In the 2015 film The Martian, astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, is stranded on the red planet after his crew leaves him for dead in the wake of a violent dust storm. Faced with dwindling rations, Watney uses his botany and engineering know-how, plus a generous serving of his own waste, to improvise…
Author: jasmin
5 Pieces, 30 Outfits: Vetta Offers The Ultimate Eco-Capsule Collection
Consider Vetta your Marie Kondo–approved antidote to “fast fashion.” Composed of five closet staples that can be mixed and matched to produce a month’s worth of outfits, the brand just might be the ultimate capsule collection. “We realized that most women had a closet full of clothes and ‘nothing to wear,’ and we wanted to…
5 Ways Fashion Can Save the World: Thoughts From COP15 Fashion Summit
While delegates from 192 nations honed in on Copenhagen to iron out a new climate-change treaty, the fashion industry had a group huddle of its own on Dec. 9 about the state of the planet. Held at the Danish capital’s renowned opera house, the Fashion Summit (the “most important fashion event of the year,” according…
Is H&M’s New Lower-Priced Clothing Encouraging Disposable Fashion?
Call it the $4.95 frock that rocked the fashion world. It costs less than a Grande Caramel Frappuccino at Starbucks, and it’s cheaper than a six-piece Chicken McNuggets Value Meal at McDonalds. You could take that money to your neighborhood CVS and still come up short on a $5.99 tube of Wet N’ Wild Shade…
Are Green Holiday Gift Guides Ruining the Planet?
Green gift guides are destroying the environment. Or at least that’s what PSFK editor-in-chief Piers Fawkes would have you believe. In an editorial titled “Tis the Season to Avoid Green Gift Guides,” Fawkes blazes with the fervor of the recently converted—a result, he admits, of working with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project on ways to…
7 Eco-Friendly Fabrics That Will Disrupt the Luxury Fashion Industry
As buzzy as sustainability may seem today, the term still conjures up (for the most part) images of grass-fed beef, off-the-grid yurts, and thick-buckled Birkenstocks. Small wonder, then, that fashion brands—those peddlers of dreams and artificers of cool—might be loathe to embrace something that might make them appear gauche by association. “Sustainability is a lot…
We Might be Descended From This Horrifying Sea Creature with No Anus
If you’re looking for new nightmare fuel beyond, oh we don’t know, the dissolution of democracy as we know it, meet Saccorhytus, a tiny H.R. Giger-esque monstrosity that scientists say could be our earliest-known ancestor. Going back some 540 million years, it’s also believed to be the most primitive example we have to date of…
H&M’s Anna Gedda: Fair Wages Are Something the Whole Industry Must Drive
The first thing you should know about Anna Gedda, H&M’s head of sustainability, is that she’s unflappable. Speaking in clipped, dulcet tones from a couch at the Westin Paris, where the Swedish retailer held court with a cadre of journalists last month, Gedda is serenity personified. Certainly she cannot be immune to the slings and…
Haunting ‘Trashion’ Gowns Illustrate Senegal’s Pollution Problem
A collaboration between photographer Fabrice Monteiro and fashion designer Jah Gal, The Prophecy is a series of haunting tableaus illustrating Senegal’s widespread environmental crisis. The African country, nearly half of which is classified as semiarid, is locked in a constant battle against desertification that is exacerbated still by deforestation, overgrazing, and slash-and-burn agriculture. Refuse lies…
Reality Show Sends Young Fashionistas to Work in Cambodian Sweatshop
A young blonde woman weeps openly on camera, her manicured fingers perched wanly against her cheekbones. “I can’t take it any more,” she sobs in Norwegian. “What sort of life is this?” Her name is Anniken Jørgensen, one of three young fashion enthusiasts who “star” in a five-part online reality series about the horrors of…
New Campaign Calls Out ‘Hypocrisy’ of Toxic Yoga-Apparel Brands
In “Gandhi Does Yoga,” a tongue-in-cheek video by College Humor, ol’ Mahatma himself rises from the dead to visit the “world’s least Hindu gym.” The yoga instructor, lithe and blonde, considers Gandhi with a tight smile. “Maybe next time try and wear appropriate attire? Maybe a Lycra top?” she asks. Gandhi protests. “This is a…
Inditex, Zara’s Owner, Announces Plan to ‘Close the Loop’ on Fashion
The world’s largest apparel retailer wants to close the loop on fashion. Cribbing a page from H&M’s playbook, Inditex is teaming up with Lenzing, the Austrian textile manufacturer behind plant-based manmade fabrics such as Tencel, to commit to the “circular economy” model in all phases of its production. Speaking at the Spanish firm’s annual general…