Dirty Looks: The Cool Chaos of Sustainable Fashion’s Future
Dirty Looks: The Cool Chaos of Sustainable Fashion’s Future
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When Imperfection Became the New Luxury
When Imperfection Became the New Luxury
Fashion used to worship perfection. In the 1970s and 80s, Cher’s sparkling Bob Mackie gowns shimmered under stage lights, while Madonna’s Gaultier corsets on the Blonde Ambition tour sculpted a fantasy of power and provocation. Perfection was the performance. The bigger, glossier, and more unattainable something looked, the better.
But over the last decade, perfection has lost its charm. A new kind of cool has emerged — one that celebrates wrinkles, texture, repair, and story. Sustainability, once hidden behind marketing slogans and CSR reports, has become a creative language of its own. Fashion’s newest obsession isn’t flawless beauty; it’s authenticity.
We’re now in an era where the aesthetic of imperfection signals care and consciousness. The visible seam says: someone made this. The patchwork skirt whispers: this had a past life. And that shift marks one of fashion’s biggest transformations yet.
From Glamour to Green: How We Got Here
From Glamour to Green: How We Got Here
To understand the movement toward sustainability, we have to rewind.
In the age of Cher and Madonna, fashion meant fantasy. It was a mirror for ambition, a way to shape identity through extravagance. No one cared about how or where something was made — only how it looked and what it symbolized.
Fast-forward to the early 2010s. The digital era amplified that obsession with image to an almost mechanical degree. Red carpets, Instagram grids, and influencer aesthetics turned personal style into a full-time job. Fashion was less about self-expression and more about curation.
Think Law Roach styling Ariana Grande: sleek monochrome, thigh-high boots, immaculate ponytail. It was branding through wardrobe. Every detail was deliberate. Every outfit had to be “camera ready.”
Then the algorithm turned the dream stale. The repetition, the perfection, the product drops — it all started to feel hollow. The world didn’t need more clothes; it needed more meaning. And slowly, sustainability shifted from moral checkbox to creative rebellion.
Ariana Grande’s sculpted stage looks reflect fashion’s early 2010s obsession with polish and performance. Source: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
The Visual Language of Sustainability
The Visual Language of Sustainability
Once upon a time, “sustainable” meant neutral basics and hemp tote bags. Now, it means couture made from repurposed lace, bio-fabricated leather, and hand-stitched denim that proudly shows its wear.
Stella McCartney laid the groundwork. She removed fur and leather from her collections long before it was fashionable, proving ethics could coexist with elegance. Her collaborations with LVMH introduced next-generation materials — Mylo (mushroom-based leather, which I talked about in my last blog, feel free to read here!), grape leather, and plant-protein sequins — innovations that expanded luxury’s vocabulary (Time, 2023).
Stella McCartney’s runway collections blend innovation and ethics, proving that sustainable materials can look bold, modern, and luxurious. Source: Getty Images/Stella McCartney
Marine Serre took sustainability and made it sensual. Her “Regenerated” collections are built from vintage scarves, lace tablecloths, and thrifted silks, all reworked into futuristic silhouettes. Every garment carries a label telling its previous life — “tablecloth,” “deadstock denim,” “vintage scarf” — like a poetic archive.
Then there’s PANGAIA, where fashion meets lab science. The brand’s materials — from seaweed fiber to natural dyes derived from food waste — are engineered for comfort, color, and conscience. Its aesthetic is simple, but its technology is radical.
And Ann Demeulemeester, the queen of poetic imperfection, captures the feeling of sustainability without ever needing the label. Her FW24 collection was an ode to fragility: black tailoring frayed at the edges, silk blouses that looked aged and alive, threads deliberately left undone. It was beauty as process — restraint instead of excess.
Together, these designers have redefined luxury as emotional durability: clothes made to matter, not just to sell.
Why Imperfection Became Aspirational
Why Imperfection Became Aspirational
The rise of sustainable style isn’t just a design movement; it’s a cultural response.
After a decade of overproduction and “perfect” influencer feeds, imperfection started to feel refreshing. The thrifted, the torn, the handmade — all signaled authenticity in a sea of sameness. The wrinkles, the mismatched textures, the evidence of care became visual shorthand for honesty.
Socially conscious consumers wanted more than aesthetics. They wanted transparency, craftsmanship, and individuality. Thrifting, upcycling, and customization became tools of self-expression. A 2024 study found that Gen Z buyers are significantly more likely than Millennials to purchase secondhand clothing — not only to save money, but to build identity through uniqueness (Masserini, 2024).
In other words, sustainability stopped being moral homework. It became personal style.
Billie Eilish has turned her influence into activism, championing sustainability through her Support + Feed initiative and thrift-inspired wardrobe. Source: Zoe Sher
Sustainability Goes Pop
Sustainability Goes Pop
Fashion has always danced to music’s rhythm, and this new aesthetic of imperfection is no exception. Artists have become fashion’s most visible sustainability advocates - not through slogans, but through styling.
Lorde’s Solar Power visuals traded the glam of her Melodrama era for linen, sunlight, and skin. The clothes felt lived in, not styled. It was sustainability as serenity.
Billie Eilish, by contrast, weaponized thrift. Her oversized silhouettes — sourced secondhand or made from deadstock fabrics — turned anti-glamour into a rebellion against the fast-fashion cycle (Li et al., 2024).
Ethel Cain brought Americana decay into the conversation: reworked wedding gowns, faded lace, and fabrics that looked touched by time.
These artists proved that authenticity photographs better than perfection. Their looks, like their lyrics, turned vulnerability into power.
The Charli xcx Effect
The Charli xcx Effect
Ok, maybe it's not just Charli, but she's always my favorite reference.
I know I’m always bringing it back to music, but I’ve been super inspired by the recent Ann Demeulemeester work as well as Charli experimenting with sustainability and the broken, kind of almost "dirty" looks.
My favorite stylist at the moment, Chris Horan, has been killing it with this, famously styling Charli for a few years now. See ADÉLA’s “SexOnTheBeat” music video to know what I'm talking about as far as his incredible styling goes. Here, I also want to reference Charli’s sustainable Met Gala look from 2024—the patchworked vintage tee dress—because it’s the perfect example of making sustainability feel punk and pretty at the same time.
At the 2024 Met Gala, Charli wore a Marni gown made entirely of vintage t-shirts from the 1950s to 70s, each hand-stitched into an abstract patchwork. “The white tee is classic, punk, comfortable, sexy, casual all at once,” she told Vogue in 2024. Styled by Horan, the look blurred the line between rebellion and refinement.
A year later, she returned to the Met in Ann Demeulemeester, styled again by Horan: black feathers, undone tailoring, and gothic fluidity. It wasn’t marketed as sustainable, but it carried the same energy: a commitment to longevity, craftsmanship, and creative imperfection.
Horan’s work, from Charli to ADÉLA, captures what I think of as “emotional dishevelment” — clothes that breathe, crease, and live. That’s the real language of sustainability: something that’s not afraid to feel alive.
Charli XCX’s 2024 Met Gala look by Marni redefined red carpet sustainability — a patchworked gown crafted entirely from repurposed vintage tees. Photo: Terrence O'Connor/Vogue
Sustainability as Storytelling
Sustainability as Storytelling
The brands that endure don’t treat sustainability as a side project. They make it the plot.
Patagonia is the moral anchor of the movement. Its “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign told customers to repair before replacing, flipping consumer logic on its head. Every product is backed by lifetime repair and activism — sustainability as service, not slogan.
Girlfriend Collective applied the same transparency to activewear. Their site lists every factory and fabric source, showing exactly how leggings made from recycled bottles enter the supply chain. They built a community by showing the process rather than hiding it.
And Marine Serre’s Regenerated tags turn every garment into autobiography. When you read “tablecloth” or “deadstock denim” on a label, you don’t just see material — you see history. That honesty resonates.
To be frank, consumers just aren’t naive anymore. Greenwashing — the performative “eco” marketing with minimal action behind it — doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Studies show that people prefer brands that admit their limits, that say we’re trying instead of we’re perfect (Shaari et al., 2025).
The future belongs to the transparent, not the polished.
The Future of Fashion: Circular, Transparent, and Tech-Driven
The Future of Fashion: Circular, Transparent, and Tech-Driven
Circular Fashion
Circular Fashion
Resale and rental platforms like Depop, The RealReal, and Vestiaire Collective have made reuse aspirational. Even luxury houses like Gucci and Balenciaga have launched buy-back and “pre-loved” initiatives (Mintel, 2024). Ownership has become fluid; the value now lies in longevity, not possession.
Material Innovation
Material Innovation
Next-gen fabrics are rewriting what “eco” looks like. Stella McCartney’s bio-sequins eliminate microplastics; PANGAIA’s grape-leather sidesteps animal agriculture; regenerative cotton farming replenishes soil instead of depleting it (Time, 2023). Sustainability is no longer about sacrifice — it’s about invention.
Radical Transparency
Radical Transparency
Technology is transforming accountability. Blockchain-based tags let shoppers trace a garment’s entire journey from seed to shelf, while AI systems now audit corporate claims to flag potential greenwashing (Theodorakopoulos et al., 2025). Transparency is becoming part of the design process itself.
Creative Collaboration
Creative Collaboration
What’s even more exciting is how culture drives it. Brands like PANGAIA collaborate with artists and musicians to make eco-fashion desirable. Beyoncé’s IVY PARK has experimented with sustainable fabrics, merging athleticism and ethics. These projects prove that sustainability sells best when it looks cool.
The future of fashion is sustainable. Source: Alamy
Why It Matters: Beyond the Trend
Why It Matters: Beyond the Trend
Sustainability isn’t just a passing aesthetic; it’s a cultural reset. The conversation has expanded beyond “saving the planet.” It’s about redefining value, beauty, and longevity. When something is designed to last — materially or emotionally — it resists disposability culture.
The “dirty look” symbolizes that shift perfectly. Raw hems, visible stitching, mismatched dyes — they remind us of process and imperfection. It’s fashion that feels alive, rather than airbrushed. That’s why it resonates so deeply in a digital world built on simulation.
Fashion used to hide its workings. Now, it puts them on display — and that transparency has become its most beautiful detail.
The Beauty of Dirty Looks
The Beauty of Dirty Looks
Sustainability once belonged to activists and analysts. Today, it belongs to artists.
Designers like Ann Demeulemeester, stylists like Chris Horan, and artists like Charli XCX are redefining what luxury means — not flawless, but felt. Their work proves that imperfection can be the most compelling form of beauty.
The new definition of style isn’t about polish; it’s about presence. When the seams show, when the edges fray, we see humanity — and that’s what fashion has been missing for too long.
The future of fashion is neither spotless nor sterile. It’s expressive, intentional, sustainable — a creative chaos that honors both the planet and the people behind every stitch.
That’s the cool chaos of sustainable fashion.
References
References
FEMMUSIC. (2025, July 9). ADÉLA — The Provocateur [Article]. https://femmusic.com/2025/07/09/adela-the-provocateur/
InStyle. (2025, May 6). Charli XCX channels gothic glam in Ann Demeulemeester at the 2025 Met Gala. https://www.instyle.com/charli-xcx-raven-bird-met-gala-2025-11728764
Li, X., Zhou, H., & Yang, F. (2024). How perceived sustainability influences consumer behavior in apparel. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 11094. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-80279-4
Masserini, L. (2024). Is Generation Z more inclined than Generation Y to buy secondhand clothing? Social Indicators Research, 169(2), 401–419. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-023-03230-1
Mintel. (2024). Luxury fashion and the circular economy: Opportunities in resale and rental. https://www.mintel.com
Patagonia. (n.d.). Our footprint. Patagonia. https://www.patagonia.com/our-footprint/
Persistence Market Research. (2025). Top sustainable clothing companies in 2025. https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/blog/top-sustainable-clothing-companies-in-2025
Shaari, H., Aziz, N. A., & Rahim, R. A. (2025). Sustainable style: Trends and challenges of green marketing in apparel. Journal of Marketing Research and Practice, 9(2), 113–129. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23949643251121309
Theodorakopoulos, L., Nguyen, H., & Park, E. (2025). AI for fashion transparency and greenwashing detection. arXiv Preprint arXiv:2509.26017. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26017
Time. (2023, July 12). Stella McCartney’s sustainability innovations with LVMH. https://time.com/6302562/stella-mccartney-sustainability-interview-lvmh/
V Magazine. (2024, March 3). Ann Demeulemeester FW24: Beauty of imperfection. https://www.vmagazine.com/article/ann-demeulemeester-fall-2024-beauty-of-imperfection/
Vogue. (2024, May 6). Charli XCX’s Met Gala dress made from patchworked vintage T-shirts (Marni). https://www.vogue.com/article/charli-xcx-met-gala-2024-marni-t-shirt-dress
Weavabel. (2022, September 5). 8 sustainable luxury brands to look out for — Stella McCartney profile. https://weavabel.com/blog/sustainable-luxury-brands/
Wikipedia. (2025). Marine Serre. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Serre
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