Ever feel like the stuff you own ends up owning you, instead? Ben Davis, the founder of JoinLess, can empathize. As the brains behind the “world’s first open source brand,” Davis wants to create a new symbol-led movement, like the (RED) campaign, “but better,” he tells Ecouterre. Unlike other brands, which get litigious over the unauthorized use of their logos, JoinLess wants you to slap its trademark “(<)” on anything—and everything—to remind you that less is more. We sat down with the man himself to learn more about his anti-brand, what it stands for, and why it’s poised to become the peace sign for a new generation.

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THINK GLOBAL
While you can still find locally manufactured materials in the United States, Canada, and Europe, they’re generally isolated in small pockets with limited options.

Sourcing materials internationally, on the other hand, can yield a number of great finds from handwoven silks to khadi cottons. Global sourcing does come with its challenges, however. There is the consideration of customs duties and …

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John Bartlett is a New York fashion designer with not one but two Council of Fashion Designers of America awards under his belt, along with such titles as Swarovski Best Newcomer and the American Apparel and Footwear Association Designer of the Year. Equally known for his love of animals and yen for classic American sportswear, Bartlett has worked alongside animal-rights organizations like the Humane Society of the United States and the North Shore Animal League to spread awareness about the welfare of our critter pals. We recently caught up with the designer to talk about the looks he showcased at the Healthy Food in Fashion fall gala, why he chose to embrace vegan fashion, and his new “Tiny Tim” collection, a series of comfy basics for men, women, and children that donates 10 percent of each sale to helping shelter dogs like Bartlett’s three-legged best friend (and the line’s namesake).

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Most people know hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons as the founder of Def Jam Records, Phat Farm, and American Classics, but fewer realize that he’s also a practicing vegan of 13 years and an outspoken animal-rights activist. We chatted with Simmons at the “Healthy Food in Fashion” fall gala to learn more about Argyleculture, his new cruelty-free clothing line for Macy’s, why sustainable fashion makes good business sense, and what advice he’d give to anyone struggling with vegetarianism.

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Food and fashion joined forces at the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food’s “Healthy Food in Fashion” fall gala on Wednesday night, and Ecouterre was on the scene scoping out the hottest designs from the night’s vegan fashion show. We chatted with VPL designer Victoria Bartlett, who has been practicing and preaching cruelty-free fashion since the early days of her career. We also received the inside scoop on why animal products are verboten in her clothes, the significance of using human hair as accessories, and her favorite meat-free recipe.

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House of Tammam has launched the first, and so far only, ethical ready-to-wear bridal collection in the United Kingdom. Founded by Lucy Tammam, who also serves as the label’s creative director, House of Tammam is based in London’s Bloomsbury district, where novelists such as Virginia Woolf and Mary Shelley lived just around the corner. Whereas Woolf and Shelley were mavericks in literature, the same could be said for Tammam with respect to fashion design. A Central Saint Martins graduate, Tammam was classically trained in tailoring. Because of her passion for animal and human rights, she became a pioneer in ethical couture, voyaging to India as early as 2004 to locate suppliers who would meet her criteria for fair-trade and sustainable materials.

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Jennifer Sharpe wants to know where your clothes have been, even before they become “your clothes.” For her master’s thesis, the Parsons The New School for Design student looked to Sourcemap, a free online tool that traces supply chains across the globe, making it ideal for addressing the complexities of garment manufacturing. Because Sharpe wanted to test the platform in the real world, she approached John Patrick, the genius designer behind Organic. “I explained my work with Sourcemap, and my focus on clothing traceability, and John was completely receptive in allowing me to document and source-map his supply chain,” Sharpe tells Ecouterre.

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Designer Carrie Parry at her Bloomingdale’s trunk show.

A relative newcomer to the eco-fashion scene, designer Carrie Parry added a notch to her belt when she kicked off Bloomingdale’s Earth Month festivities last week. Parry was on hand all weekend, meeting and greeting Bloomies’ shoppers as they perused selections from her inaugural collection. But the “shopper” who stood out most from the crowd was Bloomingdale’s own operating vice president of women’s fashion direction, Stephanie Solomon. Ecouterre saw Solomon’s enthusiastic response to Parry’s line firsthand as she flew in and out of the space. We kicked off our shoes and chased her down soon after to pick her brain about Parry and sustainability in fashion.

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Photo by Howard Lake

The current disposability of clothing is problematic. While clothes are seemingly durable goods, they are often marketed as fast-changing fashions and made of increasingly inexpensive materials with quality of construction often neglected. Clothing today is more economically accessible than ever before, at least in developed nations. Compromises in the quality of fabric and construction, and the outsourcing of manufacture to nations of cheap labor enable us to buy clothing in quantities not seen before.

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Garment care is an enormous environmental issue, but it’s also a personal one. We each use incredible amounts of water, cleaning products and energy on our clothes. Reducing that impact is something I’m trying to do every day. The way we care for our clothes has more impact on energy and water sources than a dye house, a factory, or a fleet of trucks. It’s easy to forget that wash water heads out to the sea, and dryers run on fossil fuels. Here are seven tips from all of us at Eileen Fisher.

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A recycled-polyester dress from the H&M Conscious Collection

Out of all the fibers, polyester has the worst reputation—and unfairly so. I know eco-conscious people who would rather wear conventional cotton than let a polyester garment touch their skin. They scoff at me when I proclaim I love polyester, often questioning my intelligence, sanity, and taste. Yet I believe that consumers who refuse to wear synthetics are buying into one of the biggest misconceptions about fashion’s sustainability problem.

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Introducing Offset Warehouse, the world’s first online destination to combine affordable ethical-fashion shopping with hard-to-find sustainable fabrics. Founded by 25-year-old Royal College of Art graduate Charlie Ross, the site was born from her own frustrations sourcing ethical fabrics in the smaller quantities she needed, as well as her desire to change the perception that ethical fashion is more expensive.

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