What does it mean to be Green?

It's 2009 and sustainable green-ness is all the rage. I love it. Mostly, I'm wondering what took us so long. Not to give myself too much credit here, but I've been on this track from the very beginning with Mazura in 2007. I want to write a little here about what it means to be green in my fashion world.


There are four major areas that need to be addressed when looking at sustainability of fashion: materials, labor, transportation, quality/waste management. To make things more complex, these factors don't exist individually, but rather they all impact one another.

First category is materials. At Vagadu, we only use fabrics that are donated (second-hand), found, or purchased from a second hand source. In other words, we don't buy anything new unless totally necessary. The few areas I do sometimes have to buy new materials because I haven't found a consistent source yet are; zippers, interfacing, structural reinforcement, and thread.
That equals something like 90 percent used materials that would otherwise go to the dump or sit around in someone's closet for eternity. I love working this way because it creatively deals with a big problem in the world of overflowing landfills. Although many designers are now taking the admirable step of using recycled fabrics and organic cottons, these are still more energy intensive techniques than material reuse.

The second category is a HUGE issue and that is labor. As you know, most mid-size to large design houses use factory workers in other countries to produce their garments. This allows companies to pay low wages in order to keep their production costs down and to provide cheap clothing for us. While this system doesn't have to be detrimental and there are some very good factories out there, for the most part sweatshops are bad for people and the environment. At Vagadu, we are taking a different approach entirely. We are working to bring clothing back to the individual with one-of-a-kind pieces. So it doesn't make any more sense for me to ship to China than it did for Valentino. It wouldn't work with our fabric sources anyway, we never have more than small amount of fabrics so it takes constant care and creativity to finish each garment with the fabrics we have. All garments are currently sewn by me or my interns. However, in the future,I would like to hire in-house seamstresses to work with me to create the pieces. Then, I know that no one is being exploited or treated badly under my label. Not only that, working together with the seamstresses we can collectively reduce waste, time and energy used for creating clothing.

Third category is transportation. This area is huge, and actually applies to all of the other areas too. Because I buy or get my materials locally, construct my pieces locally, and sell them locally, there is very little carbon footprint in the transportation of these garments. Most big companies buy their fabric from India, ship it to China to be made, ship it back to the U.S. to be sold, etc. By the time you see these items they have traveled thousands of miles! That said, as Vagadu grows, I will be selling in different parts of the country and world and the transportation issue will have to be addressed. I am hoping to use the most eco-friendly transport mode when the time arrives.

Last, I look at quality which intersects with waste management. What this means is that the original quality of a garment dictates how long it stays in use or in someone's home instead of in the landfill. Unfortunately, many companies like Old Navy and Forever 21 make items that look good for a couple of washes, maybe even up to a year or so and then pretty much fall apart and then you dump them. They were cheap, so you aren't totally sad when this happens, but this is not a green way to think. These clothes were made to be disposable. The low prices that draw the customers in here are an illusion, because the clothes don't last, and the cycle is perpetuated. At Vagadu, we are taking the steps to make sure all the collections from now on are of the highest quality we can achieve. Because we want these pieces to last like your grandmother's clothing...for generations. We are encouraging people to buy less, and buy better, in the hopes of phasing out the idea of disposable clothing for good.

These are just my ideas of what constitutes a basis of green clothing and in Fashion it is still not fully agreed upon what constitutes "green". The closest thing there is would be possibly the "Fair Trade" label but this means little to small designers like myself that produce everything locally in the U.S. I am optimistic that hopefully we will have an organization like CCOF is for farmers, for fashion designers. Until then, it seems it is up to individual companies and designers to define what being sustainable means to them.