A: Amsterdam Fashion Week

The average catwalk might not be the greenest place on the planet. But there’s definitely a shade of green to be seen at the catwalks of Amsterdam Fashion Week.

In the past few years, The Green Fashion Competition served as the most prominent sustainable event on the Amsterdam Fashion Week agenda. Started in 2010 as a challenge for international designers to find a balance between the economic, ecological and social impacts of their collection, the competition enabled labels such as OAT Shoes, Elsien Gringhuis and Carrie Perry to present at Amsterdam Fashion Week.

In 2012 the government’s financial support to The Green Fashion Competition has ended, which has led the Amsterdam Fashion Week to look for new ways to incorporate sustainable fashion in its programme. Since 2013, that spot has been found predominantly in Amsterdam Fashion Week’s business programme. European not-for-profit organisation Made-By regularly hosts workshops, for instance to inform fashion brand about ways to make wet processing in their supply chain more sustainable.

Perhaps surprisingly, Amsterdam Fashion Week, which refused a ban on fur in 2012, has also hosted aworkshop by Bont voor Dieren (Fur for Animals, Dutch campaigners against fur). In a much-debated talk show in January 2013, Honest By designer Bruno Pieters and textiles manufacturer Ecological Textiles shared their experiences with sustainable collections and materials. And talked about the pros and cons of furfree fashion.

Meanwhile, sustainable collections that can often be seen on the Amsterdam catwalks include Studio Jux (a slow fashion label that produces its collections in their own factory in Nepal), MLY (a locally producing, artisanal green fashion designer based in Eindhoven), and Winde Rienstra (a finalist of The Green Fashion Competition in 2010). Brands with a green touch include Marga Weimans (who creates her own fabrics), Elise Kim (who embraces craftsmanship in her collections), Tessa Wagenvoort (who designs handprinted textiles), FREDFARROWBRITTAVELONTAN (a designer duo that celebrate handmade knits and artisanal embroideries) and Sophie #1234567+ (a designer collective whose approach to seasonal collections could be called slow).

And there’s a small consolation for eco fashion lovers that are unable to attend the invitation only press events at Amsterdam Fashion Week. The downtown programme, which is open to the public, often includes collection presentations by sustainable fashion brands, such as Shekila Eco Fashion and O My Bag.

C: Competitions

China may be better known for its mass production than haute couture. But it’s also home to a growing number of sustainable fashion designers. Enter the Ecochic Design Award, the nation’s first mainstream ecofashion design competition. Aimed at stimulating textile-waste-reducing designs, 10 finalists compete for the top prize: the chance to design a sustainable collection using innovatively recycled textiles for Esprit. In 2012, the prize went to Gong Jia Qi, a student at the Raffles Design Institute in Shanghai. Gong reconstructed five garments using unsold stock from Taobao, one of China’s leading online retailers.

In the Netherlands, the Amsterdam Fashion Week and Ministry of Economic Affairs first supported young ecofashion designers in 2010, when the The Green Fashion Competition was launched. The Green Fashion Competition serves as a talent show challenging fashion designers to balance the social, ecological and economical impacts of their ideas. The award winners receive a sum of money that they can use to make new collections, as well as an individual coaching programme stimulating their corporate social responsibility and marketing skills. In addition, the Amsterdam Fashion Week allows the first prize winner to show a new collection as part of its catwalk programme. Dutch topmodel Lonneke Engel being ambassador of the competition, the winners are likely to receive plenty of media attention.

Between 2010 and 2012, The Green Fashion Competition, which was open to international designers and labels, awarded prizes to sustainable design talents such as Elsien Gringhuis, Carrie Parry and Studio Jux. According to Lonneke Engel, the competition has put the spotlights on the Netherlands as a forerunner in eco & fair fashion. What’s more, because the prize winners receive plenty of information and support, they are more likely to develop a profitable as well as people & planet-friendly business. And it remains to be seen if the Ecochic Design Award can also achieve that.

T: Transseasonal fashion

With fast fashion brands making 30 or even 50 collections per year, the traditional fashion seasons appear to have become obsolete. What’s more, the popularity of fast fashion has made luxury labels and designer brands accelerate their production as well. The average fashion company now presents not just two or four collections per year, but also a cruise collection (between spring and summer), prefall collection (between autumn and winter), midseason or even prepre collection (at any other, apparently random time of year). The slow fashion movement has been fierce criticasters of this trend, claiming that the current pace of fashion creates overconsumption and throwawayism (and hence, the ever growing landfill space).

As slow fashion has become ever more mainstream, its tenets have come to include not just timeless design and high quality products but also a concern with transseasonal items. For instance, slow fashion designers have produced multifunctional clothes that can be used in several seasons. Think of a summer skirt that can be elongated to serve as an autumn dress. Or a cotton, waterproof coat that is suitable on rainy days in spring and summer as well as autumn.

Transseasonal design also relates to the timing of new collections. For Dutch designer Elsien Gringhuis, the pressure to present four or more new collections per year puts at stake her sense of creativity and her ambition to deliver high quality outfits. Because fashion stores expect at least two new collections per year, Gringhuis delivers two collections consisting of fewer items. In a similar vein, slow fashion pioneer Rianne de Witte designs one collection each year, which is presented in spring and fall.

Some designers oppose the idea of seasonal collections as such. For example, in 2012, young designer Sanne Jansen decided to make no more than twenty items per year, which remain available in her online store for several seasons. Each month, two new items hit the stores – one for men and one for women. Each item will be made until all fabric is used up, which has the positive environmental side-effect of preventing unused materials from being discarded.