SUSTAINABLE ROUTES CY: A tool for aware fashionistas in Cyprus.

A term that we hear a lot for the last few years is “Sustainable Fashion”. Others feel connected to it and others think of it as a trend. The truth is that Sustainable fashion is not a trend. It’s the way things started out and somewhere on the way, we lost our path.

So, what does it mean and what can we do to be sustainable fashionistas? First, all you have to do is read the Fashion Revolution Manifesto. Sign it and take a screenshot to have it always in your mobile. You can find it here: https://www.fashionrevolution.org/manifesto/

All Fashion Revolutionaries love fashion. What connects us and made as grow so much within the years, is the fact that we don’t want our clothes to destroy our planet or to exploit humans. According to Wikipedia, Sustainability is “the capacity for the biosphere and human civilization to coexist”. If you want to understand what it means for the fashion industry, it’s the ability to produce garments at the lowest cost for the environment and the planet’s precious resources, and as human beings with the virtues of consciousness and free will, to do our best to extend their lives to the maximum.  In addition,  we  respect the workers and the people who make them, from the farmer till the person who delivers them to us. The supply chain of the garments is so long and so disconnected, and the operational system of the fashion industry has been working for so many years in an unsustainable way, that it is absolutely understandable to feel frustrated, hopeless and stuck into a never ending loop.

We decided to take the need for transparency one step further and figured out a way to help the Cypriots on this journey. Hopefully we want to inspire more people to do so. Fashion Revolution Colombia showed as the way and we recorded all sustainable fashion initiatives of Cyprus, which we came across so far. That is why we created SUSTAINABLE ROUTES CY.

You can find it here .

We’ll be updating  it whenever we have new entries.

Our goal is to fill the island’s map with colourful pins of hope for a fair, safe and transparent fashion industry.

Having the stateents of the Manifesto in our minds and having understood what sustainability is, we decided to create an interactive, easy to use, Google Map of Cyprus, where we record the following categories :

SUSTAINABLE DESIGNERS.

ZERO WASTE DESIGNERS.

CHARITY & PRELOVED CLOTHES SHOPS.

RENTALS.

SEAMSTRESSES & TAILORS.

REPAIR SHOES & ACCESSORIES.

CRAFTING WORKSHOPS & CYPRIOT TRADITION.

AWARENESS SCHOOLS & INSTITUTIONS.

This is a guide for all aware fashionistas, to have on their smartphones and follow on the island.

    

If you have a look at the map, you will see that on the left box, all categories have their own coloured pin, the explanation of what they contain and the names of the initiatives in alphabetical order. If you press on the pin, you will read more info about it.

Underneath Limassol, you will see many pins together in the sea. These are the online initiatives, based in Cyprus, which you can find on the web.

As SUSTAINABLE DESIGNERS we have included the ones who use sustainable materials, such as organic natural fibers, recycled polyester and other kinds of yarns, and clean recycled metals for jewellery.

ZERO WASTE DESIGNERS are the ones who use vintage, scraps (unused leftover fabrics) and preloved garments to create new ones.

CHARITY & PRELOVED CLOTHES SHOPS, RENTALS, SEAMSTRESSES & TAILORS and REPAIR SHOES & ACCESSORIES all have to do with extending the life of our garments. Apart from renting, mending, upcycling, downcycling, reusing and donating, you can also swap them.

CRAFTING WORKSHOPS & CYPRIOT TRADITION and AWARENESS SCHOOLS & INSTITUTIONS have to do mostly with learning a craft to implement it on your clothes and being educated. Also, Fashion Revolution strongly believes in cultural appropriation and encourages all crafters to preserve their cultural inheritance. It’s important to maintain the knowledge of the past and modernize it.

  

This map is a free tool for the participants and the users.

Have fun exploring it and feeling good about your choices!!!

A great thank you to Hasmik Matevosyan for being a key contributor and to the whole Fashion Revolution Cyprus team for their valuable collaborative input, as well as Niamh Tuft and Angelica Salazar for their guidance and support.