Alexis Buisson

Williamsburg Designers Go Green

The third season of the Williamsburg Fashion Weekend celebrated locally-made, eco-friendly clothing by showcasing the work of independent Brooklyn designers.

Fashion is all about colors. But for a long time, green has not been one of them. But, as the Williamsburg Fashion Weekend demonstrated last week that might well be changing: for its third edition, the two-day show focused on fair-trade, eco-friendliness, and artisan techniques. “Fashion is responding to a trend in society,” said Arthur Arbit, the event organizer. “It seems like the designers are on it.”

The show, which took place at the rambling Secret Project Robot Gallery at River Street’s Monster Island Building, presented one-of-a-kind and small-run collections from eight Brooklyn-based designers: Compai, Dear Birthday, King Gurvy, Racecar, the Sodafine Boutique, SDN, Treehouse Brooklyn Boutique and Untitled 11:11. The featured garments all incorporated sustainable fabrics, recycled material, and were locally-made.
SDN kicked-off the show with pieces from its Fall ’08 and Spring ’09 men and women collections. The collections were made from sustainable fabrics, such as soya cotton, without sweatshop labor. “Using eco-friendly fabrics is like eating organic food: it’s slightly more expensive but it’s for the best,” said Marcus Hicks, founder of SDN. “If the fabrics are of higher quality and last longer, why not go for it?”

Wearing a green top and recycled jeans, Faith Blakeney, the smiling co-owner of Compai, a crafty, green design studio that opened six years ago in Florence, Italy, and moved last year to Williamsburg, green clothing is “a necessary trend.” Compai makes limited edition collections that blend organic and eco-fabrics with vintage lace, buttons, gloves, and crocheted doilies. “It’s a fairly new trend but I hope it’s going to last,” she said.
“Green” and locally-made clothing seemed to be a perfect source of inspiration for the Williamsburg Fashion Weekend, a free up and coming fashion presentation that has been showcasing, since 2007, the cutting-edge work of local independent designers.“There are not a lot of venues where independent designers can show their work. You just don’t have the money or the clothes,” Hicks of SDN explained – he took part in the previous edition of the Williamsburg Fashion Weekend. “My goal tonight was to put my work out there and show what I have been doing.”

Arthur Arbit, the event’s organizer and founder, envisioned it as a free unconventional “show” blending art, fashion and design along with live music. The first presentation in May 2007 was originally intended to launch Arbit’s own clothing line King Gurvy, but also included other independent designers, who struggle to publicize their work while walking the unbeaten paths of Fashion. “I didn’t want to do a show just for myself,” Arbit said in an interview. The second edition, in February 2008, showcased the work of five independent designers. During the evening, models attached ribbons to a maypole in a room full of stuffed animals. The event was held right after the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. “Comparing the events in Bryant Park to this show is like comparing classical music to punk. I wanted to have an event for young and fierce designers and who don’t want to become mainstream,” he said, before the opening last Friday.

That night, SDN, Compai and King Gurvy models paraded on a small stage, before strutting and posing in front of an enthusiastic crowd of Brooklyn and Manhattan “fashionistas”. “I really liked the long white dress,” said Anna Chan, a Lower East Side resident, about a dress presented in SDN’s collection. A sales assistant at Zachary Smile, a vintage clothing store in Greenwich, Chan says that she dreams of launching her own collection. Not in Manhattan but in Brooklyn: “Williamsburg is really the scene for alternative design. It’s so different. ”

The next day, Untitled 11:11, Racecar, Sodafine, Dear Birthday, and Treehouse Brooklyn presented their locally-made and eco-friendly garments to the audience.According to Vivian Gee, a Brooklyn-based Fashion Consultant, the Williamsburg Fashion Weekend is a refreshing alternative to the exclusive runways of Manhattan: “The guys here are all aspiring designers. They have not reached the stage where they are competitive,” she said. “Designers in Manhattan lose the focus and forget where they come from.”

As Brooklyn welcomes a growing community of designers priced out of Manhattan, the Williamsburg Fashion Weekend is bound to become a destination for whoever wishes to uncover the latest trends in the Fashion world, several attendees told The Gazette. “The show is a great way to identify new trends and designers,” indicated Matra Brathwaite, writer for Stylealchemy.com, a Brooklyn-based website for independent design. “It’s interesting to see where they started.”