The Fall from Edun

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Is Edun getting tired from all the work that is involved in being sustainable?

With the recent heralding from the green trenches and even the Wall Street Journal, which exposed the celebrity-based line for going “Out of Africa, Into Asia,” we all have to sit back and scratch our chins.

After all, if you have money and a front man like U2’s Bono backing you up, you should be able to do more than just what everyone else is doing. Translated? When the indie designers in Seattle are struggling to make ends meet, and are making their lines more sustainable than yours, there’s a big problem. I mean, they don’t have the luxury of having Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) buy 49 percent of the shares in their company, they work craft fairs.

So during the recent NYFW, when fresh faced Edun designer Sharon Wauchob unveiled her vision for the label (which was stunning), and we all discovered that roughly 70 percent of the line is now made in China, it was a real slap in the face to what the brand initiated and inspired us to believe: That empowering other countries, like those in Africa, through job creation could, as Goodlifer points out, be an “important tool for societal transformation, something that is urgently needed in the world of conscious fashion.”

Edun’s new chief executive, Janice Sullivan (former president of Liz Claiborne Inc.’s DKNY Jeans division and who later ran Narcisco Rodriguez), says in a recent Wall Street Journal article about taking on Edun, “The whole celebrity piece wasn’t the draw for me. I am all about the product.”

Gulp.

Everybody’s got to make a buck, but when you brand yourself as more than that and involve community from the get go, shouldn’t you be more than that?

Image: Ali Hewson and Bono wearing Edun for a recent Louis Vuitton ad

Amy DuFault

Amy DuFault is a conscious lifestyle writer, consultant and fashion instigator. She resides in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.