By Ariel Azoff of The SNSPost & Heartsleevesblog.com
Runway shows, even ones featuring sustainable designs, are not so eco-friendly. Last year, 232,000 people attended Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in New York. There were 300 shows from over 250 different designers. Celebrity manicurist Deborah Lippmann went through 2,000 bottles of nail polish, and stylist Nick Irwin used 32 bottles of hairspray in one show. Think about how many models, designers and crew were drinking from plastic water bottles, and how many programs were printed. That’s quite an impact.
Luckily, eco-consciousness is creeping ontothe catwalk. Portland Fashion Week, for example, is the first and only entirely “green” fashion week in the world and has been since 2007. In addition to featuring only eco designers, PFW tries to use only green energy in the event’s production and receives certified carbon offsets and Renewable Energy CertificatesEnergy.
Natural beauty company Aveda is on the water bottle case. It co-hosts Aveda CatWalks for Water in cities around the country, and has been doing the show for the past six years at New York Fashion Week. For this week’s show, it has collaborated with designers to reduce the environmental impact of their runway shows, and with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to supply free tap water at various New York City locations. The company is not just concerned with bottled water, though.
There are four main ways it is making the NYC Runway more sustainable:
1. Providing limited-edition EarthLust water bottles backstage. The bottles will have the signatures of the designers on them, and can be refilled with very drinkable NYC tap water. (I know it’s drinkable, it comes from the reservoir 5 minutes from where I grew up).
2. Eliminating the use of fur in the shows and in retail iterations
3. Paying for and serving organic or locally-sourced food to the models, stylists, makeup artists and production staff backstage.
4. Printing the invitations and programs on post-consumer recycled paper.
For the Aveda shows, stylists use Aveda products, which themselves are less harmful to the models and the environment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
These efforts are great, but they’re just a start. It’s not enough for our clothes to gradually go green (metaphorically, that is). All of the runways have to get there too.
Born and raised in Woodstock, Ariel Azoff is an adventurer and aspiring writer who spent the past year working for a human rights organization in the Middle East. She is a contributing writer to The SNSPost & Midthoughtblog.com, and now that she is back in the U.S. is delving into the world of sustainable fashion and blogging as she goes at Heartsleevesblog.com.
Related articles
- Nail Polish Numbers: Surprising Stats from New York Fashion Week (bellasugar.com)
- Aveda Launches a Hair-rific iPhone App (bellasugar.com)
- What’s In a Name: Misleading Marketing of Bottled Water (livinggreenandsavingenergy.com)
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