>This wasn’t your average fashion show. In place of a pristine runway in SoHo was a historic warehouse in Downtown Brooklyn, where the audience wandered through an exhibition of models and brands. Instead of a traditional New York Fashion Week show, which often signifies changes in trends and deems previous seasons’ clothes obsolete, NYFW x NTA x Sustainable Baddie’s event focused on showcasing sustainable, upcycled fashion and designers through pop-ups and close-up modeling. Their goal? To change the concerning pattern of fast fashion and microtrends, and to help build an environmentally friendly fashion world.
Over the past two decades, the artistic culture around clothing and accessories suffered an insurrection at the hands of fast fashion. According to the Good Housekeeping Research Institute, fast fashion refers to the process of getting clothes from the runway into consumers’ hands as quickly as possible. These consumers allegedly wear what is trendy for a short period and then toss them away for the following big TikTok fashion statement. This leads to rapid overproduction of clothing items, making them lose financial and sentimental value. In fact, according to Wrap UK, the Waste and Resources Action Program, over 150 million dollars of these antiquated clothes end up in landfills every year. This has a substantial environmental toll since a great deal of these items are made from non-recyclable materials and take over 200 years to decompose.
Sustainable fashion activists and designers like those featured at NYFW x NTA x Sustainable Baddie are working to change that. The sustainable fashion movement, also known as slow fashion, is an effort being made by designers to help reverse the damage of mass production. It includes clothing and accessories that are ethically made with natural and environmentally friendly materials, instead of damaging ones like plastic and polyester. Natalia Trevino Amaro is the brains behind NTA, a sustainable brand that promotes zero-waste fashion and sells handmade clothing, and was the head coordinator of this show. Although she is one of the biggest names in sustainable fashion, with thousands of followers on Instagram and YouTube, Amaro understands the struggle many people face to accept sustainable fashion. She grew up in the Midwest and had heard little about fast fashion’s environmental impact, saying, “[sustainability] is still very taboo in many places in Middle America.” When she started her education at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she learned from her classmates about the environmental consequences of mass fashion production. After some research, Amaro completely reworked her fashion design dreams. This was a challenging change for her, especially since shopping and style were crucial to her personality: “Growing up, what we did for fun was go to the mall and shop.”
Amaro’s dream now is to make sustainability a little more mainstream, saying, “Mass production is relatively new, so clothing used to have a higher appreciation and value back in the day, and it was seen as more of a craftsmanship and artistry… I just hope that in a couple of years, people bring back that value to clothing.” To achieve this goal, Amaro has partnered with six other artists in the slow fashion movement. Since they are all independent designers with their own styles and artistic visions, they stray away from mainstream, trendy fashion. Amaro states, “Out of all the designers I work with, nobody is necessarily a trendy brand; I think everyone I work with has their own look.” This is crucial to their goal as sustainability activists, since trends are often tossed out at the end of the season to make way for the following collection. She believes that showcasing designers like this helps people interested in sustainable fashion find their style, which would make them less likely to buy every new trend on the runway.
These designers have much to bring to the table, even if their names aren’t plastered on posters across SoHo. Sophia Hayes, the designer behind CoolGirl Clothes Co., started her fashion brand in 2018. She learned to be sustainable and zero-waste from Amaro, and since then, has made it her mission to stop the destruction fast fashion has had on the environment: “Why don’t I act like everybody else? Why don’t I just not care? But it’s about staying alive and keeping the planet for a long enough amount of time to experience things like the great barrier reef!” Hayes specializes in corsets and lingerie, and her talent for designing using sustainable resources, like cotton, truly shined at the exhibition.
This was made possible due to the unique construction of the show. Instead of a runway, which Amaro had used at previous NTA shows, these designers utilized the entire room in an art gallery, like an exhibition. Guests were invited to explore each contributor individually, chat with the models about their attire, and buy sustainable clothing off the designer’s rack. “Runway shows are so quick and short and clipped. With the slow fashion movement, I wanted to tap into the slowness and the stillness of it,” Amaro says. This vision is crucial in helping guests understand clothing as a craftsmanship and art form rather than an item that can be mass-produced for thousands.
It also allowed for a networking environment that was more natural and conversational for the guests, designers, and models. Morgan Oijen, a model at the exhibition, was overjoyed with the show’s setup, stating that it allowed her to “hear all the appreciation for the clothing up close, especially people’s first reaction to a piece.” Being active throughout the whole show made it possible for her to learn even more about the slow fashion industry and pick the brains of the next generation of sustainable designers. Hayes agreed, stating, “I loved the idea of being able to talk to all the guests, being asked what my inspiration was, like being given compliments; it was very cool; I loved interacting with everybody.”
With the help of designers and advocates like Amaro, society can reverse the damage fast fashion and overproduction have caused. But how do we improve our relationship with clothing and shopping? Amaro recommends first finding your own personal style. If you aren’t so focused on trends, you will be less likely to buy everything you see on social media and re-wear what you own. Hayes endorses following sustainable content creators and designers online. “They are always posting how to creatively style and change what you have in your closet,” she says. Overall, the best advice these amazingly talented artists provided was being intentional. Only buy what you will wear, and spend your money wisely. Clothes are valuable, and every piece of fabric leaves a mark.