Designers Fashion an Ecological Statement : Trends: Environmental messages are finding their way into fashion, as designers become patrons and donors in environmental causes.
Sandwiched between bright bikinis and bouncy biker shorts on the fashion runway was a model wearing a pink swimsuit, crudely painted with the words “Keep Our Water Clean.” Her beach coat, made from plastic six-pack circles, was trimmed with medical syringes.
Robin Piccone, designer of the eyesore outfit, delivered the surprise “personal message” to more than 600 people on the night she was named California Designer of the Year.
She hit on the plan the day her pediatrician told her she could take her baby to the beach, only if she never let him go in the water. “I couldn’t believe it. It was so depressing.”
These days, Piccone isn’t the only member of the fashion industry speaking out on environmental issues. Leading names, on both coasts and in Europe, are using any means they can--from pointed runway messages, advertising campaigns and window displays to slogan T-shirts, fashionable fund-raisers and massive tree-planting programs--to drum up aid for an ailing planet.
Critics, including some grumbling journalists and environmentalists, take potshots at the newcomers, claiming they have jumped on the bandwagon for glory or gain--or simply because Mother Nature is this year’s cause.
But Tom Huntington, development director for the Western Region of the Environmental Defense Fund, isn’t complaining. “Hopefully, it will become fashionable and chic to support the environment, just the way it was to support civil rights in the ‘60s and nuclear disarmament in the ‘70s and ‘80s. A huge amount of education came out of those movements and it made a difference.”
Chic or not, considerable donations from fashion figures are finding their way into international groups such as Greenpeace, the Surfrider Foundation and Friends of the Earth.
When Italian designer Giorgio Armani decided to make his environmental concerns known in a big way, he did it with a “Don’t Bungle the Jungle” benefit for Companions of Arts and Nature and their efforts to save the Amazon rain forests; 800 people, including notables Lauren Hutton, Cheech Marin and Justine Batemen, attended the MTV-covered-event in June at the Emporio Armani in New York.
The event netted $35,000, some of it coming from sales of “Don’t Bungle the Jungle” T-shirts designed by environmentally concerned artist Kenny Scharf.
With far less fanfare, New York designer Norma Kamali tossed out a subtle pitch for the environment last month. Included in her spring, 1990, collection, shown to buyers and the press, were a group of white “acid rain squad” trench coats and “Earth children” dresses in leaf-green and sand color.
On the West Coast, designers have been speaking out with more basic merchandise: T-shirts, tank tops, tote bags and casual shoes, which are in stores or due around the first of the year.
A series of global-consciousness T-shirts by Toni Sutherland, owner and head designer of Splash swim- and sportswear, grew out of what she calls “a great need to do something about the rain forests.”
It took Sutherland almost five months to get her program and designs approved by Friends of the Earth, an international environmental group. Under their arrangement, 50 cents from every $16.50 T-shirt purchase goes to the organization, and tags encourage customers to contact the group for membership information.
Opting to protect California wildlife, executives of Esprit recently introduced an endangered species tote bag collection due in stores next February.
Customers who fork out $26 for a bag with either a bighorn sheep or a Little Kern golden trout design will have the satisfaction of knowing some of the purchase price will be donated to the Nature Conservancy.
But with a myriad of surf-related firms in California, it’s sea and shore that are getting the lion’s share of attention.
Sandy Arterburn, president of Beach Front Property, a swimwear-sportswear company located in Laguna Beach, explains: “We deal with surfers and the ocean, and we’re always talking about the issues. But as a company, we’ve never done anything about them. So I decided this year to come up with something that would get people’s attention.”
Tags on her “save-the-world” tank tops, T-shirts and T-shirt dresses (priced from $17-$32) tell customers that part of the proceeds will go to save dolphins. According to Arterburn, Greenpeace will use the money to fight tuna harvesters who wantonly maim and kill the dolphins.
Jimmy’Z, which caters to the surfing crowd, entered the men’s casual-shoe market this month and took on the environment with the slogan “Leave Only Footprints.” According to marketing director Donna Wilson, the company plans to give a part of every shoe sale to environmental groups, including the Surfrider Foundation.
The Surfrider Foundation (a nonprofit group “dedicated to the protection, enhancement and enjoyment of the world’s ocean and coastal resources”) also gets support from Gotcha Sportswear, which donates $9,000 a year toward administrative costs.
When Gotcha executives began their big push for the environment earlier this year, “we didn’t have a plan beyond here’s an issue, let’s create awareness,” explains Mark Price, marketing vice president. “It had to be surf-oriented because that’s the thing we know best.”
The company now runs ads, pleading for a “Clean Planet” once a month in surf magazines and gives part of the profits from its “Surf the Earth Alive” T-shirts to Greenpeace.
“We don’t view environmental concerns as a trendy issue. I think once you start the ball rolling you have to push harder and harder,” says Price, adding that two months ago the company stopped using Styrofoam cups on the premises. And future plans call for environmentally sound ways to package garments, now packed in plastic bags.
With all that, there has been criticism.
Price indirectly has heard questions about “why we don’t run the ads more often or why we use air conditioners in the building and in our cars.”
His response: “We’re not perfect. What we’re doing just evolved out of concern.”
Concern over the Exxon Valdez oil spill drew both Body Glove, known for wet suits, and Redken, known for hair products, to the site.
Body Glove, which sponsored a cleanup of Redondo Beach’s King Harbor in 1970, now has an advertising campaign and T-shirts that beg “Keep Your Ocean Blue.” It also has a new patented product--a mesh bag filled with duck feathers--that can soak up 33 times its weight in oil.
The bags were tested in Valdez and offered for sale to every agency involved with clean-up operations.
But Bill Meistrell, co-owner of Body Glove, says he couldn’t drum up any interest. “I spent the five most frustrating days of my life, because nobody wanted to see this thing in action.” Undaunted, he plans to return for another try next March, on the anniversary of the spill.
A luckier Lee Hunter, vice president of research and development at Redken Laboratories in Canoga Park, was contacted by a Redken distributor in Alaska and asked to come up to help save otters.
He developed a product that was successfully used to restore the animals’ skin and hair oils and return their fur to its natural hydrophobic state.
Redken also has spent the last 18 months looking into alternative packaging. According to Steve Goddard, director of marketing for new product development, no decision has been made yet between biodegradable or recyclable containers. “But with 90% of the research done, we feel recycling is the way to go.”
For many, recycling is already the way to go. Two years ago, for example, Susan Lane, owner of Country Elegance bridal boutique in Toluca Lake was commissioned by the Recycled Paperboard Division of the American Paper Institute to make a collection of clothing from paper interfacing (used for lining garments).
Every piece, including a wedding gown and a cocktail dress, is stamped with the recycling symbol--three arrows representing the three steps in recycling. The collection is still making the rounds of women’s groups where it is used to teach members how to spot recycled products, such as Kinney shoe boxes and some gift boxes.
Patagonia, a Ventura firm that makes outdoor clothing, not only gives 10% of its pretax profits to environmental groups, it “recycles relentlessly,” according to public affairs director Robert Sweeney.
In Ventura, employees sort their trash. And behind the company’s Salt Lake City store, Sweeney says, “we started the first public recycling center in the state. That goes beyond giving money.”
Instead of money, Chesebrough-Pond’s donated 1,000 new trees and shrubs to Griffith Park in August during a promotion for its Timotei shampoo and conditioner. The Timotei “Park to Park” project calls for a donation of one tree or shrub for each bottle of shampoo or conditioner sold in California, up to 50,000 plantings.
But in the long run, will the grand tree plantings and the more humble gestures--such as a month-long “Save the Forest” window display at Sami Dinar menswear in Beverly Hills--make a difference?
James Ragusa, owner of Impulse Beauty Supply on Staten Island, N.Y., believes they will. In addition to making donations to various environmental groups, he now gives 10% from sales of Glacial Fresh hair care products, made with water from Alaskan glaciers, to two wildlife foundations.
He lets customers know they are participating with a typewritten letter displayed on a counter.
“It’s a slow process, because you have to educate them,” he says. “But we’re all in this together. Whatever you do comes back to you or your children.”
