Debrief: Portland Fashion Week’s Green Wind

“Green how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches.” –Federico Garcia Lorca.

design: Exit. photo: Pete Springer.

Living in the bubble of Portland, it can be easy to forget that the rest of the world isn’t striding around in repurposed clothing. The recycled movement is big for us, whether it’s DIY with Buffalo Exchange and Red Light finds or purchased from local boutiques. For the Green and Sustainable Design night of Portland Fashion Week, the emphasis was on re-everything: recycled, re-purposed, and reincarnated. The results raised questions and started conversations about what, really, is green in fashion.

It seems there are two kinds of sustainable design: the first, a ground-up approach of using organic materials and striving for 75%+ sustainable materials (Anna Cohen), or inventing sustainable materials (Nau), and the second, the deconstructing and recycling of thrift store garments from fashions past.

design: Saffrona. photo: Pete Springer.

design: Saffrona. photo: Pete Springer.

Even with the program in hand, it was difficult to know what was green about many of the designs featured. Saffrona started the show with a line of silk dresses with accentuated waists, cowl necks, and vibrant colors ranging from bright pink to midnight blue. Saffrona’s website states the dresses are 100% silk, but makes no mention of a sustainable manifesto.

design: Nora Catherine necklace. photo: Pete Springer.

Nora Catherine Jewelry adorned the models’ necks and ears with stones either sourced exclusively through eco-friendly mining or reclaimed from older pieces. Asked about her commitment to sustainability, Nora said, “Older materials are used wherever possible. Using existing minded materials reduces the need to mine further. The materials that are not hand cut locally are purchased through free trade suppliers.”

design: MEWV. photo: Pete Springer.

Also shown was MEWV (a company of Saffrona) featuring Jersey knits with Spandex/Lycra content. Maiti Nepal showed three silk jackets, and a men’s line from Exit Apparel featured recycled and embellished blazers.

design: Nicole Flood. photo: Pete Springer.

The peppiest looks came last from Flood Clothing. Nicole Flood also recycles and deconstructs clothing, turning out Portland streetwear like pants made into skirts with cuffs, sweaters with arms mixed and matched, and fun dark blue cigarette pants with overlapping petal hems. A stylish cropped pinstripe jacket with extra wide sleeves appeared, upon much closer look, to have been reinvented from a pair of slacks.

Searches of Wikipedia for “sustainable fashion,” “eco fashion,” “green fashion,” and “environmental fashion” yielded no entries. Hello opportunity. This suggests what many Portland designers already know: that sustainable design is a new and amorphous field. Though the definition and appropriation of the term sustainable can be fuzzy, we’re proud that local designers are leading the charge into uncharted territory.

–Carissa Wodehouse

–photos: Pete Springer