Sustainable fashion is gradually gaining ground at New York Fashion Week. Meeting with two designers who reflect on their practices to create clothes with less impact on the environment.
During the pandemic, Emma Gage lost her fashion job. Two years later, she founded her brand, Melke, a little thumb that made its debut at New York Fashion Week by betting on more sustainable fashion.
Emma Gage is originally from Minnesota. It is not the first, nor the only one, to bet on the fashion niche, while the industry is singled out for its impact on the environment.
“Now (…) everyone wants to have something to say about it”, another young designer, Olivia Cheng, 23, told AFP. Her brand, Dauphinette, which has become known for its jewelry and outfits made from real flowers, was presented on Sunday February 13 for the first time on the official Fashion Week calendar, in a restaurant in Chinatown.
Hemp, organic cotton, recycled fabrics, Emma Gage, 26, highlights materials that are not very harmful to the environment and her concern to buy from companies that respect human and social rights, listed on her website.
Most “I will never say that everything is 100% durable and everything is perfect, because that’s a lie”she warns, from her small studio in the Bushwick district of Brooklyn, New York artists meet, like the murals that invade the streets.
Not yet zero plastic
Thus, “zero plastic” remains an objective for the moment, because synthetic materials can still slip into recycled fabrics, explains the designer. These limits are an additional argument for making “clothes that last and are made to be worn for a long time”. And don’t spoil anything, like these bags made from fabric scraps.
Far from voluminous and sophisticated evening dresses, one of her favorite models is a simple sweater, which returns to each collection, with embroidered motifs of flowers, fish, and now sheep.
The sobriety it claims does not prevent it from being creative and sharp. His second collection, inspired by The autobiography of red by Anne Carson, gives pride of place to this color, in often dark tones, with lots of fringing reminiscent of lava flows.
For her autumn-winter 2022 collection, she wanted to restore the memories of a trip to an Irish medieval castle and her discovery of falconry, “symbiosis between two predators, man and bird”.
A fashion exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art-
As for Olivia Cheng, her presentation on Sunday February 13 played on the codes of the masculine and feminine genders and still relied on old clothes and floral materials, preserved thanks to a resin that she promises is non-toxic.
But she also ventured on strange experiments, like this set from ginkgo nuts or this dress studded with beetle wings, which she specifies that“They weren’t killed for that”.
While they favor local suppliers, neither of the two designers refrains from sourcing from the other side of the world. Emma Gage explains that she does not want to break ties with certain forms of craftsmanship that do not exist in the United States.
The dilemma of more affordable fashion also arises for her brand, which sells to order. “I need others to buy what I buy so that prices go down”, she says. And to add that immediately, a question of overproduction will arise. She tries to solve part of the problem with a varied line of products, which goes down to the t-shirt at 75 dollars.
For her part, Olivia Cheng relies on her fruit and flower jewelry, some for less than 50 dollars. “For me, it’s central to remember what mission we started with and how we can continue this story, without being trapped by some kind of delusion of grandeur”explains this daughter of Chinese immigrants, whose two dresses are already shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York, in the exhibition « In America: a lexicon of fashion ».
(AFP)
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