Why investment dressing costs far less than fast fashion.

The term “Slow Fashion” combines many aspects of sustainability. From an industry perspective, it can refer to slowing down the production cycle, giving more attention to detail and craftsmanship in each garment, manufacturing locally, or supporting fair wages. From a consumer’s angle, it means slowing down our consumption habits, buying fewer garments that are classic, of quality, and will last us for years.

As a frequent public speaker on the topic of sustainable fashion, I find that the concept of slow fashion resonates really well with the audiences I speak to. My guess is because it’s the one area where consumers feel they can make the most impact simply by shifting their consumption habits.

Those habits are hard to break.

Like fast food, we are victims of fast fashion in North America. We feel constant pressure from the media to buy the latest trends that change with each season: From short hems to long, pointy toe to round, skinny to wide leg, we yearn to stay current. Because most of us simply cannot afford to buy quality-made garments to keep up with these fluctuating trends, we resort to shopping at the “convenient” fast fashion outlets and the big box retailer that trend-hunts runways to bring you the latest fashions in a matter of weeks.

As consumers, we are a sale-driven culture used to the quality of disposable products. We think after we wear a piece of clothing purchased at such a dramatically low cost, it’s acceptable for it to fall apart, for buttons to drop off, threads to come undone, or for them to lose shape. After all, who cares,  it only cost us $10!

The problem with this mentality is that it fuels excessive over-consumption, which comes with a hidden price tag on the environment. According to sustainable super star Kate Fletcher, who coined the term Slow Fashion, laundering our garments has a greater impact than the growing, processing and producing of the fabric, as well as its disposal. So it makes sense then that the more garments we consume, the greater the cumulative negative impact.

This is a serious problem and one that cannot change overnight. However the with our ecological clock ticking, we have to make a change sooner than later, and perhaps when it comes to fashion, we need to adopt a more European mindset. We need to invest in our wardrobe and buy quality made pieces that are timeless, and can be worn for years without falling apart.

Cost-per-wear or investment dressing is a relatively new term. But it is a very powerful tool with potential to change the way we shop. Let’s use a button down shirt as an example. On the higher end, you might spend $150 on such a top (particularly if made from organic cotton).

• First, divide the cost of the shirt by the number of garments in your wardrobe that can be worn with it. For example it can be paired with 3 pairs of jeans and 2 pairs of pants, so $150/5 = $30. The $150 shirt has now been reduced to a cost of $30;
• Next, divide the new cost of $30 by the number of times the shirt will be worn per year (say 4x per month for 12 months ie: $30/48 = 62.5 cents). The $150 shirt has now been further reduced to a cost 62.5 cents;
• The last step is to divide the new cost of 62.5 cents by the number of years the shirt will be worn – and if it was quality made and off trend it should last at least 5 years. So $.625/5 = 12.5 cents.

The final result is a $150 shirt reduced to a cost of 12.5 cents per wear over a 5 year period. Compare this to a cheaper option that falls apart in 6 months or is no longer in fashion and thereby rendered unwearable by the fashion gods. Your cost per wear can be up to 10 times more than an investment piece.

All this talk of slow fashion forced me to reflect on my own wardrobe. I was curious to know how many pieces I still wear that I have owned for 5+ years. I was surprised to see that about 40% of my wardrobe is of that vintage. I was then inspired to poll other eco fashion experts to see if they own, and still wear, items purchased from 5+ years ago. Not surprisingly, here is what I found:

Above (right): Anna Griffin, Publisher and Editor in Chief, Coco Eco Magazine pictured with astrologer Susan Miller

“I was at the Susan Miller Event at the W Hollywood Residences and wore my most treasured piece, a vintage Ozbek which always stops traffic and is absolutely stunning.”

Jasmin Malik Chua, Managing Editor Ecouterre

“I bought this sweet gingham dress from Benetton shortly after 9/11, after a harrowing 11 days away from my Ground Zero apartment.  It was a splurge for a graduate student living on a shoestring, but it’s held up magnificently over the past 10 years. Weddings, brunches, picnics, you name it. I even wore it when I was five months pregnant, so you can’t say I haven’t made the most of it!”

Emma Grady, Fashion Correspondent for Discovery’s TreeHugger, Lifestyle Correspondent for The Daily Green and Founder of PastFashionFuture

“This is a London Fog trench coat that I found at a consignment shop in Newport, Rhode Island when I was still in high school, which was more than five years ago. I have only had to mend the belt and sew on a couple of the buttons since then and it is still in fine shape and still very much a wardrobe staple of mine.”

Johanna Bjork, Founder & Editor of Goodlifer

“I’m wearing an olive green miniskirt that I bought over ten years ago. It’s been in and out of rotation in my closet, but the basic color and cut makes it a timeless piece .”

Kate Black, Founder & Editor, Magnifeco

“I bought those boots before I even knew what ‘sustainable’ fashion was, but I wanted a pair of boots with longevity, that offered both a style and brand that would see me through the years. And they only get better with age! Being a North American living in Japan, I can’t buy jeans here in my size. This means I have to ‘borrow’ from my partner’s closet. This pair, which he bought in 2006, reside permanently on my side of the closet”.

Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff, Founder/Editor of Ecostiletto

“I bought this cotton shirt and jeans before I knew what sustainable fashion was! Even though I was eating and cleaning organic, I never thought about the implications of cotton production–that this outfit alone probably required about a pound of pesticides to produce. The empire waist has seen me through two pregnancies–my kids are 12, 9 and 4 so I’ll let you guess which ones. And the jeans are soft as butter. So I guess my non-sustainable fashion purchase turned out to be sustainable after all!”

To explore this a little deeper, there are some great organizations helping raise awareness with consumers around slow fashion, such as Make Do and Mend, which, according to Maureen Dickson, co-founder of of Slow Fashion Forward “Advocates consumers make do with what they have rather than buying new to combat over-consumption. The creative one-off Six Items or Less Experiment and The Uniform Project challenge consumers to minimize consumption by simplifying their wardrobe.”

Image: Zitona

Take a look at your wardrobe. Do you own any pieces that are more than five years old and still wearable? Why do you think that is?

The post We Can All Afford to Slow Down appeared first on EcoSalon.

For those of you reading and asking, “Hey, what did I miss?” honey, you missed a lot!

This past Friday night, we hosted Ecosalon Shops! at a New York City venue in TriBeCa where nearly 20 designers, three eco-friendly boutiques (Foundfuture, Juno & Jove and Mission Savvy), and organic food and drink vendors (think chocolate! think martinis!) gathered to have a susty soiree. Thanks to a collaborative effort that included EcoSalon, sustainable designers, brands, editors, bloggers and friends, the place was packed and the fashion was flying.

But before that even happened, early arrivals, hoping to grab the product-packed goodie bags first, were swarming the space! After seating our eager guests in a lounge area, they waited patiently for the 7:00 whistle that kicked off the event. (Or make that the 7:00 beats, provided by none other than emcee Tofuburger. No, we’re not kidding.)

Over the course of three hours, some 400 fabulous eco gals (and a few green guys) showed to shop and mingle, including some of our favorite eco fashion writers (some of whom wrote pieces on the event as well): Jasmin Malik Chua of Ecouterre, Starre Vartan of Greenopia and Eco-Chick, Emma Grady of Treehugger, Abigail Doan of Ecco Eco and Eco Fashion World and spokeswoman, activist, writer and eco model, Summer Rayne Oakes of well, lots of green things! We were thrilled to spend time with these amazing people, some of whom we’ve been chatting with and working with online but had never met in person.

Readers who’ve been following us for the past two years also showed up and laughed over old and newer controversial stories that they’d either commented on or followed, got to meet all the designers we’ve been covering and made conscious purchases they could feel good about.

We’re deeply grateful to all the fantastic green supporters in media who helped spread the word about EcoSalon Shops! far and wide and attended the event, including Time Out New York, NBC’s Thread/NY as well as writers and editors from Lucky magazine, InStyle, the New York Times, Fox and Marie Claire.

Enjoy the slideshow, and visit us again tomorrow to watch the video of the event.

[smooth=id:1;]

Now don’t you fret if you didn’t get to make this one. Another event is already in the works and may be coming to a city near you. We’ll see you soon!

The post We EcoSalon Shopped! appeared first on EcoSalon.

Earth Day gets us thinking about our first.

You know, our first beach garbage pick-up, Earth Day concert, camping under the stars, organic meal – and for us fashion gals, clothing!

My first? A beautiful embroidered, organic cotton dress from designerEmily Katz who was then known as Bonnie Heart Clyde. I still own the dress and only wish we could see more from Emily (stop being such a foodie and get designing girl!)

For some of us, eco-fashion based finds were due to frugal funds as college students, for others, a conscious choice to do something different. We caught up with some of our favorite sustainably-minded fashion mavens and asked the question “Do you remember buying your first piece of sustainably designed clothing and did you buy it knowing what it was?”

Here’s what they had to say.

Anna Griffin CocoEco Magazine Publisher and Editor-In-chief

“Yes, it was a lilac and pink Deborah Lindquist recycled cashmere scarf, with a skull and crossbones that I bought three years ago from a store in West Hollywood. I had had my eye on it for ages, and was so thrilled when I finally bought it that I put it on, even though it was 80 degrees outside!”

Jasmin Malik Chua Ecouterre Managing Editor

“Yes, a sleeveless organic-cotton wrap dress from the now somewhat defunct Canadian label Twice Shy. It was purchased circa 2006, sometime after I learned about the ills of conventional cotton farming.”

Sara Ost EcoSalon Publisher and Editor-In-Chief

“I don’t remember the first sustainable piece I ever bought, because looking back there were plenty of eco-friendly things I would buy but I didn’t realize it at the time. Things started to click for me several years ago when I bought a pair of Serfontaine jeans on vacation in Marin County (I lived in L.A. at this point). They aren’t perfect, of course, but the Made in USA and natural dyes message caught my attention. I was so careful about what I ate, it suddenly struck me as odd that I was not being more conscious of what I wore: in short, a whole lot of petroleum and chemicals.”

Kate Black Magnifeco Managing Editor

“Yes, I remember by the time I started to get really interested in sustainable clothing I was living in Tokyo (and running the blog) and couldn’t read any of the clothing tags. Then along came a 50 percent off offer from Envi – and I stocked up! Organic cotton (yay!) shipped from Boston to Tokyo (nay!)”

Greta Eagan EcoSalon Fashion Writer, filmmaker, founder of gretaguide.com, fashionmegreen.com

“Hmm, I think my first sustainable fashion piece was from Buffalo Exchange when I was in college in Boulder, CO. As a student on a budget and also at a time when I was exploring my fashion identity I would go to the famous thrift store and swap out old clothing for ‘new to me’ pieces. I can’t quite remember the first article of clothing, but I do remember this one dress that was made of silk scarves and crafted in a very artistic way. I definitely didn’t know that I was participating in sustainable fashion back then – but I did like the idea of re-using clothing and exchanging what I no longer wanted for something that held more appeal.”

Bahar Shahpar Sustainable Style Expert

“Four years ago, I snagged this inky black oversized hand-knit scarf at Atrium – I saw the hulking pile of chunky alpaca amazingness from across the room and had it wrapped around my neck before I even thought to look at the label. The thing is, having just started my trial-by-fire introduction into sustainable design with the launch of my womens wear line, I already knew what to look for and what to avoid, but that day I was completely engulfed by the “Feelgood Quotient.” I may have lucked out, because the scarf was by Edun and I was able to march up to the register without much guilt – but I think that only goes to show that things that are made better actually do feel better. Shopping can be simple, if we spend more time listening to our instincts instead of the advertising.”

Rowena Hutchinson Ritchie EcoSalon Fashion Writer, Publicist and Blogger for the Innovative Fashion Council

“As a teen, I bought a champagne-colored silk brocade 1950’s shirt-waister with a full skirt from a stall at Covent Garden. I treasured that dress and would mooch around my Mother’s living room pretending to be Grace Kelly. Last year (and two decades later), I took it into a La Rosa Vintage in San Francisco and swapped it for a 30’s cocktail dress whose diamante deco-designed sleeves are a topic of conversation at every party I attend. The idea that an item of clothing can still be relevant and beautiful more than 80 years after it was made speaks to the new fashion ethos. We need clothes designed to be treasured and timeless and to foster an emotional connection with its wearer and, hopefully, multiple wearers.”

Starre Vartan Founder and editor-in-chief of Eco-Chick, author of The Eco-Chick Guide to Life, managing editor of Greenopia and a contributor to The Huffington Post

“After years of creating my own upcycled clothing (I specialized in inserting castoff fabrics into my cords and jeans to make them super wide-leg…yes it was the 90’s!) I then moved to shopping at mainstream stores and thrifting about 30 percent of my wardrobe for many years. My first piece of sustainably designed clothing was a pair of hemp trousers from The Hempest in Burlington, VT in probably 2002. They are black, read as linen (but don’t wrinkle), and I still wear them as they are supersoft and worn in perfectly.”

Kelly Drennan EcoSalon Fashion Writer, Founder of Fashion Takes Action

“I have been buying second hand and vintage clothing for years, dating back to university. However, then it wasn’t about being sustainable as much as it was about being frugal with my non existent student income. From there I was introduced to the concept of locally made clothing, having worked with a few local designers in Toronto. Annie Thompson in particular was one of my favorite local designers as she was also known for incorporating recycled fabrics into her designs.  But my first piece of clothing made from a sustainable fabric, is a bamboo kimono style jacket from Thieves that I purchased in spring 2007. Back then I, like mostly everyone else, thought bamboo was a sustainable fabric. And I wore that jacket everywhere! I still own it, and yes, I still wear it. But my reasons for wearing it have changed. When I first got it, I wore it because it was sustainable first, and stylish second. Now I simply wear it because it is a timeless and stylish piece. And it is still a conversation piece, only the conversation has changed. Rather than talking about what sustainable fabrics are and how they are better for the planet, I now talk about the reasons why bamboo is not sustainable.”

Shannon Lorraine Founder of online boutique Found Future

“I remember mine! It was five years ago and I was working as a buyer and buying high-end denim – Citizens, Ag etc… And we picked up loomstate and I did know much about the line. I bought myself jeans and an perfect tee – which I still wear!”

Image: rzacakes

The post Seasoned Eco-Fashionistas Look Back at Their First appeared first on EcoSalon.