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Do you want to know the difference between Eco-friendly and Fair Trade? Do you know what's Zero Waste fashion? This post should answer all the basic questions about ethical fashion tags. Zero Waste - using this method the brand literally swears, there is nothing thrown away during the whole production. Did you know 15% of fabric is left on the cutting floor and sent to landfill even before being used? Well not with Zero Waste. Brands either use special cuts, where every centimetre of a fabric is part of the cut, or they do cuts the “regular” way and then reuse every scrap. Like Zero Waste Daniel or Tonlé. Fair Trade – clothes and goods with this certificate ensure customers that every person in the supply chain is known and has equal rights. Everyone is paid a fair amount of money for their job and since the companies choose very carefully their suppliers, they also care about their environmental and social standards. It is a more transparent way of trading, and every company with “Fair Trade” tag should be able to answer the question: Who made my clothes? Eco-friendly - the impact on the environment should be minimal. This involves the farming, dying processes and transportation. But be aware that this tag is being overused, so always look more closely. Bio/ Organic - the crops are grown using methods and materials that have a low impact on the environment. There is no use of synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, the seeds cannot be genetically modified and the amount of water is significantly reduced. Organic farming also involves crop rotation which protects the soil from degrading. The dyeing and finishing of organic cottons also follow a strict procedure for chemical use in processing, eliminating all materials harmful to the body and the environment. Always look for GOTS certification on the clothes. Is there a difference between bio and organic? Some sources will tell you that organic cotton can be grown only in areas where it would grow naturally. However, brands and certifications don't seem to share the idea and generally, there is no difference between those two. Vegan - vegan is simply vegan. No parts of animals are used in these products, but remember to look for other tags like fair trade and find out more about the materials used, because even synthetic footwear is now sometimes considered “ecological”. For example Malai (made from coconut waste) or Pinatex is a great replacement for leather: “…is made of fiber from the leaves of the pineapple plant. These leaves are discarded from the pineapple harvest, so the raw material requires no additional environmental resources to produce.” Most commonly we are looking for a vegan alternative to shoes and my personal favorite ethical brands are: Bourgeois Boheme, Bohempia (a Czech brand which produces orthopedic shoes from hemp) and Inkkas (brand from Peru; for every shoe they plant a tree). Have some more questions? Don't hesitate to ask in the comments below or write me an email on gabriela@lapena.cz.

As costumers we are the driver of trends. Every time we buy something, we’re voting with our wallet. When we speak, brands and governments listen. So let's speak up! Why? Don't be behind on Insta and make the best selfie, which will increase the number of your followers and will have a positive impact on the future of the fashion industry. How? Take your favorite piece of clothing. Turn it inside out to show the label. Selfie time! Now take your selfie... Post the selfie on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, tag the brand and use #WhoMadeMyClothes. Now you can just watch how many likes you get ;)

My presentation “Loved Clothes Last” had about 150 participants keen to know what’s going on behind the fashion labels. I would like to thank everybody once again for coming, listening and asking some tough questions! I was not able to answer all of them properly, so in the following days, I will write couple posts giving further info. So let’s dig in by reviewing what we found out… During the presentation, we learnt that our clothes have gone a long way before hitting the shelves in our beloved stores, passing through the hands of farmers, spinners, weavers, dyers, sewers and others. Approximately 75 million people work to make our clothes. 80 % of them are women between the ages of 18 and 35.* However, half of these people (about 36 million) work in a modern slavery. This means they usually work in an unsafe environment, don’t get paid the living wage, have to face excessive hours, forced overtime and/ or sexual harassment. These people are being exploited just because we want cheaper clothes and faster production. We also found out, that the fashion industry is the second dirtiest in the world. One drop of aldicarb can be lethal, yet it is the second most common insecticide in the cotton farming. Dying processes involve other toxic chemicals (like formaldehyde, chlorine, lead, mercury,…), which cause health difficulties for the workers. These chemicals are then dumped directly into the rivers and so we are facing the extinction of aquatic life, and contamination of the drinking water, soil and the air in the areas. Well, we at Discover English are not willing to accept to shop under these terms! And luckily, we are not alone… Fashion Revolution is a global movement calling for a fairer, safer, cleaner, more transparent fashion industry.* As citizens and consumers — our questions, our voices, our shopping habits can have the power to help change things for the better. We are the driver of trends. Every time we buy something, we’re voting with our wallet. When we speak, brands and governments listen.* So let’s speak up! *information from the fashionrevolution.org

Melbourne, and especially Fitzroy part, is well known for textile factories. However, because of the cheaper production in Asia, most of these factories are closed. Some of them, though, managed to survive against all the odds and are now thriving, like the brand Nobody Denim established at 1999. Nobody knows how to do business and after 19 long years they opened the laundry to show it to the public. The whole production is made in Melbourne and before a pair of jeans hits the shelves there's a long way to go... Firstly, jeans have to be brushed before washing to get the nice "worn in" look. The Managing Director John Condilis shows us how it's done, but it's not as easy as it looks like: After that comes the washing itself, which is not a piece of cake either and it takes a lot of testing and alchemy before the color and the softness are perfect. This process includes "stone wash" to give it the texture we know. Ok, let's do the math... How many pairs of jeans do you think can be made in one machine? And how many are made in one day? Obviously, everyone has to know what to do, which is thanks to these "recipes": Few! That's one heck of a process, isn't it? Nobody is one of the brands which care about the people and resources included in their production and it is great to see that it can be done! Hopefully we will see more brands showing us #WhoMadeMyClothes and being more transparent. Thanks, Nobody!

Melbourne is the “fashion city” of Australia. And as I found out at the Melbourne Cup, fashion is taken very seriously here. So it is no surprise that the Fashion Festival (or VAMFF) is so grand. From fashion Runway shows, to presentations, mall discounts etc. it is just HUGE! The main "theme" is obviously more consuption. The whole festival is made so that you can"shop right from the runway". However, even VAMFF has to admit, that ethical fashion is fashion. And THAT’S WHY I was really happy to see there are so many events focused on recycled, upcycled, ethical and more sustainable fashion. RENEW Runway was one of them. It showed designers which are creating models from waste: dresses from old T-shirts, redesigned second-hand clothes, and even hats made from an old electric fan. Get inspired...

Sustainability came to Melbourne at last! There were plenty things to do, taste, try, listen to all related to sustanable living or eco-friendly solutions. Here is just to list a few: learn something new from a vast range of presentations, try delicious vegan cuisine or bio-lemonades and organic beers, explore living in an eco-friendly house, learn about city gardening, have a chat with representatives of various organizations concerned with animal protection, purchase some cool sustainable products (from reusable wax cloths to pack your food, to furniture made of old tyres), go bio-honey-tasting, listen to music and much more. I was thrilled with the number and variety of the stalls and was happy to see that so many people are focused on changing the course of our lifestyle. We might not have such an apocalyptic future ahead of us after all. However.... There was 1 thing missing- FASHION. There were no brands with sustainable, ethical or fair-trade clothes, neither any DIYs for upcycling old garments. There was only one presentation about sustainable fashion (you can watch parts of it in the video), but it was super ispiring! Connecting experts from different fields: Clare Press - Sustainable Fashion Expert, Author and Podcaster, Michael Spencer — Chair & CEO, Alliance for Water Stewardship (Asia-Pacific region), Courtney Sanders — Co-founder, Well Made Clothes, John Condilis — Managing Director, Nobody Denim, Courtney Holm — Founder, A.BCH, the discussion led from showing the biggest concerns of today's fashion model to envisioning brighter and more sustainable future. But to achieve this brands would have to start being more transparent (showing exactly where the clothes comes from), using natural fibers and new technologies, which would allow them to reuse fibers from old clothes, and reducing all the waste along the way. For now it is up to us, consumers, to demand better fashion and to shop responsibly.

If you haven't heard about the Fashion Revolution, you have most probably heard about #WhoMadeMyClothes, which every year in April floods the Instagram. However, if you still have no clue, or you just didn't pay attention to it so far, FashRev is a non profit organization that is concerned with the reverse side of the coin of the fashion industry. Because behind all the gloss, which we see every day through advertisement, catalogues or window displays, there's a lot of dirt. The goal of the FashRev is to point out individual problems throughout the supply chain to the final customers and give them the power, in the form of the hashtag, demand transparency from their favourite brands. I will leave it there for now, because about "slow fashion" (the fashion that doesn't succumb the always changing trends) I will surely write some more. If you feel the need to learn more right away, go on the official websites of the Fashion Revolution. I have been interested in the "redesign" of this industry for about 2 years, and I am very proud to be part of this movement as an Ambassador. This year I will therefore organize couple of events in Melbourne. One of them will be my presentation called "Loved Clothes Last", where I will be talking about couple of problems in the supply chain and I will also give some ideas how to change our shopping habits. Have a look at my invitation and if you are currently in Melbourne and you would like to participate in organizing the rest of the events, feel free to fill in this form.