Research Guides: Sustainable Design: Fashion

Sustainable Design Research Tip

Try using the following keywords when doing research on this topic in Databases and the VCU Libraries Search.

Fashion + Environmental aspects

Clothing Trade + Environmental aspects

Sustainable Fashion

Eco Fashion

Sustainable Fashion Films

Streaming Video

Fast Fashion: The Real Price of Low Cost Fashion
Call Number: Access Online
Publication Date: 2013
A documentary about the environmental and social impact of fast cheap fashion.

DVDs Available at Cabell Library.
See Information Desk.

The True Cost
Call Number: HD9940 .T784 2015
groundbreaking new documentary film that pulls back the curtain on an unseen part of our world and asks us each to consider, who pays the price for our clothing?
Design for Sustainability
Call Number: TS170.5 .D47 2009
Examples of sustainable design in architecture, fashion design, and graphic design and printing.
Big ideas for a small planet. Season 1
Call Number: TD171.7 .B44 2008
Presents forward-thinking designers, products and processes that are at the forefront of a new green world. The individuals profiled range from scientists to fashion and product designers, and from entrepreneurs to first-time inventors.

Sustainable Design Featured Resources

Use keywords like Eco, Sustainable and Recycled to find images and reports on sustainable fashion trends and materials in the following resources:

WWD
Direct, online access to WWD, the “Bible” of the fashion industry. (limited to 10 concurrent users)

WGSN (World Global Style Network)
Focusing on the areas and intersections of fashion, style, and commerce, WGSN provides a global view on trends in design. Its archive contains millions of images from the runways, the street, retail outlets, and design sketches.

Sustainable Fashion Brands

For Days
100% of our products are recyclable. You can return them to the company and they will recycle them.
Patagonia - Worn Wear
Repair, share and recycle your gear.
Eileen Fisher - Renew
Organic textiles, gently worn & upcycled clothes.
Rothy's
Accessories made of recycled or marine plastic.
Allbirds
Shoes made with biodegradable materials (wool, plants).
Ninety Percent
Sustainable womenswear label that shares 90% of their profits with charities.

Sustainable Fashion Books

The Dirty Side of the Garment Industry: fast fashion and its negative impact on environment and society
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2015
An overview of the garment industry, highlighting the harsh realities of the environmental and labor problems associated with it. Includes regulatory policies, both national and international; production and labor; marketing, business, and economic models.
Circular Fashion : making the fashion industry sustainable
Call Number: HD9940.A2 B58 2021
This book includes best practice case studies and profiles of companies, tackling the issues of the linear production model of make, use, dispose, before exploring the idea of the circular supply chain across all areas of the industry.
Eco-Friendly and Fair: fast fashion and consumer behaviour
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2018
Provides a comprehensive overview of new insights into consumer behaviour mechanisms in order to shift practices toward sustainable fashion and to minimize the negative impacts of fast fashion on the environment and society.
Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2015
Explores fashion and sustainability at the levels of products, processes, and paradigms.
Sustainable Fashion: what's next? : a conversation about issues, practices and possibilities
Call Number: TT497 .S97 2015
Examines the challenges that designers, product developers, and consumers confront as they create, wear, and recycle clothing and fashion.
A Practical Guide to Sustainable Fashion
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2020
Introduces the key issues associated with the production, use, and disposal of fashion clothing and gives step-by-step guidance on how to identify and evaluate the potential impacts of a garment during the design process.
Sustainable Fashion: past, present, and future
Call Number: TT507 .F295 2015
An overview of fashion ethics and sustainability issues tying today's eco-fashion movement to its multifaceted historical context, investigating the relationship between fashion and the environment as far back as the early nineteenth century.
Scraps : fashion, textiles, and creative reuse
Call Number: TT507 .B693 2016
Presents three designers' alternative approaches to the shockingly high human and environmental costs of textile industry waste.
Overdressed : the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion
Call Number: HD9940.A2 C54 2013
Evaluates the costs of low priced clothing, and its impact on individuals, society and the environment.
Fashion Fibers : designing for sustainability
Call Number: TS1540 .G85 2017
Features a fiber-by-fiber guide to natural fibers including cotton, hemp, silk, manufactured fibers including polyester, modal, azlon, then covers processing and promoting recycled fibers that are designed to be "circular". Each chapters investigates six main areas of potential impact in fiber cultivation, production, and processing-including chemical use, water, fair labor, energy use, consumer use/washing and biodegradability and recyclability.
Fashionopolis : the price of fast fashion and the future of clothes
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2019
An investigation into the damage wrought by the massive clothing industry and the grassroots high-tech global movement fighting to reform it.From Stella McCartney and Levi's to Moda Operandi and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading this new movement in fashion.
Fashion Industry 2030: reshaping the future through sustainability and responsible innovation
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2019
This book investigates the key drivers that are reshaping the fashion industry towards the 4th Industrial Revolution, including traceability and transparency, circularity, collaborative consumption, new technologies, and B-corporations.
The Sustainable Fashion Quest
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2021
This book uses the familiar industry of fashion as a lens to examine how business pressures and national and international policies can have both positive and negative social and ecological impacts.
Fashion Ethics
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2018
Provides a comprehensive overview of the ethical issues in the fashion industry, from collection design concept to upcycling and closed loop production. The book lays out the significant ethical issues within the fashion supply chain by mapping the lifecycle of a garment and exploring key topics such as deep ecology, cultural copyright, the role of the customer, and technology in future ethics.
Fashion Made Fair
Call Number: TT515 .K525 2016
This book showcases the work of designers from all over the world, chosen for their ability to manufacture wearable, highly covetable clothing while also contributing to better working conditions, protecting the environment and applying innovative design techniques or materials.

Sustainable Fashion Online

Textile Toolbox
Toolkits for action, instructions for making and resources for learning in order to create systemic and profitable change within the fashion industry through ‘interconnected design thinking and processes for sustainable textiles and fashion’
Treehugger: Sustainable Fashion
Fashion section of a social media channel dedicated to green news, solutions, and product information.
Eco Fashion World
Guide to sustainable designer brands, online eco fashion stores, news and organizations.
Inhabit - clothing
A green design and lifestyle site that provides coverage of environmental news and the latest in sustainable design, including clothing and textiles.
Redress
An environmental charity with a mission to prevent and transform textile waste to catalyze a circular economy and reduce fashion's water, chemical and carbon footprints.
Fashion Revolution
Designers, academics, writers, business leaders, policymakers, brands, retailers, marketers, producers, makers, workers and fashion lovers, working to promote a global fashion industry that conserves and restores the environment and values people over growth and profit..
The Renewal Workshop
The Renewal System takes discarded apparel and textiles and turns them into Renewed products, upcycled materials or recycling feedstock.
Circulose
Circulose® is made from discarded textiles, like that worn-out pair of jeans at the back of your closet. Using a breakthrough process powered by 100% renewable energy, we transform old clothes into a pristine natural material that needs no cotton fields, no oil, and no trees.
Good on You
Source for fashion brand ratings. Expert analysis to help you choose ethical and sustainable fashion.
Recycling fashion: The town turning waste into clothes- BBC News
Fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world. But a small town in Italy called Prato has built its fortune on transforming old scraps into new clothes, particularly knitwear and wool.
Cotton Leads
Cotton LEADS is a program born out of a partnership between the Australian and U.S. cotton industries. The goal: engage and connect businesses across the global supply chain with the leading efforts in sustainable cotton sourcing and production.
Ethical Metalsmiths
"Mission: Lead jewelers and consumers in becoming informed activists for responsible mining, sustainable economic development and verified, ethical sources of materials used in making jewelry."
Blue Jeans Go Green Denim Recycling
Partnership with retailers and other organizations year-round to make it easy to recycle denim locally.

Environmental Impacts of the Fashion Industry Webinar

Environmental Impacts of the Fashion Industry

On Dec 9, 2020, VCU Departments of Biology and Fashion Design + Merchandising co-hosted a webinar with environmental toxicologist Linda Greer, Ph.D. Greer has been featured in Vanity Fair magazine for environmental advocacy initiatives including the “Clean by Design Program,” a business-friendly green supply chain approach that leverages production efficiency improvements to reduce the energy, water and chemical use in textile manufacturing while saving money. Greer is Senior Global Fellow for the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and a Skoll awardee.