Recycled Clothing Meets London Fashion Week

Rachel Holdsworth
By Rachel Holdsworth Last edited 181 months ago
Recycled Clothing Meets London Fashion Week

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Image by Tsja! under a Creative Commons licence.
London Fashion Week kicks off today - albeit in reduced form. It's down to just five days after New York pushed its fashion showcase back a week (the rotters). London Fashion Working Week, perhaps? And despite catwalk shows from Paul Smith, Ossie Clark, Julien Macdonald, Nicole Fahri and Vivienne Westwood, some people are asking whether London can really punch its weight alongside Paris, Milan and NY.

Whatever's shown on the catwalk influences what's sold on the high street, but increasingly cheaper and from man made fibres. We buy about 2 million tonnes of clothes each year (that's all of us in the UK, not each) and 1.2 million tonnes ends up in landfill. Just 300,000 tonnes are reused or recycled - and the prevalence of polyester, acrylic and other man made material that can't be recycled is only adding to the problem.

So what better time to kick off a government initiative to reduce clothing's environmental impact than London Fashion Week, that high altar of changing seasons? Um... anyway, it's a worthy cause. M&S, Tesco and Sainsburys have promised to increase their organic and Fairtrade clothing ranges and use more natural fibres that can be recycled.

We're also going to get more second hand 'boutiques' selling high quality second hand and recycled clothes, which will be nice in these financially-pressed times. Environmentally friendly online retailer Adili is also working on a plan to promote carbon labelling to customers. There's a bunch of other lovely green projects in the offing, too - check them out.

Last Updated 20 February 2009