Eco-friendly future

Fashion has taken a whole new turn in the last couple of years. Eco-fashion is becoming a new and ongoing trend everywhere, including high-end fashion design.

Stores such as H&M and American Apparel show how everyday retail has incorporated eco-friendly clothing into their collections today. The Eco-Fashion: Going Green exhibit at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) shows how eco-fashion has been used in the last two centuries.

The gallery, which features over 100 garments in chronological order, narrates the history of fashion, past and present, and illustrates the fact that when the art first emerged, centuries before today, it was easier to create eco-friendly fashion.

There weren't factories to mass produce clothing back then. Organic cotton was commonly found as well as unbleached organic wool. The exhibition showed how prints and dyes were made in the 1700's; and how most items were handmade,including silk, whcih was was woven manually.

Today, designers going green have trouble switching to organic resources because there are fewer suppliers of eco-friendly materials. The exhibit mentions that, "A small part of cotton is grown or produced organically."

But fashion is a cycle; the old is rapidly replaced or redone by the new. That explains how the ‘hippie' styles of the 1970s -- earth tones, hemp fabric and patchwork -- is common in today's eco-fashion.

As for the future, eco-fashion seems like it is definitely going to come and stick around. One eco-brand featured in the exhibit, Edun, showed their new collection in Fashion Week Fall 2010. Head designer of Edun, Sharon Wauchob, used to work with Louis Vuitton. According to Edun.com, the brand encourages fair trade with Africa, having created The Conservation Cotton Initiative.

The CCI helps start sustainable farming communities and enable a fair trade market for the cotton in Uganda, where the country is recovering from a civil war. The goal is to offer "funding, tools and training to provide a strong, sustainable, cotton business."

As for the collection, the clothing is in earth tones, including off whites, silvers, browns and grey, that are fashionable and easy to wear.