Wear & Care

A loving way to treat the earth is to carefully cultivate a tiny corner of it: your closet. We’ve got smart ideas for doing just that, plus planet-friendly fashion as gorgeous as nature itself.

Though we’ve embraced meatless Mondays and reusable straws, we may still balk at the idea of eco-fashion. (Isn’t that for hippies happy to shroud themselves in burlap?) But sustainable clothing is casting off its sackcloth-and-ashes reputation. Celebrities are swanning about in upcycled couture at the Green Carpet Awards. Julianne Moore has rocked a Salvatore Ferragamo gown made of recovered sea plastic; Emma Watson, a custom Louis Vuitton dress made out of recycled bottles. Designers are using discarded fish scales instead of sequins, turning algae into sneaker insoles, producing jackets in “luxury” pineapple leather.

That may sound bizarre, but so, not long ago, did cars powered by battery packs, says Danny Seo, green lifestyle expert and host of the TV series Naturally, Danny Seo:

“Once, we needed Cameron Diaz to tell us what a Prius was, but these days they’re everywhere. There was a time when organic food was a niche thing. Fashion seems to be one of the last areas to make the shift, but it is happening.”

And not a moment too soon. The clothing industry is one of the biggest global polluters, says environmental scientist Linda Greer. It produces around 20 percent of the planet’s wastewater and 10 percent of its carbon emissions, beating the airline business and maritime shipping combined, according to the UN. The rise of cheap, plentiful “fast fashion” has fueled the crisis: Since 2000, global clothing production has at least doubled. Compared with 19 years ago, the average person now buys 60 percent more items annually and keeps them about half as long. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage-truckful of textiles is put in a landfill or burned.