Earth to A-Listers: It’s Time to Start Re-wearing Your Red Carpet Dresses

Chalk it up to the UN’s terrifying climate reports—in fashion, the sustainability issue has reached a tipping point. Consumer outrage is helping to put an end to the practice of burning unsold merchandise, and many top brands have eliminated the use of real fur. Something’s changing in our mindset about used and second-hand goods, too—a fact made clear this May when the e-commerce giant Farfetch launched its resale section, Second Life, and again by the fashion media’s summertime embrace of Depop, the thrifting app beloved of Gen Z.

Amidst all these shifts, one area has remained more or less untouched by the sustainability topic: red carpet dressing. Awards shows were politicized in early 2018 when actresses wore black in solidarity with the Time’s Up movement. Wouldn’t it be powerful to see these same celebrities re-wearing gowns they’ve worn in the past—advocating against the throwaway culture that sees consumers toss away garments after a single use, like they do iced-coffee cups? Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

There’s potential to stand up for an Earth-saving circular economy, especially now that Arianne Phillips and Carineh Martin have founded Red Carpet Advocacy, an agency that forms partnerships between talent, brands, and non-profits to raise awareness and money for charities. “Any authentic conversation must start with talent,” says Phillips, a costume designer whose most recent project is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Unfortunately, “sustainability is a complicated proposition from the brands’ perspectives, because anything around the issue asks for them to be responsible with their own practices, and that’s expensive and complicated. Not to mention,” she adds, “what brand is not encouraging its customer to buy every season?”

One more hitch: The celebrity stylist Kate Young, who dresses the likes of Margot Robbie and Sienna Miller, points out that stars “rarely keep the dresses they wear, except on extremely special occasions.... It’s all on loan.” In fact, dresses do often get re-worn by models, socialites, and friends of brands at later dates, and there’s something green about that phenomenon, but companies tend not publicize it, and the public isn’t paying attention at that level anyway.

What they do pay attention to is when a bold-facer wears something twice—or, heaven forbid, more often than that. The fashion police consensus? It’s always been a big no-no. But that might be changing. Stylist Elizabeth Stewart’s clients Cate Blanchett and Julia Roberts regularly re-wear looks. Says Stewart: “I believe clothes are meant to be cherished and worn for a lifetime, and I have tried to make the point very visibly.”

As host of Saturday Night Live in November 2017, Tiffany Haddish re-wore a $4,000 white Alexander McQueen dress she’d previously been photographed in at the premiere of her film Girls Trip, and in her opening monologue, she lampooned the tired old taboo. “This dress cost way more than my mortgage,” she riffed, “I’m going to wear it multiple times.” Haddish wasn’t making an explicit point about the benefits of reuse, but she might as well have been. “Seeing celebrities re-wear things has a huge impact, of course,” says Sofia Bernardin, a cofounder of Resee, a Paris-based vintage e-commerce site. “Historically, fashion has made you feel like you have to have what’s new, but that notion of ‘so last season’ is changing.... People shopping for second-hand, not just ‘vintage,’ is a consumer trend we’re seeing.”

The “take-make-waste” paradigm is dead-ending. One need only look at the burning Amazon for proof. Shifting away from a linear economy will require not just individuals, but governments and corporations. Still, as the Venice Film Festival unfolds over the course of the next two weeks and with the Emmys approaching next month, I’ll be hoping that some brave celebrity pulls a special frock out the closet—or out of a luxury brand’s archives—dusts it off, and uses the power of her platform to endorse a more circular fashion system and ignite a conversation.

Oscars Red Carpet 2019: See All The Fashion & Dresses Here

Originally Appeared on Vogue