" Major labels can order large quantities of organic cotton for a mainstream clothing line, but emerging Eco-designers face a series of challenges. Most mills aren’t interested in producing specialty fabrics in small quantities, forcing designers to use an extremely limited color palette (those olive greens, burlap browns and dusty off-whites) or find creative alternatives from recycling fabrics to making one-of-a-kind pieces."
Makes sense, don't you think? So what can we do to make things better, healthier, and more fair for ourselves, and for the people who make our gorgeous wedding gowns? Just start with asking questions...where is this fabric sourced? How is it manufactured? Consumers are driving this green movement, and brides can pretty much drive any changes they want in the wedding industry...look at the increased availability of recycled paper invitations....and the "conflict-free" diamond market. Getting married is beautiful, powerful, and your decisions about how you get married can change your life and the world...viva la revolution!
high fashion to david's bridal: the wedding dress
London-based designer Gary Harvey debuted his first collection last year during London Fashion Week, calling his design approach the re-contextualization of iconic, everyday garments to create dramatic new silhouettes, and thus giving new life to disposable items।
To fashion these dresses, 30 copies of the financial times were folded and attached to a corset, and 28 Army jackets were cut up and reconstructed into a fishtail cocktail dress. (here are some more things you can do with newspaper...)
10 wedding dresses were reconstructed to create this dress. Gary Harvey says: "The wedding dress is one of the most wasteful garments made to be worn once, and then either stored or discarded, and the handiwork of these dresses is often done by low paid workers who receive a fraction of the dresses final cost." And you might be shocked (I was) to learn that 40% of today's brides purchase two dresses for their wedding day...
So how about some affordable, fabulous, fair trade, sustainable wedding gowns? I know there are some out there...but I would hardly call them affordable or high fashion (sorry...) and none have yet to penetrate the behemoth David's Bridal, which is the largest seller of wedding gowns in the U।S....So what's the hold up? Here's one explanation from e Magazine (the best resource, IMHO...)
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