Sass Brown

Based in Florence, Sass Brown is resident director of the Fashion Institute of Technology New York’s overseas programme as well as one of its professors. She is the author of the book Eco Fashion, which, she says, ‘is the first book to focus only on eco fashion, discussing it separately from eco design’. She combines her interest in fashion with environmentalist activism. ‘Fashion is really wasteful: at every stage of its production, 15 per cent of the materials used are wasted,’ she said at Be Open. ‘With one-sixth of the world population employed in fashion, we need to make this a big change agent.’ She mainly uses social media (Facebook and Twitter) to raise awareness of such issues as the harmful practice of sandlbasting denim, which leads to fabricators contracting silicosis (a respiratory disease caused by inhaling silica dust). With 450 million pairs of jeans sold in the US annually, she pointed out, this is a serious issue. She also aims to change the negative perception of eco fashion ‘as hemp clothing bought from a headshop’. At Be Open, she drew attention to several companies that find inventive ways to make aesthetically pleasing clothing out of recycled garments and materials.