Eco Fashion
by S. Brown
ISBN: 9781856696913
This review is part of the Green Books campaign.
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‘Eco Fashion‘ was printed on FSC certified Mixed Resources paper.
Ecologically and socially sustainable fashion historically suffers from the stigma of being a turn-away for your social life and style recognition. Eco-fashion without fault, became – and even today still is – associated with the image of being a hippie, wearing baggy, often ethnic, more often than not unfavourably fitting clothes, in drab colours and amateur DIY cuts.
‘Eco-fashion‘, finally, turns the table on unfounded, historical clichés, and shows on 200 beautifully illustrated pages that eco-fashion has come of age, and in fact offers some of the best designs and designers the fashion industry has currently to offer. It presents short profiles of 62 individual designers and brands that in one way or another are ‘eco’ in their approach. ‘Eco’ being the rather fuzzy concept it is, Sass Brown assigned every profile to one of 5 different categories, which in turn are represented in separated chapters, each accompanied by an introductory paragraph:
- Community & Fair Trade (14 portraits)
- Ecological & Slow Design (15 portraits)
- Recycle, Reuse & Redesign (14 portraits)
- New Models (9 portraits)
- Designer & Corporate Initiatives (10 portraits)
The 62 portraits are all presented on 1 to 2 double pages, and feature – inevitably – ample evidence of the design achievements in form of photographs. In addition, a generally short introduction and outline of the brands’ history, philosophy, work approaches, ‘eco’ achievements and commercial success complements the portraits.
In this context, one remarkable detail cannot go unmentioned: A number of designers portrayed in the book – such as Noir, From Somewhere and Miguel Adrover (now head designer for the German ethical fashion online brand Hess Natur) – have in fact been around for a decade or even more. In this time they ‘just did their thing’, rather than talking about their commitments. Until recently. Now that ethical/sustainable fashion is slowly being pushed into the spotlight, how a designer produces his/her collections is more openly talked about, and as a consequence, this information is a point of reference for the public as much as for design peers alike.
The specific value of Sass Brown’s book lies not in the theories, and neither in any ‘To Do’ lists which – ideally – should be adhered to by the makers and producers of fashion, nor in the academic evaluation of each and every achievement. But rather, the book introduces a broad public, not the least in the fashion industry, to the idea that only brilliant (fashion) designers can live up to the challenge and ALSO be ethical at the same time – after all the standards are high in every respect. The book makes it also plausible that ethical designers are numerous out there. This latter point is further enforced by growing number of portraits that, though they have not made it into the book, are continuously added to the resource section of ‘Eco Fashion’s website. In fact, the site has already at this point evolved into a substantial directory of ethical brands.
Another key point about the book is the fact that the brands were chosen wisely with respect to their country of origin.
It is an open secret that the ‘eco’ fashion scene in the different countries such as the UK or France has little idea about what is happening beyond their national borders. So it goes that UK brands are short of knowledge about their peers in, say, France, Italy or Spain, and vice-versa.
Through the choice of the brands portrayed, ‘Eco Fashion‘ makes a firm statement about internationalisation, or rather: globalisation, of ‘eco’ fashion as a trend. Brands from the US, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the UK and Scandinavia are being portrayed, and overall this leaves clearly the impression that there is a lot of interesting, good design being created in just about any country. At this point still, geographic locations such as the Asia-Pacific, South America or Africa are under-represented in comparison to European and North American brands. It is fair to assume though that this may likely be due to a lack of availability of information in first place.
Two major flaws of the books, both of which are related to the portraits’ descriptive text, can though not go without mentioning.
First, some of the descriptions read like they have been copied straight off the website of the brand they are describing, or else feel like an arbitrarily scrambled together collection of words caught when eavesdropping at a coffee table conversation of fashion designers. Second, the descriptions are generally lacking organisation. Certifications and materials used, to name but two examples, are mentioned, yet in multiple different, sometimes incoherent ways. This makes it very difficult to compare brands against one another based on the information presented, or even to use the portraits as foundation for further research.
‘Eco fashion‘, while well researched and balanced over all, is not a book that will give you wast amounts of insights of how the different brands operate, what their challenges, hurdles and achievements were to get to were they are now. It tells us only very little about how brands compare to each other – other than visually. Taken transparency as a given characteristic of all the mentioned brands, I would have expected more substance in the texts, which at this point read like press releases or website summaries.
The principle, and no doubt major merit of ‘Eco Fashion‘ is its show casing of the breadth and width of ethical fashion brands that are successful in the market place. It also illustrates the variety of approaches that qualify them as being ethical. The picture portraits are the long overdue prove that ethical fashion as nothing to do with being reminiscent of ‘hippie’, but instead honour the designers for what they are: at the top of league among their peers.
This book is available from your nearest book store, as well as online from Amazon.
