On the 14th of January this year I saw an advert for a contest which challenged new designers to create a red carpet dress with a sustainable edge, using sustainable fabrics. The contest was called Red Carpet Green Dress and challenged designers to make a dress suitable for a red carpet event made only from sustainable or recycled fabric/material. My initial passion has always been for fashion design and red carpet fashion so I thought I would enter it and see what would happen. I was blown away when I received a call from Suzy Amis Cameron herself to let me know I had won. My design had won the contest based on my design sketch and the need for the dress to be sustainable.

I didn’t have time to celebrate because from the time of receiving the call to being flown to LA with the dress so I had to get on the case right away so the only downside was that I had about 10 days to get it all made, from sourcing the fabric, dying it, sewing and cutting, fitting my model and everything in between…it took nearly 2 days to find the fabrics! In the end I found a lovely company and had a great chat with Maria at Majestic textiles (the only company in the U.K. specialising in organic silk bridal fabrics) who sent me express package of organic chiffon in the post, I loved the texture and quality so placed and order. I used the internet to source the fine hemp silk (again after having been sent a sample via post) I then decided to buy it to make the dress. I researched fabric to understand which fabric would best meet the criteria and opted for a dress made from organic silk and fine hemp silk. Needless to say I didn’t sleep and it took 3 days to find the fabrics I needed. It was a learning curve and I ended up dying the fabric myself in my bathroom! The challenge of designing a sustainable dress also showed me that although sourcing was difficult the next steps weren’t – it was easier to create a sustainable piece than I thought once the fabrics had been sourced. I tried my best to make the dress as ‘green’ as possible, by doing as much hand sewing as possible (I made the belt from scratch and beaded it using cranberry dyed-pearls and beads from other jewellery I had), I took my own carrier bags to the fabric supplier, used a no-waste pattern so that no excess fabric was wasted and even recycled an old belt buckle.

With the help of a lastminute.com Samata Angel team we pulled it together and I boarded a plane to LA. And so the Red Carpet Green Dress journey began! Now fast forward to the beginning of the contest for February 2012 and I am looking after the campaign under Suzy Amis Cameron’s guidance and it looks set to be bigger and better than we could have imagined.
Stay tuned!

Red Carpet Green Dress Samata Angel interview

Samata Angel