Are Your White T-Shirts Sustainable Fashion?

Monday 10th of October 2011 03:02:11 AM

Are Your White T-Shirts Sustainable Fashion?

Have you really thought about what is meant by “green fashion”? There’s plenty of terminology tossed into conversations today, but you would probably be hard pressed to find friends who could give you an accurate definition of sustainable or green fashion.

So what IS meant by sustainable fashion? That’s an excellent question and one that has been discussed in conferences around the world. The result of these conferences like one held in Copenhagen is that the definition of what qualities your white t-shirts, or any of the other clothes in your closet for that matter, would have to have in order to be considered sustainable fashion vary depending on the fashion designer you are talking to at the moment.

We are back to the original question: What is sustainable fashion? After considering the responses of some of the fashion designers asked the question, there are some common characteristics found in clothing considered to be green fashion. For example, sustainable fashion refers to clothing that is enduring and made with traditional techniques and concepts which are passed from generation to generation. That implies that the production method is not wasteful because people used to be quite frugal with materials and time.

Sustainable fashion also refers to clothing that is made of materials that don’t pollute the environment, has a low carbon imprint and is not made to be thrown away after only a couple of wearings.

When you are shopping for organic t-shirts, you may see words like sustainability, ethical and eco and these are all terms that mean the product is green. As the earth becomes more and more polluted, sustainable fashion is going to become a standard in the clothing industry. You can already find larger and larger collections of clothes made with organic fabrics and according to Fair labor standards.

The London College of Fashion has defined sustainable as “harnessing resources ethically and responsibly without destroying social and ecological balance.” One day your closet just well may be filled with sustainable fashion…and that’s good for the earth@