Svetlana Fedina has het own organic fashion label "Stillsveta" based in Amsterdam. Stillsveta believes fashion can be an effective way to convey a message serving a higher purpose other than merely improving appearances. For the Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week, she will be representing "water" in the four elements show.We asked Svetlana, was water means to her. "Today, many parts of the world face major challenges due to limited freshwater availability. The majority of the world’s freshwater resources are contaminated and polluted." She found out that in developing countries, 70 percent of the industrial waste is dumped untreated into waters, polluting the usable water supply. Every year, more people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war. Industry dumps an estimated 300-400 million tons of waste into natural waters sources every year.Svetlana is shocked and tells us: "Our preference for convenient, single-use shopping bags and plastic water bottles isn’t the only problem. In order to truly address water usage and pollution, we need to look at the big industries that wield the greatest proportion of power. One of the worst offenders? Fashion."Her fascination was raised after watching "Blue Planet 2". She says: "In the final episode of Blue Planet 2, English broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough urged us to protect ‘the future of humanity and all life’ following devastating footage of a mother whale carrying the dead calf that she poisoned with her contaminated milk. It is good that this has brought a lot of emotion and awareness of this issue, but the fact remains that we all have to change our individual behavior in order to really do something about it."It is interesting to see how she transforms these emotions and information into her collection for the Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week. We asked here how she managed the process. Svetlana: "I feel very lucky to be approached by the Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week. I have created a collection that raises this very important topic of water preservation and reduction of water pollution. ‘No. More. Plastic.’ is the name of the latest StillSveta collection designed to express my love for the water that we take for granted every day. The whole collection is made of wool that never needs to be washed, the only thing you need is air – hang it up on the balcony overnight and off you go."The collection is going to be presented during the Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week on the 10thof October 2018. Do you want to read more about Svetlana and her collections? Have a look on the website of Stillsveta.
