About two weeks ago I attended Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week. As you might remember I attended London Fashion Week in Autumn 2019. You can read more about that in my blog post 10 things you should know before attending London Fashion Week. This time around it was the sustainable fashion week with all kinds of events, fashion shows. The events and activities were throughout Amsterdam, The Hague, and many other cities across The Netherlands.
What is Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week?
You’ve probably heard about Amsterdam Fashion Week or any other fashion week in a big city. The Sustainable fashion week is all about ethical clothing, the sustainable fashion industry, and brands that produce their clothing in a more sustainable way. There are hundreds of stores participating in this yearly event from chain stores, to boutiques and concept stores. During Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week there are many different events, for example, different designers showing their newest collections, and inspirational talks. But also workshops on for example how to get your clothes recycled, and shops that want to showcase their brand.
Workshop at Jeans Centre
The first event I went to was at Jeans Centre in The Hague. A beautiful store with a variety of different clothing items, from affordable ethical clothing to more expensive sustainable pieces. The event started with the official kickoff Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week. Let me share some shocking statistics about the way we produce clothes at the moment:
- To make 1 pair of jeans (from cotton plant to a sellable pair of jeans) it takes around 8000 liters of water
- On average we wear one piece of clothing around 7 times.
- 20% of the waterpollution is due to dying fabrics
- On a yearly basis one person throws away around 13kg of clothes (in The Netherlands)
These are some shocking statistics I learned during the Kickoff of Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week. During the event, we experienced different ways to upcycle your clothes. For example by UseDem showed us how to make backpacks, laptop sleeves, and iPad covers from our old pair of jeans. Pretty cool actually?!
How sustainable is your shopping behavior?
This year Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week launched a quiz where you can check how sustainable your shopping behaviors are. Are you buying pieces from sustainable, organic, or ethical brands? How often do you buy new clothes? Do you buy them second-hand or new? All questions determine how sustainable your shopping behavior is. I have to admit mine is not perfect either. I don’t always buy sustainable brands, maybe buy clothes a littlebit too often, and I should look a littlebit more into where my clothes are made. If the people who make them get a fair wage.
What I often do is try to sell my clothes either on Vinted or other places that collect clothing pieces you no longer wear. I recently tried out a new service, which I might write about on my blog very soon. Would you be interested in that?
If you want to check your sustainable shopping behaviors, don’t forget to do the quiz yourself and see what you can improve!
Fashion show at Fashion For Good
The second event of the day was a virtual fashion show at Fashion For Good. Meggie van Zwieten designed some very interesting pieces, which we saw during the virtual fashion show. The collection is called Yana and I have to say it was a very different experience compared to the shows I saw during LFW. As I just mentioned the pieces were shown virtually on big screens and after the show, we could try on the pieces ourselves with Augmented Reality. This was a fun feature I’ve never experienced before, which was very innovative!
What are ways that you try to become more sustainable in your shopping behavior? Let me know in the comments below and let’s try to inspire each other!
xxx 🙂