Fashion-conscience.com attended the Alternative Fashion Week and found some great organic, recycled and sustainable ethical fashion mixed with purely experimental clothing. Some of our mid-week highlights included a collection from Samantha Waine with her collection ‘Dirty Pretty’ which had been created with recycled materials entwined to produce bright feminine shapes. There was also an amazing showcase from Colchester School of Art & Design, who produced recycled and reworked garments for men over 60. We loved the bright colours from Gemma Woodcraft & Jessica Haley who created strong geometric shapes as a key theme and as you can see below their designs mixed electric blue with pinks and blacks to create an edgy look. The Alternative Fashion Week, which highlights recycled and sustainable clothing aims to bridge the gap between graduate and fashion designers and as the event is only on until the end of the week,  try and catch as many ‘alternative’ shows as you can now.

Gemma Woodcraft & Jessica Haley’s neon bright designs

By Gina Morris

Eco Friendly Clothing, Ethical Clothing, Designer Clothes, Fair Trade Clothing, Womens Shoes,Fashion Clothes Clothing, UK Shopping Online, Organic Cotton

This year Alternative Fashion Week is celebrating 15 years of bringing experimental and edgy clothing to the forefront! The idea behind the event is to ‘overcome a mountain of economic obstacles and promote sustainability’. It gives young designers a great opportunity to showcase their work as well as encouraging more people to buy ethical fashion. Designers hail from all over Europe from countries such as Italy, Germany, Croatia, Finland and Hungary and a wide variety clothing is made with materials that are recycled,  sustainable or with a ‘green’ element! Eco highlights will include the credit crunch clothing theme from designers such as the amazing Laura Booty, who is described as using ‘cherished possessions, discarded nick-knacks and unwanted rubbish to create glamourous dresses’ and hip Swedish designer Wilfried Pletzinger, who has created a whole sportswear collection from recycled materials. More ethical fashion will be showcased by CoolTan Arts, the arts and mental health charity and TRAID, a company that recycles textiles for aid and international development. The event will take place from 20 – 24 April in the vibrant Spitalfields, East London – an area which has partly been regenerated due to the Alternative Fashion Week!

By Gina Morris

Laura Booty’s glamourous ‘rubbish’ dresses 

Wilfred’s recycled sportswear 

Eco Friendly Clothing, Ethical Clothing, Designer Clothes, Fair Trade Clothing, Womens Shoes,Fashion Clothes Clothing, UK Shopping Online, Organic Cotton

London Fashion Week kicked off on Friday and the great hurrah was for ethical fashion.

Noir, the sexy sustainable line from Danish designer Peter Ingerwersen kicked off the celebration of eco fashion, and a speech by British Fashion Council chairman Harold Tillman, as well as a new campaign on sustainable clothing by DEFRA, all in serious style. If there were still any sceptics that fashion with an ethical heart was anything less stylish than mainstream counterparts they were left in no doubt that this is not the case.

The front row of the show was filled with glossy magazine editors such as Lucy Yeomans and Sarah Bailey from Harpers Bazaar, to Elizabeth Walker, Fashion Director at Marie Claire, Hilary Alexander from Telegraph, to teams from Elle and Glamour magazine.

The collection was Noir’s strongest yet, playing on it’s masculine meets feminine, sexy after hours theme that is the backbone of the collection. Leather zipped pants were sexy, sequin encrusted slouchy drop backed dresses were destined for those hours after the cocktail party when you hit the grungey club, there were their trademark sharp white shirts, and just clinging to the body by shoe string straps dresses. Leather, zips, and sharp tailoring abounded.

Our favourites were silk harem pants, a zippered sequin slouchy jackets and Noir’s leather zippered pants, which fly out of boutiques seasn after season.

To view images from the show click here to WWD for all the pictures.

Fashion-conscience.com is always on the look out for exciting new ethical designers and so we were intrigued to pop along to two exhibitions this week showcasing some new eco friendly clothing brands. We visited Pure and Margin exhibitions on the scout for great new ethical clothing lines for Autumn Winter. For the first time Pure hosted an Ethical area with some familiar brands, such as Amana (pictured below), EJF, Komodo, all of whom we have,or have had on Fashion-conscience.com plus some interesting new organic cotton and Fair Trade Clothing labels, including Bibico, who has just arrived with us. 

To read more about our findings go to Greenmystyle.com to read our report on the new labels at the Pure Autumn Winter 2009 fashion exhibition and Margin event as well.

Amana Spring Summer 2009 

Eco Friendly Clothing, Ethical Clothing, Designer Clothes, Fair Trade Clothing, Womens Shoes,Fashion Clothes Clothing, UK Shopping Online, Organic Cotton 

We have a tiny bit of video of Camilla Norrback’s Spring Summer 2009 catwalk show to whet the appetites for fans of the Swedish eco luxury designer clothes line, and ahead of the new collection arriving very soon! We can’t wait, we adore her organic cotton denim utilitarian feel this season, and the light airy feel to her organic cotton and silk pieces all in a very now nude palette. 

See our some of our favourite pieces and the tiny bit of video below.

Eco Friendly Clothing, Ethical Clothing, Designer Clothes, Fair Trade Clothing, Womens Shoes,Fashion Clothes Clothing, UK Shopping Online, Organic Cotton 

Spring Summer collections are almost upon us, and we can’t wait to showcase the latest season’s amazing eco friendly clothing collections.

To give you a taste of what is to come we have uploaded Lalesso’s Spring Summer Catwalk Show Video. The Fair Trade Clothing line has really developed from last season, with gorgeous silks added in amongst the trademark printed cotton and crochet. We love the prints for this summer only designer clothes collection, made by a Fair Trade Clothing group based at the glorious Diani Beach in Kenya, Africa.  The designers Olivia Kennaway and Alice Heusser showed their latest ethical clothing collection at Cape Town Fashion Week last year, and the line went down a storm. It is sure to be hit again his season with stars such as Sienna MIller and her mum, who both already wear the line. We adore their bikinis and dresses. Keep your eyes peeled for when the new collection arrives at Fashion-conscience.com in spring.

Watch the video below to get you in the mood for balmy summer holidays.  

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Escama are an amazing design company based in Brazil making bags from recycled aluminium can ring pulls. What is so special is that no only are they recycling a waste product into something useful, they also work with communities providing work in a fair trade manner. Each bag they produce is signed by the maker, creating a real connection between you and the piece and the person who made it. Escama make small purses to larger handbags. Here watch a video on the pieces on the catwalk, and browse the Escama fair trade recycled collection. The ring pull purses work brilliantly as unique metallic accessories for the party season.

Noir is one of the leading lights of ethical fashion, they take fashion seriously with sleek masculine suits, and diaphanous, wispy and body conscious dresses.

Formed by Danish designer, Peter Ingwersen, the label uses Oeko Tex and organic fabrics, invests in communities and makes sure manufacture is under fair work practices, and as low impact on the environment as possible. Here in a video interview he talks about the ethos behind Noir. Want to shop Noir’s classic and beautifully cut suits, jackets and shirts?  Go to the Noir page in our designers section or click here to see the high end eco fashion pieces online at Fashion-conscience.com

Fin, the Norwegian eco collection, is one of the most accomplished ethical fashion lines currently available, creating wearable, smart casual pieces all made from organic cotton, or wild silk and all fair trade. The catwalk collection show below, features this season’s pieces, including the great trench coat, beaded shawl, slim classic trousers, silk print dress and embellished black work to party dress. All stunning and available at Fin eco organic collection.

Sadie Frost runs her own fashion label but is not at all sniffy when it comes to wearing other great boutique lines such as Doucette Duvall. Not only is she a dedicated vegan, she now supports up and coming green fashion. 

The designer, film producer, actress and pal to the tireless and newly single Ms Kate Moss, was spotted this week in the NY eco label’s, ‘Bonnie’ dress in Metallic Fruit Brocade. Only last week R & B star Rihanna was spotted in their ‘Audrey’ trench. A busy week for Doucette Douvall! We love their label as they make an effort to source vintage fabrics, get all their pieces made in the NY Garment District, so supporting local businesses while keeping their carbon footprint low. 

Fashion-conscience.com stock Doucette Duvall exclusively in the UK, click on ethical fashion Doucette Douvall to view the gorgeous dresses we have in stock. Also look out for our upcoming Green Style How To Video on ‘Day Dresses’ to see the Beatrice Dress, with it’s totally on-trend brass military buttons, modelled live. 

Want to see Doucette Douvall’s Autumn Winter Fashion Show 2008 for the current on-sale collection? Just Click here to view it in Ethical Fashion Shows!