This past weekend, musician Pharrell Williams made a huge announcement at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, whilst the City revels in it’s biggest fashion event of the year, New York Fashion Week.
“The oceans need us now,” Williams said Saturday evening as he announced the launch of a long-term collaboration between denim label G-Star Raw and Bionic Yarn, the textile company he co-founded to produce fabric from recycled plastic bottles. “Raw for the Oceans,” which will debut in stores and online August 15, will be the first denim collection derived from fibers made from collected ocean plastic.
[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/egFPDOZQ6Rc” title=”Pharrell%20Raw%20for%20the%20oceans”]Raw for the Oceans
“Working with G-Star was an obvious choice, because they have a legacy of pushing the boundaries of fashion and denim forward,” Williams said. “Bionic Yarn is a company built around performance, and denim is the perfect category to show the world what Bionic Yarn can do. Everyone has jeans in their closet.”
Together with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s Project Vortex, a campaign to turn plastic debris from the ocean into commercially viable products, G-Star is taking the next step in “creating denim for the future,” according to Thecla Schaeffer, the company’s strategy director.
Celebrity photographer David LaChapelle, who also made an appearance, urged the audience to not give into “apathy, hopelessness, or despair” but be “true warriors.” “If we don’t radically change the way we live, the only way we’d enjoy the oceans is here, at the Museum of Natural History,” he added.
Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, made another poignant observation: “If the oceans die, we die.”
via Ecouterre
