Joshua Katcher
According to Joshua Katcher, “In order for fashion to be truly good, the handsomeness of an object must be matched by the handsomeness of how it was made.” In other words, designers can’t just make it about the final piece, they need a clever way of explaining how that piece came to be. Obviously, designers need to make their pieces attractive, but they also have to take full responsibility for every decision they make to create that piece. They need to know how it’s made, whose hands are going to touch it, how it’s going to impact the ecosystem, and what is it going to made of. Joshua Katcher is the founder of a vegan menswear brand called Brave Gentleman and a men’s ethical website named The Discerning Brute. He uses organic, recycled, and hi-tech materials to create his high-end, sustainable, and ethically-made men’s clothing. Joshua uses specific products that are sustainable to the environment for his clothing and gets it from the garment district in New York City. For example, Brazilian future wool tweeds, twills made from recycled cotton and polyester, velvety Turkish future-silk made from recycled water bottles, and hi-teach microfibers that are EU Ecolabel Certified.
Joshua Katcher is also a fashion professor at The Parsons School of Design and he wants his students to think about every single step they take in designing a piece. As he is a strong advocate of ethical fashion and get ridding of using animals for design, he wants his students to know that using animals isn’t the only way fashion can look good. They need to start thinking of ways to approach that system differently and try to make it eco-friendly. Right now, using animals in the fashion industry is one of main problems that is hurting our environment. Some designers say that they are eco-friendly because they use wool and leather and not fur. However, that is not true because wool is also not a sustainable product. Most sheep on this planet are used for the wool industry, which is bad for the environment because it impacts the greenhouse gases and soil erosion.
Joshua communicates this specific theme of cruelty-free sustainable fashion through his clothing line and website. When one goes to his website to shop, it clearly says under each item what it is made of and gives a detailed explanation. Another way, he advocates this theme is through teaching because he uses his students and work atmosphere to spread his message and ideas to the world. He creates a domino effect because after he tells his students, they tell their friends, and the friends tell their friends. Basically, Joshua is trying to tell us that neither should we be destroying ecosystems to create fashion nor should we increase velocity of “fast-fashion.”
