Conscious Clothing

 

(Photo:orange prom dresses)I love fashion as much as the next girl. Actually, if I’m honest, I love fashion a little more than the next girl which is why I chose it as a full time career. Unfortunately, as with most things I love (aerosol deodorant, frequent taxis and disposable water bottles included) fashion isn’t exactly good for my future.

Now I know that sounds a little dramatic (don’t I always?) but bear with me. Are you aware that the fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters in the world? Yep, the oil moguls may be right up there at the top but we fashionistas are hot on their heels.

It’s a scary thought that bulk buying spaghetti strap tops for your summer holiday could be contributing to global warming. So that’s it then… no more clothes for us! Now that is dramatic. There is an answer and as per usual I have it for you. Just call me the Dalai Lama of fashion.

Before you burn all of your clothes in protest (which, BTW, would just add to the pollution) let’s take a second to think about how we can make a change. You might have heard the term ‘ethical fashion’ and wondered what it means.

Well, ethical fashion does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s the idea that as consumers we should be aware of where the materials used in our clothes have come from, the pollution that we have caused and how the people creating our garments are being treated.

We are all aware of the horrors that workers in sweatshops are often subjected to. The idea behind ethical fashion is that we research where we buy from and avoid the labels that are guilty of a less than ethical manufacturing process.

However, ethical fashion isn’t just about where your clothes have come from. It’s also about what they say. Fashion has the unique power to portray a message to the masses. Recently, Karl Lagerfeld sent a pack of models careering down the catwalk on a feminist march for Chanel. It was a ploy that placed the feminist movement into all of the right news outlets for all of the right reasons.

That’s what ethical fashion is all about, improving the world that we live in through the medium of fashion. We are a generation of people that are painfully aware of what we put in our bodies so it makes sense that we should be just as aware of what goes on those same bodies.

The full article appears in the December issue of Xposé Magazine, out now.Read more at:purple prom dresses uk