Fashion’s Best Friend: Our Skin

H&M Spring2011 Conscious Collection; all pieces are made from organic cotton

We love fashion so much that we cover our skin in it.  From the clothes on our bodies, stockings on our legs, shoes on our feet, and scarfs around our necks.  For almost every inch of human skin, you can dress it with some kind of fashion item.

Although our skin is fashion’s best friend, we don’t often think about our skin’s relationship with fashion.  For fashion to bring satisfaction, the emotional high far surpasses the physical realm of comfort, health, and well-being.

These days, we hear a lot about organic and natural fabrics, how they are beneficial for the body and skin.  How many times have you heard this when a salesperson presents you with a cotton shirt or silk dress, “Miss, this fabric allows your skin to breathe”?

I was wondering about this the other day.  I understand that, for every hair on your body, there is a corresponding skin pore.  But what does it actually mean, ‘letting your skin breathe’?  Does skin really breathe?

Apparently not.  For starters, as humans we absorb oxygen through our noses and mouths and in our lungs.  It has nothing to do with the skin.  Whichever copywriter that came up with the phrase, ‘let the skin breathe’, is truly clever.  Because, in reality, s/he means the reverse: that if you use a certain product or wear a certain ‘breathable’ fabric, the thing it actually does is that it minimizes the blockage of your pores.  False advertising?  Borderline if you ask me.

Anyway, back to fashion and fabrics.  The best fabrics that let you skin ‘breathe’, so-to-speak, are silk and cotton.  Silk is a light fabric that allows gives a balanced approach to your body’s temperature control.  Amazingly, it provides the body a balance with the outside world, as it is warm in cool weather and wool in warm weather.  Cotton, on the other hand, is known for being the least irritable to one’s skin.  Organic cotton is especially good as it is grown without the use of chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers.

Emma Watson for People Tree, “Love from Emma”, Spring 2011 Collection

The trendy word today is eco-fashion or sustainable fashion.  Every notable brand like Nike, Levis, Gap, Stella McCartney, H&M, and celebrity collections like Emma Watson for People Tree have jumped on the bandwagon and come out with lines made of organic cotton.  Besides being good to your self environment, i.e., your body, sustainable fashion also means that a fashion product, from source to design concept, manufacture, and retail, does not go through any process of hurting the people who it comes in contact with.  That means there were no chemicals injected into the plants, no environmentally-harmful waste in the soil, no sweatshops or under-aged labor when the pieces are sewn.

Of course fashion has to look good.  However, I believe you always look more beautiful if you are also good to your body, soul, and surrounding world.  Call me Asian or Buddhist, but I believe in balance and peaceful co-existence.

(you can find the images on the following sites: Upper image, Lower image)