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 American Journal of Art and Communication 

Vol.8, Issue 4; July-August - 2023; 

1252 Columbia Rd NW, Washington DC, United States 

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ECO-FRIENDLY CLOTHING: HOW TO DESIGN CLOTHES THAT 

PROTECT THE PLANET  
 

 
1Wang, Xin, 2Zhang, Yi, 3Chen, Xiaomei, 4Zhao, Qiang, 5Sun, Yu  

Quanzhou Normal University, Quanzhou, Fujian, China. 

 

Abstract: The concept of environmental protection has been constantly evolving in the past few decades. In the 

clothing industry, major brands have begun to integrate this concept into their design process. This paper studies 

how these brands have incorporated environmental protection into their clothing design, and discusses the 

challenges and opportunities they face. 

Keywords: environmental protection, clothing design, sustainable development, major brands, challenges, 

opportunities 

 

 

1. Introduction   

Human beings has a written history of more than 5,000 years. In the continuous development of history, human 

civilization and natural environment have been constantly fighting and integrating. Natural environment 

determines the development direction of regional human society, and human social activities also cause 

irreversible changes to the natural environment. In order to make the human society and the natural environment 

better integrated development, the concept of environmental protection is also constantly innovating. The concept 

of environmental protection refers to a new concept put forward to maintain the sustainable development of the 

environment in a regional or global scope. Human beings should reduce the impact on the natural environment in 

various social activities and coexist in harmony with nature.  

The concept continues to develop, and then becomes one of the necessary factors to directly drive consumers' 

consumption activities. In the world, all the major brands have integrated the concept of environmental protection 

into their own clothing design, and constantly hold various kinds of clothing press conferences to show the 

environmental protection concept of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. This paper aims to study 

how the major clothing design companies combine the concept of environmental protection with clothing design, 

and design a new clothing in line with the concept of environmental protection.  

2. A review of environmental protection concepts  

2.1. The emergence, development and evolution of environmental protection concepts  

Environmental problems are a phenomenon that human beings have been required to face since ancient times. 

Because the development of social productive forces is gradually improving, so the environmental problems also 

develop, in different historical stages of the environmental problems are also very different, and in today's society 

is facing the biggest environmental problem is-environmental pollution.  

In order to better improve the quality of life, the life mode based on environmental protection has become a new 

goal of people's life. Because of the increasing amount of waste in life, the consumption of resources and 

environmental deterioration, so in order to reduce unnecessary waste, the concept of low carbon and 

environmental protection has become the mainstream idea in the 21st century[1](Hu Xiaoqing, 2012).  

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With the rise of environmental protection heat, environmental protection has become the new favorite of 

designers. Because the theme of environmental protection is currently the most concerned topic of the public, but 

also the most sympathetic way to arouse the public. First of all, a variety of topics about conservation and 

environmental protection frequently appear. Secondly, the major enterprises have also joined in the environmental 

protection action, playing an important leading role in the environmental protection activities.  

In the clothing industry which is closely related to our life, the real reason for the concept of environmental 

protection and sustainable development into the fashion industry is the outbreak of "fashion pollution protest" 

incident, which has also attracted wide attention from fashion brands and designers. With the concept of 

environmental protection, the concept of waste utilization is gradually accepted by more and more people. Such 

as well-known environmentalists vivian westwood, (Vivienne Westwood) in the spring and summer 2018, the 

west queen will add waste disposable items to clothing, make clothing in more three-dimensional feeling more 

reflect the concept of the concept of environmental protection, as well as the use of abandoned disposable water 

bottles to some models as shoes, fully express the idea of waste use.  

"Buy, buy, buy" is a common problem of modern consumers. Due to the psychological impact of impulse 

consumption, most clothing and related products are abandoned and left idle after using them once or two times, 

while Vivienne Westwood advocates buying less and buying high-quality products.  

2.2. Research status of environmental protection concept  

Developed countries led by the United States, such as Sweden, France, The United Kingdom and Japan, took the 

lead in studying the environmental protection of clothing from the strategic perspective. Looking at the foreign 

clothing market, a large number of authoritative data on the consumption of environmentally friendly clothing 

show that the total global green consumption has exceeded us $300 billion in the last year.84 percent of the Dutch, 

about 89 percent of the Americans, and about 90 percent of the Germans consider their environmental standards 

when buying[2](Feng Xiaohan, Yang Rongrong, 2011).  

Compared with the foreign environmental awareness and environmental protection concept of clothing design, 

China is relatively indifferent, because in the face of the green consumption wave sweeping the world, most 

enterprises are lack of sensitivity and practical actions. Among the textile enterprises can carry out ecological 

textile certification is very few, only a few enterprises and products have been green certification.  

3. The application of environmental protection concept in reality  

3.1. Practical application of environmental protection concept  

3.1.1. LVMH The Group promotes LED lighting and energy-saving cooling equipment  

With the rise of environmentalism, the clothing and luxury industries have been questioned from all walks of life, 

so LVMH, the world's largest luxury group, has devoted itself to environmental protection and taken the 

responsibility of protecting the environment. According to my data collection, LVMH group's sustainable 

development plan is increasingly perfect. The LVMH Group has set up a special carbon emission fund to promote 

LED lighting and energy-efficient air-conditioning equipment and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its stores 

and factories. The group's carbon emissions fund raised 11.3 million euros in 2018 and gradually increased the 

number of specific environmental measures to 112 from only 64 in 2017. These environmental measures helped 

LVMH reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2,500 units in 2018, equivalent to 1,600 European households. In 

order to increase environmental protection, LVMH, the company put forward an environmental protection 

initiative with the theme of LIFE LVMH Initiatives for the Environment, and strive to implement environmental 

protection in every link from procurement to production, from design to retail.  

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3.1.2. Levi's launches Project F.L. X plan  

In the world, 90 percent of clothing consumers have at least a pair of chic jeans. In popular culture, denim clothing 

is a fully personalized popular element, which spans the global clothing of the gender, age, traditional concepts 

and other aspects of consumers in different market groups."As a fashion item recognized by the housing market," 

jeans " jeans occupy an extremely important place in the fashion circle. Jeans type is the most fashionable category 

fold and wear effect of pants, for the designer deliberately create "old" effect, to achieve this unique other fashion 

style, factory before each pair of jeans after twenty recurrence of dehydration grinding, then artificial grinding, 

after bleaching and coloring to finish a finished product. To make the jeans better visually, the water also adds 

surfactant to be softness. Now people mouth of jeans on behalf of the "fashion" is actually hundreds of tons of 

water as a price, according to the People's Daily in 2006, according to information processing plant each 

production a ton of denim clothing and related products, there will be about 200 tons of water will be polluted, 

including about 2500 kinds of chemical substances in the sewage, cannot be recycled. Therefore, the famous 

denim brand Levi's (Levi's) launched the F.L. X plans to improve jeans productivity and environmental protection 

to replace traditional manual operations through automatic machines and reduce the use of chemical formulas to 

achieve environmental conservation.  

3.1.3. Starbucks launches its first “container store” in Taiwan  

Over the years, Starbucks, a global coffee chain giant that has been challenging its unique stores, has begun to 

explore more different business models to meet the needs of different consumer groups. On September 26,2018, 

the first Starbucks container store in Taiwan, Zhuilan Store, was opened in Ji’an Township, Hualien County. It is 

understood that as the world’s first Starbucks café built by abandoned containers, founded in 2012, it is not only 

conducive to the recycling of waste resources, help protect the environment, but also trigger more creative 

inspiration. This time, in order to present a better effect, Starbucks specially hired the famous Japanese designer 

Kengo Kuma to design this “container store”. This design is not only beautiful but also more environmentally 

friendly, so that the recycled containers can be fully utilized. In addition, Starbucks announced in July 2018 that 

it would eliminate the use of plastic straws in all its 28,000 stores by 2020[3](Yang Tao, 2020). This is also similar 

to the use of waste containers to create environmental protection of the store.  

3.2. The application of environmental protection concept in clothing  

3.2.1. The design and application of environmental protection concept in clothing materials  

The famous Magella Fashion House (Maison Margiela) is always unique and elusive in costume design. Designer 

John Galliano (John Galliano) also like Martin Magilla (Martin Margiela) has the same way of deconstruction 

and restructuring, making the design look more intriguing. The hat is made only of a transparent raincoat material, 

while the bag is designed more like a pillow at home. Single tone such as white, gray and other main tone color 

and with the bright color of men's wear contrast is also quite strong.  

As shown in Figure 1.  

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Figure 1: Maison Margiela Autumn and winter 2018.  

In an interview with the British version of ELLE, designer Stella McCartney revealed that she will use 

environmental awareness to better respond to her clothing brand. In the future, clothing design and production 

will be used in large quantities, as well as an environmentally friendly flagship store in London, UK. The design 

of the flagship store to the use of the store permeates the concept of environmental protection, and is known for 

its environmental friendliness.  

3.2.2. The design and application of environmental protection concept in clothing styles  

Vivian Westwood (Vivienne Westwood), the representative designer of the top environmentalists in the fashion 

industry, appeared in the 2018 spring and summer men's fashion show, in order to better express the concept of 

environmental protection, she used four different poker symbols in life to convey the theme of this season "We 

Are Mother Fucker". Throughout the show, the Empress Dowager used her flashy expression to show imminent 

environmental protection in her clothes. The most important element that can reflect environmental protection is 

that the Empress Dowager holds all kinds of disposable waste in the clothing, and even some models step on 

disposable mineral water bottles and rope them as shoes. In the autumn and winter fashion show of 2019, the 

Empress Dowager used a different approach from the spring and summer 2018 fashion show to make an 

environmental declaration again. In the release of the fall / Winter 2019 collection, the queen added British street 

style fashion. The series uses asymmetrical silk satin dresses and plaid suits to form a very funny mix and match, 

constantly appearing on T-shirts and skirts in the form of graffiti prints and slogans, to talk about the 

environmental problems of the current society.  

As shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3.  

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Figure 2: Vivienne Westwood Spring / Summer, 2018 .  

  
Figure 3: Vivienne Westwood Autumn / Winter 2019.  

3.2.3. The design and application of environmental protection concept in clothing color  

Stella McCarney (Stella McCartney), who has always focused on sustainability, and famous photographer Harley 

Weir and artist U rs Fischer have focused on the issue of “waste” and “excessive consumption” in the new 

advertisement in the fall and winter of 2017.  

In the shooting of this advertising blockbuster, the new models and the popular models were dressed in brown 

and gray clothes to show the city’s failure and pollution caused by garbage pollution, which formed a very strong 

contrast with the environment full of waste garbage in the shooting. On the other hand, models wearing green 

dresses with brown gauze, lie in the garbage accumulated by a variey of disposable waste, which can bring people 

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a strog viual impact and convey the brand's attention to the problem of waste and excessive consumption of 

resources and the positive attitude.  

As shown in Figure 4.  

  
Figure 4: Stella McCartney 2017 Autumn and winter series of advertising.  

4. The application of the environmental protection concept in the design  

4.1. Inspiration source  

This design is related to the current topic is closely related to the environmental protection issues. Because with 

the continuous expansion of consumption scale, the waste in life is constantly increasing, resulting in serious 

consumption and deterioration of resources. Therefore, in order to reduce unnecessary waste, the concept of low 

carbon environmental protection has become the mainstream idea in the 21st century[1]( Hu Xiaoqing, 2012).  

Inspired comes from Figure 5  

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Figure 5: Environmental art design drawing.  

4.2. Design philosophy  

The reason why people often say that art comes from life, because the inspiration and experience that life gives 

to the creators are indelible. After being deaf, Beethoven wrote the symphony of fate that shocked the world, and 

Li Bai created the classic eternal pass into the wine after his exile.  

With people’s pursuit of high quality of life, environmental protection has become a key topic. The concept of 

environmental protection has subtly infiltrated into our daily life, and the clothing in line with environmental 

protection has become a fashion and trend. This design is mainly based on the concept of environmental 

protection, constantly find the fashion elements from the environmental protection, and through clothing and 

accessories to convey the concept of environmental protection, the design of environmental protection, fashion 

as one of the clothing. It is hoped that through such a design, more people will begin to pay attention to 

environmental protection and devote themselves to environmental protection activities, and contribute their own 

meager strength to green environmental protection.  

The clothing design effect drawing is shown in figure 6:  

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Figure 6: Newspaper PVC and DuPont paper material clothing design drawing  

4.3. Fabric selection  

4.3.1. Denim fabric  

The three main elements of clothing are mainly color, fabric and style. Therefore, clothing fabric is the most 

important clothing element besides clothing style and color. The choice of clothing fabrics, to a large extent, will 

determine the final effect of clothing presentation[4].(Lu Aixiang, 2016).Therefore, the choice of fabrics has 

become an indispensable part of the clothing production link.  

According to the design idea, in the initial fabric selection, the black denim fabric with a relatively stiff material 

was selected as the primary fabric of the overall clothing. Because the cowboy fabric air permeability is good, 

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wear comfortable, and thick texture, not easy to deformation. Considering that the fabric should be processed and 

modified in the later stage, so denim fabric is the first choice of fabric choice.  

The rendering of denim clothing fabric is shown in Figure Figure 7:  

  
Figure 7:Denim fabric.  

4.3.2. Thousand bird case fabric  

In 1948, the elegant Mr.C hristian D ior applied the modified canine tooth pattern on the packaging of the 

perfume[5] (Eunice,2019),Therefore, the first time on the fashion stage, and got a new name-thousand bird case. 

Since then, the qianbird case, which was only used in men's wear, has gradually become popular in women's wear. 

According to the design idea and referring to the final clothing renderings, the bottom dress in the clothing is 

made with the fabric of Qianbirds, which forms color contrast with the black denim fabric chosen by the coat.  

The rendering of the fabric is shown in Figure Figure 8:  

  
Figure 8: Thousand bird box fabric.  

4.3.3. Patent leather fabric  

The so-called patent leather fabric, mainly refers to the leather or PU leather leather fabric into the shower paint 

processing, make its surface more bright and strong, its feature is full leather color, natural, waterproof, not easy 

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to deformation, easy to take care of. In order to make the visual effect more impact, the black stiff denim fabric 

of the early primary election was replaced with patent leather fabric. While the color contrast is strong, it also 

forms a sharp contrast on the material, making the overall visual effect more attractive.  

The rendering of patent leather fabric Is shown In figure 9:  

  
Figure 9:Patent leather fabric fabric.  

4.4. Manufacturing process  

4.4.1. Make the style and silhouette  

The style of clothing has an important influence on the final effect presentation of clothing, and it can play a role 

in decorating and beautifying all kinds of body types. If the style of a dress or a dress is too old, the ordinary can 

not attract people's attention, bringing a strong visual impact to people.  

In this design, the basic style of the dress has carried out a second transformation, focusing on the sleeves, waist 

and shoulders of the transformation and re-creation, and cutting off on both sides of the sleeves to increase the 

visual impact and sense of hierarchy. And pulling the waist line on the dress can make the curve of the human 

body more obvious. Creative transformation on the coat shape through some common fabric transformation 

techniques, will make the environmental protection theme more prominent. And the hollow-out processing is 

applied in the second set of the back, so the clothing shape is full of hierarchy and more changeable. Finally, the 

silhouette of the coat is enlarged to increase the sense of volume of the clothing and make it more attractive.  

4.4.2. Production of sample clothes  

Before making clothes, the production of clothes samples is also an indispensable and important lin[6](Min Yue., 

2015).  

k. Because often the clothing can not be directly made into the clothing effect diagram, is the need to be constantly 

changed can be completed. Therefore, the sample clothing of clothing is the best way to modify the clothing, 

through the production of the sample clothing to see what the style, size and details of the clothing need to be 

adjusted and changed.  

As shown in figure 10and figure 11:  

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Figure 10: Sample clothes making drawing front and side.  

  
Figure 11: Sample garment making drawing back and side.  

4.4.3. Garment making  

The production of ready clothing is particularly important in the creation of the whole design, which is the most 

intuitive expression technique of clothing renderings. The costume design series of "Environmental Protection 

Art" adopts the asymmetric decorative effect, and has been created twice in some places, so that the whole clothing 

has a sense of hierarchy and visual impact, so that the seemingly thin design becomes more full. Fabric 

transformation, as the name suggests, is to transform the fabric twice on the original basis, to make it more creative 

and practical[7](Ma Jian, 2010). Fabric transformation not only needs to have the ornamental value, but also needs 

to reflect a certain value in the clothing. These two points can be fully reflected in the texture and texture of the 

fabric.  

As the backbone and texture of fabric transformation, it plays a key role in the final product, because it is its visual 

beauty and expression mode are the way to express the final effect.Dupont paper, retro newspaper printing PVC 

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and transparent veil fabric is overlapped and folded to express the surface texture in the garment making. And all 

the production of small texture superposition processes could make the seemingly messy fabrics reflect a certain 

sense of space, concave and convex feeling, weight and volume. On the above basis, in order to highlight the 

concept of environmental protection, the acrylic pigment is used to process the clothing, so that the orange acrylic 

pigment can express stains, increase the visual impact, let people feel the concept of environmental protection 

more intuitively, and use the fluorescent orange line to lock the clothing edge processing, echoing the orange 

acrylic pigment.  

In order to increase the sense of series, in the later stage of the second set of ready-to-wear production, the fabric 

used in the first set of ready-to-wear dress is added to the skirt of the second set of clothing, and it is pleated, and 

the first set of clothing has more sense and continuity of series.  

We can see the design concept become more perfect through the two sets of garment effect. Clothing has become 

more complete through constant attempt and modification processed in the aspect of details from the thin fabric, 

not rich level, small size and not comfortable neck structure problem at the beginning.   

See the pictures as shown in figure 12 and figure 13:  

  
Figure 12: Garment making detail drawing.  

  
Figure 13: Detail drawing.  

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5. Conclusions   

In the process of environmental protection, clothing design can be said to be the most intuitive means to express, 

in the face of environmental protection theme display, we have to mention its visual art value. First of all, the 

design of environmental protection clothing brings us the most direct feeling is the reduction. From the idea of 

environmental protection that the designer wants to express, we can restore the fact of environmental pollution 

visually, so that we can arouse the resonance of the public's environmental awareness faster and more 

directly[8](Du Ping, 2016). Secondly, the visual experience of garbage pollution or air pollution in the design 

theme is the main embodiment of designers' creativity.  

References  

Hu Xiaoqing. New direction of clothing design —— Clothing design advocated by green fashion recycling 

consumerism [J]. Jiannan Literature (Classic Teaching Garden), 2012 (04): 225.  

Feng Xiaohan, Yang Rongrong. Green trade barriers and the Upgrading of China's textile industry [J]. Private 

Science and technology, 2011 (05): 52 + 5.  

Yang Tao. Thinking on the problems related to the environmental pollution of plastic packaging [J]. Plastic 

packaging, 2020,30 (05): 22-31 + 9.  

Lu Aixiang. Discuss the application of plastic art in modern costume design [J]. Art Review, 2016 (04): 12-13.  

Eunice. Classic [J]. Fashion Beijing, 2019 (08): 178-179.  

Min Yue. The influence of clothing design on clothing structure and clothing management [J]. Textile Report, 

2015 (05): 48-49 + 74.  

Ma Jian, Yao Guizhen. Analysis of fabric reconstruction art in textile clothing design [J]. Light textile Industry 

and Technology, 2010,39 (04): 65-67 + 86  

Du Ping. Environmental protection fashion in clothing design [J]. Fashion of Tomorrow, 2016 (20): 34.  

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