Eco Fashion by Sass Brown, honors what ground-breakers are doing in the fashion industry to integrate their consciousness, lifestyle choices and concern for our planet and the people on it, into their business strategies.  The designers and labels featured in Eco Fashion, overview a range of change in our industry from entirely new business models to recycle, reuse, redesign, sustainable fabrications, diversion of waste materials from landfill, fair trade and community development. This book is about good design that gives back.  Good design in its many guises from street fashion to couture, and everything else in between. It is not however about boring beige T-shirts or scratchy, drawstring pajama-style pants, but fun, playful, ethereal, cerebral, intelligent design, at various price points and for various markets.

One of the strongest trends in fashion is the expression of ecological, social and community consciousness through for-profit fashion design corporations, which most recently have moved upscale from organic cotton T-shirts and hippy-ish drawstring pants to high fashion.

There is now a wide range of companies offering well designed merchandise, from one-off art, recycled and redesigned clothing, organic and sustainable textiles and garment production, to a range of community and indigenous support cooperatives bridging the gap between traditional craft and high fashion.

This book shows the range of companies making a difference in the area of sustainable design in fashion, exploding the myth that sustainable design is bad design, or at best basic design, by highlighting the range of companies producing desirable and well-designed apparel and accessories with a conscience. It not only demonstrates the range of products available around the globe, but explains the stories behind them and the communities they support, as well as showing how and where they make a difference.

For more information on this title from the publisher, visit Laurence King Publishing.

To pre-order a personal copy of the book in the U.S., visit Chronicle Books, Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

In the UK at Laurence King Publishing, Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwell or Amazon UK

Also available in Spanish at Blume, or Italian at Logos.

What people as saying about the book:

Kathrin Nill, Koordination, Collection of Hope.  “the whole ESMOD team who worked with their students for the  ”collection of hope” will thank you very much for the publishing of the fair trade eco label. We are so proud to are presented in your book which is great designed and written. Thank you also so much for having sent us an exemplar.”

Valerie Steele, Director, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology  – “ECO FASHION makes an important contribution to the global movement for ecology-in-design. In particular, Sass Brown calls attention to the many independent designers who are bringing environmentally-friendly fashion to the next level.”

Professor Frances Corner, Head of College London College of Fashion  – “Eco Fashion is a thoughtful and stimulating publication that comprehensively covers the way companies and designers are responding to the challenge of creating a more environmentally friendly yet design-led fashion industry. What is perhaps unique about this publication is how it provides both an insight into the key drivers behind developing an eco fashion industry, whilst at the same time acting as a guide to the designers and fashion companies who are tackling these issues. This publication never loses sight of the importance of creating fashionable and exciting clothes if we are to have a sustainable fashion industry.”

Linda Loppa, Didactic Director, Polimoda International Institute of Fashion Design and Marketing (Italy)  – “Fashion designers have a great responsibility. They have to create a dream, a desire, a status and above all a better world!”

Clemens Thornquist – Chair Fashion Design, Swedish School of Textiles  – “Brown’s remarkable overview of ecological and socially responsible work deals with the subject of sustainability in fashion in a way that for once does justice to the true diversity of the pioneering and entrepreneurial work done within a field too much engaged in sustaining models and practices from which there may be noting or little to sustain. It is bold attempt to encourage real change in fashion.”

Professor Carol Garcia, Doctor in Communications and Semiotics ,Head of post-graduate courses on Fashion Styling and Image Creation at Senac São Paulo, Brazil  – Long before sustainability in fashion was a global trend, Sass Brown has been investigating the role played by leading designers and communities around the world. This non-stopping commitment to the relations between man and his environment led her to discover, catalogue and seriously analyze the world’s most important initiatives in such field, from Brazil to the USA. The same great energy and enthusiasm that moved her research through time and space is now documented in her new book with a fresh and unique approach. Eco Fashion is the answer to better understand and orchestrate the everlasting human desire to conceive a nice and comfortable appearance along with our need to reconnect with the environment. Definitely, a must read for scholars and entrepreneurs interested in the future of fashion.

Joanne Arbuckle – Dean of Art and Design, The Fashion Institute of Technology, New York  – This book is a must have for any designer committed to apparel making major contributions to the global sustainable movement. The book provides wonderful insight in regard to what designers in various areas of the industry are doing in sustainability that’s “really good.” It is no longer about the natural and often boring tee shirt!

Dr Suran Goonatilake OBE  – “Eco Fashion will be one of the fastest growing areas in the global fashion business this decade. This book provides an excellent overview of this emerging field.