One mans garbage is another mans hand bag (and a really nice one at that)?

Is it really the responsibility for a fashion designer to consider environmental stewardship? Chances are the answer to this question comes back with a list of haunting images for what dismantled, discarded, exploited and mass-produced consumerism has replaced a body of work, in which we have forgotten fashion.

Royal Black Collection

 

 

 

 

At one point fashion was more than simple trends, it was more than just a purchase. It was an investment to a statement and an admiration for style and collections were the stories of designers.

Since those days, where ever they went, we have wandered astray and allowed for the ugliest of circumstances to come about. Not only forgoing fashion as art but subsequently oppressing people, animals and land in the process of filling our closets….

 

 

 

Like a phoenix from the ashes rises Osklen by Oskar Metsavaht, an environmentally conscious clothing line. Metsavaht is a designer who takes responsibility for where fashion has gone and attempts to renegotiate an ugly contract with consumers! Based out of Brazil, the Osken collections have single-handedly reinvigorated the fashion world, competitively addressing the classic respects to design while completely obliterating their place in the modern world. Osklen’s silhouettes ebb and flow just as the true form of the human body does, speaking to beauty and awkwardness equally. The collections have meaning, substance and completion for the present world while charging down the path of the future. Osklen’s collections beg for the individual to express them self with subtly avant guard shapes and angles and alongside highbrow innovation. Osklen brings the sand, the sun, the stars and the sea to the urban existence.

“Everybody got mixed feelings about the function and the from, everybody got to elevate from the norm” – Neil Peart, Rush, Vital Signs, 1980

Fenix Collection

Osklen Ready to Wear

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Osklen presence is no smoking mirror, it is the real thing, a living breathing house of eco-fashion, a time sensitive culmination that speaks to where the world is and how we must care for our “whole” environment as much as our need for “stuff”. Metsavaht is making great advances in the world of textiles. Amongst the exciting materials being used are discarded skins of the pirarucu, salmon and tilapia. After sourcing another man’s garbage, these skins are processed and tanned using green methods and supplying fare wage jobs for the local communities. Metsavaht is not alone in these projects, he has cultivated a world-class incubator along with others, for the advancements of green textiles within the E Institute, a non-profit private civil association, created and based in Rio de Janeiro, dedicated to the promotion of Brazil’s calling as a “country of sustainable development”. Birth out of the E Institute comes E Fabrics, which I am sure you can guess what their mission is! Textiles, like those being used in the Osklen collections, were nothing more than garbage before groups like these brought heightened concern to fabrics, design and environmental responsibility. Furthermore, textiles like these were also only a “neat idea” until forward thinkers, like Oskar Metsavaht, gave them new life.

Oskar Metsavaht is also an appointed representative for UNESCO since 1999. Save it… I know… What does that really truly mean? The United Nations, what do they really get done, another glorified puppetry center? Well I can not answer that for you in one brief essay length post, but I can say that the combination of connections back to the man behind Osklen is completely inspiring. The concept and actions behind Osklen show that fashion and design do not have to leave blood on your hands. These connections draw a profound depth to a collection of clothing. These connections also set a new standard in fashion and push boundaries that were once set for aesthetic beauty. Whether an individual continues to walk blindly through the world of shopping or not, the playing field for style has just become illuminated and I for one know which team uniform I want to be wearing!

So while I have danced around the question “Is it really the responsibility for a fashion designer to consider environmental stewardship”, I have provided an abstract in response. The truth is that whatever part one plays in the world a portion of the responsibility is theirs. To carry a portion of the weight in this is where we depart from the singular identity of a profession and become a presence, Osklen is that presence is in fashion and design introducing endless possibilities in fashion.

“I feel the sense of possibilities”. – Neil Peart, Rush, Camera Eye 1980

The beautiful people I know applying Osklen to their lives….

Lou Dickinson

To read more from Ms. Lou’s fashion and design perspectives visit Gres Matter.

Edgemont

Himalaya Tee

D&K

Optics by Osklen