WHAT YOU WEAR MATTERS MORE THAN YOU REALISE. HERE'S WHY...

This weekend past, Crimson proudly supported the Good Magazine Sustainable Fashion Show at New Zealand Fashion Week, by providing boxes of tampons for inclusion in the goodie bags. Headlining the show was leading yoga and lifestyle brand, WE-AR. 

You might be wondering why we choose to support sustainable fashion? The answer is simple; it’s a movement that shares our values of making more conscious choices for the benefit of our environment.  

Sadly, the cult of consumerism and fast fashion is more rabid than ever before. What many of us don’t realise however, is that our choices often mean we are supporting unfair labour practices, and manufacturing processes that place a high toxic load on our environment. 

Here are some frightening statistics: 

• A pair of jeans uses 1,800 gallons of water(that’s about 6,800 one-litre bottles)
• The fashion industry uses 1,600 chemicals in their dyeing processes; only one per cent of which, have been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency
• A t-shirt can travel up to 3,500km before it lands on a consumer’s back, which means that even if you are adopting other environmentally friendly practices in your everyday life (separating your recycling correctly, taking reusable bags to the supermarket, etc), you’re complicit in fashion’s shameful truth, just by getting dressed every morning. 

So what can you do?  

For starters, support sustainable fashion brands such as those who showed at Fashion Week. These include: 

• WE-AR
• Ovna Ovich
• Mane Project
• Grumpysuns
• Outliv
• Tonic & Cloth
• Papinelle Sleepwear
• AURAI Swimwear
• ReCreate Clothing

 You can also practice the six Rs:

• Reduce
• Reuse
• Recycle
• Rent
• Repurpose
• Repair or alter; and most importantly…
• Research