Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Slow Fashion Meetup

The Slow Fashion is not a Trend: It's a Movement Meetup took place on Monday, March 21 from 7-8 p.m. at 132 Crosby Street.

About Louis Sagar, creator of the Slow Fashion Meetup Group: "I am co-producing a major ECO FASHION WEEK runway event during New York Fashion Week in September 2011. Slow Fashion is the couture end of the broader ECO FASHION and sustainability trends. We are working with major global sponsors, along with the CFDA, and want to begin building a network here in New York. We are interested in building a network of designers, stylists, sources, and workshops. This meet-up is to inform, exchange ideas, and offer advice on the opportunities in this important movement."

Sagar started by giving a definition of Slow Fashion:
Fashion is made up of fast fashion - the throw away, cheap clothes that are mass produced - and slow fashion - pieces that are an investment, take time and good quality materials to make, and will become vintage in the future. Slow fashion requires a preservation of the artisan tradition and derives its name for the Slow Food movement of Italy. It counts on the appreciation of the luxury in life. 

The goal of the Meetup group is to create a call to action - something tangible such as a curriculum or conference - and to figure out how big the movement is. 

It was the second meeting of the group (unfortunately I was unable to make it to the first event). Last time the group talked about potentially splitting into task forces examining best practices, standards and guidelines, and education. 

We agreed that luxury needs to be redefined, because as strange as it sounds, luxury has an image problem. Also, in order for this movement to really catch on, materialism will have to be redefined or morph from the more is more mentality to less is more. This is where the slow fashion movement really connects to the rest of the sustainability movement.  First of all, in order for people to value their pieces, they need to know more about the supply chain - where it all comes from and goes. Also, the entire more is more concept needs to be changed for us to even consider a sustainable civilization. As said in The Economics of Happiness, "You can't have infinite growth on a finite planet." 

We discussed the potential for third party certifiers to help in this transformation process, but there are setbacks with this method as well. 

This promises to be a very interesting meetup and I can't wait to continue the discussion. If you have any comments please leave them below!

The following is a list of links to things mentioned in the discussion:

3 comments:

  1. Great to meet you last night. Nice summary of the meeting! Look forward to seeing you at the next one:) -Teresa

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  2. Thanks Teresa! It was nice meeting you too.

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