Monthly Archives: February 2020

Sustainable fashion is increasingly present during the Milan Fashion Week, also thanks to White Milano which has started to give great space to innovations in the green field.
Despite the latest events related to the spread of the coronavirus in Italy, White Milano closes with great success affirming its green soul more and more.

After the WSM fashion reboot, it continues its commitment to raising awareness of the fashion world towards environmental issues and this edition, staged from 20 to 23 February during the Milan fashion week, has particularly highlighted sustainability with various initiatives.

White Milano’s sustainable hub
One of the most important initiatives, which since the February 2019 edition continues in its aim of promoting sustainable realities, is the section called Give a fokus. Directed by Matteo Ward in partnership with Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto and Fashion Revolution, the exhibition area hosted the ten finalist start-ups of the WSM Smart Contest accompanied by a sensorial installation dedicated to the theme of washing, finishing and dyes they represent the most polluting phases of the entire production process of a garment.

Read also: WSM Fashion Reboot, all the testimonials from the first sustainable fashion show
Titled “The hidden morphology of fashion” (in Italian “The hidden morphology of fashion”), the installation was designed with the support of Albini group and Boyish jeans “to bring back to the forefront the elements that manage to give shape and the hand to our leaders, inviting buyers to go beyond the dress “.

Matteo Ward has in fact declared that the intent was to “get inside the fiber to find out that everything we buy is made up of water, nature, chemistry and electricity. The first installation brings these elements to the fore, from digital we then move on to the physical with the fabrics of suppliers who already work to tell us about the water, energy and substances used ”.

The special guest who recovers old fabrics
Many characters, projects and special guests were brought to White Milano. The Moroccan designer Artsi Ifrach of Maison ARTC was one of these with his creations with a strong identity and cultural value, made with vintage fabrics recovered around the markets of the world.

Read also: Sustainability in fashion comes to White with Give a fok-us
He himself told us how important the issue of sustainability is for his business: “it is not a concept or a trend, it is a real issue towards which we all have to become more responsible. This is why I seriously think about it and I do it also because it is interesting to discover new techniques. It’s something I’ve always done, even before it became a problem. “

The result was over 73 companies present at the show and indicated to visitors with a recognition badge: Blue of a Kind, Boyish Jeans, Closed, Insane in the Rain, Tuinch, Ibrigu, WRÅD, Made for a Woman and Regenesi, but also The Sustainables showroom housed in the Superstudio Più basement with a selection of sustainable brands such as Ochis Eyewear, the company that processes coffee waste to transform it into glasses. These were just some of the brands selected for their attention to socio-environmental issues.

To prove particularly noteworthy was LaMilanesa Made in Milan, a brand born almost as a game from a bag made with a woolen blanket and which has become an environmentally and socially worthy reality that supports some rest homes with sick women of Alzheimer by purchasing the essential blankets for his one hundred percent sustainable creations from them.

Cinzia Macchi, designer and founder, confessed to us that her dream “is to build a factory for women who have suffered violence, in fact thanks to the association Fare x Bene we have two women who come from protected houses to whom we are teaching a I work to give them a second chance. “

It’s time for Met Gala, the most anticipated event in the world of fashion that marks the inauguration of the exhibition organized by the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York every spring.

Time is the theme that the curator of the exhibition Andrew Bolton – inspired by the idea of ​​durée by the French philosopher Henri Bergson and by the writings of Virginia Woolf – has chosen for the performance of 2020, the year in which the Metropolitan celebrates its 150th anniversary.

«About Time: Fashion and Duration» will retrace more than a century and a half of fashion history, from 1870 to today, exploring the concept of time and the way in which garments create temporal associations that combine past, present and future.

The theme of the exhibition was presented on the occasion of the Paris Fashion Week, where Bolton recalled that «fashion is indelibly linked to time, not only reflects and represents the spirit of the time, but changes and develops with it, acting as particularly sensitive and precise watch ».

The exhibition itself will have the appearance of a watch with two adjacent galleries, like two dials, built on the principle of sixty minutes of fashion, where for each minute two associated clothing will be presented based on the shape, motif, material, model, technique or decoration, for a total of 120 items.

As per tradition, the exhibition will be inaugurated on the first Monday of May with the Met Gala where celebrities from all over the world will parade with clothes and costumes inspired by the theme of the exhibition. Last year the title to follow was “Camp: Notes on Fashion” or rather creativity, excess and parody. Among the most memorable looks were Katy Perry, dressed as a chandelier, and that of Lady Gaga who transformed her red carpet show into a real show with several dress changes.

The gala began as the main fundraising event for the Costume Institute and since 1995 it has been organized by Vogue America director Anna Wintour. This year, Louis Vuitton creative director Nicolas Ghesquière and actors Lin-Manuel Miranda, Emma Stone and Meryl Streep will also present the event.

Fast Fashion, when fashion pollutes

New York, Milan and Paris have seen the collections of the inverse autumn 2020-21 parade, between glamor, Haute Couture and Prêt à porter it is easy to be enchanted by such pomp and forget the irrefutable reality that the textile industry wants is the second to the world for pollution.

The fashion industry is constantly evolving, the fabrics and textures worn until last month have already gone out of fashion and the temptation to put your hand in the wallet to stay abreast is a lot, helped by the renowned names of the large retailers that allow you to to be fashion and current without spending a fortune. But at what price?

The ecological cost of fashion is high not only for the way the food is produced but also for the poor recyclability of the materials but also for the poor recyclability of the materials, the chemicals used in the supply chain and the high production of waste, without neglect the exploitation of environmental resources and the workforce.

In this dramatic picture, Slow Fashion has developed in recent years, an alternative movement that winks at more sustainable and ethical fashion.

Before talking about Slow Fashion we must take a step back until 1986 when Slow Food was born from an idea by Carlo Pertini, a real cultural movement aimed at “promoting the right to pleasure, defending the centrality of food and its right value.”

Slow Food had the ambitious goal of contrasting the overwhelming development of Fast Foods born to respond to the swirling rhythms of modern life. Carlo Pertini’s idea was to study, defend and disseminate food and wine and agricultural traditions from all over the world, with particular attention to the defense of biodiversity.

The non-profit organization founded by Pertini responded to the maximum agriculture and genetic manipulation by spreading biodiversity and peoples’ rights to food sovereignty at the forefront.

About thirty years later something in the food industry, not only has we been more attentive to the food we bring to the table but realities such as the Salone del Gusto and the University of Gastronomic Sciences have emerged.

Is slow fashion convenient?

The path to Slow Fashion still at the beginning, just think that neologism was created only in 2007 by Kate Fletcher inaugurating a sustainable fashion movement that winks at Slow Food. Slow fashion is a way of “identifying sustainable fashion solutions” while promoting a more ethical and sustainable way of living and consuming.

Among the elements at the basis of the slow fashion philosophy are the redesign of old clothes, the purchase of vintage clothes, shopping from small producers and the production of clothes and accessories at home.

Precisely because of the variety of the elements that compose it, it is difficult to give an unambiguous definition of Slow Fashion. Companies that fall within the slow fashion philosophy commit themselves to greater transparency in the (eco-compatible) production processes, in the choice of materials and in the timeless designs that make up their line.

Buying a slow fashion item of clothing is certainly expensive, however it is a real investment: although the price is a deterrent, in the long term, a well-produced item of clothing will survive any other low-cost item.