Sustainable Fashion Initiative promotes style and sustainability

Spring is here, which means ditching the old winter coats and pulling out a whole new wardrobe. What better way to be inspired than to attend the upcoming Princeton Fashion Week events, hosted by the Princeton Sustainable Fashion Initiative. On the first real day of spring, Street caught up with Carmina Mancenon ’14 and Megan Partridge ’14, two of the three co-founders of Princeton’s Sustainable Fashion Initiative, and asked them to “disclothes” some more information about SFI and Princeton Fashion Week.

First, we wanted to know why sustainable fashion is important. “The problems are quite pressing at the moment. Just to throw some stats from 2006 out there, for instance, the ‘throwaway culture’ of fast fashion generates environmental impacts on the order of 2 million tons of waste, 3.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and 70 million tons of water waste in a single year in manufacturing hubs in China. As a consumer, I don’t want to be a part of a system that gives rise to these types of conditions,” Partridge said.

In the summer of 2011, Mancenon, Partridge and Jenna Rodrigues ’14 came up with the idea of SFI, and that fall they brought it to life. “Each of the three co-founders, Meg, Jenna and I, come from a very different background,” Mancenon said. “But I guess looking at it from my perspective, I was born in the Philippines and raised in Japan, and would go back to visit the Philippines during the summer, and there was a definite difference between third world and first world life, which got me interested in the idea of inequality and international development, particularly from an environmental angle.”

The initiative was partly inspired by the unique and far-reaching characteristics of the fashion industry. “It’s unparalleled as a language of self-expression, but for so long, there’s been a disconnect between the story of where our clothes come from and how they’re used to communicate identity in a purely aesthetic sense. To put it quite simply, the Sustainable Fashion Initiative grew out of my desire to explore ways to bridge this divide and harness the power of fashion to catalyze positive change around the world,” Partridge said.

Mancenon has a background in fashion activism. At 16, she founded Stitch Tomorrow, an organization that aimed to combat poverty by combining fashion and microfinance. She took the organization to the World Economic Forum in 2010. However, once she came to Princeton, Mancenon felt that in order to take advantage of everything Princeton has to offer, she needed to put the project on hold.

At first, it may not necessarily seem that fashion and sustainability have a common thread, but Mancenon elaborated on the logic behind the combination. “I think the best way to interest people in civic engagement is to combine things they know well (like fashion) with civic issues (like environmental activism). We also want to get Princeton to play a role in sustainable fashion, create conversations and get stakeholders involved,” Mancenon said.

Part of getting Princeton involved is through Princeton Fashion Week, an annual series of events coordinated by SFI to celebrate sustainable design. “We seek to use each event as a platform for sparking inspired and informed conversation around the future of fashion, sharing the stories behind our clothing and accessories and critically examining the way the current fashion system works,” Partridge said.

This year, there are a variety of events offered by SFI. These events consist of TED-style talks given by leaders in the fashion industry, including Benita Singh, co-founder and CEO of Source4Style, and Sarah Ziff, founder of the Model Alliance, and culminate in a runway show. Mancenon is most excited for the runway show. “I used to think of sustainable fashion as bad-looking, or something you can’t wear. So I’m really excited to show people that you can have the glitz and glam of high fashion, but you can also have everyday wear. It’s also really fun to see friends dressed up in the clothes, walking on the runway!” Mancenon said.

Once Fashion Week is over, things won’t slow down for the busy SFI founders, who have many projects and ideas up their sleeves. “We would love to see increased attendance and interest [in SFI]. We’re also hoping to bring SFI to other schools and create a network. Stanford already has a SFI, and we’ve started getting in touch with them. We’d also love to get some of the many great design schools that are in the area to come to events,” Mancenon said. “I really think that bringing an academic angle to all of this would be exciting. We are talking to ODUS about starting a seminar-style course around sustainable fashion, which would be interdisciplinary and bring together people from different parts of campus. We also have a magazine, Verte, which is coming soon.”

Ultimately, the two girls ended the discussion with this thread of wisdom. “One thing the three co-founders always say is that to care about fashion, it shouldn’t just be about looking at trends and following them, or your appearance, but about understanding the meaning of clothes, and creating stories from clothes.” Mancenon said.

“Sew” as you get ready for the fresh, warmer weather and changing up your wardrobe, you might want to keep in mind some of the goals of SFI. Make your way to the Princeton University Art Museum to learn from one of the talks, or head over to watch your friends strut their stuff down the runway.