The Society for Rational Dress has such a great concept: Women deserve freedom from conformity in how they attire themselves. That’s why the label produces unique limited-run garments from batches of surplus fabric — because everyone should have the opportunity to be one-of-a-kind.

So it’s our lucky day that SfRD is having a blowout sample sale this weekend in Los Angeles.

Society for Rational Dress Sample Sale
What: Nab tees for $20-$50; dresses for $35-$90; leather skirts for $85-$150; sweaters for $45-$160; and all other samples, overstock, and one-of-a-kinds at up to 75 percent off retail.
Why: You might even be able to rationalize a pair of shoes.
When: Sat. March 15, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Where: The Reserve, Society for Rational Dress Studios, 255 S. Santa Fe Ave., at E. 3rd St., ste. 100, Industrial District (213-613-0757).

(via DailyCandy)

Tesco is in some ways the U.K. equivalent of Target — a place where you can buy well-priced groceries and clothes in the same trip. Now, in the tradition of Target’s eco-minded Go International collections, Tescois releasing a sweet sustainable clothing line in collaboration with From Somewhere. Fast fashion, this isn’t.

As Ecouterre reports:

Made up of damaged stock, end of rolls, and pre-consumer textile waste from Tesco’s own supply chain, “From Somewhere to F&F” consists of six striking, paneled designs that are being produced in a LEED-certified factory in Sri Lanka—the first apparel factory in the world, in fact, to receive a Gold rating for lowering its carbon footprint by 48 percent and using 60 percent less water than a standard factory.

Also, the clothes are pretty hot — we’d wear any of these dresses out on the town. Well played, Tesco!

The dresses, which start at £16, are set to go on sale on Tesco’s website this spring.

Earlier this month we reported on H&M’s Garden Collection and its lofty promises to clean up the fast-fashion retailer’s act. Unfortunately, new information may torpedo H&M’s big green hopes, if you believe genetically modified (GM) cotton shouldn’t bear an organic label.

As Ecoterre.com reports:

Roughly 30 percent of the tested samples contained genetically modified cotton, says Lothar Kruse, a director of Impetus, an independent lab in Bremerhaven, which examined the cotton fabrics in question. The contaminated cotton was traced back to India, which is responsible for more than half of the global supply of organic cotton, with an output of nearly 107,000 tons of fiber in 2009 alone, according to thee Organic Exchange.

India supplies more than half of the global supply of organic cotton.

The controversy over GM and organic cotton is far from over, but we can’t help but notice they have fairly compatible goals. Organic farming is designed to reduce farmers’ reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers that run off the crops and poison the habitats of native flora and fauna. Some strains of GM cotton have been developed to diminish the desirability of cotton for its main pests and to increase the crop’s heartiness in poor soil, meaning less pesticide and fertilizer are needed altogether.

So while it doesn’t excuse H&M for defrauding its ethical consumers, shouldn’t we be revisiting the GM debate to see if it’s worth berating a market leader for trying to do the right thing?

Prince Charles is reportedly planning new initiatives to bring wool back into fashion by promoting it as a green alternative to other textiles.

According to Luxist.com:

The Prince hopes his efforts will help make wool more popular once again for both clothing and carpet and rugs. Wool has a bad reputation as being bulky and itchy but the new push for wool plans to highlight the green benefits and beauty of wool compared to synthetic materials. Modern wool fabrics are also sleeker and softer and are being used in more innovative ways by top designers showing up in traditional Savile Row suits but also in wool bags from Marni and trendier pieces from Burberry and Paul Smith.

The Prince has his own organic flock of sheep and is aware of how lowering wool prices have affected farmers. British wool competes with wool from Australia, New Zealand and China among other countries.

In addition to the new label, Prince Charles is planning to help plan Wool Week, which will precede London Fashion Week this fall. Wool Week will be sponsored by British chain Marks & Spencer.

I probably fall into a very small sliver of people who have a box or two purely of fabric scraps.

Unless you sew quite a bit, you will likely not accumulate this many too-small-to-make-anything fabrics scraps. So unlike the women in India will old saris to convert into floor mats or women in the old south converting gingham dresses into quilts, you probably couldn’t do much with a “here’s how to make something out of your fabric scrap box” DIY article.

But that’s not to say that you don’t have an extra fabric resource. You just may never have thought about it before.

The Problem: Copious amounts of worn-out tee-shirts. I used to have stacks of them. Maybe you have ten you still wear, but sixty you don’t want to throw away—because you got the darn thing at a [family reunion/football game/your ex-boyfriend/in Vegas/from a sensitive glue-gun wielding relative]. What do you do with them? Nothing. So they collect dust…and one day, you’ll get over the nostalgia long enough to throw them out.

The Solution: Make a tee-shirt quilt. Ultimately, each beloved graphic tee-shirt will yield one to two quilt squares — one from the logo on the back, and one from the front.

1.     Take a long look at your t-shirts, and pick out as many as you want to cut up.

2.     Based on the size of your shirts it might make sense to make 10, 12 or 14-inch squares. The logos on my shirts worked best with a size 14X14 in.

3.     Determine based on how many tee-shirts you have what the dimensions of your quilt will be. Remember, you need twice as many squares as the dimension of your quilt (front and back). Mine is 6 square by 9 squares, front and back, so I needed 108 squares in all from more than 54 t-shirts.

4.     Make a cardboard cutout at the size you want each of your squares.  I cut a large whole in the middle, making it more like a frame, so I could see where I was placing the square.

5.     Lay the square on a t-shirt and trace around the edge.  Repeat on the opposite side.

6.     Cut out as many shirts as you have plans, piling up the squares.

7.     Lay them out in the pattern that you want, for example, checkered light and dark squares, all the big patterns on one side, or some more involved placement.

8.     Begin to sew the squares together in strips, keeping the seam width the same.  For my quilt, I had 2 sets of 6 strips of 9 squares.

9.     Sew the strips of squares together. Then you will soon have two large squares, the front and back of your blanket.

10. Put the two sides together, right sides facing inward. Trim the excess fabric to make both pieces the exact same size.

11. Pin and then sew around the outside, leaving an opening to turn the quilt inside out.

12. Turn the quilt inside out and iron around the edges. Be sure to iron under the edge that has the opening, in order that you can easily stitch over the opening.

13. Run the sewing machine around the edge of the quilt, to finish off the edges of the quilt.

14.  Find several points around the quilt to attach the two sides together, basically tacking the quilt in four or eight places with a hand or machine stitch.

15.  You may notice a pile of scrap fabric that you have left over. This shouldn’t be wasted. Hear are a few ideas: Shred finely and use as stuffing, make another quilt with smaller squares, or the most practical — use the left over scraps as rags for work around the house.

By making a fun quilt that’s full of memories and using the leftovers for new rags for housework (which can later become rag rugs), zero waste isn’t an impossible goal for any of us.

I’d venture a guess that humans have been recycling fabric since the dawn of time.

Silk rag rugs are hand-loomed in India by weaving twisted strips of old saris.

When you have to weave for weeks to make one item of clothing (not to mention gathering the wool or harvesting the cotton or tracking the deer), once made, you would never choose to waste the cloth.

By contrast, today we often throw out clothes with the slightest need for a mend. We throw out clothes because we have too many. We throw out clothes because they just aren’t cool anymore.

Now designers are thinking up new ways to cut up existing fabric to avoid waste, and other methods to keep extra fabric at a minimum. As we “Oooo “and “Ahhh” over these new technologies to not waste fabric, let’s take a minute to respect our ancestors for finding creative ways to do the exact same thing.

From quilts to rag rugs, potholders to aprons, stuffed toys to pillows, our predecessors have been finding creative ways to turn bits of fabric into functional masterpieces for generations. Here are a few ideas from around the world.

• Indian silk “rag” rugs: Silk rag rugs are hand-loomed in India by weaving twisted strips of old saris into wide gorgeous rugs. They are substantially brighter that their American-European counterpart, as they are made from bright silk saris that are often adorned with metallic paint and thread shining through.
• European/Country rag rugs: This craft was brought to the United States, likely by European immigrants, although it is hard to tell from where and first became popular in the 1890s. Some type of rag rug was likely the original American floor covering. A rag rug can be made from any material sewn into strips, although organic materials such as cotton and silk are the very common. Getting its name from what it can be made from—old rags—the name conveys the charm of these classic rugs. In the Old South, rag rugs were mostly cotton, leftovers from textile mills. Strips of scrap material can be woven in a rectangle on a loom, crocheted, or strips of fabric can be braided and then coiled and sewn in concentric circles, creating large circular, oval, and even heart-shaped rugs.
• Pieced and patchwork quilts: The quilt is as old as ancient Egypt, and has remained popular throughout history. The patchwork quilt only came to prominence after the 1840s when industrially produced fabric made it common and affordable, and while often the quilts are very ornate (and not made from scraps), women in the American interior and frontier preferred to use fabric scraps from used clothing and especially leftover scraps from other things they were sewing. The story of the quilt in America is particularly strong in the abolitionist movement, among the Amish, and in the Midwest. Certain quilting techniques are traditionally very “American,” but variations on the quilt can be found around the world.

I plan to keep plumbing the depths of this movement, but it has been much harder than I thought to track down ways that people around the world recycle their fabric. But that is not because they are not recycling — they are. Truth is, from Tulsa to Timbuktu, men and women will reuse fabric for a thousand things not just out of choice, but out of necessity. A lesson for us all.

Spring is a few months away but that hasn’t stopped us from eyeing all the spring/summer collections from our favorite ethical designers. Right now, Canadian designer Nixxi’s body-conscious and yet comfy basics are topping our wishlists.

Layering is an art form in Southern California and these versatile pieces will really come in handy for those extreme temperature swings. We particularly like the ruched leggings ($66) pictured at left with a blousy V-neck top ($96).

And designer Jada-lee Watson designs everything with top-quality eco-fabrics, according to the new collection’s press release:

“My favourite piece this season is the Empire Dress,” says Jada-lee. “We always use great fabrics like organic cotton and woven bamboo voile, but I’m most excited about the linen I’m bringing in from Italy for the dresses. It is beautifully textural.”

To browse more images and shop the brand online, check out Nixxi’s website here.

To the fashion industry’s credit, the various Fashion Weeks sprinkled all over the globe almost all included ethical design events. The movement has come a long way indeed.

The Battalion's cream bamboo jersey dress for S/S 2010, presented at Downtown L.A. Fashion Week on October 15. (M.J. Prest/EthicalStyle.com)

The Battalion’s spring/summer 2010 collection was one of the most hotly-anticipated fashion shows anywhere in Los Angeles during Downtown Fashion Week this month. Held at the industrial setting of the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Modern Art, the show was an homage to ballerinas, those experts of balance and grace.

“If women are going back to the basics in the coming seasons,” they wrote in the show’s liner notes, “we want their clothes to be simple but sincere. We want their wardrobe staples to be wearable, but dreamy. We want them to dance, dream, and fall in love like the dancers who have inspired this collection.”

And the same can be said for the innovative fabrics that The Battalion designers Chrys and Linda Wong made excellent use of. Draping bamboo jersey and ultrasoft pro-modal are the ideal media for everyday basics, but their expert tailoring is what made these pieces so eminently wearable. (For photos of more from the collection, check out our page on Facebook.)

France brought us the Ethical Fashion Show at Paris Fashion Week, featuring more than 100 designers of clothing and accessories at Le Tapis Rouge in the 10th Arrondissement and even more big names at the Green Showroom in Le Marais. Established brands like Article 23 and Terra Plana presented side-by-side with newbies like Como No and its fair-trade Wellies.

As you might expect in Paris, the emphasis was on flawless tailoring and feminine details in addition to cutting-edge fabrics like lyocell and peace silk. Valentine Gauthier showed some to-die-for gladiator sandals with vegetable-dyed leather — sure to stay in style next summer.

And across the Channel, Estethica wrapped up its seventh annual event at London Fashion Week. Among the noteworthy presenters: British model Lily Cole has launched her own eco-brand called The North Circular, and also new to the scene was Ajna by Beryl Man, the former knitwear design director at Donna Karan New York.

Ethical design veterans made headlines as well. Beautiful Soul named its spring/summer 2010 shoe collection “Miss Butterfly,” which took its inspiration from authentic Japanese kimonos dating back to the 1940s. (Other materials in use this year included vintage saris, peace silk, organic jacquard, handloom cotton and bamboo jersey.) Of particular note was Christopher Raeburn and his use of re-appropriated military parachute fabric in the brightest shades of red, green, blue, and purple. In addition to his favored parkas, ponchos, and bomber jackets, he also showcased a small number of dresses and handbags (such as the “jellyfish” bag woven from parachute fabric and cord).

This year is the International Year of Natural Fibers, according to the United Nations. This means 2009 is a good year for organics.

The Organic Exchange (OE), a business-supported certifier of organic fiber agriculture (most often cotton), is using the occasion to host the 2009 Sustainable Textiles Conference in Seattle next month, which will focus on the key issues related to sustainable textiles in the 21st century. This very week, Organic Exchange’s Helvetas (The Swiss Association for International Cooperation) and other international partners are holding the World Congress on Organic Cotton in Interlaken, Switzerland, entitled “From Fashion to Sustainability.”

Left: Gypsy 05's organic cotton maxi dress. Right: Fitness model Diana Chaloux in synthetic workout clothes.

Thanks to all these initiatives, consumers are seeing more organic, green, and sustainability labels popping up on clothing than ever before. But how does an item of clothing get labeled as such?

The international regulatory framework for certifying organic materials is not centralized and comprises a number of organizations that oversee setting the standards. The International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) published the Organic Textile Standards in 1998 in an effort to bring together all the disparate directives, but they remain disjointed around the globe. The International Organic Accreditation Service is responsible for certifying groups that, in turn, certify many of the companies.

In the United States, cotton fibers can be labeled USDA organic if they contain 95% organic fiber grown without conventional pesticides and using environmentally friendly agricultural practices. No matter where it is produced, in order to be certified, it must be inspected by the USDA. The label does not indicate anything about the dyes or chemicals in the fabric.

Among the non-governmental regulatory bodies, the Organic Trade Association (OTA) is the main certifier in the United States, and they use different labels: “Organic,” “100% Organic,” “Made with organic (specified fiber products),” and “Less than 70% organically produced constituents.” It has yet to be determined what would be labeled with “Less than 70% organically produced constituents.”  Their labels, beyond the USDA’s labels do include standards created to regulate chemicals, dyes, detergents, “green”-ness, non-organic elements like zippers and elastic.  However, they do not evaluate fair trade practices.

As is evident in the OTA’s regulations, beyond the straight forward “X leads to Y” certification by the U.S. federal government, the reality is that companies often incorporate other mores into their own certification and labeling processes. Depending on the company or organization, organic might say something about fair-trade practices, low-impact dyes, sustainable or biodegradable fabrics, and fewer chemicals in the final product—practices that go beyond the simple “organic” label.

In fact, defining “sustainable textiles,” a phrase that incorporates and analyzes much more than agricultural practices, is the next big thing. It seeks to marry the organic, fair-trade, and green concepts, with a holistic assessment of the long-term impact of the item — that is, access the total impact of the creation, use, and disposal of an item, and every person that the item affects along the way. It is a high-minded goal with, as of yet, no single certifying body to label items that fit into this category.

A word about synthetics: I prefer a silk blouse over a polyester blouse any day. And I want cotton dresses just like everyone, but I want my running clothes to be synthetic and high-tech. Synthetics serve a purpose. Rayon, a hybrid cellulose semi-synthetic fabric, has been found to biodegrade faster than even cotton. And thank goodness for nylon for giving us stockings without seams down the back.

In a world with no synthetics, there would be no elastic. Even strict certifiers allow elements (notions, as we seamstresses call them) that have no “natural” alternative: buttons, zippers, elastic. We forget that synthetic items can be also fair trade, like organics. I would argue that the role of synthetics in the future of sustainable, ethical fashion is has yet to be defined sufficiently. As we, the consumers, define “sustainable fashion,” it is my hope that synthetics will have a roll.

It remains up to consumers to be vigilant in their purchases and do their background research if clothes that fit into this category are important to them. In truth, that level of vigilance is always important on the part of consumers, and transparency is so important on the part of companies.  Companies who open up their sourcing, production, and labeling methods create confidence with their customers. Regardless of the fact that there are a dozen or so labeling systems granted oversight, companies can take the lead on defining their own products.

At the end of the day, labels are a shorthand way of telling us what we are getting. They don’t—nor can they—tell us the whole story. We should know that all around the world they mean different things. But it is certainly a comfort to discover, upon researching a line of clothing, that their labels mean exactly what they say.

It’s time for the September edition of E.S. Eco-Over! If you’re new to this feature, we take a runway trend and find a stylish equivalent from a green designer — usually for a lot less than the high-end version.

Up this time is Jean Paul Gaultier’s sailor pants (pictured left). With a flat front and long, wide legs, these cotton-linen blend jeans are born for fall (think wedges and a snug-fitting striped top — very French).

But for eco-conscious fashionistas, Kelly B has a doppelganger in denim made from bamboo and hemp with a touch of silk for softness. All the style with far more sustainable fabrics — you’ll wear these into the ground.

Jean Paul Gaultier Sailor Pants, $795 at NeimanMarcus.com, versus Kelly B “Sabrina” Sailor Pants, $48 at Nimli.com.