Ecouterre

Multimedia artist Alyce Santoro may be best known in the fashion community for her woven cassette-tape Sonic Fabric, but the conceptual artist, activist, and homesteader contains multitudes we’ve only begun to see. Once a member of a grassroots artist enclave in Brooklyn, Santoro now holds court in West Texas, where she lives an almost off-grid lifestyle accompanied by the hum of her solar-powered sewing machine. We caught up with the creative powerhouse to learn why she considers Sonic Fabric more conceptual art than upcycling statement, the reason she abandoned New York City for the Texan desert, and how she managed to whittle her electric bill down to $14 each month.

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Nel Linssen’s paper-craft jewelry may look disarmingly simple, but the Dutch designer’s crisp collars and razor-edged bracelets are anything but child’s play. Inspired by botanical rhythms and structures, Linssen’s “logical constructions” are designed to respond to the wearer’s movements . Every precise cut and fold conspires to create tessellated pieces that are at once minimalist in aesthetic and texturally complex.

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Fashion houses, designers, and writers live in the future. Although summer has everyone a-swelter, we zapped forward in time recently for a sneak peek at how fall fashion will shape up, specifically Eviana Hartman’s surprise collaboration with ethical clothing label Hessnatur. Prognosis: The Bodkin designer’s 13-piece capsule collection will rock your tomorrow, with smart, functional designs that are versatile, modern, and affordable.

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If you have soft spot for the chunky knits of Sandra Backlund or Dave Cole, you definitely need to know about Taiwanese designer Johan Ku and his “emotional sculptures.” Now based in London, Ku takes hand-knit and crochet techniques and blows them up in scale, creating a new form of homespun wizardry that depicts the wilder side of fashion.

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CRAILAR \ ˈkrā lär \
n. 1 a: Organically certified fiber derived from natural bast fibers (such as hemp and flax), which are responsibly treated with an “enzymatic bath” and then spun into soft, white fibers similar to organic cotton. b: Touted as the next affordable and sustainable stand-in for conventional cotton, with the added bonus of tensile strength for use in textile, industrial, energy, medical, …

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Scandinavian modern may be synonymous with sleek blonde-wood furniture, but the design movement’s love of natural materials and curvy, organic forms can just as easily be applied to fashion. Considering that many of frontrunners of sustainable fashion hail from Sweden, the Swedish Institute is wasting no time flaunting its best and brightest with a touring exhibition that hit American shores for the first time this week. Eco Chic – Towards Sustainable Swedish Fashion, now showing at Scandinavia House in New York City, is a celebration of design that is high on both style and ethics, featuring notable names like Camilla Norrback, Anja Hynynen, and Johanna Hofring.

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Photo by Aurora Silk Yarns

AHIMSA \ə-hĭm’sä’ \
n. 1 a: A Sanskrit term meaning to do no harm—literally translated as “the avoidance of violence”—or in the context of silk-fiber production, the ethical treatment of mulberry-eating silkworms. b: In lieu of boiling the silk cocoon to prematurely release strands of filament-like fiber, Ahimsa silk is extracted …

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Few people, perhaps, understand the seasonal alchemy of Mother Nature better than Jane Palmer, co-creator of the Noon Solar line of bags and now the founder of the first—and so far only—natural-dye production house in the United States. Launched in January and based out of Chicago, Noon Design Studio is committed to using sustainably harvested natural materials as a low-impact alternative to toxic fabric treatments. More significant, however, is that it endeavors to do so at a cost-efficient, production scale.

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London Fashion Week may have been aflutter with Ada Zanditon’s bat-inspired eco fashion, but it was Paris that laid claim to Rianne de Witte’s “sophisticated moths.” Both mystical and minimalist in nature, the Dutch eco-fashion legend’s Autumn/Winter 2010 collection is a perfect example of how contemporary fashion might transcend the material realm, with classic elements that have timeless appeal.

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Jennifer Wen Ma’s beautifully dappled charcoal prints at Ekovaruhuset’s New York Fashion Week show so mesmerized us that we simply had to find out more about the Emmy Award-winning artist and her work. Ma collaborated with Melissa Kirgan and Xing-Zhen Chung-Hilyard of Eko-Lab to create the smoke-hued pieces, which were painted freehand using water-based, low-impact inks. The result? A misty, atmospheric effect reminiscent of Chinese landscape paintings and Zen calligraphy.

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Photo by Johann Sauty

Can sustainability, biodiversity, and the future of the fashion coexist under one roof? EcoChic Geneva paved the way for just such a tête-à-tête this past week, with an ambitious agenda to “redefine sustainability in the international agenda.” Held at the UN’s European headquarters, the two-day event gathered policy makers, economists, fashion designers, and textile enthusiasts to explore the role fashion can play in wildlife conservation and sustainable development.

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Photo by Sean Michael/Epoch

If you’d rather draw stares than jeers, skip the fur stoles this winter in favor of this textured moss collar by Tara Baoth Mooney, a recent graduate of the London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion. (Bonus: It’ll match your living plant purse.) It’s no surprise that Mooney reaped accolades for her botanical faux fur at this past month’s Fashioning the Future Awards. This spirited young designer looked to her Irish roots—quite literally—for ways people can fashionably interface with the natural realm, as well as consider the impact their activities have on the environment.

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Slow and Steady Wins the Race by Mary Ping

The message may be the medium, but for some eco-savvy fashion designers, it’s not simply enough to use organic materials, nontoxic processes, and fair-trade practices. The ongoing Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion exhibit, held at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery in NYC, aims to examine the relationship we have with the clothes we acquire, consume, and cast off, from the way they look to how they make us feel.

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Photo by The Purl Bee
O-WOOL \ō wu̇l \

n. 1 a: U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified organic wool yarn and fabric by The Vermont Organic Fiber Company. b: Requires certified-organic livestock feed and forage; the prohibition of synthetic hormones, genetic engineering, and …

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Here’s another eco-fashion innovation that is both puzzling and promising: “Fragmented” clothing that features customizable snap-on pieces, requires no sewing, and reduces textile waste. Leading this charge is Refinity, a Dutch design consultancy whose Square Dress and Star Skirt are based on a click/fold assembly system that allows you to wear the same garment in countless ways, alter its design on demand, as well as wash or replace the parts separately.

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There is definitely something haunting about rendering the invisible “visible,” particularly when it comes to dissecting layers of the corporeal self. Austrian designer Sonja Bäumel goes one step further with her “(In)visible Membranes: Life on the Human Body and Its Design Applications” project, a fusion of fashion, philosophy, and science that explores how bacteria on our skin could be used to create clothing. Or, in her own words, how we could witness the “transformation of invisible skin bacteria on our living body to visible bacteria on a body-external medium.”

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Despite the rich autumnal tones on tap, jewelry innovation seems to be taking on the bold green hues of summer. These exotic leaf and pod accessories, created by Bulgarian textile artist Ceca Georgieva, are fit for a woodland nymph. After more than a year of email exchanges, I was treated to her latest green jewelry experiments, a fresh discovery in a land more accustomed to Thracian gold ornaments and ancient leafy crowns.

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The whirlwind pace of Fashion Week shows and parties is de rigueur for buzz-happy fashion editors and groupies, no matter how up to speed they profess to be. So it’s rare when a hot young designer sends them into a tizzy the way that London-based Ada Zanditon recently did. Her Spring/Summer 2010 collection (“Colony”), presented at London Fashion Week/Vauxhall Fashion Scout’s One’s to Watch Show, is not only an example of textile biomimicry at its best, but also a signal that we might finally be ready for true ethical and environmental storytelling in fashion design.

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With all the fashion-forward inroads made at The GreenShows at New York Fashion Week, it’s obvious that today’s eco-fashionistas are savvier than ever about the alchemy of eco-couture. What they may not be privy to, however, are the custom recipes that go into hand-dyed garments like those of standout label Mr. Larkin. Thanks to The Permacouture Institute’s slow textile-dyeing methods, eco-friendly fabrics can now be artfully imbued with a rich palette of organic materials that are readily available at your local farmers’ market or garden.

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Photo by Mark Aldane Tumang

PIÑA FIBER \ pēn-yə fī-bər\
n. 1 a: Long, fine, lustrous fibers obtained from the leaves of pineapple plants. (The plants are typically cultivated in Hawaii, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, and the West Indies.) b: Resilient, strong fibers often used for sheer, silky fabrics, ropes, twine, and paper. c: Piña …

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Photo by Barneys New York/Earth Pledge FutureFashion

BANANA FABRIC \ bə-ˈna-nə ˈfa-brik\

n 1 a: A Southeast Asian cloth derived from the cast-off stems and leaves of the banana tree. b: The coarse outer layer is commonly used for woven tablecloths, cushions, seating, and curtains, while …

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