The meeting of the G8 environment ministers discussing climate change, global investments in renewable energies and pollution opened yesterday in Syracuse, coinciding with Earth Day, a date that was more or less celebrated all over the world. Yet the eco-party for fashionistas started a couple of weeks ago on Yoox.
The global Internet retailer recently started a new project, Yooxygen, offering ethically and ecologically conscious products - clothes, accessories, design objects and books - and is at present also planning to offset 100% of its shipping carbon footprint.
Ilaria Venturini Fendi launched on Yoox her “Venetian Bag” collection for Carmina Campus that features a series of clutches in bright and vivid colours - red, blue, yellow and green - created by assembling aluminium slats that were once part of Venetian blinds.
Brazilian jewellery line Caboclo offers instead on the site a line of accessories created by native craftsmen from the Amazon rain forest and made in natural materials such as bones, seeds, stones, raffia and mother-of-pearl.
Multiple award winner Italian design firm Pandora Design, famous for focusing a large part of its production on biodegradable tableware objects, created exclusively for the Yooxygen initiative the “Aperitivo Bio”, an interesting “aperitivo” set comprising 4 cups, plates, sticks and forks, made in Mater-Bi, a 100% biodegradable polymer obtained from corn.
The eco-party continues on the Yoox site with a selection of vintage clothes and further eco-fashion products, from Momaboma and Espiritu Libre's paper bags to Stella McCartney’s designs in natural fibres, Camper’s footwear in coco fibres and jute and Katherine Hamnett slogan T-shirts.
Passionate readers can instead get further information on eco-sustainability with a selection of books on subjects such as green architecture and green design published by National Geographic, Phaidon, Steidl and Thames & Hudson.
The main partner of the initiative is the Green Cross International, an environmental non-governmental organization founded by President Mikhail Gorbachev. The NGO is active in 31 countries and aims at promoting actions that can ensure a just, sustainable and secure future for humanity.
In the next few months, Yooxygen will launch new actions and collaborations and while so far this sounds like an exciting and laudible initiative also thanks to side projects such as “Elements by Magnum”, a multimedia essay produced by Magnum in Motion, a multimedia and digital project from the photographic agency Magnum Photos, done exclusively for Yoox, I find some of the projects rather worrying.
Asking Costume National, C.P. Company and Emporio Armani to come up with an ecomask is one of them (I thought the main idea was trying to make the world a better place and not surrender and going around with a mask to avoid breathing polluted air…).
Inevitably you also start wondering if producing and buying more is actually the key to save the Earth. I honestly doubt the umpteenth Katherine Hamnett organic t-shirt with slogans such as “Choose Life” or "Save the Future" will actually save the planet rather than simply ending up clogging your wardrobe.
The very final dilemma then is about prices: a "Venetian bag" by Ilaria Venturini Fendi will set you back €390, the sort of price that will make you stop and wonder why not opting for a bejewelled leather and fur clutch for the same amount of money, while buying 4 aperitivo cups and plates (despite their exclusive design...) for €36 might be considered by some people as a waste when you can buy porcelain sets for even less. Yes, you may argue this is all meant to save our planet, but, ultimately, who will save our wallets?
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