Image above - 2017 Fall Fashion Line showcased at Vancouver Fashion Week. Image by David Collins
Everything is about relationships. Eco-fashion is at it’s core about relationship. All of the various threads of eco-fashion are ultimately connected and grounded by the thread and intention of sustaining and honouring LIFE in all of it’s myriad forms and expressions. IT IS… within all of our means to make choices motivated by, “LOVE OF LIFE.”How do we dress as if we are meeting the highest potential, the best in ourselves and in others while we generously and enthusiastically engage and protect all of life’s planetary beauty?
Image by SE Photography –Shelbi Eastwood
How do we connect both survival and celebration within the context of the second dirtiest industrial economy?
Zuhal Kuvan-Mills, founder of Australia Eco Fashion Week and Patti DeSante teamed up and launched, "Raising the Hemline," in 2014/15. It was a public art, "sit-in" that recorded the dreams and aspirations of various communities around the world.
Eco fashion is more than just local-organically produced fabrics, the compassionate designers, empathic designs, the zero-energy distribution, the zero-waste, the styling, the branding, it is….
a NEW ECONOMICS of radical peacemaking that is rooted in building community, connecting us to a place on earth and bringing us into a sustainable relationship with nature where everybody matters in every-wearable occasion.
Image by SE Photography - Shelbi Eastwood
Welcome to the first blog of 2017 Australian Eco Fashion Week, an event that I believe will ASTONISH those that participate. I love this word astonish..It belongs in the VIP row sharing the view with others words as…
amazing, astounding, staggering, surprising, breathtaking;
remarkable, extraordinary, incredible, unbelievable, phenomenal;
mind-boggling
Zuhal Kuvan Mills, the founder and producer of Australia’s first Eco-Fashion Week is astonishing.
The stunning photos included in this blog not only offer you an insight into Zuhal as an accomplished award winning eco-fashion designer but also the photos clearly illuminate her devotion to the environment, to honouring diversity and to her active participation in social issues such as youth and gender rights.
Writer and humanitarian, Marilyn Wilson’s recent article shines further light on Zuhal’s extraordinary life and life’s purpose. You can read it at this link - Olio by Marilyn
Zuhal Kuvan-Mills taking a bow at the end of her Vancouver Fashion Week FW 2017 runway show featuring her Empty Oceans collection. Image by Harry Leonard Imagery.
Zuhal Kuvan-Mills taking a bow at the end of her Vancouver Fashion Week FW 2017 runway show featuring her Empty Oceans collection. Image by Harry Leonard Imagery.
Zuhal and I met for the first time in 2014 when I was writing for Vancouver Fashion Week’s Province blog. We continued to remain close after our first Skype call, and have teamed up on several other occasions to utilize the vehicle of fashion to bring greater awareness to other issues dear to both our hearts; gender and youth rights.
Eco-fashion's reach through hip-hop to raise gender equality. Zuhal and Patti teamed up again to launch an event for the first female Malawian hiphop album in 2017. Hip Hop artist Lady Pace pictured here recorded this inaugural album to celebrate Female Chief Kachindamoto, internationally known for ending childhood marriage.
The eco-fashion designer’s world encompasses much more than design. The designer is now a communicator-educator, a custodian of the environment, an activist for human rights and an entrepreneur continuously exploring how to expand a new economy of fashion that breathes life beyond the war economy of greed, waste, injustice and centralized corporate power.
Image by SE Photography - Shelbi Eastwood
I look forward to introducing you to many of the designers and participating in building and expanding this community of fashion and radical peacemaking.We hope all of you repeatedly enjoy a sense of what it means to participate in a new economy that is imbued with a genuine sense of astonishment and love.