Vegan And Bio clothing from Turkey; Designers Ece Gözen And Tuba Ergin Using Recycle Materials For Sustainable Fashion

 

Istanbul (Turkey) is one of the oldest fashion hubs in the world. It is one of the six largest textile suppliers in the world. The people there prefer clothes that make them feel comfortable and light, the outfits which you can move everywhere such as blouses, light shirts, skirts, shorts, and trousers. They love colorful clothes and light materials. Istanbul has been successfully attracting the eye of the world towards its fashion lines.

But, there is an array of materials used in the fashion industry that are sourced from animals from silk, fur, feathers, to the most famous of them all  is leather, while another drawback is its severe effects on climate change. It is also believed that textiles contribute to at least 10% of all landfill wastes.

That’s why new age designers are focusing more on sustainability now, and prefer completely re-engineer materials like vegan  leather, which is made from bacteria, it does not affect the sales margin and the beauty of the product's aesthetics.

Creating sustainable fashion from recycled materials  is entirely a new concept carried by an emerging generation of Turkey's fashion designers.

Tuba Ergin and Ece Gözen, who presented their fabulous vegan wardrobe collection at Istanbul fashion week 2021-22,  belong to a new generation of Turkish designers who are trying to make fashion sustainable. They are using recycled fabrics, innovative raw materials and plant-based leather substitutes to create new types of clothing and bags.

Tuba Ergin uses vegan plastic for her designs

Tuba Ergin,

Tuba Ergin is one of those designers who defines strong, environmentally conscious and refined women, as the brand outlines in her mission statement. Her style is more about experiment and freedom than anything else. She is inspired by technology and street culture and values environmentally conscious materials. Innovation and wearability are two key elements that you will always notice in her outfits.

In 2014, she launched her own brand, TUBA ERGIN, a contemporary designer label based in Istanbul.  Her latest collection for FWI addresses the climate crisis via an explicit reference to renewable energy; she sets the show in a field of solar panels, using two rows of these to create a runway.

Tuba said in an interview- “For me sustainability doesn’t consist of only the selection of materials you choose but all the choices you can make to create sustainable systems.”

“The reason behind the choice of a solar plant field for the venue was to draw attention to the fact that the understanding of sustainability in fashion is not only limited with the eco-sustainable material selection and production techniques, but also the energy resources used by the manufacturing companies supplying for the fashion industry must also be clean.”

In addition to her own clothing line she has done many collaborations with different industries as well as the textile industry. In 2013 she created an upcycled accessory line made out of upcycled inner tires & vegetal leather and collaborated with the Turkeys top tire manufacturer Brisa of Sabancı Group.She collaborated with Sile municipality using the traditional organic Sile cloth in her collections bringing a contemporary interpretation to fit the needs of the urban woman. She also took part in the Argande project created by UNDP and GAP working as a volunteer designer for 2 seasons for the brand, aiming to empower the Turkish women in the eastern region of Turkey socially and  economically.

Fashion designer Ece Gözen in her lab Gözen Institute

Ace bio-designer Ece Gözen,

Turkish bio fashion designer Ece Gözen comes with a vision of designing and growing a better future together by establishing micro and macro-level connections with mother nature and each other. Her fashion brands accelerate the development of next-gen materials that are animal free and more sustainable.

She defines her style as a ‘sportcouture’ and imagines very confident women, open to fresh styles, hiding their femininity among their sportive looks. She designs for inspiring and mysterious women. Ece always harmonises culture, art, innovative ideas, science and technology in her collections.

Gözen  creates fashion from bio-plastics and vegan leather in her laboratory at Gözen Institute She is considered a pioneering sustainable fashion.

Objective of the Gözen Institue

The textile industry is a major climate polluter, in such situations bio designers like Ece Gözen are fighting back with unfamiliar materials like vegan leather.

According to Ece - "For me , reusing recyclable materials is not enough, that's why  I started Gözen Institute in 2017, which aims is to connect designs with bio-technology, on which we are working on the formula of sustainable industry materials."

She found a way to make bioplastics or vegan leather from bacteria, whole manufacturing process is resource efficient and 100% ecological.

"For calfskin, you usually have to breed and keep animal, you need a lot of raw materials like food and water, that takes about 3 years, we can produce this leather in two or three weeks in the lab......we give back to nature, what we takes from it, through bio-designs…..It might have significant impact on the future of the fashion industry." – Gözen  said in an interview with DW Euromaxx.