Fashion Tries on Zero Waste Design

[davidinalameda]

YOU wear organic T-shirts. You hang your clothes to dry. You recycle your unloved suits and dresses.

But frankly, that’s just the tip of the green iceberg.

Today’s truly fashion-forward have a more radical ambition: zero waste.

That may sound more like an indie band than an environmental aspiration, but it’s a new focus of top fashion schools.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/fashion/15waste.html?pagewanted=1

[niyad]

1. was reading about this several months ago in a fabric magazine.

makes a lot of sense, indeed.

on the other hand, in all the years I have been sewing, I have pretty much done the same thing, laying out pattern pieces in the least wasteful way possible--and saving all leftover pieces for use in other projects.

[Warpy]

2. Some of the old Folkwear patterns used to come close to this

because the old styles used darting, gussets, and smocking or gathering to turn flat, rectangular pieces of cloth into something that would actually fit the human body. There was less waste with those patterns than there were with patterns tailored with set in sleeves, especially.

While I find the zero waste cutting to be an intriguing proposition, I find the execution shown in sites online to be less than desirable, "wearable art" to be draped on a starveling model and paraded down the runway once, and that's it, certainly nothing a real human being could wear in public.

Perhaps they need to go back in time rather than trying to reinvent something that was already accomplished by frugal seamstresses who used sewing techniques instead of cutting to reduce waste.

[niyad]

3. I love folkwear patterns-my favourite being the kinsale cloak--have made about a dozen of them for

myself and for friends.

[Warpy]

4. The hapi/haori pattern is my fave

and I live in those things in the winter. I have the Afghan coat pattern that I've been planning to make up in black velvet and silver Chinese silk brocade. I have nowhere to wear it, but I still might get to it this winter.

I have nowhere to wear my mother's mink coats, either, but they're nice in the house when it's bitterly cold here in the high desert.