Menswear from Izzy Lane's 2009 Ethical Fashion

Seven-plus days of champagne-soaked, Swarovski-studded Fashion Week opulence can leave your average “green” enthusiast feeling unconscionably wasteful. The daily arrival of extravagant fashion invitations printed on rubber or dusted in 14k gold can make the most cynical of eco-skeptics wonder: “what is the carbon footprint of chic?”
     Happily, a heroic few among the fashionable set have made going green a style priority for Spring/Summer 2010.  Located at Soho’s fittingly titled King of Green Street boutique, the GreenShows will host presentations by earth-friendly, fair-trade labels including Bodkin, Bahar Shahpar, Izzy Lane, Lara Miller, Mr. Larkin, and House of Organic over the course of two days.  Of course, runway beauty will be suitably “eco”, with John Masters Organics providing all hair-styling services. In addition, a kickoff party on opening night will aim to raise awareness about the Rainforest Action Network (RAN)—an organization that attempts to educate fashion and luxury brands who use custom paper packaging about the dangerous environmental side effects that come from farming tree pulp in tropical rainforests.

Simon-Pierre Toussaint took not one but two prizes at the Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival this past spring for his menswear collection, “The trees can hear you if you talk to them”. Boy scouts and the male adolescent experience are points of reference for his work, an imaginative spin on practical outdoor wear. It was the twenty-fourth year for the festival at Hyères, which is held at the early modernist villa Noailles in the south of France and focuses on emerging fashion designers and photographers. This year’s fashion jury included artist Nan Goldin and Jefferson Hack, founder of Dazed and Confused, among others.
     Toussaint, who graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp last year, says that the boy scouts and simple childhood pastimes like playing with wooden knights are what inspired his collection. Like boyhood camping and acting out Medieval battles, his designs are playful but not whimsical. They are inventive, dreamy solutions for surviving outdoors. Take for example his ankle-length parka, pieced together from sleeping bags and lined with nighttime constellations; this huge cape parka is shown over white long johns that look old-school backwoods, except for the stark geometric designs that wrap suggestively around the hips.

No contemporary clothing brand — with the obvious exception of Maison Martin Margiela — is cloaked in quite so much mystery as the Deth Killers of Bushwick. Eight years ago, the Brooklyn-based atelier made its debut as “Inner City Raiders vs. Deth Killers”, purportedly named after the centuries-old violence raging between two of the borough’s most notorious gangs. According to legend (available in its entirety on DethKillers.com), the gang leaders, exhausted after years of unremitting battle, drew up a peace treaty stipulating not only the end of their bloody turf war, but the creation of a fashion company. The mega-brand they summoned “would combine and capitalize on the clubs’ exquisite and deadly senses of style. Styles of dress so sexy, they were known to lure Mamasitas, Hoochie Mamas, and Rock Goddesses from all five boroughs.” And it was so.
     The Deth Killers spent three glorious years on the periphery of mainstream fashion — outfitting David Bowie in tight jeans and punk rock jackets for his 2003 “Reality Tour” — only to disappear altogether a year later. The circumstances surrounding the brand’s dissolution remain unclear: “If you happen to be wondering where the Deth Killers have been for the last few years, it’s a long story,” states their new website. “You might want to go to the bathroom now, because it’s very long and very boring.”

Photography by Peter Gehrke

For Stockholm-based designer Sandra Backlund, the opportunity to work with Italian luxury knitwear producer Maglificio Miles signified as much of an end as it did a beginning. Until now, Backlund has been doing everything herself, producing mind-bogglingly meticulous sculptural fantasies entirely by hand and on a made-to-order basis. In 2007, her distinctive “three-dimensional collage” knitting style made her the grand prix winner of Festival International de Mode et De Photographie in Hyeres, France. Her support network at the White Club, a non-profit organization in Milan that connects talented young designers with established fashion industry professionals, offered Backlund’s portfolio to Miles, who wisely approached her for a collaborative “production test”.
     The fruits of their labor, the Control-C Collection for F/W 09-10, offers a decidedly more severe vision than Backlund’s past collections, which tended toward charmingly oddball. Composed of five machine-knit and four handmade pieces, the collection proves that Backlund’s bizarre, gravity-defying aesthetic is realizable via machine — and, therefore, mass produceable. The handmade aspect, however, will always be an integral part of Backlund’s design process.

Fashion, Jewelry and Shoes by Julie Eilenberger. Photography by Yves Borgwardt. Model. Kati from Seeds

A student at Universität der Künste, Julie Eilenberger debuted her designs in early July in her school’s presentation at Berlin Fashion Week. My Inner and Outer Space, a take on astronomic inspiration, combines structure with the ethereal.  Eilenberger, who is 24, says of the collection, “I wanted something dark and unnatural yet elegant…the outfits are somewhat futuristic but with a feeling of history.” 
     Indeed, the Space collection exhibits multiple contrasts: the intricacy of tiny eyelets and veils of asymmetric black Swarovski crystals against simple chiffon and jersey; flowing drapery elevated by exaggerated shoulders sculpted from hand-cut foam.
     The Danish-born Eilenberger lives the role of artist-as-observer, processing influences and letting her pieces develop on their own. She says she doesn’t, by nature, engineer her creativity: “I’m just giving it way and am always surprised by the outcome, as if it’s not mine.” Appropriately, Eilenberger rarely designs with herself in mind. Instead she draws from art or a mood, or she fleshes out and dresses a fictional woman. The muse she cast for her first collection is “strong and ready to take off for space…to protect Earth,” she says. She also looked to classic science fiction films, like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barbarella, and Logan’s Run for inspiration. The future might as well be fashionable.

theblackmark.sg

Quite possibly taking a nod from art movements of the past — conjure Fluxus or Dada — the Singapore-based design lab Black Mark established their art/fashion/lifestyle boutique Black Market to “retaliate and reject all the ideals of commercial bombardment” and to “celebrate design in all its manifestations”. Black Market, located stylishly close to Haji Lane, hits high marks for curating international brands like Nixon and Ksubi with local Singaporean designers. Every product featured within the store is carefully selected so there is plenty of rhyme and reason behind why a sweater and jeans have found their way into the shop. Black Mark blogs about each new brand the boutique picks up: take, for instance, the hipster sunglass label Mystic Vintage, which gets it’s inspiration from vintage frames and iconic figures like John Lennon and Ziggy Stardust who wore them; the deconstructionist brand Nickicio, alongside books by the Swiss Nieves collective; and French indie label L’Espace Des Createurs. Quincy Teofisto of Black Mark says the boutique is about “style rather than trends… Blackmarket is diverse, nonconformist, and unpretentious.” A look inside reflects this, with a do-it-yourself ingenuity — one will awe at the handmade Orangina bottle chandelier perched above the wares. Black Market is a celebration of artistic collaboration, reminding us as audience and consumer that playful experimentation does a wardrobe, and a heart, plenty of good.