Paris Fashion Week: Are You Buying Clothes or Fabric?

The Paris shows started on Monday. And despite some we'd-love-to-see names like Balmain and Rick Owens, many journalists are waiting until mid-week to arrive. Why? Well, the schedule runs a full 7 days and after New York, London, Milan, one has to be selective or risk losing the love of friends and family at home. (I caught my son pouring water slowly over my computer on Sunday. Think he's trying to tell me something?)

But early visitors to Paris got to mingle with designers from around the world. Because while the store buyers are shopping for the Spring collections, the designers are here shopping for their Winter 2009 collections at the Premiere Vision fabric show. The fabric shows are where the whole design process begins. Designers have to place their orders for all the material they will use before drawing a single sketch. Zac Posen's mom Susan told me it is the most harrowing part of the process for her because of the financial commitment they have to make and, if the water+son+computer incident hadn't happened, I'd be able to supply you with a nice quote here.

Instead, I'll point you to an article in WWD about the range of eco-friendly fabrics at the fair. The good news is prices are coming down, in part thanks to new mills in Asia. The bad news is that a eco-friendly T-shirt from All Saints would still run over $50.

In another article, WWD also points out some of the by now pretty obvious problems with low-cost manufacturing in China. Guess what? Environmental and safety standards are not being met! Increasing wages in China mean even more corners will be snipped. And consumers are beginning to care. Kind of. But not really. Or not really enough to fork out for those environmentally-correct fabrics.