Green Couture - Earth forward fashion at Sustainability Week

MU’s second Sustainability Week brought together two passions of many MU students – fashion and sustainability.

Sustainability Committee members and MSc students Aishwarya Krishnan and Elena Zepharovich organized a week of activities relating to the topic ‘Green Couture’, including a fashion show, movie night, upcycling workshop and sustainable dyeing company field visit.

The fashion show featured a glamorous cast of MU students modelling clothing from local sustainable producers Göttin des Glücks, Anukoo, and Colortex. ‘Upcycled’ garments by designer km/a made out of fabrics from tents, parachutes, and blankets were the show’s highlight, followed by an exhibition of his work on display throughout the week.  On the catwalk, the models were cheered as they strut their stuff in the designer gear and the most stylish finds from a second-hand clothing swap organized for students by students.

Wednesday’s movie night featured ‘Fashion Victims’, an Australian documentary about the cheap labour and poor working conditions at factories in Bangladesh, a country which 75% percent of all export income comes from clothing exports to wealthy countries.  Students and staff alike had a sobering insight into where likely some of their own clothes were manufactured and the human costs behind them, in an eye-opening look at the mass-producing garment industry.

The week’s activities continued on Thursday, with an upcycling workshop held by Alexandra Poetz,  a Graz-based designer and member of Austrian-Swedish collective ‘The Good Tribe’,  a ‘’social venture that offers innovative tools to raise awareness and create passion for a Zero Waste society.’’ She showed attendees the concept of ‘upcycling’, and provided them with great ideas of how to turn old clothes into ‘new’ ones with sewing machines, scissors, textile printing, and more.

The final event featured a visit to a sustainable dyeing and clothing company in Vienna’s 23^rd district, who provided some of their collection for the fashion show.

Elena shared her experience with us:

‘’On the 11th of April we visited Textilfäberei Fritsch, also known under the name Colortex, an Austrian dyeing company founded in 1952. Their production is mostly focused on special products, for example raw and dyed silk yarns. They also work with natural dyes, made out of the essence of flowers and similar sources. In recent months, they have also been creating their own fashion with certified organic wool and natural dyes, which were presented at the MU Fashion show.

The CEO of the company, Rudolf Fritsch, explained the history of the company, how and why he stared to invest in natural dyes, and which problems he had to face when experimenting with them. Afterwards he personally showed us around the factory, first visiting the "color laboratory" where he explained how the recipes for the dyes are created, to the testing station for new colours, and finally we saw how the yarns are dyed.

We learned many surprising facts about natural dyes, for example that they can be very strong and bright and not only pale colors as many people would expect. Personally I was really impressed by the machines they were using, and I very much enjoyed the honesty in the answers of Rudolf Fritsch to all our questions.’’

Check out the MODUL University News Network feature on Sustainability Week on Youtube!