After signing to a New York model agency Summer Rayne Oakes, 26, began turning down campaigns that fell short of her eco beliefs. She was duly shown the door. Then she met Faith Kates, head of the Next modelling agency, who approved of her stance – and the rest is history. To date, Oakes has turned down six large cosmetics campaigns and is internationally regarded as the eco model. She is passionate about the need and desire for a more ethical fashion industry, as her book Style, Naturally attests.
You might expect that she´d follow this by “designing” a small line of exclusive eco frocks. “Oh, no! The challenge is to be involved in creating an infrastructure,” she insists, which explains why I find her perched behind a desk at the Rite conference, where the people who actually make fashion come to talk about the relative merits of Ingeo (made from maize) versus Crabyon (made from waste crab shells) to produce T-shirts. This is certainly not fashion week.
Oakes´s website, source4style.com, aims to make it easy for fashion designers to use more ecologically and socially friendly textiles. She has teamed up with best friend Benita Singh, 27, an expert in fairly traded products, who has extensive experience working with small-scale textile-producing co-operatives around the world. These producers need access to market, and source4style.com puts them directly in front of designers. There are currently 30 different textiles to choose from, with nine exclusive designs. “Designers spend 85% of their time sourcing and 15% marketing,” observes Oakes. “That leaves no time for the creative process. So we source and you can design.”
Ethical beauty at its best!
Source: The Observer
The liveeco team
