Australia’s love affair with fast fashion has reached an all-time high.
The Australia Institute recently revealed that Australia has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest textile consumer, with 200,000 tonnes of clothes ending up in landfill each year.
But amid the piles and racks of overconsumption and fast-flying trends, a growing movement was designing a different story.
Over the weekend, Yagan Square hosted the inaugural Circular Fast Fashion Festival, which brought together designers, sustainability advocates, and fashion enthusiasts for a program of runways, Q&As, markets, hands-on workshops, and more – to reshape how we think about fashion.
Conversation starters
For Charlotte (Charlie) Smith, sustainable fashion advocate and one of four co-founders of the festival, the goal was simple – to start the conversation and rethink sustainable fashion.
“Circular Fashion Festival was inspired by a belief that fashion should be more accessible to people, and also should consider communities and bring people together through activation,” she said.
“Sustainable fashion can be fun, trendy and stylish.”
Smith hoped attendees walked away understanding that sustainable fashion is more than a thought process, but a call to action.
“We tend to think that just because you’re singularly one person, there’s not much you can do.
“When you actually step into that collective and that consciousness of thinking, OK, well, where did my clothes go, and where did that whole circular lifestyle really occur? Then you’re a part of the movement,” she said.
Sustainable design – could be jazzed
Among the designers who showcased their circular fashion talent was Madalyn Jane, founder of Madalyn Jane Designs, whose designs featured on multiple runways across the weekend.
For her, sustainability has always been central to her creative process.
“I just had an instinct in me to care for beautiful fabrics and not want to discard anything or throw away scraps.”
Her Jane’s approach to her designs is personal, shaped by generations of family who taught her to sew and instilled in her a lasting respect for materials.
“I want to continue creating, but in a way that is in line with nature and can preserve what we have naturally in the world for as long as possible, for everyone to enjoy.”
It is a passion that she feeds through every piece, transforming older and forgotten materials into something new and meaningful.
“A lot of the circular principles that I use are using dead stop fabric or vintage pieces and then re-envisioning them into something new,” she explained.
“When you actually discover the story behind [pieces] and see how circular they are, there’s not one way that a circular piece of fashion clothing could come in multiple different forms.”
As the conversation around sustainability continues to grow within the fashion world, events like the Circular Fashion Festival serve as a reminder that fashion does not have to be wasteful. That style and social responsibility can go hand in hand.
