Review: Green is the New Black

Recently I got out Tamsin Blanchard’s book Green is the New Black from the library. It’s a great book about ethical fashion, with plenty of ideas and recommendations for everyone.

Blanchard is a UK-based fashion journalist. Her passion for fashion is clear in every page of the book. But she’s not keen on some of the practices of the fashion industry, and she wants us all to think carefully when we make our clothing decisions.

Each chapter covers one of the main reasons you might buy clothes: everyday wear, special occasions, holidays, for the kids. It also covers extras like shoes, bags and cosmetics. It has a bright and breezy attitude that assumes you already know that sweatshops and pesticides are bad things, and gets on with the task of teaching us how to avoid unethical clothes.

The book is all about solutions: choosing organic cotton and other alternatives, buying from fair-trade businesses, how to buy vintage and secondhand, how to avoid fast-fashion (because it’s as bad for you and others as fast-food is), plus a bit of DIY action too. There are patterns for basic skirts and handbags, how to reconstruct old t-shirts into new items, and how to make some of your own cosmetics.

Blanchard also includes sample letters that you can send to your favourite designers and shops, asking for them for information about the working conditions in their factories or if they have any organic content in their materials.

Additionally, there are interviews with ethical designers and producers, and many recommendations for shops and websites which stock eco-conscious fashion. However, these are mostly UK-oriented, and might not be particularly useful for Aussies.

Recommended?
Fashionistas will want to read this from cover to cover, because it’s full of interesting and useful information. However, anyone else who wears clothes (I assume that’s all of us!) should at least borrow this from the library or a friend – there’s plenty of good ideas, DIY patterns and ethical labels that will be handy to know. And it’s a good snapshot of the current state of eco-friendliness (or otherwise) in the fashion industry. Finding ethical clothing is difficult, but Green is the New Black goes a long way towards helping you figure it out.