I Wore Only Slow & Recycled Fashion For One Week

And full disclosure: I don't own slow fashion shoes or lingerie yet, but thought it would defeat the purpose of this article to buy things I don't yet need. When they wear out, though, I certainly intend to make responsible, informed purchases. Transitioning to a sustainable slow and recycled fashion wardrobe doesn't have to happen overnight. It's all about taking it one purchase, swap, and dive at time.

Before I show you how I pulled this off for a week, I want to break down the terms fast fashion, slow fashion, and recycled fashion. According to Elizabeth L. Cline, fast fashion is "consumer products based on rapid changes in fashion that are engineered by corporations" at great cost to the environment and human rights. Zady founders Soraya Darabi and Maxine Bédat break down slow fashion as "a complete approach to retail that respects the environment, human capital, [and] the longevity of a product." Lastly, recycled fashion falls under the slow fashion concept in a different way.

The Year in Fashion

The Valentino couture show, held outdoors on a balmy evening in Rome, with its evocation and resonances of deep history and art reeling back through millennia, was one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever witnessed in fashion. Changing formats, breaking away from the rigid, numbing routines of fashion’s standard runway cycle can only be healthy. I don’t think for a minute that access to this new phase demands million-dollar budgets. In fact, I am already seeing that young designers and students still in college are using video, set-building, animation, and performance to communicate in ways the generation before them never could. Something else is coming. The grand fashion tour of 2015 is only a sign of it. It’s as if we’re watching the tired, old skin of fashion being shed and something different about to be born.

One thing’s for sure: 2015 has been like no other year I’ve ever lived through—a year in which we saw the age-old four-city map of the runway universe ripped up and fashion setting off on a nonstop round-the-world trip. The distance we’ve come since May! We’ve been to Seoul with Chanel; Palm Springs with Louis Vuitton; Cannes with Dior; Cambridge, England, with J.W.Anderson; Rome with Valentino; and Portofino with Dolce & Gabbana. Even during the routine marathon of the ready-to-wear shows in New York, London, Milan, and Paris, designers didn’t always pitch up where you’d normally expect to find them:Riccardo Tisci brought Givenchy to New York, and Anthony Vaccarello’s Versus Versace skipped over to London.

At Re-Fashion Show

Young designers make fashion apparel out of recycled materials for a show at Charleston Town Center. The event is organized by the Recycling Coalition of West Virginia, a non-profit environmental organization whose mission is to promote effective and sustainable reduction, reuse and recycling of materials that might otherwise be destined for disposal.

Katie Castellucci, 17, models a dress during the Recycling Coalition of West Virginia’s 13th annual Re-Fashion Show at the Town Center mall in downtown Charleston, Saturday afternoon. The dress, made from recycled West Virginia Living magazines, was created by Alexa Gerrard, who was in the audience during the show (far left). Gerrard said it took about a month and a ton of hot glue and tape to put the dress together. Castellucci was awarded second place in her age group and received a $200 gift card to the mall.

Hunger Games premiere fashion watch - Jennifer Lawrence dazzles in Dior

A Hunger Games frenzy grips London as the final instalment of the franchise has its UK premiere in London. Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Dormer and Elizabeth Banks are joined by Julianne Moore, and others to celebrate The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2.

Lily Aldridge is wearing the coveted $2 million Fantasy Bra during this year's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which airs on Dec. 8 on CBS. The supermodel has walked in the Victoria's Secret show for over five years, so we're taking a look back at Lily's Victoria's Secret runway evolution.

Britney Spears’s “Overprotected” Music Video Brings The Flawless Fashion

When you hear the words “Britney,” “Spears,” “music,” “video,” and “outfit,” what’s the very first image that pops into your mind? Is it the Catholic schoolgirl uniform? The red latex catsuit? The flight attendant costume? The pink bikini and low rise jeans? The white turtleneck crop top? I totally support any of those answers. Every last one of those ensembles is totally iconic, totally stunning, totally life-changing, etcetera. But let us not forget about a certain underrated denim ensemble. The all-jean getup that should not be slept on for a second. And no, I do not mean that all-jean getup. I am talking about the embellished denim two-piece worn by Godney in the original “Overprotected” music video.

In April of 2002, the music video for the non-remixed version of "Overprotected" was released in the U.S. The Brian Friedman-choreographed, Bille Woodruff-directed clip is peak Danceney: Spears shimmies, chaines, stomps, arm dances, and body rolls all over the empty warehouse where "Overprotected" was filmed. This video also happens to be peak Outfitney: "Overprotected" features some of my very favorite Britney Spears music video looks (the denim two-piece is just the tip of the early '00s iceberg).

This Entire Outfit

Go ahead and take a moment to bask in this outfit's glory. You may say this is an embarrassment of denim riches, but I would have to disagree. It's just the right amount of denim riches. This is a perfect outfit. I've only just begun singing its praises.

First Of All, The Sleeves

Oh, what have we here? Sleeves made up of studded patchwork denim? We are not worthy.

Fashion, Finance And Coco Chanel

It would be easy to think that with all the crises in the world today – economic stagnation, wars with ISIS, refugees from Syria to name three – that there’d be some diminished enthusiasm over the just-ended Fashion Week in Paris. But you’d be wrong on two counts.

First, there’s the French attitude towards fashion and beauty, succinctly put by Gertrude Stein in her seminal work, Paris France, published on the eve of World War 2, when she resided here with such other artistic ex-pats as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Note: the punctuation below is famously Stein’s)…

Leading Export

And so it is interesting to note that the person whose shows are the most coveted, whose fashion leadership is alive and well today is someone who has been dead since January 10, 1971: Coco Chanel. Not to disparage 77-year-old Karl Lagerfeld whose helmsmanship rescued the line from becoming moribund when he took over the reins in 1983; but it was Chanel who led the revolution and set the groundwork for the modern woman. She did it by creating the “look” for her own life…and it is a life worth examining.