Ecochic Geneve took to the stage at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland this January 20-21, 2010 in celebration/awareness of the Year of Biodiversity. Talented designers from around the world (many whom I’ve never heard of before) participated – from Diane von Furstenberg to Redley Exantus. The goal was to make the business case for biodiversity through the fashion and cosmetics industry.
Biodiversity – quite an esoteric, unrecognizable term for many – is essentially all the genetic, molecular, species and ecosystem diversity on Earth. Basically, the variation of life forms and biomes is a good thing and if we can support that through business – particularly ones that rely on raw materials (e.g., cosmetics, fashion, food) then we’ll be much better off.
Had a wonderful opportunity to present on a panel “Communicating Biodiversity” along with Allan Schwarz who presented BoM and a.d. schwarz – and later took part in the UNCTAD Ecochic Geneve show. All of us girls got to sport premature gray bobs à la Tavi Gevinson-style. I thought it was pretty cool – a real statement that “it’s cool to go gray,” but I don’t know if the other girls saw it that way.
Kate Dillon and I sporting the gray bobs
Talking about the benefits of alpaca fiber while sporting more side boob than I had expected!
A Beatriz Canedo Patino alpaca vicuna dress
Royah Afghani chitrali wool coat with ethnic flower emboridery
Some of my other favorites from the show were as follows:
Redley Exantus silk filament dress
Diane von Furstenberg soy jersey dress with vintage feather necklace
Selphie Bong’s organic linen dress
Noir’s 100% organic, fair-trade cotton from Uganda + some pleathery goodness (even the back looked bad-ass)
Reem Al Asadi’s dress made from recycled turn-of-the-century corsets and ballet dresses
And finally Oliver Tolentino‘s pineapple fiber dress (pina fabric) largely because it is so damn hard and technical to make something out of barong fabric. Well done! Runway photos compliments of Johann Sauty