High Arctic to High Fashion
MOSAiC Sea Ice Premieres at New York Fashion Week
The Sea Ice Collection is an education and public outreach, Art-Science-Fashion & Technology cross-pollination experiment that recontextualizes the Arctic Ocean through the lens of sustainable practices in fashion. The Sea Ice Collection materializes climate science and tells the story of the diminishing Arctic sea ice cover through fabric pattern and garment design. Each garment represents a different facet of textile sustainability and is patterned with different crystalline structures of Arctic sea ice through two annual cycles of growth and melt. The goal is to shift the conversation about climate change away from environmental doomism towards the beauty of all that remains, raise awareness about brand consciousness, and reorient consumer habits towards sustainable practices.
The Sea Ice Collection is wearable art that tells a story. When thin sections of sea ice shaved down from ice cores are placed between polarized light, a kaleidoscope of colors reveal the individual crystals. We've printed these crystalline structures of Arctic sea ice onto fabrics that represent different facets of textile sustainability. The Sea Ice Collection is the habitual ritual of getting dressed every morning wrapped in beautiful reminders that the Arctic Ocean exists—feeling climate science instead of reading about it—and weaving it into personal style and identity in a way only fashion can offer and proving that style is sustainable and sustainability is style.
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Fashion is a phenomenological interface between our internal and external experiences. Arctic sea ice is a boundary, an interface between the ocean and atmosphere that regulates exchanges of gases, heat and light between water and sky. Just as our skin helps regulate our body’s temperature, Arctic sea ice helps regulate the earth’s temperature, and it is, scientifically named, a fabric of crystals that changes throughout the year. This fabric is thinning and vulnerable to greater exchanges of energy between the ocean and atmosphere.
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The environmental impact of the fast fashion industry, which largely runs on the exploitation of young women, is present in virtually every area of environmental concern. The fashion industry is one of the the biggest polluters in the world—second only to the oil industry— and responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions (more than the sum total of the maritime and aviation industry combined), 20% of the world’s wastewater and 35% of the ocean’s micro plastic pollution. The facts are relentless: the textile industry is the second largest pollutant of water globally, second only to agriculture; 8,000 liters of water—what one person drinks in 7 years—is needed to make 1 pair of jeans; 2% of garment workers—of which 80% are women—earn a living wage; and, 60% of all clothing made is landfilled or incinerated within 1 year of its production with the average person throwing away 81 lbs of clothing each year.
