Titania Inglis, winner of this year’s Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award in Sustainable Design, gets street cred with her first New York Fashion Week show.
The show started early for Titania Inglis. Bedecked in black – lots of stylized black – guests waited upbeat, mingling behind black curtains. It was Inglis’ inaugural New York Fashion Week show, made possible by her recently announced 2012 win of the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award in Sustainable Design. It was clear that something award winning was about to take place. And, it felt as if we were part of Inglis’ cheerfully somber production. So, like good cast members we waited in the entryway of the Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, a non-profit enterprise and one of the country’s leading media art centers.
The stage was set for Inglis’ own shade of black, uplifted and far from bleak – a seamless blend of preppy plaid and gothic darkness. It was as if two, vastly separate, high school cliques instantly merged into one, very cool and non-cliquey band of fashion mavens. So, it came as no surprise when I overhead Inglis characterize her collection as “My So Called Life all grown up.”
Street-tough models bedecked in vegetable tanned leather from a farm in France, (where they guarantee the entire cow has been used, from food to fashion), in herringbone, recycled cotton plaids, asymmetrical skirts and soft fabrics like raw Japanese silk and Cupro glided by effortlessly.
For the complete article and snapshots from the show, please visit my post on Ecosalon…
(Photos by Jennifer Barckley of Organic Girly.)
… makes it nice.
That’s not to say this pearly white dress (pictured above) is truly fashioned from rice. But, it’s organic cotton and peace silk composition make it just about as natural as the grain by which it was inspired.
After studying Fashion Design at Parsons School of Design in New York City, Hasan Pierre (pictured below) went back to his roots, finding inspiration in his family’s rice fields in Haiti. As he explored a reconnection to the land, he discovered the pure beauty of simple textiles like organic cotton, hemp and peace silk softly colored with vegetable and soy-based dyes. The Way It Should Be (WISB), his re-inventive fashion label, was born.
With the company based in Miami, Florida, “All of my garments,” Pierre says, “are made locally in the U.S.A in North Carolina and Colorado.” Afterall, this designer believes that fashion is not luxurious, stylish or sexy if it’s not sustainable, environmentally sensitive and socially responsible. Which is why we think WISB is crafted just the way it should be.
(Photos taken by Organic Girly at WISB’s Treasure & Bond trunk show.)
