Not Too Sexy for the Earth
(Page 2 of 2)
January / February 2006
Andi McDaniel Utne magazine
While a few pairs of pricey bamboo pants are hardly going to
turn the toxic tide, ecofashion's appetite for organic cotton is
already making a difference for farmers. According to Organic
Exchange, a Berkeley, California-based resource center for ethical
consumerism, demand for organic cotton has increased 300 percent in
the past three years. Behemoth Nike pledged to use 5 percent
organic cotton in all of its cotton apparel by 2010. If mainstream
corporations continue to catch on, it will go a long way toward
making organic cotton farming a viable enterprise.
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The rise of conscious consumerism in the fashion world feels
more than a little familiar. It wasn't long ago that organic food
caused a similar stir and was dismissed with similar cries of
elitism. It was too expensive, we claimed, and too nichey to appeal
to the mainstream consumer. Yet sales of organic food have exceeded
all predictions, forcing supermarkets to adopt 'natural food'
aisles to hang on to those precious LOHAS (lifestyles of health and
sustainability) consumers.
The consensus within the ecofashion community is that once high
fashion fully embraces sustainability, it will trickle down to the
average consumer, presumably at a lower price. Besides, says Sean
Schmidt, founding editor of the online magazine SASS (Style and
Sustainability Seasonal), ecofashion is only partly about making
sustainability look good. The part about 'bringing sustainability
to the style world,' he writes, 'is simply a must.'
Consumers could opt to drop out of the relentless cycle of
retail consumption and resurface in the world of clothes swaps and
buying secondhand. In the short term, though, the answer probably
involves compromise: purchasing some new organic clothes and some
used clothes, and supplementing with hand-me-downs from Mom's
vintage wardrobe. And in the long run, sustainable fashion, like
sustainable agriculture, will require going beyond pesticide-free
and even fair trade to an entirely new way of thinking about our
clothes, knowing where they really came from and caring where they
end up.
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