Pictured: Bodkin Collection. Courtesy of Sapna Shah.
By Guest Blogger Sapna Shah
Last week saw the debut of Eco-Fashion Week in NYC, a 2-day event that focused on designers and brands that used environmentally friendly materials and practices for their designs. Designers included Lara Miller, Bodkin,Bahar Shahpar, House of Organics and Izzy Lane, to name a few. The event was hosted at King of Greene street in downtown Soho and saw fashionistas and environmentalists support these new and established designers in their quest to bring fashion into the realm of environmental and social awareness.
Pictured: Laura Miller. Courtesy of Sapna Shah.
The challenge for these eco-designers was to offer fair-trade, eco-friendly and ethically sound fashion without compromising on style and ensuring broad appeal. Some of these designers addressed this challenge while others fell short. It would be interesting to know how retailers and e-tailers responded and whether these eco-designs would reach their intended audience. Nonetheless, it was a good start that brought together eco-designers, the Rain Forest Action Network, environmentally and socially conscious fashionistas and other industry purveyors to support eco -fashion. Even the hair and make-up were organic and fair-trade!! Thankfully, this event showed that now, an increasing amount of people were interested in and supported fashion that was accountable and responsible. However, for eco-fashion to be more mainstream there is much greater effort required on the part of designers, retailers and consumers and this was only the first step.
Born in Mumbai, India, Sapna Shah is a New York-based independent consultant with experience in global fashion, retail and business. After studying fashion business in London College of Fashion, Sapna began her career in merchandising at Hugo Boss in London. From there on, she moved to Catwalk in Mumbai where she headed the all India merchandising operations before moving to New York to attend the graduate program in Design Management at Pratt Institute. Currently, she’s consulting with a design firm for business development and strategy and is working on establishing her own entrepreneurial ventures.
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