Don’t you hate it when for years you support an idea/trend/band/musical genre/whatever and, then, after having been laughed at, abandoned by friends or simply ignored, you see the whole world jumping on the bandwagon and suddenly becoming crazy about that same idea/trend/band/musical genre etc. you used to love? I do. 
I’ve never been a tree-hugger, but, since I was quite young, I was aware of “green” topics. As a teenager I often dragged my whole family to save-our-planet kind of demos, adopted a brown bear, defended whales, supported Greenpeace’s activities, wore eco-friendly and fair trade gear that I bought at little market stalls or at very special stores and constantly recycled clothes. No, unfortunately, I didn’t manage to single-handedly save the world, but lots of my friends probably thought I was an out of time/out of fashion Goa-goer hippy. 
But now it’s different, we’re in 2008 and, hey, it’s cool to be “green”. Between 2005 and 2006, fair trade boomed in the UK, followed in 2007 by the organic food mania. In the last few months, instead, eco-wear has turned from a twee hobby into a fully-fledged mania: organic clothes and accessories are now being sold everywhere, from expensive department stores to small boutiques, from high street shops to trendy online fashion sites. Yes, it’s desperately cool to wear eco-friendly clothes and accessories and magazines and newspaper highlight this message through their own ethical fashion sections, columns and galleries, while the BBC has recently launched an online magazine to bring you the latest “eco-fabulous style”.
This obsession is honestly getting on my nerves: there are organic cotton jeans and T-shirts, soy-based underwear and recyclable totes that cost more than plastic surgery and even fair trade and organic pants that change colour to show the effects a rise in sea level would have on the planet. Some items even have a paper label impregnated with seeds so you can plant it and grow flowers. 
A few days ago the 2008 Ethical Fashion Award, a showcase for upcoming ethical designers still in further education, took place in London. The winning team, The Urbanites - that is Nicole Da Silva and Phong Nguyen from Hackney Community College – snatched the award thanks their creation, a short and hip wedding dress. But the competition featured also casual wear and evening dresses, some of them made with recycled materials such as newspapers and plastic bags, as in the case of Reduce, Re-use, Recycle’s long ball gown, or Recycle Junkie’s ra-ra skirt dress with oversized pink bow.
Recycling seems to actually be one of the media's current obsessions: "Did you know that you can find hidden treasures in your wardrobe?" some of the pro-recycle columns vapidly preach. "Just get that old trench coat hanging there and turn it into a skirt with a matching clutch bag, and you'll have something truly unique." Wow. Italian women used to make items of clothing with abandoned parachutes during the Second World War and nobody actually thought they were trying to be trendy.
A few years ago I learnt an interesting lesson about recycling and helping the world. I interviewed a group of elderly women who called themselves “le nonne della sartoria” and worked for one of the “sartorie della solidarietà” (tailor and dressmakers’ solidarity workshops) in Tuscany. Their aim was to produce clothes from pieces of material donated to them by big textile companies and factories and then to send the finished products to the populations in need all around the world. Since the sartoria was founded in 1989, they managed to send clothes to India, Mozambique, Bolivia and Russia. The grannies were driven by an incredible sense of duty, love and passion for what they were doing, but none of them boasted about their work, in fact they asked me not to mention their names in my article as they wanted to remain anonymous. Chatting with these nice ladies really taught me that another world was possible, but each of us has to do our part and splashing out on organic clothes and accessories just to feel better about ourselves is probably not a good start.
Are there really any benefits in this eco-friendly/fair trade/organic/recycled mania? Well, thanks to it a few fashionistas may realise how important is to preserve our dear planet, but many designers, brands and celebrities are sadly turning it into an upmarket trend. Yet there is one alternative solution to all this: just keep your eyes open and do not buy products by supposedly “green” brands trying to cash in on the trend. It might not be enough to save the planet, but it will save your bank account and ensure plenty of wardrobe space.
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