“Fashioning the Change” is a campaign by Group Galeries Lafayette to promote sustainable fashion. For Fall 2020 Galeries Lafayette has collaborated with Green Initiatives to combine nature and art to inspire people to adopt conscious fashion practices and lifestyle.
Titled “Behind the Fall”, the main artwork in Shanghai is a grand, 20-meter high, flowing waterfall made from deadstock fabric that was left unused amidst the COVID crisis. Similar artworks featuring stalagmites and stalactites will also be featured in the Beijing location.
Visitors are invited to walk ‘behind the fall’ and spend a moment as memories of waterfall is recreated, to remind visitors of something that they may not have experienced recently. The Fall is embodied within colours, shapes, textures, sounds, and even a mist effect as each piece of material begins to surface and in its conclusion, recognises that a world with no water implies a world with no fashion.
The installations question an industry that is famed for its beauty but has destructive effects on the environment, especially on the water ecosystems, considering that the fashion industry ranks 3rd in china for wastewater discharge. Paradoxically, 1 in 3 people globally do not have access to clean water. to celebrate the significance of water to the fashion industry.
By reconnecting fashion back to water the artworks showcase alternative and action to minimize environmental impact. Nearly 1000 kilograms of fabric is discarded in China every second*. This statistic became the basis for the installation: discarded fabric has been used to create the lake, the stalagmites and the artefacts.
One of the features of the artwork is that the fabric used has been hand-dyed using traditional dying techniques by the Buyi tribe, a large minority group from southwestern China. The production of blue indigo in the Buyi region has a long history. Because the waste water discharged from the production of blue indigo as well as the water used to dye and wash the cloth can degrade naturally, the traditional Buyi villages have said to have maintained a beautiful scenery thousands of years!
“We rarely get the chance to visualize how much we waste. We rarely get a chance to appreciate what we have. And not often do we connect the clothes we wear to where they come from and how they connect with the environment. This installation aims to recreate and reconnect nature, fashion and humans,” says Alex Ho, Creative Director and Designer, Green Initiatives.
“Our goal through this campaign, and by working with a responsible organization like Galeries Lafayette was simply to inspire people to change their approach to fashion. By recreating scenes where they can experience the power and beauty of nature we intend to inspire individuals to be more fashion conscious.” Concludes Nitin Dani, Founder and Director, Green Initiatives.
