2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15
Carmen Gama takes sustainable fashion one step further, designing clothes exclusively from used clothing. Now that is a challenge! We spoke with the Guanajuato designer who, after studying at the prestigious Parsons school and winning a design scholarship from Eileen Fisher, one of the pioneers in sustainable fashion, set about directing the brand's zero waste line., Renew. You have to know its history.
How does one end up specializing in sustainable design?
When I started studying at Parsons I always had [in my head] the glamorous design that everyone has, I wanted to be the best fashion designer. I was not very keen on being more ecological and environmentally conscious, but in parsons I realized what the industry really is, the damage it generates in the environment and the people who produce it, and I realized that I I didn't want to bring more clothes to the world because we don't really need more clothes. […] From my teachers I learned to design with a purpose because the world no longer needs more beautiful dresses.
How did you get to Eileen Fisher?
I started designing collections with materials that I had from years past, I decided not to buy more new materials or new fabrics and only work with what I already had. When I left school I didn't know who I wanted to work for, all the big names I dreamed of no longer sounded so attractive to me, […] it was frustrating. I was lucky that when I graduated the CFDA organized a competition with Eileen Fisher to bring 3 recent graduates to propose a solution for what to do with all the garments that the brand had accumulated over the years with its Take Back Program, since 2009.
What was that program about?
If you buy an Eileen Fisher garment and it gets loose or stained and you want to continue having that garment, you take it to the store and they send it to you to repair it for free. If you don't want it anymore, but you don't want to throw it away, you send it to the two recycling centers that we have or you take it to the store and we give the customer an coupon of entertainment they took us to a warehouse full of clothes and they told us that the challenge was to do something beautiful, that could give benefits and that could be replicated at scale. A garment cannot be a garment, it is too many clothes, it had to be something big. Our first collection was presented in Brooklyn and Eileen loved it and made it a project in the long run.
How is your job at Renew now, three years later?
Now we have a factory, we call it a tiny factory, with three seamstresses and I who design the collections. We have a team that is in charge of separating these clothes into categories, by fiber, within each material they separate by style: jackets, sweaters, tops, etc. and then we separate it by size. They are all used garments that cannot be repaired. Renew's style starts from the essence of Eileen Fisher, the silhouette and the style, but we include more seams and other details. For me that is one of the biggest challenges, making clothes that do not seem to be made of clothes.
Where can you get Renew?
We sell in two stores that we have in Irvington, New York, and another in Seatle, we have our own website, in several stores in New York, in the outlets and we also do pop up tours, we go to cities and we associate with institutions and offer this product people who like Eileen Fisher, but can't afford it, like me. The clothes are of excellent quality and fashionable.
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