This week Latest Sale covers sustainable fashion for the Business Directory and addresses the question, is sustainable fashion a niche proposition? Eco fashion or sustainable fashion as it is so-called considers the environmental impact of humans in the production of fashion garments. Increasingly, the idea behind supporting sustainability and addressing environmental concerns has entered regular dialogue in the fashion industry, assisting the notion that this niche proposition is becoming more and more mainstream.
Fast fashion brands are known to have created the unhealthy throwaway culture, through the manufacture of mass-produced garments that are deemed to be overly affordable. This factor alone presents problems that are sometimes at the detriment of local workforces and the environment. For this reason, more and more consumers have become socially aware, taking into account how their spending power may have been taken for granted and used indirectly to harm natural eco systems.
Consumers will, with the aim of supporting sustainable fashion consider from where their chosen fashion garments are manufactured and how. The need for stunning designs persists and it is the responsibility of sustainable fashion labels to bear this in mind when launching an eco friendly fashion label. Fashionistas will not want to compromise on style and desirability, therefore the elegance of design is essential for all sustainable fashion labels. Other considerations that sustainable fashion brands may include in their ethos include the workforce, how they are treated and the working environment in which they work in order to produce the clothing.
These factors influence key decision making especially in the case of cotton based garments that are known to utilize vast amounts of water during the production process as well as causing damage to natural water streams in the developing world. Consumers concerned about these aspects of environmental consumption may therefore turn to sustainable fashion brands such as Finnish fashion label Arela that specializes in ethically sourced cashmere. This sustainable fashion brand puts colours, functionality and elegance at the heart of its designs whilst focusing on sourcing only the best natural materials. The Arela sustainable fashion collection whose Founders pride themselves in manufacturing garments that enjoy considerable durability, produces its collections in the skilled hands of trusted professionals in Nepal, Latvia, China and Finland.
Ethically sourced cashmere enables socially aware fashion wearers to enjoy the very best high quality garments thanks to the use of a natural wool fibre, collected from cashmere goats that live in the rough plains of Asia. Cashmere goat’s hair used to produce Arela cashmere garments is produced sustainably with each goat producing enough hair over a four-year period to manufacture one cashmere sweater. Functional, long-lasting garments are ethically sourced with cashmere yarn material deriving from Northern China. The priority of the brand is to produce Arela cashmere sweaters with small-scale production runs to ensure they retain their eco friendly credentials.
Images courtesy of Arela