Climate change is as real as the comeback of baggy jeans, baby tees, and vintage clothing, but unlike most fashion trends, climate change is here to stay longer than any fashion trend if we don’t do anything about it. Amidst the fashion and clothing industry’s art, glamour, and beauty, this industry has contributed to the climate crisis that we are experiencing.
From the avant-garde haute couture pieces to the basic white t-shirt and jeans, our clothes and purchases increase our carbon footprint and create an environmental impact more significant than couture’s exorbitant price tags.
Whether you’re an aspiring designer looking to get into the fashion industry, or a creative entrepreneur looking to develop your own eco-friendly fashion line, you’ve probably wondered, “What is eco-fashion, and how can we make it?”
Eco-fashion is an emerging design movement that combines eco-friendly and high-quality design, focusing on building a positive impact on the environment. It’s a natural progression for those who are environmentally conscious, design-minded, and looking for a business model that allows for greater profits.
If you’re ready to learn how to design eco-fashion, keep reading! This article will help you understand the fundamentals of eco-fashion design, the different subcategories, and how to incorporate them into your own business. For fashion houses and designers, the challenge now is to create sustainable fashion that works and helps alleviate the ill effects of climate change on our environment and fashion production.
Environmental Concerns in the Fashion Industry
To fully understand eco-fashion or sustainable fashion, let’s first look into the social and environmental implications of irresponsible fashion production, from the materials used in producing clothes to the labor that produces them.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, annually, the fashion industry consumes 93 cubic meters of water, estimated to provide water for up to 5 million people. If that doesn’t alarm you, the fashion industry is also responsible for 10% of the annual carbon emissions—from the manufacturing process up to the shipping and packaging of the clothes. Not to mention that textile waste accounts for 1/3 of all household waste, and most of it ends up in landfills.
As for labor, more often than not, it is found that most fashion items are produced in developing countries where unregulated labor practices are employed to meet the demand of big fashion brands, thus, resulting in dismal working conditions. With these staggering statistics, it is clear that the fashion industry has transformed from being a mere form of self-expression to an alarming contributor to climate change.
What Is Ethical And Sustainable Fashion?
Sustainable fashion is fashion that is made to be ecologically sustainable to reduce waste, lessen the fashion industry’s carbon footprint, and overall improve the lives of its consumers and employees by being on the side of the environment.
There are other means related to fashion wherein we can still contribute to the fight against climate change. Some ways to do so are to support the use of organic materials such as plant-based dyes, turn to vegan leather or organic approaches in fashion production, and use natural fibers such as cotton and wool instead of synthetic fabrics or acid-treated materials. Sustainable fashion is not necessary to eliminate the use of all synthetic materials in fashion production but rather to reduce the amount used and increase the usage of natural fibers.
Overproduction and Overconsumption
The main enemy here is overproduction and overconsumption. Sustainable fashion combats these by promoting the use of ethically-made fashion and slow fashion. We can reduce our baselines for production and prevent over-consumption by buying only what we need and reusing old clothes instead of getting rid of them to make way for new items. So yes, your thrifted jeans are a great contribution to the sustainable fashion movement. The key here is balancing our needs as designers, consumers, and society. We have to find a balance that works for us and be creative to make our sustainable fashion statements.
The Conscious Collection
Nowadays, we see clothing lines or fashion brands participating in circular fashion. Circular fashion, or what some brands refer to as a “conscious collection,” is a fashion line wherein all the raw materials used in making the collections come from a closed cycle of organic and recycled materials. This means that if it is not biodegradable to begin with, then the materials are recycled or upcycled into something that can still function as a fashion accessory without causing adverse environmental impact.
Slow Fashion
We also have slow fashion, which is in stark contrast to the fast-fashion ready to wear (RTW) industry. In slow fashion, clothes are made and designed for longevity using sustainable materials and recycled textiles. This way, we can prolong the lifespan of fashion items and still look sustainably stylish.
How Does It Differ From Sustainable Fashion?
Before we can get into how eco-fashion design works and how you can integrate it into your brand, it’s best first to understand what eco-fashion is. Sustainable fashion is a broad term used to describe the production of clothing and other products designed to be reused repeatedly without wearing out (or polluting the environment). Sustainable clothing uses low-impact manufacturing practices, such as organic dyes, recycled materials, and organic fabrics.
Some sustainable fashion products can easily be reused and recycled, while others are more durable and intended to be durable fashion. For example, eco-friendly rubber shoes can have multiple life cycles, while leather boots have a more limited lifespan and require proper treatment.
The Different Types Of Eco-Fashion
Depending on the type of eco-friendly materials you incorporate into your designs, you’re likely to find different kinds of eco-friendly fashion subcategories. Let’s take a look at some examples to see the differences between each type.
Textiles – As mentioned above, textiles make up the most significant sustainable fashion category. Textiles can be made from natural materials like cotton, hemp, linen, silk, and bamboo. They can also be made from synthetic materials like polyester and acrylic. Although you don’t see fabrics made from these materials very often in mainstream fashion, you do see them used in sustainable fashion brands and products.
Technical Clothing – Technical or safety clothing often includes workwear, such as hard hats and vests. This type of clothing is usually made from synthetic materials such as nylon and polyester. However, when these workwear items are made with organic materials like bionic fiber, they can be considered eco-friendly. Clothing for the Home – This includes clothes for everyday wear, such as t-shirts, sweatshirts, and jeans. Eco-friendly clothing for the home often incorporates organic cotton, hemp, and other materials.
Fashion Accessories – Accessories are a bit of a wildcard. Although they often incorporate eco-friendly materials like cotton, hemp, and bamboo, they can also be made out of various other materials.
How Does Eco-Fashion Design Work?
When thinking about the process of designing eco-friendly fashion, it’s essential to realize that you won’t be creating a garment from scratch. Most eco-friendly fashion brands use sustainable textiles and then add their unique touches and designs. Let’s see how this is done. When designing eco-fashion, you’ll start with one of two approaches. You can either collaborate with a sustainable fashion brand or use a sustainable fashion template.
Collaboration – If you’re looking to partner with a sustainable fashion brand, you’ll choose from those brands’ existing eco-friendly product lines. This can include their clothing, shoes, bags, bedding, etc.
Template – The second option is to use a template. Sustainable fashion brands often create these templates for their employees, so you’ll want to make sure that your chosen template is available to the public.
How Can You Integrate Eco-Fashion Into Your Brand?
Once you’ve chosen the type of eco-friendly fashion subcategory you’d like to integrate, it’s time to think about how to incorporate it into your brand. There are a few different ways you can do this.
Product Design – Product design can be the easiest way to incorporate ecofriendly fashion into your brand. This is because most eco-friendly fashion items are already designed. The only thing you need to do is add your unique touches.
Website – Adding eco-friendly fashion to your website is another easy way to incorporate it into your brand. Using a custom WordPress theme with a few plugins like Eco-theme and Eco-responsive, you can easily integrate these eco-friendly products into your online store.
Eco-Fashion Design Principles
If you’re interested in eco-fashion, you’ve probably read about the benefits and opportunities of the industry. Still, if you want to get serious about the business, you need to understand the core principles behind the movement. There are six main principles of eco-fashion design. Let’s take a closer look at each one of these principles so that you’re better equipped to create your line of eco-friendly fashion.
Care: As a designer, you need to put a lot of thought into your choices when designing a product. Everything you do, from choosing materials to the way you create your product, has an impact on both the environment and the people who will use it.
In a nutshell, the core principle of eco-fashion means thinking about how you create your products as if you were creating them for someone you care about. Suppose you want to create eco-fashion that positively impacts the environment. In that case, you need to make sure that the materials you use are eco-friendly and that each step you take to design your products is conscious of how it will ultimately impact the environment.
Considerate Action: Eco-fashion designers need to be conscious of how their products will impact the environment. As we mentioned above, every product you create impacts both the environment and the people who will use it. The first thing you need to consider is the product’s impact on your customer.
Great-quality, eco-friendly products that are durable, comfortable, and appealing to your target customer need to be sought after by as many people as possible. If your product is only appealing to a niche market, you’re missing out on many potential customers.
Sustainability: The second principle of eco-fashion design is sustainability. This means long-term thinking and planning. You need to think about your business model, your materials, your distribution model, and your product design.
As a designer, you need to think about how you’re going to make your business successful for years to come. Your business model will determine how you distribute and sell your products, what materials you use, and how you design your products. It’s important to remember that the quality of your product is just as important as the price when determining how successful your business will be.
Transparency: Eco-fashion brands are often trusted and admired for their transparency. With transparency, you need to ensure that customers know where and how their products are made. Transparency is all about being open and upfront about the practices and materials used in producing your products so that customers can make an informed decision about the products they buy. Transparency also means you need to be upfront about your company and how you’re addressing sustainability practices in the production of your products.
Inclusive Design: Although eco-fashion is becoming increasingly popular, it’s often seen as a luxury good. This means that most people don’t have easy access to it – which is a huge missed opportunity.
As a designer, you need to think about offering your products at affordable prices without sacrificing the quality of your design. By keeping your product affordable and selecting eco-friendly materials, you can appeal to a broader range of customers. Your products should be durable, comfortable, and appealing to your target market. It’s important to remember to think about how you can build a sustainable business model that allows you to reach a larger audience.
Authenticity: Some of the most exciting opportunities in eco-fashion come from tapping into the creative innovation that’s happening throughout the industry. This means collaborating with other designers and entrepreneurs to create new products and brands that you can be inspired by. It’s important to remember that ecofashion is a movement, not a fashion trend. While you may see certain styles of clothing and accessories making waves in the media, it’ll be up to you to create new products that incorporate those trends. At the end of the day, you want to design authentic products for your brand. It’s important to remember that you’re designing for yourself first and then for your customers.
Why Is Eco-Fashion Important?
The key to eco-fashion is building a positive impact on the environment. This means being conscious of the materials you use, the production process, and how you design your products. When you think of eco-friendly fashion design, you need to think about how you build your products as if you were building them for someone you care about.
In addition, eco-fashion is all about creating authentic designs for your brand. Because of this, it’s important to think deeply about the design process behind your products so that you can create a fabric and product line that’s both appealing to your target market and sustainable.
How To Design Eco-Friendly Fashion
Eco-fashion, however, is more meticulous, especially with the production process. Here, eco fashion ensures that the clothing items produced have little to no environmental repercussions, such as minimizing microfibers, which are major ocean pollutants, using natural dyes over toxic chemicals, and sourcing sustainable fabrics and organic materials.
Sustainable practices also assure the safety of those working in the production line, ensuring that workers are not being exposed to toxic chemicals. Ideally, clothing design should be sustainable from scratch. The designer must consider the ecological impact of their designs from start to finish, from the idea to the market stage, and even how it will be distributed.
This is why in most sustainable fashion brands, you would notice that their clothing pieces are essential and timeless, assuring that the item can be used repeatedly over time. But then again, this doesn’t mean that these sustainable fashion brands are boxed into designing basics. There are still eco-friendly brands like US designer Stella McCartney who produces sexy and stylish clothing pieces.
Designers need not be limited by the idea of what sustainable fashion should look like since beauty is already in the eye of the beholder. We have to be conscious and responsible about our designs to look good and feel good while doing so. So how can these fashion brands keep their heads above water if they shouldn’t utilize a mass-production business model?
While many sustainable fashion labels design for the luxury market, there are also brands that produce affordable eco-friendly designs. The trick is in getting people to understand and appreciate what they’re buying. Eco-fashion designers must communicate how their products are made so consumers will get on board with their message and patronize their products.
Brands must be able to prove their value proposition through the quality of the products they make. By educating consumers, brands can convey that eco-fashion is not just about wearing clothes. It’s about doing our part in protecting our earth and society as a whole.
Agile Manufacturing Model
Another thing that fashion brands should consider if they’re keen on becoming sustainable and ethical is switching to an agile manufacturing model. In this respect, teams can quickly iterate and improve the design of a product as more information about their customers becomes available. A strong relationship with your endusers will help identify what eco-friendly products they want more of, which also helps prioritize production goals for marketers and designers.
Companies that practice agile manufacturing have a competitive edge in the marketplace by producing goods more quickly and efficiently. By taking advantage of what is known as “agile supply chains,” sustainable fashion brands can speed up the design process, market research, production timelines, and supply chain management.
In tandem with switching from a one-size-fits-all model to an agile manufacturing platform, this eliminates significant time wasted on unsold inventory that traditional fashion companies still have to deal with.
Learn more about how Tukatech can support your business’s agile manufacturing by using the latest in fashion technology.
Fashion Revolution Week
Another important event for sustainable fashion is Fashion Revolution Week. Founded by Carry Somers in 2014, Fashion Revolution Week is a global movement that aims at raising awareness for sustainable fashion and conscientious consumerism.
“Greenwashing” Is Not Sustainable Fashion
While the idea of sustainable fashion is already gaining ground among consumers, it is important to separate reputable brands from companies that are just trying to profit off of the fashion revolution movement. Sustainable fashion is not about making money. It’s about doing good for you, your community, and the planet.
That said, fashion firms that claim to be sustainable brands simply by developing environmentally-friendly lines but are produced in the same large quantities as conventional fashion brands should not be recognized as sustainable and ethical fashion brands at all.
The Key To Eco-Fashion Success: Focus On Quality Design
Three main things will help you create quality eco-fashion: research, development, and testing. Many brands and designers don’t put a lot of thought into the research and development of their products because they assume their target market will want to buy their products. The problem with that approach is that you won’t know if your product is actually sustainable and eco-friendly.
As a designer, you need to take the time to understand how your customers use your products so that you can implement sustainable materials and production practices. Additionally, you need to test your products on real customers beforelaunching your brand. This will allow you to make any necessary adjustments before launching your products.
Tips for Designing Eco-Fashion
Before you start designing products, it’s important to understand your target market. Your customers use and buy your products for different reasons, and they have different needs, which means you need to think about the way you design your products. When designing products, you also need to think about your marketing strategy. If customers don’t know your products exist, they won’t buy them.
The Top Eco-Fashion Subcategories
There are many different subcategories within eco-fashion, and the best thing is that most of them are completely doable by small-time designers. The best way to break down the subcategories of eco-fashion is to think about how you can incorporate what you’ve learned so far into your design process.
Support Sustainable and Ethical Fashion
In a nutshell, sustainable fashion encourages better business practices and more eco-friendly production techniques that highlight the importance of fair trade. If we are to support sustainable and ethical fashion, we must be conscious of what we buy and where it is coming from. Ultimately, social, ethical, and sustainable fashion is about people, the planet, and making a positive change in the world.
(Contributed by Tukatech Inc.)
