As a fashion-lover and designer, Stella Cella has a close-up view of some of the industry's biggest challenges. Excessive 'wear-once' consumerism, resulting pollution and the exploitation of workers in developing countries have recently combined to give the fashion world a bad name.
Ms Cella hopes to address those challenges as she develops her own fashion labels with a sustainable focus.
Indeed, the apparel and textile industry ranks as the second largest polluter of our world, right after the oil industry. That is why this 30-year-old Melbourne-based Italian woman has decided to take action and make a difference, one hem at a time.
Starting at the fashion industry's huge environmental impact, with its constant production and disposal of low-quality, fast-fashion garments, Cella decided to extend the garment life-cycle.
courtesy of Source: https://gliese504.myshopify.com
In her two collections, Gliese 504 and Curated Second-Hand, the Piacenza native has combined sartorial skill with environmental consciousness to imagine new designs for ‘old’ garments through a process of up-cycling.
In fashion 'recycling' so often means 'down-cycling' - the constant re-use or re-purposing of material which deteriorates its quality - while 'up-cycling' means the creative improvement of those materials. This is done through re-modeling and altering the garment to add functionality.
Every year Australians buy on average 27 kilograms of new textiles, and discard 23 of those kilograms into landfill. Two thirds of those discarded garments are composed of man-made synthetic fibres that take extraordinary amounts of time to break down.
Giving a second life to a skirt, shirt or blazer reduces the overall environmental impact that results from impulsive purchasing behaviors and a throw-away culture.
Gliese 504 Source: Supplied
“The hope is that in 20 to 30 years we will only produce garments that enter into potentially infinite lifecycles, where nothing is wasted but continuously reused,” says Cella.
In her 20s, Cella was an impulsive buyer herself, much like other young adults. Yet she eventually couldn’t afford to keep buying new garments, so she started to take sewing lessons from a seamstress to modernize her own clothes.
Besides teaching sewing and alteration techniques to others, the seamstress opened her eyes to the environmental and ethical implications of the modern apparel industry. That was the beginning of her journey toward a more sustainable fashion.
“There are techniques to fight an impulsive purchasing behavior," she says. "Without having to own a wardrobe that has 100 per cent second-hand or up-cycled [clothing], already 20 per cent would have a great positive environmental impact.”
Cella's garments are sourced in different ways, including from charity stores and direct donations. In some cases they are donated by migrants returning to their home countries after years spent in Australia, who realise they might not need all the garments they have accumulated over the years.
