Bloomberg speaks to us about how to make weddings more sustainable

27 Nov

Back in Summer our founder Hayley was joined by Lara Williams of Bloomberg opinion to talk about the rise of influencer weddings and the affect this is having on our planet. It was a joy to have Lara in to talk about a subject we are so passionate about. The article is linked below if you want to see how green your wedding is going to be and if you are interested in other ideas to minimise your impact. Thanks so much for the feature!

An excerpt from the article ……

The Wear and Tear of What You Wear

For many brides and grooms, the outfits make the day. These garments are likely to be among the most expensive clothing purchases of their lifetime, but that doesn’t necessarily make them sustainable. Whether a Western white gown, a lehenga, a hanbok, an ao dai dress or a suit, the environmental impact will mainly come from the production of the outfit’s raw materials — that is, the growing of the cotton, the extraction of the silk, the fabrication of the polyester and the processing of these fibers into glossy, slinky materials. The wedding dress industry can be confusing for the well-intentioned couple. Plenty of brands call themselves sustainable while churning out polyester dresses, or boasting about cutting fabrics as economically as possible. “Everyone does that!” says Hayley Neil, founder and designer of Rolling in Roses. “It’s not something to be proud about.”

There are optimal sustainable choices: Rentals are becoming popular, as well as buying secondhand or vintage garments. These extend the life and use of clothing already in existence. But there are other options if you’re set on something new. Neil says a dress made of eco-friendly fibers is key. That includes anything from linen, organic cotton and modern rayon. Neil uses innovative fabrics such as a viscose sourced from sustainably managed pine and eucalyptus forests; and there’s also smooth and lustrous lyocell, which can be made from the byproducts of the orange juice industry in Sicily. If you want a really romantic fabric, you can buy satin made from organic rose petals. These fabrics are more than just biodegradable. Lyocell is made in a closed-loop system, meaning the water and chemicals involved are cleaned and recycled, reducing demand for an increasingly sparse resource as well as preventing pollution.

While it’s getting easier for dressmakers like Neil to source sustainable materials, it’s still a challenge. Some fabrics, though beautiful, take a little while to learn how to use. “From a commercial point of view, that’s time wasted,” says Neil. “Polyester, on the other hand, hardly creases and it’s cheap.” Wedding dresses are, in some ways, the ultimate throw-away fashion item. Worn once, they are left to languish in the back of the closet. That makes their emissions-per-wear index pretty hefty. It’s also a shame to put on your most expensive and best-fitting outfit for just a single day. Neil does dye tests on all the material she uses, so the fabric can be tinted safely for non-ceremonial use. She also urges brides to fashion their dresses into a shorter style for wearing long after the wedding.