It’s common practice for apparel brands to hop from factory to factory in search of cost savings. Experts say this keeps companies hooked on fossil fuels.
Read moreVox | This company claims to help the world’s biggest corporations recycle. Activists say it’s greenwashing. →
TerraCycle recycles everything from Solo cups to Febreze canisters, but are they doing more harm than good?
Read moreYes! | Don't Let Consumerism Co-opt the Zero-Waste Movement →
Loop taps into the trendy and aspirational zero waste movement, in which consumers obsessively catalog their household’s output and try to get it down to the volume of a mason jar. Vowing to minimize one’s consumption and waste is a natural reaction to seeing viral photos of sea turtles strangled by beverage rings and a seahorse wrapped around a Q-tip. Well, it’s a natural reaction if you feel like the only power you have is over your family’s grocery shopping list—because you’ve been systematically blocked from decision-making positions in government or consumer product corporations.
Read moreVox | Could the Solution to Fashion Pollution Be... Tiny Nuclear Reactors?
The thing is, the fashion industry does far more toxic and dangerous things every single day than run a small nuclear reactor. I couldn’t get Ruff’s idea out of my head, as strange as it seemed at first. So yeah, I’ll bite. What is “micronuclear?” Who is Rickey Ruff? And is this idea ... feasible?
Read moreWIRED | Do You Like My Jacket? Thanks, It's Recyclable →
At the beginning of February, a large box from Germany arrived at my home in Brooklyn. Inside I found a futuristic, quilted polyester hooded jacket in pure white. “That would go really well at a winter rave,” my husband said when I slipped it over my head. With its sharp angles and preponderance of straps, it looked like something issued to the residents of a colony on Mars to wear on their weekends off from working the potato greenhouse.
Read moreWell+Good | Remove the Earth Day T-Shirt From Your Digital Cart: Here’s What’s Required of Effective Sustainable Fashion →
Writing about sustainability in the fashion industry is my passion and focus 365 days a year, and so I’m always on the lookout for innovative brands trying to do things a little better. But come early March, the emails start arriving from brands that want to tell me about their soon-to-launch collections in honor of Earth Day on April 22: branded T-shirts made of organic cotton, hoodies made from recycled plastic and cotton, and sunglasses made of bio-based polymers. These efforts are the environmentalism equivalent of phoning it in.
Read moreVox | The wellness industry is coming for your mattress →
“Every spring works like a little hand holding your body,” a male voice intones from the darkness. “That level of relaxation can open up all your small muscles, and particularly that of our hip flexors. In Swedish culture, we know that the root chakra is where we store all those emotions or feelings. So once that is open, we can really be our true self.”
I’m not used to hearing the words of a yoga goddess in a clipped, professorial Swedish accent. And normally I would laugh at the assertion that belief in chakras is a Swedish thing, but the bedding salesman’s lyrical patter has lulled me into a helpless, meditative state as I sink deeper into the $400,000 mattress system.
Read moreWIRED | Get Rich Selling Used Fashion Online—or Cry Trying →
Poshmark belongs to the ranks of companies that speak to a missing element in the labor market. Few jobs offer the desirable combination of a decent wage, flexible hours, and the ability to be one’s own boss. Poshmark seemed to offer one answer—an easy way to set up your own shop and, as a 2013 press release noted, potentially start generating $20,000 or so a month. But as Petersen discovered, there was only one problem: the hours.
Read moreW Magazine | Meet the Designer Behind Beyoncé and Madonna’s Dreamy, Ornate Body Jewelry →
Then, in November, Jordyn Woods appeared in a full Object & Dawn set in the video for Megan Thee Stallion’s paeon to the female form, “Body.” And this past Friday, Gwen Stefani teased her upcoming single on Instagram, declaring “LET ME REINTRODUCE MYSELF,” wearing a slew of Object & Dawn items: the beaded Elohim harness, the Amaya garter belt with long, black tassels, and a matching necklace.
Read moreVogue | The Fight to Strike “Gypsy” From the Fashion Lexicon →
Grigore’s nationality is Romanian, but her ethnicity is Roma, which is the preferred term for what many people call Gypsies. She’s also the founder of the Roma People's Project at Columbia University, which aims to destigmatize Roma representation and promote new, uplifting narratives about their identity. As part of that mission, she campaigns to make the word “Gypsy” obsolete.
Read moreThe New York Times | For a Leading Light of Indian Fashion, All That Glitters Is Not Gold →
His aesthetic defined Indian-fusion style for Westerners in the late aughts, with a riotous palette and Indian craft methods like embroidery and appliqué.
But Mr. Arora’s brand partnerships, it turns out, seem to be more like belated attempts to save a business beset by years of chaos and financial troubles than an indication of success.
Read moreHarper's Bazaar | Just How Harmful Are the Chemicals in Your Clothes? →
Due to lack of regulation, dangerous chemicals turn up in fast fashion, outerwear, and everything in between. Here, some ways to steer clear.
Read moreNEO.LIFE | Get Up to Speed on the State of Eco-Fashion →
The race is on to bioengineer carbon-neutral, recyclable, biodegradable, and affordable materials.
Read moreInStyle | The Most Patriotic Thing You Can Do This July Is Buy From These Black Designers →
As July Fourth 2020 approaches, it’s just not the mood to grab a $5 flag-printed T-shirt.
Americans are wondering how, exactly, they are supposed to celebrate and take pride in a country when Black Americans are still fighting for the right to exist safely in public spaces and vote. It will also be hard to forget that America is Number One, but in the most gruesome statistic of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, which have disproportionately affected Black Americans.
Meanwhile, before you snag that discount red-and-white striped bikini, it might give you pause to know that the garment workers in developing countries from Haiti to Bangladesh who produce much of our patriotic garb are running out of food, as large companies — including the one that produces Kylie and Kendall Jenner’s brand — refuse to pay for their orders.
Narratively | The Quarantined Hippies Trapped in a Jungle Paradise →
When COVID flared in Panama, 20 travelers from 18 countries holed up in this eco-village and shut the gates. Things in the outside world got worse, and now they might never leave.
Read moreHarper's Bazaar | Can Sustainable Fashion and Inclusive Sizing Coexist? →
These brands are tackling two important, underrepresented facets of the fashion industry, but they’re still a minority.
Read moreInStyle | The Human Hair in Your Wig May Have Been Pulled from Shower Drains →
The grossest moment in Just Extensions, the self-produced documentary by L.A. serial entrepreneur Riqua Hailes that investigates the global human hair trade, is probably the scene where she arrives at a human hair market after a 17-hour drive through rural China and ends up picking through a large burlap sack filled with matted hair balls for sale.
In the trade, they call this “fallen hair,” or hair that has been pulled out of hair brushes, shower drains, and even the trash in rural villages and cities alike in Asia. And if you wear extensions, you might have it on your head right now.
Read moreInStyle | Red Carpets Will Never Be the Same After the Pandemic Is Over →
We don’t know yet how long this will last, but one thing is for sure: When the pandemic has passed and we are allowed to reemerge into a social life again, the conversation about sustainability in celebrity fashion can’t just be about fabrics. It has to include a human element, too.
Read moreInStyle | American Fashion Changed After the Depression, and It's About to Reinvent Itself Again →
If we draw on the expertise of fashion historians and trend forecasters, we can learn from the social, financial, and fashion upheaval of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to predict how our style will change in the coming months and years. In short? It’s not going to be all leggings all the time: Dressier days are on the horizon already.
Read moreThe Cut | Fashion Week Is Simply Not Sustainable →
Why are we still doing this? Of course, runway shows create but a sliver of the environmental impact of the fashion industry, but they represent everything that is wrong with it. They’re inherently wasteful, with glossy sets built, torn down, and landfilled after a ten-minute spectacle. Attendees fly first-class from fashion capital to fashion capital, where they jump into black cars that ferry them around, leaving trails of disposable water bottles and gift-bag swag behind.
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