With ever-increasing concerns about the environment and our impact on it growing, eco-friendly clothing is, thankfully, growing in popularity day by day – from sustainable fabrics to more ethically sound garment factories, consumers are becoming more and more aware of the important things to look out for when it comes to buying clothing.
That’s why, today, we’re sharing some of the top trends we think you’ll be seeing in the world of sustainable clothing in the next couple of months – and how you can work them into your wardrobe!
1. Recycled fabrics
The use of recycled fabrics in clothing might not exactly be a new thing when it comes to sustainability, but it is something that is – luckily, in our opinion – becoming more and more popular within eco-friendly clothing lately. From the new-found abundance of recycled cotton that’s being used by both sustainable and high street brands, to brand new Econyl, an innovative fabric that uses recycled synthetic waste like fishing nets and other plastics, there’s more options of recycled materials than ever before!
2. Circular fashion
We recently shared a blog post explaining what circular fashion is, and how it’s impacting the sustainable clothing industry, but if you haven’t had a chance to catch up, let us give you a quick explanation: in its simplest definition, circular fashion means any clothing or accessories where the sustainability of the item is considered and prioritised from the very beginning of it being designed. This means that, unlike more traditional clothing production, the long-term impact of each item of clothing made is being considered at all times!
Lots of circular fashion designers are gaining popularity in the eco-friendly clothing space, currently, with lots of sustainable fashion brands beginning to try and incorporate circular fashion practices into their production cycles.
3. Reclaimed fabric clothing
You’re probably thinking that we already mentioned recycled fabrics in our first point – but we’re talking about something different here, we promise! Reclaimed fabric clothing is actually clothing that is made with leftover fabric – often called offcuts – that remain in factories after clothing companies have created their garments. Often, dedicated specialist clothing brands will collect these offcuts of clothing from various factories, and create unique, sometimes one-of-a-kind garments from those pieces, to prevent waste. Considering how much excess fabric waste ends up in landfills every year, this is a great way to minimise the harmful impact that the fast fashion industry can have on the environment!
4. Innovative fabrics
One of our favourite things about the sustainable clothing industry, at RAINE Clothing, is how incredibly innovative it is – with so many incredibly talented clothing industry aficionados joining the fight to help stop its once-negative impact on the environment, there are constantly lots of exciting new developments happening! One of the best examples of this is how many incredible new fabrics are constantly being invented and utilised to make more sustainable options of both clothing and accessories.
You might remember that we mentioned both Piñatex, a vegan leather alternative made from pineapple leaf fibres, and Coconut Carbon Recycled Polyester, a eco-friendly fabric made using coconut shells that we use in some of our products, in a recent blog post, but the innovations don’t stop there! Options like jellyfish leather (!), orange fibre, and even paper cloth have all been developed recently – and we can’t wait to see what else is in store!
5. Resell, resell, resell!
We’ve discussed how to responsibly dispose of unwanted or unused clothing before, so it’s probably no surprise that at RAINE Clothing, we are big supporters of reselling unloved clothing so that it can be discovered – and worn – by someone who loves it, rather than ending up in a landfill. That’s why the increase in reselling and recycling apps – and their popularity – is so important in decreasing waste. We’d strongly recommend downloading a few recycling or upcycling apps and searching what’s up for grabs in your area, as well as listing some of your own.
We hope you’ve found our little summary of some of the upcoming spring/summer sustainable clothing trends interesting! Are there any of the trends that we mentioned that you’re particularly excited about? Let us know in the comments!
