Eco Fashion Week(end) Exclusive: Emily Factor Goes Long
Emily Factor Winding Floral Gown pictured above and Nasturtium Wrap Dress on our home page; both organic silk with non-toxic inks; photo credit Kai He/gotcouture.com. Part One of Four.
American fashion used to be fairly simple: Under the auspices of marketing and events conglomerate IMG, New York Fashion Week presented the big shows in February (Fall) and September (Spring), and Los Angeles Fashion Week followed a few weeks later with up-and-coming designers—a few of them eco.
But since IMG exited Los Angeles Fashion Week in 2009 after a reputed spat with host Smashbox Studios over creative control, they took major sponsor Mercedes Benz with them. And although March and October in L.A. is full of small, independent shows, so far no one has stepped into the void to create a unified fashion week.
Until now.
Event production and marketing agency The Gallery LA celebrated its second-annual L.A. Fashion Weekend in October with a series of Chevy Volt-sponsored Green Humanitarian Shows at Sunset Gower Studios, benefiting the Green Youth Network, an organization that EcoStiletto also supports.
As we reported earlier in the year, L.A. is chock-full of eco-designers, from straight-up runway to jewelry, lingerie and couture, and we love that The Gallery is creating a showcase for designers working within entirely sustainable means. (Although we’d love to see compostable cups and/or a recycling bin or two at the pre-party. Hint, hint.)
The Green Humanitarian Shows confirmed what we’d already suspected from New York’s capsule Green Shows, all-eco Fashion Weeks in Vancouver and Portland, and the Ethical Shows in London: Eco-designers are on point with conventional consumer trends.
Take longer hemlines, for example. After a few years of butt-grazing miniskirts, we’re so happy to see that calf- and floor-grazing skirts are back with a vengeance. Mainstream designers like Lanvin, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi and Donna Karan all showed them, as did Green Humanitarian Show headliner Emily Factor.
Sister to Smashbox Studios’ Dean and Davis Factor, and the youngest of seven great-grandchildren of makeup legend Max Factor, Emily obviously has fashion in her blood. She’s an artist who designs her own patterns and non-toxic dyes them on eco-fabrics like organic cotton and silk. Celebs are lining up for a green carpet excuse to wear one of Emily’s amazing dresses—and we now know why.
Dreamy.
