I was reminded of the title of this outstanding New Order song while attending last night's Fashion 2.0 Meetup/Startup Showcase. What does fashion have to do with Cleantech you ask? Apparently, a fair amount. Of the four presenting companies, two were marketing decidedly Cleantech approaches.
Source4Style aims to "create the world's first online marketplace for designers to search and source the world's leading sustainable textiles." One of the showcase judges, a prominent local VC, asked why Source4Style would pursue only the estimated $600 million to $1 billion sustainable textile market, rather than the entire estimated $100 billion textile market. The founders responded emphatically that (i) sustainability was a core part of their mission and (ii) the sustainable segment of the overall textile market was the fastest-growing segment of that market.
Another presenting company, Uniform Project, wants to "revolutionize the way people perceive ethical fashion and place social responsibility at the center of consumer culture. Use fashion as a vehicle to make acts of charity more inspired and playful, enabling individuals to rise as role models of style, sustainability and social consciousness." The central inspiration for Uniform Project derives from a founder's achievement of wearing the same dress every day for a year—what I consider an extraordinary exercise in sustainability.
Surely the New York fashion scene has long been a bellwether for emerging trends. Perhaps this will be true in the startup world as well, with new startups pursuing more sustainability-focused, double-bottom-line business models.
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