Her approach is based in her long history of thrifting, but also in Seattle’s vibrant sustainable-clothing scene. Brands like Girlfriend Collective and Prairie Underground, vintage stores like Indian Summer and Bon Voyage, and designers like Janelle Abbott are among the locals mindfully pushing the dial forward on what sustainable clothing can look like.
In mcLean’s case, that look might be anything from a bucket hat made from a Burberry scarf to patchworked hoodies to hand-dyed denim shorts.
“Seattle is going to be a big place for sustainable fashion,” mcLean declares. Despite our city getting forever blasted for being a paragon of anti-fashion, she believes our penchant for eco-conscious fashion is what makes us unique. “We don’t even second-guess being sustainable, it’s just the way we are,” she says.
Similarly, mcLean’s “bootleg” series brings DIY flair to discarded high-fashion items. She started bootlegging in high school when she flipped a thrifted Juicy Couture keychain into a necklace. Now, mcLean reworks luxury dust bags and metal label emblems from houses like Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Prada and Gucci into necklaces, underwear, bikinis and earrings.
It’s a practice distinct from duping or knocking off a luxury brand — one closer to “fan art,” mcLean says. Drawing from the long tradition of streetwear-turned-luxury designer Dapper Dan (“My biggest bootleg idol,” says this dan), whose unsanctioned flips of Gucci and Louis Vuitton prints launched him to fame, mcLean sees her remixed items as a tip of the hat to luxury brands.
“It’s not ripping off somebody’s design, but more like, I respect you and I see you and I see that you do these cool things and I wanna be like you but I don’t wanna be you,” explains mcLean. (Her website includes a lengthy disclaimer stating all her designs are “repurposed,
April has been the most active and promising month so far this year in terms of sustainability in the fashion industry. It was marked by Earth Day on 20th April, Fashion Revolution Week, which commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh on 24th April 2013, and the World Retail Congress in Barcelona from 25th to 27th April, which focused on sustainability, transparency, traceability and responsibility, among other topics.
Probably the best news, however, came from members of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee: they worked out stricter regulations and called for the end of fast fashion, a business model that promotes excessive production and consumption. Instead, the MEPs want to encourage European Union countries to produce recyclable, sustainable and socially responsible textiles that are more durable, easier to reuse, repair and recycle.
Europe
In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) Green Claims Code, launched ten months ago, aims to show brands and retailers how to avoid greenwashing by communicating their sustainability claims honestly and accurately so as not to mislead people.
In an interview with FashionUnited, Cecilia Parker Aranha, director of consumer protection at the CMA, spoke about the regulator’s ongoing investigation and findings on the Green Claims Code. She also gave advice on how to avoid greenwashing as a brand and what the future of sustainability communication in fashion might look like.
German fashion brand Armedangels provided a good example of this by changing its marketing strategy, claiming that “sustainable products don’t exist”: every newly produced product leaves an ecological footprint and pollutes the environment – no matter how consciously and resource-consciously it is manufactured. “Don’t fall for promises that buying a product will do good for our planet, but listen carefully,” said Katya Kruk, impact & innovation director at