For earth-conscious devotees, the name ECOMODE calls up ideas of funk plastic, Evian-bottle polyester, and pop-trend recycled matter. Form and fashion mix with trash and cash. We have reached a new understanding as our culture waits at the beginning of a recycled earth. The desire for trash has reached an organic pinnacle. Humans thirst for the old and used, while transforming trash into fash.
We invite you into the world of Safoua Brightasare, student designer of clothing and textiles at SF State University and founder of ECOMODE. This new, funky designer has taken her world of fashion and textiles into a green land where before only hikers and surfers dared tread. She has just finished designing an entire women's line made of recycled fleece, polyester, sateen and wool felt.
"I'm spearheading it as a designer, and I see no reason to not use recycled fibers," says Brightasare.
Currently, Patagonia and some surfwear companies are the only eco-friendly users of recycled and organic matter. Brightasare wants to change that. "What I want to do is bring recycled textile garments into the mainstream market so, a person can go from NaNa's to Macy's and buy a garment because it's cute and because it's environmental," she says.
Brightasare uses fabrics from Wellman Inc., a recycling facility in South Carolina. Wellman is one of only a handful of companies that make the recycled fiber used by American textile mills. It annually recycles about 2.4 billion plastic bottles into a polyester fiber known as Fortrel EcoSpun. Just one year's worth of these recycled bottles represents enough energy to power a city the size of Pasadena, Calif., for an entire year. And, according to Wellman Co. statistics, 86 percent of consumers want to buy products with recycled content over non-recycled.
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