Katharine Hamnett: Fashion tax is 'stupid' - BBC News |
- Katharine Hamnett: Fashion tax is 'stupid' - BBC News
- Ethical fashion is on the rise - TechCrunch
- The rise and fall of Halston, the man who redefined American fashion - CNN
- Open Call: Fashion Pavilion Milan - ArchDaily
| Katharine Hamnett: Fashion tax is 'stupid' - BBC News Posted: 06 Aug 2019 03:54 AM PDT  Image copyright Getty ImagesFashion designer Katharine Hamnett has described proposals by MPs to impose a 1p-per-garment fashion tax on the industry as "stupid". The suggestion was made by a Commons committee in an effort to fund better recycling of clothes. It came amid growing fears that the industry is increasingly dominated by throwaway "fast fashion". But Ms Hamnett said she feared the garment industry would just end up paying workers less to absorb the tax. Instead, she is in favour of EU legislation making it mandatory for goods from outside Europe to meet the same standards required by the region. She told the BBC that taxing retailers would be "like putting a plaster on a septic wound". "The reason we say legislation is that the brands are not going to do it willingly - we've seen that, we've been talking about this for too long and nothing's changed. They have to be forced by law," the designer, who is known for her political slogan T-shirts and ethical fashion activism, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "Wouldn't it be better to force brands to pay their workers properly, and not discharge toxic chemicals into the environment, rather than making them pay for the privilege to do that?" Ending 'throwaway clothes'Over the last two years, concerns have been increasingly raised about the environmental impacts of "fast fashion". According to Stella Claxton of Nottingham Trent University's clothing sustainability research group, falling prices, social media marketing and the convenience of online shopping have led to British shoppers buying twice as many items of clothing as they did a decade ago. And because clothes are so much cheaper, consumers have fewer qualms about throwing away good clothes when they have too many. The UK now throws away a million tonnes of clothes a year, 20% of which end up being dumped. Discarded clothes are piling up in landfill sites and synthetic fibre fragments are flowing into the sea when clothes are washed, where they are digested by fish. The fashion industry is said to be worth £28bn to the UK economy, but it is estimated to produce as many greenhouse gases as all the planes flying in the world. In June, MPs on the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) put forward 18 recommendations aimed at forcing the fashion industry to reform environmental and labour practices in its supply chain. The proposals include:
Prof Dilys Williams, director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion, is in favour of taxes being imposed on new clothing. "[The price listed] isn't actually the full price of the garment, so the tax would help. Also, people need to realise they're being duped," she told the BBC. "We're spending more on clothes than we used to." Amber Kim, a BA graduate of London College of Fashion, is making clothes out of discarded tents, because she was appalled by the waste generated at music festivals. She is fundamentally opposed to the fast fashion trend: "I don't really want to own any denims because... it uses a lot of water to make one pair of jeans. "You can't just keep buying new things and have that shopping habit."  |
| Ethical fashion is on the rise - TechCrunch Posted: 03 Aug 2019 09:30 AM PDT The fashion industry has historically relied on exploitative, unsustainable and unethical labor practices in order to sell clothes — but if recent trends are any indication, it won't for much longer. Over the last several years, the industry has entered a remarkable period of upheaval, with major and small fashion brands alike ditching traditional methods of production in favor of eco-friendly and cruelty-free alternatives. It's a welcome, long-overdue development, and it's showing no signs of slowing down. Tradition fashion is unethical in almost too many ways to count. There is, of course, the monstrous toll on animal life. Every year, over one billion animals are slaughtered for their fur or pelts, usually after living their lives in horrific factory farms. Cows, including newborn and even unborn calves, are skinned alive in order to make leather, while animals killed for their fur are executed through anal electrocution, neck-snapping, drowning and other ghastly ways in order to avoid damaging their pelts. Even wool, traditionally perceived as a more humanely-produced animal product, involves horrors on par with those at a slaughterhouse. But animals aren't the only ones who suffer under the traditional fashion industry. In Cambodian garment factories, which export around $5.7 billion in clothes every year, workers earning 50 cents an hour are forced to sit for 11 hours a day straight without using the restroom, according to Human Rights Watch. Mass faintings in oppressively hot factories are common, and workers are routinely fired for getting sick or pregnant. In Bangladesh — the world's second-largest importer of apparel behind China — a poorly-maintained garment factory collapsed in 2013, killing 1,132 people and injuring around 2,000 others. When Cambodian garment workers protested in 2014 for better working conditions, police shot and killed three of them. Lastly, traditional fashion is killing the planet. Every year, the textile industry alone spits out 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gases — more than all marine shipping vessels and international flights combined — and consumes 98 million tons of oil. Textile dyeing is the second-largest polluter of clean water, and on the whole, the apparel industry accounts for 10 percent of all greenhouse emissions worldwide. Worst of all, the clothes produced by this massive resource consumption produces clothes are rapidly discarded: In 2015, 73 percent of the total material used to make clothes ended up incinerated or landfilled, according to a study by the Ellen MacArthur foundation. Thankfully, as big and small clothing manufacturers alike are realizing, there are plenty of ways to sell fashionable clothing and accessories that don't destroy the environment, endanger workers, or cause suffering to animals. Vegan clothes are becoming increasingly popular, and there's no shortage of them to choose from. Some brands, like Keep Company and Unicorn Goods, offer an expansive generalized catalogue of vegan shirts, jackets, accessories and more. Other brands are more specialized: Unreal Fur has a beautiful line of vegan faux-fur, Ahisa, Beyond Skin and SUSI Studio all sell stylish vegan shoes, and Le Buns specializes in vegan swimwear. There are upscale vegan clothing retailers, such as Brave Gentleman, as well as more casual budget options, like The Third Estate. Strict veganism isn't the only way to manufacture clothing ethically. Hipsters For Sisters' products are made entirely with recycled, upcycled, or deadstocked materials, earning the approval of PETA. Reformation utilizes a carbon-neutral production process to make its clothes (and offers customers a $100 store credit if they switch to wind energy), while Stella McCartney's entire product line is vegetarian.  British fashion designer Stella McCartney poses prior her presentation during the men and women's spring/summer 2019 collection fashion show in Milan, on June 18, 2018. (Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP) (Photo credit should read MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images) Many vegan clothing companies, such as In The Soulshine and Della, have found ways to sell cruelty-free clothing while also providing humane working conditions to their factories' workers. Amanda Hearst's Maison de Mode features a combination of Fair Trade, recycled, cruelty-free, and organic products — as well as a comprehensive labeling system to inform customers which is which. There are plenty of small, niche companies offering ethical clothing options, but make no mistake: The transition to sustainable and ethical fashion is an industry-wide phenomenon. Well-established brands like Dr. Marten's, Old Navy, H&M and Zara all now sell vegan clothes. Gap, Gucci, and Hugo Boss have banned fur from their stores, and three of the largest fashion conglomerates — H&M Group, Arcadia Group and Inditex — recently pledged to stop selling mohair products by 2020. Companies are rapidly investing in new ethical alternatives to traditional clothing as well: Save The Duck's PLUMTECH jackets feature a cruelty-free alternative to down feathers, while companies like Modern Meadow are developing new biofabricated leather made from collagen protein and other essential building blocks found in animal skin that don't require the slaughter of any animals. There are, of course, some holdouts. Canada Goose still traps and kills coyotes to make its fur jackets, and uses a device that's been banned in dozens of countries for its cruelty in order to do so. As a result, its store openings regularly draw protesters. But by and large, the trend is in the opposite direction. From up-and-coming brands to the biggest names in fashion, the industry is moving away from the destructive practices of years past and toward cleaner, ethical ways of making clothes. It shouldn't be a surprise. After all, being successful in fashion has always required changing with the times — and in 2019, basing an industry on labor abuse, destruction of the environment and animal torture to make their products is no longer a sustainable business model.  |
| The rise and fall of Halston, the man who redefined American fashion - CNN Posted: 05 Aug 2019 05:22 AM PDT Watch CNN Films' "Halston" on Sunday, August 25 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. There is a scene in "Halston," a new documentary about the enigmatic fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, in which his former assistant Tom Fallon recounts a story that still shocks -- even half a century on. Halston, who made hats for New York's high society in the early 1960s before becoming a household name, was invited to a grand meal at a client's house in Long Island. As they sat down to eat, two men remained standing, refusing to be seated unless Halston and another diner -- whom they attacked with homophobic insults -- were removed. "Tom," Fallon recalls Halston saying to him, "I just need you to understand that you and I could not hope to be anything more than trained fa**ot poodles to jump through the hoops of these rich people." But Halston would prove his own pessimism wrong in almost every way. Over the next two decades, he rose to become perhaps the single most influential figure in the history of American fashion.  Halston with Betty Ford, Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli at Studio 54. Credit: Robin Platzer/The LIFE Images Collection/The LIFE Images Collection via G
The first superstar fashion designerThe documentary tells the story of how Halston redefined the role of the American fashion star. Irresistible to the media and defined by trademark designs, he mixed high fashion with low, as well as producing a perfume range, diffusion line and licensed brand extensions bearing his name. At the dawn of the 1960s, old rules were already being broken -- and Halston would do as much as anyone in fashion to usher in the radical changes that followed. By the 1970s, he had created a style that spoke to the freedom and youthful energy of the disco generation, becoming the decade's "quintessential designer," says Patricia Mears, deputy director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York. But "Halston" also shows how, in his megalomaniacal desire to "dress all of America," the designer came undone at the hands of the fashion and business powers he couldn't bend to his will -- and at the hands of his own vices (Halston reportedly spent thousands of dollars a week on cocaine at the height of his power). Mears tells CNN that America's first superstar fashion designer -- one who brought an unprecedented diversity of racial backgrounds and body shapes to the runway -- offered a "cautionary tale." "He was the great shooting star of fashion in the 1970s and early 1980s, but he burned out very quickly too," says Mears, who curated the designer's work in the 2015 FIT show, "Yves Saint Laurent + Halston: Fashioning the '70s." "The things that we see today -- designers becoming part of large conglomerates or growing their companies so that they're worth billions of dollars -- (were) probably made easier because of Halston's pioneering efforts. He was the first to really build a business in the United States to that level, and he was the first to really crash and burn."  Halston in New York in 1980. Credit: SAUER Jean-Claude/Paris Match Archive/Paris Match via Getty Images
Dancing clothesThroughout the 1970s, Halston was often flanked by a squad of models and celebrities, including Anjelica Huston, Bianca Jagger and Liza Minnelli. In the documentary, women who wore Halston's creations recall his ability to use a single piece of fabric and transform it into a beguiling shape that shifted on the wearer's body. "His clothes danced with you!" says Minelli who spent decades as Halston's close friend and confidant. By the end of his 20s, Halston had already designed the pillbox hat that Jackie Kennedy wore to her husband's presidential inauguration. By his early 40s, he had helped break France's global dominance of fashion with 1973's landmark Battle of Versailles Fashion Show, which pitted top American designers like Halston and Oscar de la Renta against famous French peers including Saint Laurent and Christian Dior. Through headline-grabbing stunts -- he was responsible for Jagger riding a white horse around Studio 54 at the height of the nightclub's notoriety -- he cemented his position as America's best-known designer. Yet Halston continued to micro-manage his empire, hand-designing clothes worn by everyone from American Girl Scouts, whose official uniforms he redesigned, to Avis car rental workers and US athletes at the 1976 Olympics.  Halston redefined the role of the American fashion designer. Credit: John Preito/Denver Post/Denver Post via Getty Images
Democratizing fashion"Halston" is the brainchild of Frédéric Tcheng, the French-born documentarian behind 2014's "Dior and I." The new documentary, which he wrote and directed, exposes two sides to the American designer. The film depicts Halston as an aspirant, Tom Ripley-esque figure, whose rise from obscurity was made possible by a succession of masks he hid behind, shielding his true identity with eccentricity and a flair for showmanship. At the same time, Tcheng's film argues that he was a democratizer of fashion who dreamed of breaking the great class chasm to bring elegance to the American everywoman (whose dignity and power he had seen in his own midwestern mother). Despite his once-huge public profile, Halston mostly kept his own story hidden. In interviews, he repeatedly rebuffed questions about his past: "The past just doesn't interest me so much," he squirms in one scene. In reality, he was from a working-class home in Des Moines, Iowa, and spent his youth in provincial midwestern cities before landing a job as a custom milliner at New York's Bergdorf Goodman department store. His work there culminated in Jackie Kennedy's aforementioned pillbox hat, a radically clean shape that inspired copies across the US. But it was upon leaving Bergdorf that Halston -- following in the footsteps of milliners-turned-fashion designers like Coco Chanel and Jeanne Lanvin -- took what Mears calls his "quantum leap" into designing clothes. He scored early hits by masterminding the hot pants craze and designing "Ultrasuede" suits, which became best-sellers for an emerging generation of young professional women. He then began developing his own signature style. "The 1970s was all about youth, dancing, being sexy (and) being carefree," says Mears. "And his lifestyle, as well as his clothing, embodied that. But he also maintained a really strong element of elegance. His clothes were never disheveled. "Always clean, always very modern-looking. At the same time, the clothes were meant to be worn often without bras -- they were often halter necks or cutaways, so you saw skin and you also saw a lot of the female body very clearly underneath the clothing."  Halston in 1980. Credit: SAUER Jean-Claude/Paris Match Archive/Paris Match via Getty Images
An enduring legacyHalston's impact is clearly visible in the work of designers like Tom Ford, whose glamorous late-1990s womenswear bears his influence, according to the Washington Post's fashion critic Robin Givhan. By making everyday outfits luxurious, he was also an early pioneer of "athleisure," adds Mears. What's more, his business empire set a template for today's ambitious designers. In 1973, he signed a deal with food conglomerate Norton Simon, which also owned Max Factor cosmetics, giving him huge financial backing (though the deal meant he no longer owned his own name). Then in 1982, he made a $1 billion deal with JCPenney, the affordable department store where he had shopped as a child. Today, collaborations between major designers and high street brands like H&M are common, but at the time it was major news. The decision resulted in his label being booted out of high fashion stores including Bergdorf Goodman, which had given him his start. Model Alva Chinn, one of his group of so-called "Halstonettes," tells Tcheng that the JCPenney deal transgressed the boundaries of exclusivity that fashion fiercely protected: "He stepped out of the norm, and people like their boundaries that are set between them and those." "It was pure hell after that," says Don Friese, Halston's vice president of sales, who recalls high-fashion brands cutting orders to distance themselves from the increasingly accessible label. "He realized he'd done the wrong thing." Haltson was subsequently removed from the helm of the business that bore his name. This, and his premature death from AIDS-related complications at the age of 57, make up the film's tragic second act, which tells of how he disappeared from American fashion. In losing his name, he lost control of his legacy. The brand, now known as Halston Heritage, has been sold on repeatedly in the 21st century, with former president Sarah Jessica Parker and previous co-owner Harvey Weinstein among those who failed to recapture the magic. "In some ways, we see this as a tragic tale," says Mears. "But it's also a good tale, I think, to tell. "I hope in the midst of this we don't forget he was also a great pioneering designer. He didn't become famous just because he was good at self-promotion -- he became a great designer, and remains a great designer in the minds of many, because he was so revolutionary." "Halston" airs on Sunday August 25 at 9PM ET/PT on CNN.  |
| Open Call: Fashion Pavilion Milan - ArchDaily Posted: 05 Aug 2019 09:11 AM PDT Open Call: Fashion Pavilion Milan  BACKGROUND What do Tom Ford, Raf Simons, Pierre Balmain, Pierre Cardin, Gianni Versace and Virgil Abloh all have in common? Before kickstarting a flourishing career in fashion, each of these individuals enrolled to study architecture or industrial design. Architects like Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas have repeatedly collaborated with fashion houses and imparted their quirky vision to develop an experimental and bespoke range of products. It is unsurprising that architects – artists who obsess over scale, shape and proportion in their work – tend to apply the same tenets to their personal style; while many fashion designers have cited architecture as a practice and individual architects as inspirations for their designs. Fashion and architecture have the same point of origin, the human body. Dressing of an individual provides a definition of personal space as do architectural structures though they are bigger in scale. Both fashion and architecture express ideas of personal, social and cultural identity, reflecting the concerns of the user and the ambition of the age. The aim of the competition is to design a pop-up pavilion in the emblematic Parco Sempione in Milan that connects fashion, architecture and people. The pavilion should capture the essence of fashion design and celebrate its powerful impact on our society for such a long time. The pavilion should infuse fashion with architecture physically and poetically, creating a structure that is able to host different events and activate the zone. The pavilion should strive to become a 'window' for man to experience the impact and importance of fashion design on the society. The pavilion should be a tribute to the idea of fashion where the visitors would transcend their olfactory, tactile and visual experiences. The participants are free to designate any kind of function (or not) to their pavilion that would fit in their narrative. The space could be a small museum/exhibition space, an experience/display center, a designer's workshop, a pop-up ramp or even a functionless vestibule. The pavilion should have an innovative built quality that would highlight a designer's passion towards creating an avant-garde structure. The pavilion should emphasize on strong silhouettes, structure, shape and form. The pavilion should be able to create a sense of drama architecturally with exaggerated angles, oversized proportions and a distinct use of lines, shapes, volumes and other design tools. The pavilion must become an important landmark and icon for the park and the city of Milan that attracts more and more people. The pavilion should become a strong reference point that would generate awareness towards fashion design and create a holistic view of its impact on the society. REGISTRATION &TIMELINE The competition is open to everyone in the world (architects, students, engineers etc.). You can participate individually or in a team. A team can have a maximum of three members only. *All deadlines are 11:59 PM- 00:00 IST (India) DISCOUNT Group discounts apply for a minimum of 5 teams from one particular architecture school/university as our initiative to promote more participation from students. Send us the following details at queries@archasm.in to avail the offer.
Winning participants will receive prizes totaling INR 2,00,000 with the distribution as follows: TERMS AND CONDITIONS Please see the terms and conditions section on www.archasm.in. COMPETITION PROJECT DISCLAIMER This is an open international competition hosted by archasm to generate progressive design ideas. There are no plans for the pavilion to be built. The competition is organized for education purpose only. OTHER DETAILS Website: www.archasm.in Download the information related to this competition here.
This competition was submitted by an ArchDaily user. If you'd like to submit a competition, call for submissions or other architectural 'opportunity' please use our "Submit a Competition" form. The views expressed in announcements submitted by ArchDaily users do not necessarily reflect the views of ArchDaily.  |
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