STUDENT AT FIT WANTS NYFW TO BE MORE SUSTAINABLE
By Hillary LeBlanc
Meeting Annnabelle Brame at New York Fashion Week, you might not suspect her fierce passion in the world of fashion goes beyond the glitz and glam of runway shows, after party invites and networking with the who’s who of the fashion industry during fashion’s most anticipated week. What drives her is rooted in a bigger mission: sustainability.
Brame is twenty years old, working towards a bachelor's degree in Fashion Design and Product Innovation at the University of Delaware. She is also finishing an associate’s degree in Fashion Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) as part of the Visiting Student program. Brame tells us, “there are only a few programs that offer a focus in sustainability for fashion design and after sustainable fashion became my passion in high school, the University of Delaware was able to give me the most opportunities for research”. She is also presently interning for a womenswear brand Muehlder that specializes in neoprene fabric.
As a child, Brame always knew she wanted to pursue a creative career path, “First it was illustration, then architecture and then naturally fashion emerged as an option. I had been making clothes for dolls, playing with fabrics and was always dressing up. When I started high school I started sewing my own clothes and with the help of my teacher, I ended up launching our school’s first fashion club. Since many of our members were brand new to sewing we did a lot of upcycling projects and even partnered with Goodwill for our first runway show. Through that experience I fell in love with creating garments and using pre-loved materials.”
Garment made from repurposed SHEIN bags.
In high school, Brame attended a math and science governor's school that required students to focus on individual research, which first introduced her to sustainable fashion. From there she studied textile decomposition and longevity, “this allowed me to better understand the level of damage that fabrics used in fast fashion had. While other fabrics that I studied were able to break down over the course of a year, polyester remained in perfect condition when uncovered a year later. Our choice of fabrics in different situations can quite literally shift the fashion industry. Instead of using whatever fabric you want to fulfil your task, pick the fabric that will best serve the garments long-term purpose”.
While studying fashion in Delaware Brame was able to work with the state’s agricultural department, which was such a different experience than generic studying for school. Brame was enchanted by having access to resources such as: labs, funding, and food waste, which made a huge difference in the success and exposure of the project. Brame tells us, “The process started with just an idea, ‘how can we take the waste produced on our Delaware farms and use it’? From there we looked at what resources we are known for and specifically focused on chicken feathers, watermelons, black walnuts and as the research continued we added avocados due to the high amount of consumption in our state.”
Brame explains that though they hope to work on creating a fabric from the chicken feathers in the near-future, Brame decided working with natural dyes would be the most successful in relation to mass market production. She explains, “since chemical dyes are quite dangerous to the environment and humans we developed all natural pre-mordants and dyes. For those who don’t know, pre-mordants are the liquid in which a fabric soaks in before accepting the dye to make the dye last longer. We created a couple of natural premordants from food waste including soy milk, watermelon rin and whey from greek yogurt. Then those soaked fabrics were dyed with black walnut, avocado peels, and shredded recycled fabrics. Through a variety of pre-mordants and dyes we got a large range of colors. The avocados and walnuts made every shade of brown. Our watermelon rin pre-mordant gave fabrics a sea green tint and the recycled fabrics were able to make pastels of any color in the rainbow.”
Dyed jacket from avocado waste for her Research Study on natural dyes.
The most interesting thing Brame has learned is that even if it is waste, if you are creative you can solve a problem with it. Who knew watermelon rinds would be the material used to help dye your clothing in the future?”
Brame plans to do a brand of biodegradable eveningwear with the skills that she has been learning. “I know that one day I want to have my own brand focusing on biodegradable eveningwear, that when gotten rid of is able to decompose without harming the environment. Since eveningwear gowns are worn less than day to day clothing, it makes sense to produce them from materials and fabrics that reflect the longevity it is needed for. However, I am a firm believer in you have to work for other people to learn and be truly successful when launching your own brand. So in the next five years I want to be working for someone else, being the advocate for the environment in a design setting.”
Brame notes how valuable her education has been, noting how few schools have changed the curriculum despite drastic changes in fast fashion and waste, “Coming from a school with such a large emphasis on the environment and research, I know the ins and outs of textiles that frankly anyone entering the industry should know. When working for other brands in the future, my goal is to educate employees or work in a consulting capacity. I want to make changes in the workplace. Helping businesses switch to more organic textiles, realizing how manufacturers can be cutting the fabrics to get the least amount of waste and helping the brand become transparent about their practices is exciting for me. A main goal of mine is exposing this information to the most people possible in order to create a chain reaction in companies across the world. We only have one planet and the way we are creating is violently unsustainable.”
Although Brame is at the beginning of her career path, she has certainly validated a need for more sustainable advocacy. As a guest at New York Fashion week, working as a production assistant for Dur Doux and as the Sustainability Design Intern for the underwear brand Eve’s Disclosure, she has seen first hand the waste that goes into fashion in general.
“Fashion week, no matter how much I love it, is so wasteful. First, we have an array of extravagant outfits created just for a minute of fame on the runway that may never see the light of day again and event goers themselves often put together an ensemble that is solely being worn to stand out in the crowd, often never to be worn again. Event goers have options of renting garments that can be returned and reused by someone else after the show instead. Aside from just fashion, the amount of promotional materials at a fashion week is astonishingly wasteful.” Brame adds the amount of paper, single use products and items being tossed or left behind is “shocking”. “I feel like I folded millions of paper flowers that after the show were just left on the seats and thrown away. Brands can be doing QR codes for programs instead of wasting paper or giving out another goodie bag people don’t really need. There are ways to do these shows in an environmentally friendly way. Fashion week is a time when we emphasize that more is better, more shows, more clothes, more after parties, more free goodie bags.”
While Brame is sympathetic to the intricacies that make the fashion world glamorous, she recognizes they also make it wasteful. “What I can’t express enough is that I love all of those things too. I want to go to more shows and get more goodie bags to post all over my social media, but the harsh reality is considering do we really need it? Through this we often sacrifice the environment when we don’t need to. I could get the same great red carpet pictures if the brand had used a mounted projector instead of another printed plastic banner. I could still shop the collection on my phone, I don’t need a huge booklet that I will go through once and then recycle. The fashion industry is constantly consuming, we need to start making small changes to ensure we can be attending and admiring fashion shows until the end of time.”
For now, Brame will be enjoying her internship at Muehleder which has finally given her the opportunity to have her first experiences working directly on the design side: creating samples, designing products, and building patterns.
The message she wants people to realize is that “we are so lucky as designers to get worldwide exposure for our brands during fashion week, however we have to make sure we are paying that same respect to our planet.”