Luxury Shift: Recycled products that rival those from the best fashion houses in the world.

Just about everyone knows that one of the easiest ways to be environmentally friendly is to recycle. Sustainable style seekers have long been known to add breadth to their wardrobes with finds from thrift, consignment and vintage stores. More and more, the buzz is that fashion retailers are turning to reusable materials and some innovative techniques to get mainstream fashion consumers hooked on recycled fashion.

Born into one of Italy’s most famous and important fashion houses, Camina Campus creator, Ilaria Venturini Fendi uses the family talent for fine craftsmanship to produce high quality products from recycled materials that rival those from the best luxury houses in the world. Her line’s ongoing collaboration with the International Trade Centre and their Ethical Fashion Program—which seeks to improve working conditions for women in slums and rural areas of Kenya and Uganda—recently developed a capsule collection with legendary Milan lifestyle emporium, 10 Corso Cosmo. According to their journal, the lustworthy collection is made from recycled materials including “reclaimed military blankets and 10 Corso Como colorful fabric cuttings.”

From Style.com’s Style File, news of another retailer embracing recycled materials came from a fashion editor who got a glimpse of Club Monaco’s under-the-radar recycled repurposed vintage military collection due to hit stores this fall. She reports that “while in London, Club Monaco’s design team hand-picked one-of-a kind men’s vintage military jackets at Portobello Market and reformatted them into parkas, vests, and jackets for women.”  Authentic but altered for an updated, modern look, the line is sure to be a hit with eco and mainstream consumers alike. The 20 piece collection priced from $149 to $199 will be available at select Los Angeles and New York Club Monaco stores.

Oxfam, the U.K.’s Goodwill, have developed a truly innovative way to connect consumers to the fun of thrifting. The Oxfam Curiosity shop, a pop up store in London’s world-famous Selfridges store has partnered with Tales of Things to create QR code tags for many of the celebrity donations and vintage selections. According to PSFK, customers can “scan the mobile tags using their smartphones or any of the store’s bespoke RFID readers to reveal video of the associated celebrity explaining the charity and talking about the history of the item.”

With our culture’s voracious appetite for fashion and celebrity media, and, in turn, fashion and celebrity media sharing an unending appetite for newness, it seems logical to think of a future where everything has to be re-used and regenerated. For trend watchers, recycled fashion—the concept of taking something old and working it into something new—might yet be the most exciting style scene to track.

There’s a lot to learn from the cool UK example of raising funds to share the wealth.

Take Oxfam, for instance, and their ethical and secondhand shops whose funds raise money for relief efforts around the globe. They do great work and offer us one-of-a-kind clothes and jewelry to die for.

Another group, most commonly known as TRAID (Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development) is a UK charity that actively works to divert clothing and shoes from landfills as well as to reduce world poverty by raising funds for development projects.

From TRAID has sprung TRAIDremade, an environmentally-conscious fashion label launched in 2002, giving new meaning to conscious shopping. They recently partnered with Timberland to create Bagsy, limited edition eco bags made from 100% recycled denim and leather (including reconditioned Timberland shirts and jackets).

Bagsy by TRAIDremade and Timberland

Timberland’s role in the partnership is equally impressive with its “Change Your Wardrobe, Change Their Lives” campaign where Timberland customers get 20% off new purchases by donating clothes they no longer need. TRAID then transforms the clothes into “funds to fight global poverty.”

If you live in London, shopping TRAID is a given. But the best resource for Stateside shoppers is to contact the site and see if you can claim your own Bagsy and have it shipped. (Man, but then there’s a carbon footprint to offset. Can’t anyone open a location here?)

Do you have your email set up for Google alerts? I do. One of them is for “eco-fashion” (go figure, right?).

A few days ago I got an email talking about Oxfam Great Britain’s secondhand and ethically-produced clothing you can buy online and was flabbergasted by how great the pieces were in both sections.

I’m ashamed to say I never knew the same Oxfam has over 700 shops, including specialist shops for books, clothes and music all over the world, which sell many fair-trade items and clothing. This all started in 1948.

According to the website, the proceeds from these usually get paid to different charities or are used to further Oxfam’s relief efforts around the globe. They rely on people donating things for free.

In just the Second Hand section, there are 1,282 pages and numerous others in the Ethical Collection. Where to begin?

Well, how about page four of their Second Hand store under Evening Wear for this stunning evening dress which goes for around $31.00?

Wait until you see the back of it…