Reformation’s Mycelium Aims, Cassandra Dittmer’s Designer Debut: Short Takes
Leather Alternatives, Better Together: Reformation has joined Ecovative’s Fashion for Good Cooperative for advancing and accessing plastic-free mycelium leather alternatives. The West Coast sustainable brand aims to use the material in an upcoming shoe line.
Earlier this year, Pangaia and Vivobarefoot became part of the cooperative, joining the ranks of Bestseller and PVH Corp. The brands will focus on material development, with products not only likely but inevitable as a proof-case for the material. Ecovative is a New York-based biotech firm that is focused firmly (as with its competitors from Bolt Threads, MycoWorks and so on) on scaling its network and production capacity for its leather alternative.
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Manufacturers and tanneries are getting on board, too. Wolverine Worldwide, a family-owned company that supplies the likes of Sweaty Betty, Chacos, Merrell and Sperry, will also be working closely with its owned tanneries on product development in Ecovative’s next wave of progress.
When Stylists Go the Designer Route: This week, Los Angeles-based stylist Cassandra Dittmer launched her first clothing collection “CD Studio,” in collaboration with sustainable retailer Rêve En Vert.
The 11-piece U.S.-made collection conceptualized during life in lockdown ranges in price from $69 to $245 and includes an edit of sweatsuit and ribbed sets, polo shirts, T-shirts, jumpsuits and leggings. Core fabrications include organic cotton, as in the bike shorts that sport 95 percent organic cotton and 5 percent Lycra. Dittmer was previously accustomed to red carpet styling and scouring markets all over the world for new designers and small businesses to pull her looks for sustainably-minded (and often A-list clientele). Naturally this changed. But she’s no stranger to innovating in a new hybrid workplace, as she previously launched an online styling service last year.
“It’s like a relationship, it’s a collaboration — I’m reimagining what this relationship with a stylist means and helping people rework their brains in that way,” she told WWD, at the time of her e-styling service launch. She hopes the collection continues to solidify her sustainability ethos.
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