The Zero Waste Fashion is the new haute couture

Gisela Fortuna is a fashion designer graduated from the UBA and for many years she worked on recognized women’s clothing brands such as Claudia Larreta and Sathya. His work tour was interrupted by the 2001 crisistime in which many people from his work team were fired and were alone doing everyone’s homework.

In that context, he decided to start over elsewhere. “One always has that thing to go to prove luck to Europe, more when you study art or design. You want to see trends and how fashion is done in situ. I must recognize that the design culture I acquired it by the hand of my professors from the University of Buenos Aires. What Europe gave me was to see things live”.

And what many happened to him: he went to see what was happening and there he stayed. He settled in Madrid, where he has been living for 25 years, and was fortunate to get a job as a fashion designer for several companies. From the hand of one of them he began to travel to the East, where he witnessed how large -scale clothes were produced and learned about tissue suppliers.

That motivated her to become an advisor Free Lance of European labels that wanted to produce in China, to which she accompanied and connected with fabric suppliers and factories in that country. As part of his work, no edition of Premier Vision was not lost, the International Fair where all fashion trends begin. Until one day was a mother and that task of traveling to the East began to complicate.

But that didn’t make him still. As he always liked training, he came up with the idea of ​​teaching. She was lucky that the English Court hired her to teach her designers and employees of all textile stores and trends so that she can improve their sales. Following this, he ended up being the director of the Fashion Design race at Camilo José Cela University for a period of 7 years.

He currently dedicates his 100% to Work Experience Fashion, his own Spanish company in which he fuses the fashion designer vein with the teacher. Under this umbrella offers workshops to fashion professionals and schools and even performs brand exchanges.

For example, receives students from Argentina who want to do practices in European fashion companies and she finds them a job. In her role as director of this venture she visited Buenos Aires to give a talk about “Zero Waste Fashion”, a novel movement that becomes more and more strength within the industry.

It is a system that comes to solve two key problems that afflict the industry: that of the generation of waste of materials and that of the copy. It is achieved thanks to the use of a system of grid grids, origami type, to prepare the garment. It is very difficult to learn, but once that is achieved then it is easy to make any piece. This creation process is far from using a conventional pattern that anyone can imitateso it is a great solution for plagiarism, which in Europe has become a problem since everyone is copied among all. Even the same haute couture marks are copied between them. It is no longer just a matter of China replicating European designs at a mass scale.

Fortuna explains that this tool entails other benefits. “When one has that assembly file, it is already in a position to instruct the seamstress to systematize the preparation of the garment. In addition, the business structure is reduced to a dressmaker, four sewing machines at most, and five or six different fabrics with which to make each design.

The key is that these are manufactured quickly and locally. This prevents the famous merchandise stock from being generated, since it is not manufactured to the client. In Europe we are fed up with those huge outlet full of clothing that nobody wants to buy. In turn, it prevents workers from being exploited and that the spell is done in another continent, so there is no need to go to China.

Few very well made pieces are made and with a verifiable traceability on its label, which certifies who, how and where it was done.

It will be business with a few pieces in various colors and fabrics, and that people can order them on request. The challenge of the brands will be to deliver them the next day, for the immediacy of these times.

For its part, the only investment that a designer will have will be the purchase of fabrics. And problems are saved with the theme of the sizes, since the designs Zero Waste are like kimonos, pieces with a very Japanese style Issey Miyake or Yohji Yamamoto: loose, unisex and only size. This is what I propose in my collection that I sell in Cremiodite’s e-commerce, a non-profit association that I created in order to combine different sustainable, experimental and collaborative design projects.

Mine are unique garments in which the finishes work a lot. The good thing about using a Zero Waste pattern is that it allows you to make a garment with flat or point tissue, something that is not possible with conventional patterns. I make short tops with kimono sleeves, crossed blouses with frouze, pants, coats, everything without causing waste and with the minimum seams.

Clearly clean fashion is the opposite of fashion trends. “It is for those who relate to a brand for what it does, because it is sustainable, it does not produce garbage to the planet, it manufactures when asked, it does not exploit people and work locally. Obviously they are more expensive proposals than something bought in Zara or manufactured in China.

But the consumer understands that part of sustainability is to pay well to the designer, the clothing, to the employer and the entire value chain that has fashion. I remember that in my time as a young designer they paid me very well, but not to the seamstress who received a very low remuneration, as is currently in the centers of mass manufacturing. Instead, I am paying almost 60 euros for each garment. The benefits are shared between them.

No. Since it is considered the new haute couture, it is very sought after by many rich people who want to use something that no one has. We know that today anyone can have it. Take some money together and buy it.

Last month, for example, I received in my showroom in Madrid the visit of the owner of Tommy Hilfiger, who asked me to help her buy designers from Madrid that they do not sell in the US. I was looking for different designs that no one has, so I took her to know different shops from my association and was delighted: many of them bought everything because they were not known brands.

Although he specializes in fashion Zero Waste, Fortuna is convinced that in fashion the plurality of options must reign. “I believe that in the industry we must coexist among all: the prêt-à-porter, the massive and the project projects since there are people who cannot pay them. The idea is that everyone chooses where they want and can consume. “

There is a very large movement with respect to the sustainability of tissues. In Premier Vision I saw lactose or coconut fabrics. Much is being experienced in that as well as in technological tissues. On the other hand, it is much oriented to millennials with proposals that come from Korea. The Koreans managed to make an exquisite corpse of the entire European culture by taking all their aesthetics and proposing a potpourri where everything is predominated.

The idea is that everyone combines anything with anything. For example, mixing a very expensive chanel jacket, with joggings pants of a cheap brand. This is one of the most creative moves that come and that were already adopted by Dior and Loewe to capture the young public.

There is also a return to the basics with a hypohopera imprint. Remerones gain strength with a lot of marketing from behind. Another current that steps strong is the Ladylike style, perfect for the woman who wants to dress elegant.