As the popularity and abundance of eco-friendly fashions grow with each new season, the GreenShows will host a series of runway shows and presentations by a talented fleet of environmentally-conscious designers.
Scheduled for the tail end of Fashion Week (September 15 to 17), Samantha Pleet, Bright Young Things by Eliza Starbuck and Milliners Guild will headline a roster that also includes Dress Reform, Ashton Michael Black Label, Susan Cianciolo, Lavuk, Luis Valenzuela, Auralis Herrero and Joann Berman.
Pleet represents the new guard in eco-friendly fashion, shifting the perception from hippie-hemp to fashion-forward styles that happen to consider materials and production-methods as much as aesthetic, easily proving that one attribute need not bow to the other. Case in point: Pleet's flirty party dresses and military-inspired outerwear from the fall 2010 collection.
Bright Young Things designer Eliza Starbuck created her signature LBD for Sheena Matheiken's Uniform Project, which involved wearing that one dress every day for a year to study functional fashion and limiting one's consumption (after twelve months of wear, the dress held up beautifully, we might add).
Also participating is the Milliners' Guild, a hatmakers collective that's banded together to highlight the craft and maximize the use of raw materials. More than 40 skilled artisans are representated for a unique accessories element of the show.
All in all, it looks to be an amazing showcase of young and emerging designers, and not just in the area of green fashion, but within the industry as a whole—especially as green design becomes more and more the norm.
