Toxic vs sustainable fashion
Sustainable fashion is trending but will it ever take root? Not until we the consumer demand it!
I learnt about eco designer clothing for the first time when I was asked to open for Jeff Garner’s Prophetik fashion show at London Fashion Week with one of my songs ‘One Starry Night’.
Jeff creates beautiful hemp silk clothing for men and women. It’s next level unlike anything I had seen in that category before. High end fashion, with beautiful silky texture, dyed naturally in stunning vibrant colors from the flowers he grows in is own garden.
But why? Spoiler alert, everything that you wear is going to go into your body. Yes that means into your blood stream! You might be surprised to realize that we weren’t really designed for modern clothes. Our skin absorbs everything. Our lymphatic system moves all the toxins out of our body. Fatty tissue in women’s breasts need the lymphatic system to move everything out. Bras are restrictive in motion. Victoria’s Secret were sued by 600 women for breast c a n c e r. That’s when they took away the underwire bra, as it’s a conduit for radiation. But it’s not just that, it’s the chemicals too. The carcinogens in our clothing.
Do you know what polyester & nylon are made of? Parachutes were first made out of silk, followed by ladies silk stockings, so when more silk was needed, Dupont was paid by the government to create a synthetic to mimic silk. That is nylon.
Then formaldehyde is the glue in dyes that holds it together. It’s also found in actual glue, and even medicines and food products that people eat! Read your labels!! Studies have shown that people who wear perfumes with formaldehyde have been known to get asthma. It’s bioaccumulation. Then you have to wonder what about the chemicals in baby cloths right?
Spandex has TDI in it which is a hormone disrupter, as in, it can cause fertility issues and much more.
Petrolium based chemicals within synthetic dyes can catch alight at the strike of a match! Sounds healthy doesn’t it?!
Denim is made with starch, what does starch do in water? It sucks all the oxygen out. Hence fish suffocate.
Would you believe, the number one pollutant in the textile industry is washing your clothes. Microbeads peel off, and they come out of our wash. Our filtration systems and water treatment plants are not designed to handle these, so fish are being cut open and microbeads are being found inside of them. Not to mention what we actually wash our clothes with…
Natural plant based dye vats take more money and time, but in the grand scheme of things that’s only TEN CENTS more per jeans! It’s an economics game.
A bit of a bonus perk for those who don’t love doing their laundry, natural clothes don’t need to be washed very often. Hemp is anti fungal, anti bacterial, strong, breathable and doesn’t hold smells. This is the same for bamboo and other organic natural fibers.
Design obsolescence, which they teach designers in school today, is putting people back into the store because their clothes fall apart. Staying power is not a healthy product to the fashion world!
I could go on, and deeper, but the bottom line is we vote with our wallet. Sometimes we think it’s easier to simply go with what is intentionally put infront of us, through advertising and convenience, by the very companies cutting the most corners, harming the most lives, but if our population of billions keep doing that without thinking, we will no longer have a culture and planet we recognize or even like. And if we were doing better in health as a society, then maybe things wouldn’t feel as urgent.
Sustainability calls for less pollution, harm, depleted soils, poisoned workers, dying bodies of water, etc. Sustainability is the forerunner of greater diversity and choice. So in the long run it’s a no brainer!