Mother of Pearl designer details sustainability focus in new documentary

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Mar 6, 2023

Amy Powney, the owner and creative director of British fashion brand Mother of Pearl, claims sustainability is still just a buzzword in the fashion industry and not enough action is being taken by her peers.

Powney makes the claim in a just-released documentary ‘Fashion Reimagined’ where she investigates supply chain issues and reveals some “hard truths” about the industry.

The new film, which has just been released in cinemas and is being shown next month on Sky Documentaries, charts her 18-month journey to make a fully sustainable collection, creating garments that are “organic, traceable, socially responsible and considerate of animal welfare”, the Guardian newspaper said.

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“I hope people watch and see how complicated it is,” she told the newspaper, adding: “but that you can do it – you just have to put hard work in.”

She and the brand’s former designer Chloe Marks travelled to Uruguay, Peru, Austria and Turkey with a to-do list that included ordering fabric and encountering the process to complete a garment run.

However, in the documentary, Powney revealed: “If the fashion industry were a country, it would rank third for carbon emissions after China and the United States. We buy three times as many clothes as we did in 1980. And wear them for half as long… [But] only 2% of the people who make our clothes earn a living wage.”

While the number of clothes described as sustainable has quadrupled in the last four year, the film claims that fashion’s impact is getting worse.

Powney said brands simply using organic cotton doesn’t make them green or ethical. And she wants to “encourage others in the industry to become more genuine in their efforts to be sustainable”.

She also referred to Vivienne Westwood’s adage: “‘buy better, buy less’… If you can’t buy better because you can’t afford it, you can still buy less … You can also buy vintage, secondhand – there’s so many different ways now.”