Agent Green Issue #35

Environmental-friendly designers go undercover

By Mengly Taing
Published: March 1st, 2008 | 2:58pm

Who said bamboo, hemp, and soy couldn’t be sexy? As more designers develop a green thumb, environmental-friendly fashion is quickly becoming the norm. From tees to jeans to swimwear to … underwear? Yep, even skivvies are going green.

After developing an interest for sustainable fashion as a teenager, Amanda Buchanan decided to channel her passion into an eco-friendly line of handmade lingerie – 90% of which is made entirely from natural materials. With colorful Indian silk thongs and vibrant-hued lacy bamboo cotton panties, her Sandmaiden (sandmaiden.com) line is anything but bland. “I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the modern woman to stop wearing color because of the effect of dyes on the environment,” the Seattle-based designer says. “But I do think we can offer women the choice to wear something dyed with natural non-polluting dyes.”

Buchanan is determined to change the way people look at eco-friendly clothing, and she’s not the only one who feels this way. Jenny Ambrose has been producing Enamore (enamore.co.uk), her organic line of lingerie, for more than four years in the U.K. Part Hollywood pin-up girl, part tree-hugging hipster, her pieces are made from a mixture of organic and hand-selected vintage fabrics including hemp, cotton, and peace silk. “I feel very strongly about the impact that the fashion industry has on our environment and think that the only way to change our ways is by setting a positive example and offering attractive alternatives to produces that have a harmful supply chain,” she says.

Taking the extra environmental step, Ambrose also recycles waste from the production of her garments and donates unused and unwanted materials to local schools and colleges for art education purposes.

Though trends in the underwear industry may continuously shift, both Buchanan and Ambrose are dedicated to making the planet greener — and that never goes out of style.