When is Eco-Friendly Not Eco-Friendly?

by Retro Chick
March 2, 2011
28 Comments
2 minutes read
89 Views
14 years ago

Oh dear.

One of my interests is in eco fashion. It’s one of the reasons I got into vintage and thrift or charity shopping in the first place. It always seemed so incredibly wasteful to buy so many clothes that then just get discarded when people are tired of them. I used to write about this far more, but I kind of ran out of steam really. I’m interested, but it’s not my every day life.

Then I saw this story. I saw it tweeted on Monday night by Vintage Secret. It’s the story of a Greenwich vintage store, 360 Vintage, who provided some of the ELEVEN DRESSES used by designer Gary Harvey to make Livia Firth’s “eco friendly” red carpet frock.

This picture is from her Twitter stream in order not to annoy Getty Images. You can see far nicer ones on her blog for Vogue.

My understanding is that most, if not all of the dresses used were already perfectly wearable. Livia proudly talks about how the dresses date from the era of the Kings Speech, thus making the dress super relevant to her husbands current Oscars triumph.

Go back and read that again

Yes, that’s right. 11 vintage dresses from the 1930s were hacked up and “upcycled” to make ONE frankly so-so gown for Livia to wear on the red carpet.

I have no particular problem with the word “upcycled”, it’s a bit stupid but it doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is the concept that turning 11 wearable dresses into 1 is suddenly green and eco friendly. It isn’t, it’s wasteful, and that is the antithesis of “green”.

I have great respect for Livia’s attempt to raise the profile of eco designers by wearing their gowns on the red carpet, but I just can’t support this.

Yes. If you buy a dress you can do whatever you damn well please with it. It would be nice if everyone had a bit of respect for particularly interesting pieces of fashion history. It would also be nice if they had the skill not to make a beautiful piece of workmanship into an unwearable mess. But at the end of the day it’s your dress and you do what you want with it.

It’s very, very, sad that 11 1930s gowns died to make this dress, but that’s not my real issue. My real issue is dressing it up as Eco Fashion.

Eco Fashion should be about making clothes for people to wear that suits their style, whatever that may be, without wasting resources or actively damaging the environment.

Whatever way you look at it turning 11 dresses into 1 is a waste of resources. Not as wasteful as making a new one from scratch, but hardly green. 11 people could have worn 11 dresses, now only 1 can, and it’ll probably never be worn again.

That’s not green, it’s tragic.

- by: Bella Q
- 14 years ago
First off let me congratulate you on writing such a terrific post. The points you make are pow! 1-2, 1-2, bringing to light a slight mutation of Green Fashion.

For the record, I LOVE the concept of “Upcycled,” and it’s actual definition. Here’s the Wikipedia soundbite: “Upcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value.” This urge to upcycle hit my bloodstream after reading the seminal “Cradle To Cradle” ground breaking design manifesto by eco-designers McDonough and Braungart.

Slaughtering pretty good vintage is NOT upcycling. The def of upcycle is to make an even better product, so using non-sellable material and turning it into some desirable and quality made is the goal here.

As this is what I’m trying to do with my upcoming collaboration with textile artist Lindsay Rickman, I can understand your horror. The thought of ruining perfectly good vintage horrifies me. The thought of keeping loads of old materials out of landfills by coming up with new clever ways to re-purpose them, gives me purpose.

This dress is a poster child for eco-fashion gone awry. Thanks for bringing this salient point to light! -Bella Q
Enter to Win My Shabby Apple Dress Give-Away- the Citizen Rosebud
- by: Mrs Bossa
- 14 years ago
Hear hear! It’s bordering on the obscene to me – and it rankles with me as a lover of vintage.
- by: Little Miss Bossy
- 14 years ago
I agree with you a 100 %. It is appalling, sad and quite a farce. And to top it all off – the new dress is absolutely hideous. She’s a stunning woman but that dress is just awful.
- by: Emma at Daily Clothes Fix
- 14 years ago
This is an excellent post. I fully agree with everything you say here. What a shame that 11 dresses had to die, even more so when vintage dresses from that era are so hard to find.
- by: Charlotte
- 14 years ago
I don’t have a big problem with altering vintage dresses to fit, or to make them more attractive (I once unpicked and re-sewed the waistline of a 1940s dress to remove a weird drapey piece of fabric, which made it much nicer), or to cut out worn areas in true ‘make do and mend’ spirit – even, to an extent, combining two (for example xxs) dresses to make one. But to hack up 11 wearable, rare 1930s gowns just for the fabric is just a simple waste. And I agree that to do this, then dress it up as ‘eco fashion’ somehow makes it even more heinous.
- by: Helen
- 14 years ago
I was amused by the one person on Twitter who thought it was a good idea to have an argument with me and Fleur and Smuteralla about it. She actually said “there’s loads of 1930s dresses on Ebay – what’s the problem?”

WTF??? There *is*? Where????
- by: Paperdoll
- 14 years ago
I’m in no way adverse to “rescuing” a tired or unwearable vintage item and giving it a new lease of life, however, eleven, apparently perfectly wearable dresses? To produce one dress, probably not even going to be worn again. Not my idea of eco-friendly! X
- by: Lady Cherry
- 14 years ago
Wow. That is shocking. I wouldn’t label that as being an eco friendly gown even if it was an original vintage – yes, re-use, greener than buying new, but how do we know what was used in the production of rhe second hand or vintage clothing we buy? The manufacturers might have beem polluting rivers and exploiting people left right and centre…just because it was 80 years ago doesn’t make it a green option today. Blimey l am really shocked at how this has been labelled. It makes a mockery of companies that genuinely adhere to fair trade and environmental standards. As for destroying fashion history!! And there l am umming and ahhing over whether tp get ONE dress taken in. It’s disgraceful. AND the dress really isn’t that great anyway??
- by: BooBoo Kitty
- 14 years ago
Great post, I totaly agree!

It breaks my heart to think of these 11 dresses from the 30s being cut up.

Its like when Kate Moss went out on the piss dressed in vintage and totaly ruined her dress.

Have some respect people!
- - by: Perdita
  - 14 years ago
  I think this is worse.
  
  I buy my clothes to wear: and yes, that does mean I wear them to the pub or work. If they get pen on them of a fag burn, that is their fate: I will usually mend/clean them! If something is beyond repair THEN I make it into something new. Not before. But neither do I own anything I won’t wear or would have to compromise my lifestyle for.
  
  Now obviously I don’t own museum pieces or any super-valuable vintage, but I’d rather see something worn by someone ‘doing what they do’ than in a museum or on someone who behaves ‘museum like’ when wearing them (not always boozing- it could be work or whatever) than something cut up and made into a ‘work of art’ to be worn once.
- by: Ms Wanda's
- 14 years ago
I suppose it depends on what condition the vintage dresses were in. If they were 1930s chances are they could be in a bit of a state. I’m looking at refashioning a 1950s dress because it’s silk and it’s really deterioration with age (silk tends to go quite quickly) and is unwearable as it is. Don’t be too hard on Livia – she’s done a lot to raise the profile of ethical fashion designers on her green carpet challenge.
- - by: Retro Chick
  - 14 years ago
  My understanding is that at least some of the dresses were lovely and in wearable condition.
  
  I have no problem with items that have deteriorated with age being repurposed, that’s always better than letting them go to waste!
  
  She has done a lot to raise the profile, but in a way that just makes this even sadder. To me the idea of vintage, recycling and ethical fashion have always been interlinked, I just think that using so many dresses to make one is wasteful and lets down the concepts she has been promoting.
  
  It’s like recycling for recyclings sake. Making a new jam jar out of an old jam jar uses more energy that just reusing the original jar. For instance!
- by: Hannah
- 14 years ago
Why oh why couldn’t she just find one beautiful 1930s evening dress. Okay, so they’re rare and expensive but I doubt the Firths are struggling for cash at the moment!

The hacking up of eleven valuable and rare vintage dresses to make a dress that, in my opinion, isn’t amazing is just wrong. End of.
- by: bonita
- 14 years ago
~ * ♥ * ~

Can I go into mourning for those 11 dresses that needlessly lost their lives?

Seriously, it makes me livid enough when people start hacking into vintage clothes to make them trendy {most of the time this involves cutting the hem line off below their buttocks so it’s “modern”} let alone ruining 11 dresses at once for no good reason…!!

Words fail me, but I definitely agree. That is NOT Eco friendly!!!

xox,
bonita of Depict This!
~ * ♥ * ~
- by: Lauren
- 14 years ago
That sound you can hear is my head hitting my desk repeatedly.
11 1930s dresses? There should be laws against that sort of thing.
What a waste.
- by: Franca
- 14 years ago
I totally agree! I’m not generally completely opposed to altering vintage clothes, i think it can bo ok in some circumstances if it is done sentitively and makes the difference between somthing languishing in the back of a cupboard or actually being worn, but this is just silly. Its just using the dresses as fabric. why not just use fabric then? And as you say NOT eco-friendly.
- - by: Retro Chick
  - 14 years ago
  Absolutely, I don’t think it’s ALWAYS a bad thing.
  
  Though if people shorten hems and things I wish they’d fold rather than chop the fabric so they can be lengthened again!
  - by: Perdita
    
    14 years ago
    
    Yep a folded hem can go down as well as up! (As the small print would say)
- - by: perdita
  - 14 years ago
  I have a vintage ‘re-made’ dress, but the idea was to save a dress that was too ragged without adjustment/patching with modern fabric. Which is a great idea! But destroy a dress to make something else? How silly!
- by: Pixie
- 14 years ago
Great post.

I totally agree. I’m all for eco wear and especially at such a high profile event.

But it’s just desperately sad that this is classed as an example of the same.

As someone has already said it’s a pretty average looking dress – I’m very confident someone could have made something similar just using cuts from material which would normally be wasted – not from perfectly fine already ‘ready to wear’ dresses.

Talk about taking a concept and totally getting it wrong on so many levels.
- by: Penny Dreadful Vintage
- 14 years ago
This gave me a sick feeling in my gut yesterday. 1930s fashion is becoming so rare to find, and she destroyed eleven examples. People like her don’t seem to realise that it isn’t disposable, it is history, and we have an obligation to look after it.
- by: MissMatilda
- 14 years ago
I call it Vintage Vandalism.
- by: LandGirl1980
- 14 years ago
It is a hideous waste of fashion history. I love the fact that she obviously knows nothing about the “era of the King’s Speech” or she would have clocked how rare and sought after dresses from that era actually are. If she had any respect for the era, she would have simply worn one of them – not 11 frankinsteined into this beast of a dress.

This is not for the cause of being green. Because that’s not what it is at all. It is for a typical celeb “look at me!!!!” bullshine. And the designer is fooling himself if the thinks what he as done is good promo. And 365 Vintage probably did not expect this backlash. It’s a shame – because now when I think of them – I shall think “you’re the shop who sent innocent dresses to slaugter”.

And, if I was not ranting enough… the dress is mediocre to say the least. Was it a patchwork wedding she was attending, I wonder?
- - by: LandGirl1980
  - 14 years ago
  Apologies – I may have quoted the incorrect company. I am sure I read it was a place called “365 Vintage” – but now I have read elsewhere that its “360 Degrees Vintage”.
  
  I need more sleep.
- by: Mim
- 14 years ago
I felt so sad when I read that her dress was made out of 11 others. It’s so hard to find wearable 30s dresses, let alone affordable wearable vintage dresses… Every time someone destroys something in this way, it makes the things that are left more expensive for those of us who really love them, and Livia Firth could easily have had the same sort of dress made from recycled, more easily available, dresses from a later date.

I feel the same way about people who cut up vintage magazines and film books and sheet music – and usually they’re turning something that’s survived for 70 years into something throwaway, like confetti cones for weddings or notebook covers, making these books and magazines harder to find and more expensive for those of us who actually enjoy reading them.

Treating something that’s still wearable/readable as rubbish for recycling isn’t really green imo.
- by: perdita
- 14 years ago
And the dress is SO-SO. You can bet at least one of the other dresses would have had at least as much- if not more- flair, too. In terms of the aesthetic (for starters) it’s a similar issue with ‘eco’ to ‘work friendly’ fashion: for some reason designers MAKE IT LESS ATTRACTIVE. Usually with a slight nod to hippy-festival-patchwork but in dull, greigy colours. I just don’t know why. Even this non-eco-eco-dress has a whiff of that aesthetic. There just doesn’t seem to be a logical reason for it as both practical AND eco clothing can be perfectly nice with both mainstream and/or vintage.

And the eco-buzzword thing? Thoughtless eco-publicity irritates me no end. Whether the extreme of releasing fur-mink (which then of course damage the local ecosystem) or simply advertising flown-in in ‘green’ brands from the US that don’t pollute (until they are flown in, in small batches, from San Francisco or LA). If you try to explain why it isn’t that green it’s usually met with blank expressions or ‘you don’t understand because…’ by whoever is flogging the stuff. Grrr.
- by: Fiona Culshaw
- 14 years ago
Lordy I had no idea about this as I’m not really an Oscars fashion watcher, but I agree wholeheartedly that is so far from green it’s untrue. Had the dressed been unwearable then that would be fine but to remove 11 30s dresses that will never exist again from the world to make one which will probably -as you quite rightly state – be worn ONCE!

mmmmm I see where she was going but oh how wrong she got it!
- by: Elizabeth@rosalilium
- 14 years ago
I totally agree. It is utter nonsense to call this Eco Fashion. Livia Firth must have skewed idea about the seriousness of waste. I hope she realises her mistake.