Ecouterre

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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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