[420 Girl]

Remember the early days of sustainable clothing? Your choice was hemp, or hemp. Once you got past the jokes about smoking it, you almost had to pick the granola out of the threads. It was scratchy, thick, unflattering, and hippie-dippy. You had to be pretty dedicated in those days to don it.

Oh, what a difference a few years can make. Today, sustainable fabrics are soft, silky, form-flattering. They offer so much variety that you can even find sustainable fabrics in haute couture.

There is bamboo, sustainable because it grows so fast; soy, a byproduct of the tofu industry; and linen, a flax product that grows well without pesticides and uses very little water. There's modal, a cellulose fabric made by spinning reconstituted cellulose from beech trees. It's soft like rayon and more absorbent than cotton. There is tussar silk, made by silkworms that are not killed at the end of the process. And there is organic cotton, much better than the conventional cotton, but still requiring a lot of water.

Then there are the blends of all the above. But hemp is still the apex of environmental sustainability. It grows really quickly, needing little water and no pesticides or herbicides. The hemp fibres are long and strong, but also porous so they allow your skin to breathe. It has been used for 6,000 years but now, finally, designers can find hemp fabrics that are soft, and sheer, and even knit. Sustainable designers are giddy with the options.

But there are other ways to be sustainable in the fashion business. You can recycle, like the folks who turn water bottles into fleece or athletic wear. You can reuse, like Ashley Watson, who remakes old leather products into great new bags. And you can keep production local to reduce the carbon footprint. What is cool today is that fashion designers often use as much creativity to be sustainable as they do to create their spring or fall lines.

Today we feature four local designers who have found their own unique ways to be sustainable and fashionable.

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