From a wasteful fashion industry emerges the Zero Waste movement.

It is said that the next great war will not be over oil, but water. So when it takes 1,800 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to produce a single pair of jeans, it is extraordinary that cloth has become a readily disposable commodity of little value. Indicative of this is the fact that on average 15 – 20% of cloth needed to produce a garment is wasted and the useless remnants are destined for the incinerator, landfill or occasionally as mattress filler.

In 2008 China, one of the world’s largest exporters of textiles and clothing produced 31.8 billion meters of fabric in January to July alone. You could reasonably estimate that almost 5 billion meters of that fabric was wasted. This astonishing wastefulness is caused by the entrenched traditions of the fashion industry, which separate the stages of garment design and production into hierarchies where the designers often work isolated from production. It is a system that fails to acknowledge that textiles are a finished product with energy invested into their design and manufacture and which seems primarily interested in the next new thing, forgetting also about what happens to garments at the end of their fashionable lives. So what’s being done about it?

Zero Waste cutting

Over the last couple of years I have had the privilege of working with Parsons Assistant Professor Timo Rissanen to bring together the work of 12 designers from all over the world in a zero waste fashion exhibition called Yield: Making Fashion Without Making Waste. All of these designers engage in some way with what has come to be known as Zero Waste Fashion Design (ZWFD). ZWFD involves designing clothing that in some way eliminates waste from the production or consumption of clothing.

This can be achieved in a number of ways and through various approaches; some designers use the left over fabric pieces to make other garments or products; others eliminate the creation of waste altogether when designing their patterns. Many designers use second hand clothing in order to remove waste from the post consumer end of the fashion consumption cycle, while others use innovative technology to make garments in completely new ways. All are in some way are addressing the huge volumes of textile waste contributed by the fashion and textile industry and consumers every year – a massive 30kg per person per year in UK and U.S.

Piles of second hand clothes for sale

Designing Out the Waste
Anybody who has cut out and sewn up a garment will be aware of the pieces between the pattern that are not incorporated into the finished garment. Many people save such offcuts for future projects, but there will typically be pieces that are either too small or oddly shaped to be of any use. These are routinely discarded, passing through the trash, en route to the landfill. In industry, markers are designed to eliminate as much of this wastage as possible in order to save money. However, the design of the garments is dictated by aesthetics and market alone, inevitably resulting in surplus pieces that cannot be used. The company can either creatively use this left over 15% to make different products, or by designing both the positive and negative spaces of the pattern it is possible to reduce this figure to zero. ZWFD aims to tick all the boxes of aesthetics, fit, market and zero waste.

The kimono as a historic example of Zero Waste cutting

These approaches, while sometimes appearing new, are in fact as old as clothing itself. For hundreds of years, aesthetics, and to a lesser extent functionality, have been the two pillars of fashion design, and when coupled with the slightly more contemporary desire for speed and change, has lead to the proliferation of too much fashion, too many collections, too often. Historically fashion was expensive because cloth was expensive and time consuming to produce. This meant it made sense to be careful about how you used the cloth you had and how you cared for the clothing you owned. Mending was common and using cloth frugally was standard practice – there are examples of “zero waste garments” from almost every continent and culture, and we’ve been practicing it for centuries.

Admittedly designing ZWF isn’t the easiest when first starting out. This type of design is not about numbers, it’s about experimentation, playfulness and taking a risk, all while being mindful of the impact of your actions. It slows the design of fashion down and forces many parts of the fashion chain to think about waste and material use from a design and production perspective. Many of the problems that exist in the fashion industry begin with ideas of separation, both geographical and hierarchical. Whether designer/producer, producer/consumer, consumption and disposal, the greater the distance and separation between the stakeholders in the fashion chain, the greater the likelihood of discordance and a lack of appreciation of what is really going on.

Holly McQuillan’s own Zero Waste Designs

Designing ZWF needs to be done with either a close relationship between designer and pattern cutter, or by a designer who is the pattern cutter, any other arrangement will be an exercise in futility. The change enables a close relationship between market, aesthetic and fabric yield to flourish, and from this, beautiful things are possible.

A designer attempting a zero waste garment design cannot simply ask, “have I used ALL of that piece of cloth?”

Doing only this would potentially result in garments that no one would want to purchase. So with ZWFD and indeed all sustainable design, aesthetics cannot be at the expense of the environment, just as the environment cannot be at the expense of aesthetics. There must exist a harmony between both.

Writer Holly McQuillan, is the Yield exhibit’s curator, and is also a designer and lecturer in the fashion design program at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts in Wellington, New Zealand.

Top image: McQuillan’s Yield Exhibit in Chicago

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Loomstate debuts its first zero-waste garment developed in collaboration with Parsons The New School for Design.

Recent Parsons graduate Andria Crescioni, and Loomstate founders Rogan Gregory and Scott Mackinlay Hahn are this week debuting their first zero-waste garment developed in collaboration with Parsons The New School for Design. The winning design, by Crescioni was inspired from a zero waste fashion course at the school and guidance from Timo Rissanen, Parsons Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Sustainability and an expert in zero waste fashion.

Rissanen developed the course for students to learn a new approach to design: that of wasting absolutely nothing in the entire design process. Hahn and Gregory served as mentors on the project, educating students about such issues as sourcing, dyeing, finishing, and energy consumption of organic denim. The two continued to guide Crescioni in the manufacturing of the garment from development through production. The result is this modern, truly sustainable spin on a wardrobe favorite that never goes out of style.

“Zero waste fashion is an innovative design process that produces no fabric waste. In effect, patternmaking becomes an integral part of the process, creating a richer, more sustainable design practice,” says Simon Collins, dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons. “Through this collaboration, we have proven that zero waste can be a viable manufacturing process for designers.”

You can see more from Crescioni at the Awamaki Lab, a Peruvian non-profit that works with indigenous female weavers, where she is developing a capsule collection.

The winning anorak will be available starting this week at the ROGAN boutique located on the Bowery in New York City and at Loomstate’s online store.

The post Lustables: Loomstate & Parson’s Zero Waste Anorak appeared first on EcoSalon.

EcoSalon’s top 20 favorite sustainable fashion sites from around the globe.

They help us find out about new designers, industry news, trends, learn what sustainable fashion means, and discover all the swanky events we can attend on a global level – these are our eco fashion writers and designers, our go-to girls reporting all the news fit to print, from the exciting and beautiful to the all-too-often tragic and wasteful designer landscape. These are the pioneers of a new type of fashion that explores, connects and draws us in to what the industry could be if we simply supported it more.

We’d like to throw our own hat into this ring, as well- but then, you’re already here reading us, aren’t you?

Past Fashion Future

Past Fashion Future founder Emma Grady says: “I founded Past Fashion Future one year ago as a platform to explore my personal style aesthetic and to show the beauty of timeless and classic fashion and style. I love hearing people’s personal style stories, specifically about their sentimental connection to the clothing that they wear.”

We love the site layout, sharp, stylish images and especially, Something Old, Something New, a series that reveals how modern day style mavens wear heirlooms, vintage, and ethical fashion.

Vogue’s Green Style blog

Come on, It’s Vogue, it’s Livia Firth, it’s eco fashion and it’s high style – do we need to say any more about it?

Ecco eco

BurdaStyle

BurdaStyle, is an online social community that uses the web to bring the craft of sewing to a new generation of designers, hobbyists, DIYers and anyone looking to sew. What could be more sustainable than making clothes yourself? Sewers flock here to mingle, share and support over projects, patterns and full galleries of completed designs.

Join their community to keep current with what other budding (and seasoned) designers are doing. We most certainly do.

Six Magazine

SIX says it was founded with one aim, “to celebrate the designers, individuals, independent brands and companies who are creating a more ethical and sustainable future for the fashion industry.”
We love how the site incorporates beauty products as well as high fashion and packages it so beautifully we want to read every article.
We also love that SIX represents the sixth sense we all have when it comes to style and value.

Clever.

4 Equal Sides

Tara St James, founder of Study NY and 4 Equal Sides believes that “open source material plays a strong role in the development of the sustainable design community,” making her the rare designer that has vision enough to see how the sustainable designer’s new model needs to play out. Under her guidance, Study’s interns have developed, produced and continue to sell their own sustainable mini collections. St James is very open about her production and design process and documents her own story as a designer in a visually as well as editorially personal way that makes you come back for more.

Fashion Me Green

FashionMeGreen is a sustainable fashion awareness project and style site. Founder Greta Eagan says it’s “Conscious coolhunting from around the globe,” and we are in total agreement.

All the curated product pulls, designer features, amazing photo editorials and fashion trend pieces give us extreme hope for the future of ethical fashion that it can in fact be stylish enough to become mainstream without anyone even noticing.

Closette

Yuka Yoneda, founder of Closette and Ecouterre’s Senior Editor calls herself a shopaholic.

“Well, I was a shopaholic. I was always a jeans and sweatshirt kinda girl, but when I graduated from college and got a job in the city, I went a leeeetle crazy with the shopping – okay, a lot crazy. Then I learned about where the clothes I was buying came from and how they were affecting and hurting other people, particularly women and children, around the globe. The idea that these crimes against women, pollution and chemicals going into our water and bodies, and just shear waste were all happening because I wanted a new top or jeans really made me feel ashamed. I knew I had to make a difference in my own life, so I started thrift shopping, supporting sustainable designers and making my own clothes and I feel wonderful knowing that the garments I wear don’t contribute to anyone else being hurt (except maybe for the people who have to look at my crazy outfits).”

Check out Closette for some fun DIY ideas, shop vintage and secondhand clothing or try winning one of her fun giveaways.

Goodlifer

Founded by Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Johanna Björk, Goodlifer is all about style and the good life. “With your help, we’re writing a guidebook for a new generation of Goodlifers. We want you to share in and help craft a positive, enthusiastic vision of a future that is both sustainable and achievable. Through first-hand, personal journalism and thoughtful exploration and discussion we’re here to consider daily choices, reconsider assumptions, pose questions, uncover opportunities, make you think and collaborate with us on what it means to be a Goodlifer.”

Sign us on Johanna.

We’ve been following Timo Rissanen since we came across him in this New York Times article and were more than elated to finally meet him recently at the Yield exhibit in Brooklyn. Timo says on his site: “I’m investigating fashion creation without fabric waste creation through design practice.”

We are fascinated by his finds.

EFW

EcoFashionWorld says they aim to inspire with new ideas, ideals and information. “Our goal is to keep you green, gorgeous and growing with a comprehensive guide to finding sustainable designer brands and online eco fashion stores.” For those new to the game and fumbling over the words like Peace Silk or tencel, check out their glossary for the latest terminology definitions.

Ethical Fashion Forum

The Ethical Fashion Forum is a non-profit organization, that makes life just a little more easy “for fashion professionals to integrate sustainability at the heart of what they do.”
Membership to the EFF delivers support for sustainable fashion businesses through three programs with each program including several essential tools which members can take advantage of to succeed in ethical fashion business.

Members can also stay current with events, sourcing and EFF socials.

Ecouterre

The fashion daughter of Inhabitat, Ecouterre is a heavily photo-curated website devoted to the future of sustainable fashion design. “We’re dedicated to showcasing and supporting designers who not only contemplate cut, form, and drape, but also a garment’s social and environmental impact, from the cultivation of its fibers to its use and disposal. Our ethos: To follow the evolution of the apparel industry toward a more environmentally sound future, as well as facilitate a conversation about why sustainable fashion matters.”

Treehugger

What came first, eco blogging or Treehugger? I think many of us were reading Treehugger when eco fashion was just beginning to evolve past the point of crunchy. Still on track to provide us with timely fashion news, we’ve bookmarked the site and will continue to go back.

Eco Chick

Eco-Chick editor Starre Vartan, consultant and author of The Eco-Chick’s Guide to Life, says the main intention of her site is to “inspire readers toward a healthier, more sustainable life (which we think means a happier life too). That includes slowing down, unplugging, getting out, going in, making mistakes and moving on, being choosy, doing research, and growing every day. Rest and relaxation are real and important, and so is time with friends and family. We love local food, farmer’s markets, independent designers, handmade everything, and connecting with where our stuff comes from and who makes it. We especially love inspiring women who keep us on our toes and asking questions.”

Her site covers all aspects of the fashion industry and Starre is a known girl about town on the streets of New York City when it comes to getting the scoop on eco-fashion. If you’re where she is, you’re in the right place.

Magnifeco

Magnifeco is an eco-fashion blog currently based in Tokyo by founder Kate Black and features fair-trade, sustainable, organic, recycled, vintage and vegan brands in a place where ethics meet aesthetics. From earth friendly fabrics, to sustainable manufacturing processes and fairtrade practices, the site features conscious designers and products for the conscious consumer.

Market Publique

Market Publique is an eclectic marketplace dedicated to vintage fashion “committed to bringing the community together so we can all have a place to buy, sell and discuss vintage in a positive and focused environment.”
The Brooklyn based company started when the founders realized there was a lack of options for quality vintage sellers online.

We are obsessed with how great the styling is and are always inspired to grab a piece to add to our own wardrobes or to simply wear clothes differently after we leave the site.

Holly McQuillan

Holy McQuillan, Yield Curator, designer and lecturer in the fashion design program at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts in Wellington, New Zealand says since completing her Masters of Design, which explored the presentation of cultural memory through garment design, her work has focused on exploring the possibilities that arise when garment design is restrained by one goal – zero-waste.

Peruse her site or get in touch with her with some of your own zero waste design questions. She will get you rethinking fashion for sure.

Organic Girly

Organic Girly founder Jennifer Barckley is not only one of the nicest people we’ve ever met, she’s also a fantastic resource. Utilize her “Ask me anything,” button and she will get back to you quickly. Check her site for periodic updates on vegan and sustainable fashion forays that sometimes even lead her to chicken sitting.

Social Alterations

Mary Hanlon’s Social Alterations was “developed with fashion and textile design educators in mind, it also acts to create a platform for design educators to benchmark themselves against other educators not only within their own field, but across various design disciplines. In order to create real lasting change, designers of all disciplines must work together to foster transformation.”

A wonderful venue for timely fashion news regarding everything from Fast Fashion to CSR.

Image: Shandi-lee

The post From Eco to Vintage to DIY, 20 Fashion Sites We Can’t Live Without appeared first on EcoSalon.

Yield’s “Making Fashion Without Waste” exhibit, a closer look at an art and a movement.

In the midst of Fashion Week here in New York, it might seem contradictory to go to a show on producing less waste when all around, fashion is flying. In eco-fashion, however, it’s always good to keep things in balance and to have a reality-grounded perspective about the fashion industry. However beautiful, however sustainable, designers have got to keep themselves in check when it comes to the waste they produce with every collection.

Some designers are better at this than others.

The Textile Arts Center launched Yield: Making Fashion Without Waste, on Friday night at their Brooklyn location, featuring zero waste designers Holly McQuillan, Caroline Priebe, Timo Rissanen, Julian Roberts, Tara St. James, David Telfer, Yeohlee Teng, Jennifer Whitty, Natalie Chanin, Carla Fernandez, Sam Formo, and Julia Lumsden.

Holly McQuillan, Yield Curator, designer and lecturer in the fashion design program at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts in Wellington, New Zealand was available to answer some questions pre-show about the exhibit and just how zero waste can be that when by the simple act of design and creation, there is excess.

Here’s what she had to say.

Yield curator and designer, Holly McQuillan

Would you consider zero waste design an art?
No, it’s a technique. Painting is a technique and can be an art form or a way to decorate your home. It depends on what you do with it, like any technique, its up to the practitioner. So some zero waste design could be considered art, but much of it is commercial design.

Julian Roberts and Holy McQuillan

Why don’t more designers use it if it helps maximize fabric use and create less waste?
Primarily for 2 reasons.
A: When you first start it is difficult to do well. Like any new skill that requires a bit of effort, zero waste can begin badly, many students try it once, it doesn’t meet their expectations and they assume its not possible. The reality is that it’s a technique, like standard pattern cutting and draping on a dress form and sewing, learning it takes time.

B: Because of this, the assumption is that you have no control over the aesthetic – something all designers want. The more you practice zero waste fashion the more you can shape the outcomes. Many good designers have spent 3-4 years being taught the skills of traditional fashion design (sketching, design development, drape, pattern cutting, construction) and then go into industry and continue to have at least some of these skills developed. This enables designers/pattern cutters to have control over the outcomes; a layman has a great deal more difficulty resolving a garment design because they don’t have the skill base.

Julian Roberts

Designers want to be able to immediately be as good at zero waste design as they already are at the traditional models, but of course most won’t be as they haven’t had years of learning in education or industry. So they assume the outcomes they initially see from their attempts are all they will be able to achieve. They also assume that the outcomes they see out there by existing zero waste designers are all that can be achieved, but every designer approaches it differently and therefore has different outcomes.

Recently I’ve been in conversation with one of the worlds best known producers of clothing about implementing a zero waste fashion collection to their ranges. If these guys can do it, anyone can.

Timo Rissanen

Can you talk about “cultural memory” inherent in our clothing and how that ties into zero waste?
I stumbled into zero waste while completing my Masters of Design at Massey University in 2004/2005. My masters (called First Son) wasn’t on zero waste fashion at all – it was exploring the role clothing can play in communicating cultural and collective memory. How clothing can tell a story and the appropriateness of garments as a medium for that. I was interested in the flexibility inherent in cloth, the intimacy of wearing clothing next to the skin, its ability to tell people about who or what you are, the multi-layered, adaptable possibilities of cloth and garments, and importantly the way garments, more than most other personal items, seem to be able to ‘hold’ the memory of the person who wore them.

Sam Formo

All of this combined into a collection of five garments that told a story collected from a group of people about a person important in my life – my father. He was an ordinary husband, father, farmer and friend who grew up in post WWII New Zealand and died in 1993 after a battle with cancer. I was using his life and the memories people had of him as representative of (masculine) culture in post war New Zealand and testing how clothing could be used to transcend time, to communicate narratives and loss to contemporary New Zealanders.

To achieve this I used a process of cutting 2D cloth (landscape) without cutting any part off, and transforming the cloth into five different garment designs that told a different story about my father and the time he lived in. The garments are not fixed, they can be ‘unmade’ and ‘made’ again and again using the relatively complex fastenings, folds and twists, so to be able to make them the way I intended them you need to know the story behind them. However, someone else could make a completely different garment with a different interpretation of a similar ‘story.’’ The garments were zero waste because nothing in memory or time is cut off and removed, nothing is ‘wasted,’ it all comes together to make us who we are, what our cultures are, both good and bad, whether we like it or not.

I didn’t know what zero waste fashion was, my manifestation of what we now call Zero Waste Fashion came about from my research into memory and a chance encounter with a pattern for a Kimono (which are usually zero waste). There were no sustainable goals in my master project, just a respect for craft, time, landscape and a desire to communicate an idea.

Yeohlee Teng

Do all the designers featured design with zero waste in mind all the time or was this just a challenge for some for Yield?
Not all the designers are always zero waste designers. All but Julian Roberts had garments that were zero waste in some way, which is why they were selected back in early 2010. Julian Roberts uses a technique he invented called Subtraction Cutting which lends itself well to zero waste fashion, and has been inspirational to Timo and myself in the work we do. So we challenged Julian to attempt a zero waste piece for this exhibition, it is not quite zero waste, but a vast improvement on his usual yield.

David Telfer explores a range of innovative approaches, one of which is zero waste design. Yeohlee Teng and Zandra Rhodes do not always design with zero waste in mind, but are always extremely mindful of how they use cloth. The garments in YIELD are demonstrations of what is possible. Today we could add many more examples, as more and more designers attempt this process, but that’s a whole other project.

Carla Fernandez

How does a fashion designer one day decide to call what they are creating “zero waste” when by the very act of designing they are creating waste?

I’m not even sure where the term came from! It should probably be called Zero Waste Garment Design or Zero Waste Pattern Design. We intentionally didn’t call our exhibition Zero Waste Fashion because not all the designers are zero waste fashion designers, so instead it’s YIELD: Making Fashion Without Making Waste. So when we make the garments in the show we don’t make any (or much) waste. It’s the easiest way to explain what the premise for the show is, and for what we do in general, so it seems to stick.

Principals of waste management ask that you first don’t produce any waste, then you reduce waste, then you reuse it and then you recycle it. So this process targets the first step in waste management, we don’t produce waste in production. Now a company/designer/consumer can choose to follow through with other equally important steps to reduce their environmental impact, or not. Obviously I’d prefer they used organic, recycled or otherwise sustainable fabrics. That they designed timeless garments that encouraged their consumers to buy less and local, That they transported their locally made garments in biodegradable packaging using transportation methods with minimized impacts on the environment.

Natalie Chanin

I’d like it if they encouraged their consumers to wash less, in cold water, and to not use the dryer. I would encourage designers and consumers to support mending services and local craft. And, when the garment can no longer be mended, for it to be reused in another capacity until its eventual disposal – ideally being recycled or composted. Zero Waste Fashion is one step in a possible series of steps. Zero waste fashion can also be about using the scraps for other purposes – such as what Natalie Chanin does, or designers could use textiles that can be recycled into new fabrics. Sustainable designers need to deal somehow with the resources they waste in the production of their garments. There are so many opportunities for designers, consumers and retailers to make a difference, zero waste fashion is one such opportunity.

Tara St James

There a number of important repercussions from designing in this way also:

Designing a zero waste garment is slower: It would be extremely difficult have a lead-time (from design to delivery) of 14 days (such as Zara has) for all but the most simple zero waste fashion design. While the waste reduction from this process would benefit from the vast scale of fast fashion – the more zero waste garments you make the greater the reduction of waste – the negative impacts of fast fashions speed of change would cancel this out. It’s quite the conundrum and something I struggle with a lot. I guess it depends if you believe its possible for designers to stop people from consuming/disposing of clothing the way they currently do.

It requires all members of a design team to consider every decision they make. The production of clothing has long separated out the roles of design and production. To successfully achieve a zero waste garment either the line needs to be developed by a person with strength in pattern cutting, 3D design and construction, or the team needs to work as one in a truly collaborative way. The pattern for a zero waste garment is the 3D design, the pattern and the marker all in one – the design is not a sketch.

You can’t copy an existing design easily: following fads can be difficult. The value in a zero waste design is its originality, its craft and its embedded energy. Garments designed through a zero waste design process will have moments that are unexpected, they wont look exactly like everything else you see in stores because it is difficult to draw a design or to look at an existing garment and say “I want to design something like that.”

The post EcoSalon at NYFW: Yield’s Zero Waste Exhibit appeared first on EcoSalon.

In August 2010, we published a story about Parsons The New School For Design’s first course in zero waste – a first in the world. Watched closely at key junctures throughout the design process by Loomstate co-founder/designer, Scott Mackinkay Hahn, and taught by Timo Rissanen, a Finnish designer, the duo hoped to instill in students the principle that zero waste is possible and can be achieved – and that the end product can be a thing of beauty. They launched the class with that iconic American wardrobe staple, a pair of jeans.

Students had a big carrot in front of them, knowing that at the end of the course, the winning design would be chosen and the student behind it would have the opportunity to intern with the Loomstate production team in their California or New York factory. The design would then be sold at Barneys in New York.

The time is here! An exhibition of all the students’ denim fashions will be on view at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons, February 8-23, 2011. The winning look will be revealed at the opening reception.

Designer news portal Dexigner reports: “Through muslin prototypes, garment patterns, video and photography, the exhibition will provide visitors with a behind-the-scenes look at this cutting-edge approach to sustainable design, which is the focus of a new course of study at Parsons.”

Zero-Waste Fashion is one of a number of sustainable design initiatives in the School of Fashion at Parsons. While this intro to zero waste was a great start, Dexigner says Parsons is looking forward to spring with fashion design students examining ways of extending the life-cycle of a garment. Additionally, fashion marketing and communications design and technology students will collaborate with the advertising agency, Droga 5 (the agency behind the “Great Schlep” campaign of the last presidential election), to research sustainable care practices and develop a global branding campaign called “Wash Cold.”

Meanwhile, those in the BFA Fashion Design program are teaming up with students across Parsons in the Solar Decathlon, a biannual global competition to design and build a solar-powered home, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Parsons students will be designing a sustainable wardrobe for inhabitants of the home, which takes into account energy use and consumption.

The post Loomstate And Parsons Set To Announce Zero Waste Winner appeared first on EcoSalon.

In an overly consumptive American society, it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out why we’re so far behind other countries when it comes to zero waste. We consume so much, that we never take inventory of what we already have.

So it should be no surprise that according to a recent New York Times article about Fashion Tries On Zero Waste Design, “Nearly every leading zero-waste or less-waste designer hails from another country, including Mark Liu, Julian Roberts and Zandra Rhodes in England; Susan Dimasi and Chantal Kirby in Australia, Ms. McQuillan in New Zealand; and Yeohlee Teng, who is working in New York but was born in Malaysia.”

The article brings up some really great questions about how fashion is interpreted and at the most basic, the pattern.

While many in the fashion industry are starting to stand tall on their green toes – implementing organic fabrics, using less energy, and making significant changes when it comes to their carbon footprint – excess fabric, which translates to tons of waste over a design career, is often overlooked. While all these strategies are optimistic and good, creating well thought out patterns that use less waste may be a better option.

Next month, Timo Rissanen, a Finnish designer whose blog promotes  “Fashion creation without fabric waste creation through design practice,” will be Parsons the New School For Design’s first-ever assistant professor of fashion design and sustainability offering one of the world’s first fashion courses in zero waste. (Rissanen might want to bring his soon to debut book “Shaping Sustainable Fashion: Changing the Way We Make and Use Clothes,” co-written by Alison Gwilt along for the ride).

The class will be co-taught with Scott Mackinlay Hahn, a founder of the organic fashion label Loomstate.

The duo hopes to inspire in budding student designer’s minds that zero waste is possible and can be achieved with the end product being something of beauty. They plan to start with an iconic American wardrobe staple, a pair of jeans.

The New York Times says the “Students in the class will explore how to change the way jeans are made and cared for, from sourcing fibers that have not been exposed to pesticides or fertilizers, to how frequently consumers wash their denim. The top design will be manufactured at Loomstate’s California factory and sold next spring at Barneys New York.”

Inspiration enough for students to work harder than they ever have.

Image: Timo Rissanen (New York Times)

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