A faculty member and a recent graduate each have won first-place awards from an international apparel organization for their work in one of the hottest new areas of the fashion industry—sustainable design.

Janet Hethorn, associate professor of fashion and apparel studies, and Brenda Greene, CHEP ’06, earned top honors in their respective categories at the 2006 Design Exhibition of the International Textile and Apparel Association (ITAA). The juried exhibition was held in November in San Antonio.

Hethorn’s winning design was a coat she constructed entirely by recycling portions of used garments, and Greene’s creation was an ensemble with detachable pieces that can be adapted to warmer or cooler weather conditions.

While sustainability is a term more often heard in connection with renewable energy production or environmentally sound farming methods, the concept also has applications in clothing design. In Hethorn’s case, she reused thrift-shop items instead of purchasing new fabrics for her coat. Greene based her design on the premise that if an outfit can be changed to fit different seasons and a variety of fashion moods, it will be worn for much longer than a conventional garment.

“This year, the ITAA had ‘sustainable design’ as a new category in the exhibition because sustainability has become an important focus for fashion,” Hethorn says. “There’s a realization that we throw away clothing all the time that is still good, and that’s a very wasteful thing to do. People used to routinely alter and update and recycle clothing, so in a sense, this is an old concept that’s gained new momentum.”

At the ITAA exhibition, Hethorn won the faculty-level Educators for Socially Responsible Apparel Business Award for Sustainable Design. Greene, who designed her contest entry during her senior year while working with Mary Jo Kallal, professor of fashion and apparel studies, won the undergraduate-level Paris American Academy Scholarship. The award supports four weeks of summer study at the Paris American Academy in France.

Hethorn’s idea for a coat made from recycled clothing began to take shape when she accompanied her daughter to a thrift shop in California. While her daughter was browsing for vintage clothing to wear, Hethorn noticed a storm coat with a green, zip-out lining that she says caught her eye immediately.

“The lining was in great shape, and I liked the idea of using it in a different way—as an outer layer—to show off something that doesn’t usually get seen,” she says. The wool gabardine lining, with zipper and cloth label intact and visible, eventually became the vest-like top portion of the coat.

By the time she was done, Hethorn had used parts of seven items she found in thrift stores, including a yellow floral pajama top for the coat’s lining, the legs from a pair of men’s pants for sleeves, a detachable collar from another coat (she returned the collarless coat to the store for re-resale) and an old purse strap for a belt. Along the way, she stitched traditional bound buttonholes, reversing the way the coat wrapped in order to fit a woman’s style, and embroidered a design down the front of the bodice.

“I had a lot of fun designing it,” Hethorn says. “It was like putting together the pieces of a puzzle to solve all the different design problems I encountered. I can’t go to thrift stores now and look at things the same way I used to.”

She says she’s incorporated recycled items and fabrics in previous designs and requires students in some of her classes to do so also, but she never before created a piece entirely from used clothing. Hethorn, who is writing a book about sustainable fashion, says she believes it’s a trend that is going to stick around.

“I think the concept is moving toward becoming a part of the normal design process, not a separate technique,” she says.

Greene’s design, called “Seasonal Adaptation II,” looked at sustainability from the perspective of prolonging the useful life of a particular ensemble.

“The purpose of constructing these garments was to make something that would be longer lasting, easier to use and more appealing, so the consumer would feel it was worth keeping in the future,” she wrote in her competition entry. “This ensemble is adaptable to extreme weather patterns and style preferences.”

Her design, made of all-natural hemp fabric blends, includes a jacket and cropped pants. Detachable pieces and panels allow the wearer to transform the outfit’s appearance from season to season or day to day.