I was helping my friend shop for a pair of designer jeans last weekend and we got to talking about hems. Why, oh why do designers cut denim so long that no one, short of a supermodel, is tall enough to wear jeans straight off the rack?

Not only are we paying top dollar for brand names, we then have to invest extra time and money in the tailoring process. This has always infuriated me. What a waste of resources, energy and time! If we pieced together the denim scraps for all hemmed jeans, we could probably circle the earth.

It's not just denim. In overall garment production, about 15% of fabric is wasted in the cutting process.  That’s a lot of excess and it’s terrible for the environment.

Luckily, genius fashion and textile designer Mark Liu has come to the rescue. He has developed cutting techniques that create zero waste. Mark cuts out pattern pieces like a jigsaw puzzle from a single piece of fabric. Naturally, this begs the question: why aren’t more designers doing it? Mark’s innovation is such an important step towards sustainable design, and he truly believes that these types of eco-efficiencies can be used to create top-quality products. Now, if only the denim designers would crib his notes.

Image: Stique