More people are starting to care where their food comes from — but not many have given the same thought to their clothes.
Shoppers snap up fast fashion pieces from stores like H&M and Zara on a daily basis, often unaware of the damage they’re causing the environment, and the consequence the cheap-but-chic industry has on workers in countries where long, grueling hours and low wages aren’t governed.
A new shopping website, Zady.com[1] , hopes to change that.
“Zady wants to be Whole Foods for fashion,” co-founder Soraya Darabi told the Daily News. The same way the organic-heavy grocer pushes local, healthy foods, Zady sells sustainable — but still stylish — clothing and accessories from designers who take pride in handmade, high-quality and locally-sourced materials.
Zady
Brooklyn designer Tracey Tanner might be a vegetarian, but she’s OK using scraps of Italian leather, which would normally be thrown out, to make her colorful, luxurious bags.
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“We’re trying to go back to timeless, classic style,” said Maxine Bédat, Darabi’s partner. “It’s not just about selling ‘green’ products. It’s about having nicer clothes in your wardrobe.”
Several New York designers are on board, like Tracey Tanner, a vegetarian who crafts buttery leather bags from Italian scraps, and Kika Vliengenthart, whose high-quality belts are handmade at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“I think it would be fantastic if more people were interested in how things are made,” said Vliegenthart, who met Bédat and Darabi at a trade show earlier this year.
Zady
A look into Kentucky store Imogene + Willie, which sells on Zady. Every piece is handmade from high-quality raw materials in the U.S.
“They asked all these specific questions — where does the leather come from, where do you work, what are your values? We didn’t even know who they were,” she recalled. “[Zady] is about getting that story out there. The bags and belts we make — they last a lifetime. If people realize that, it’s a whole different way of buying. If this is the future, fantastic.”
RELATED: SEARCH FOR BANGLADESH BODIES ENDS WITH DEATH TOLL AT 1,127[3]
Despite the allure of fast fashion — it’s hard to resist $5 tank tops and affordable replicas of runway trends — the consequences aren’t worth it, Darabi and Bédat say.
One of the biggest problems is waste from overproduction. More than 80 billion garments are produced every year — enough for every single person on the planet to have a brand-new wardrobe. In the future, there won’t be “vintage” clothes from this decade — they’re so low-quality, they just won’t last that long.
References
- ^ Zady.com (zady.com)
- ^ RELATED: ECO-FRIENDLY BRANDS MAKE GOING GREEN FUN (www.nydailynews.com)
- ^ RELATED: SEARCH FOR BANGLADESH BODIES ENDS WITH DEATH TOLL AT 1,127 (www.nydailynews.com)
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