Is Green Always Good?
Soooo, last night’s Project Runway hailed eco-friendly fashion, and some of the green material-inspired looks were pretty effing awesome. But I’m still not buying the notion that green translates to good, and here’s why. Opting for eco-friendly material (jersey cotton, organic satin and silk, etc.) is a nice way of doing your part to screw up the earth less. But buying green apparel from certain companies sometimes funds more than eco-conscious fashion. Sweatshops, for example.
Banana Republic and Macy’s - two recent additions to the green fashion bandwagon - had their wares manufactured by a factory that paid its employees $3.79 an hour for 66-hour, six-day workweeks until recently, when the Labor Department busted the facility for employee abuse. And it’s right here in Queens.
I honestly don’t know if any of Banana’s or Macy’s latest green apparel came from this Queens sweatshop, and I’m not saying eco-friendly fashion isn’t a good thing. But it’s not an exclusively good thing by virtue of its green-ness. Eco-friendly doesn’t mean people-friendly, and the earth’s effed up enough already. Maybe we should focus a little more on helping the people who make the clothes, instead of obsessing over the material they use to do their jobs.
Tagged: Eco-Trendly • Project Runway
