This guest post is written by Yatu Widders Hunt, Communications Director of Clean Cut, a new collective bringing a more sustainable focus to the Australian Fashion Industry.
Last year, Lisa Heinze, Carlie Ballard, Kelly Elkin & I came together to form Clean Cut, a collective which is all about generating greater awareness and celebration of the future of Australian fashion.
I guess you could call the four of us sustainable fashion advocates. We were drawn together by a common goal of wanting to support and perhaps gently nudge the industry, in a greener, fairer and more ethical direction.
Equally, we wanted to support other fashion lovers like ourselves, to make purchasing decisions that were more in line with their values.
There’s a lot I could talk about when it comes to the idea of ‘less is more.’
Like most others, Clean Cut would like to see less greenwashing and more honesty in advertising, less garment worker exploitation and more transparency, less ignorance and more awareness of how the fashion industry is impacting on our environment.
But the one thing that stands out for me, that makes Clean Cut unique, is the way we approach encouraging a more sustainable industry. We believe that the best way we can make a difference, is to promote the good work being done, to celebrate achievements and set the sustainability standard by example.
In a nutshell, I suppose we want to see less negativity and more celebration of the huge number of Australian fashion labels who are moving in the right direction.
Sure, there are lots of things that still concern us about our industry, there are a whole raft of areas where we can do better and undoubtedly, we need to keep the pressure up and call out bad practice when we see it.
We just don’t want the conversation about the future of our industry to be dominated by the companies and individuals whose practices shouldn't be part of it. We want to make more room for the movers and shakers who are breaking boundaries, agitating for change and putting Australian ‘clean cut’ fashion on the map.
And there has been lots to celebrate.
Last year, iconic homegrown label Sass & Bide released a second ethical accessory collection, Manning Cartell became ethically accredited through Ethical Clothing Australia and Undressed announced it was spreading its wings and heading south to Melbourne.
So this year, I am going to commit to spending less time giving oxygen to the labels that are doing the wrong thing and more time supporting and actively promoting the ones who are leading us into the future of fashion.
We look forward to bringing you more updates about Clean Cut throughout 2014.
To find out more about Clean Cut visit www.cleancutfashion.com