Desert Chic And Sustainability At Mara Hoffman
Designer: Mara Hoffman
Date: Thursday, February 8, 2018
Location: Remote (literally)
Jewish? Sicilian and Jewish.
Lately there’s been a lot of talk about sustainability in the fashion industry, but few brands have absorbed the message as fully as Mara Hoffman. Her fall winter 2018 collection was made entirely out of low-waste and recycled fabrics.
In lieu of a show or presentation, Hoffman’s collection was presented in the form of a lookbook. Shot in the desert, the sparse vegetation and crumbled dust provided a muted background for bold colorblocking to really shine. There were flowing prairie dresses in virginal whites and loose layering in the form of soft suiting and long puffer coats. It was a small collection, showcasing a mere 27 looks, echoing Hoffman’s minimalist philosophy.
But is it truly minimalist?
Let’s be real here: Presenting a new fashion collection and calling it “sustainable” is pretty ironic. Hoffman isn’t some bold warrior on the front lines of creating sustainability — she, along with all other brands, are part of the problem, masking her consumerism in fruitless virtue signaling. Can any fashion be truly minimalist, and truly sustainable? After all, retail survives on consumerism alone, which is why presenting new collections every season is so vital to the lifeblood of apparel companies.
Hypocrisy aside, the Hoffman collection is beautiful, its imagery hopeful and even whimsical. Perhaps it’s not hypocrisy so much as a wish — that this collection is the physical embodiment of her vision for the future, that mainstream fashion will be rid of its excesses and become a sustainable, ethical industry.
Michelle Honig is the style writer at the Forward. Contact her at [email protected]. Find her on Instagram and Twitter.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO