(Courtesy of Preloved.ca)

It’s a challenge to find organic cotton and hemp grown in Canada because of a little thing called weather. Down “south” we can imagine our organic cotton shirt coming from plants thriving a few states away, or my hemp shirt grown down south, but Canadians don’t really have that luxury.

Canada’s main crops include lots of oats, corn, soy, and vegetables — not exactly things that can be easily made into fabric. Although some of them (particularly soy) do have fabrics that can be made from their by products, they are not widely produced yet. And yes, Canada has a robust wool industry, but let’s focus on the more creative segments of the northern fashion industry.

Some up-and-coming Canadian designers are looking at ethical style from a new angle — I think in part due to the “challenge” of limited textile producing plants in Canada. Instead of simply making new clothes out of eco-friendly textiles, what not make something new out of something old?

It has become known as “upcycling,” a term that hasn’t been around even 20 years, but something that industrious women have been doing forever. Anyone who has traveled to third world countries has witnessed upcycling, but they may just call it “waste not, want not.”

The principle goes like this: Instead of thinking of modern recycling as taking old things and melting them down into something new, we should think about reconstituting old things into something new that has a better use or a different use. We need to think about recycling as preservation. It creates or increases value, instead of destroying or reducing value — just as making a pot is much harder than smashing it with a sledgehammer. Upcycling is a way of life, and in Canada, limited resources breed creativity.

How does this relate to ethical fashion? Part of eco-conscious style obviously involves thinking about the sources of materials. In Canada, “locally” sourcing a textile by necessity has to mean something other than growing the fibers. But that hasn’t stopped some remarkable Canadian designers who deserve credit for creatively “re-purposing” what local means, by reusing textiles, materials, fibers, etc. to make really incredible clothes.

I’ve dug up some awesome examples to prove my point.

Paper People Clothing, based in Thunder Bay, Ontario, stands out as a beacon of earthy up-cycling, reusing curtains, sweaters, lace, and bedsheets to create a line of clothing that is 80 percent reused materials and 20 percent organic and sustainable textiles. All I can think of is Scarlet O’Hara.

Toronto-based Preloved uses vintage fabrics to make all their clothing, and my, do they know how to upcycle. The label’s style is a slightly offbeat take on classic fashions that are simply gorgeous. Labels read “this garment was consciously created from reclaimed fabrics,” according to FashionTakesAction.com. Scrolling through their runway gallery reveals not only the reuse of very nice suiting material, but also some very sexy takes on what was originally the “classic Canadian sweater.”

And Flora&Fauna has long made very smart choices about the source of their fabrics, but for the Fall 2010 collection, they are promising to use “rescued” fabrics. EcoGear uses 100% recycled cotton fibres and even recycled water bottles to makes casual clothes for both men and women. There are even yoga pants!