Chatting About Fashion and Sustainability with Oskar Metsavaht

Protecting the environment is something Oskar Metsavaht has cared about since his early life. Growing up, he had a strong relationship with nature, traveling with his family to explore forests and camp on mountains and beaches. In fact, it was after coming home from an expedition in the Andes that he came up with the idea of starting the Brazilian fashion brand Osklen.

In 2008, the brand launched its first project aiming at environmental education, creating clothes from recycled textiles. Prints highlighted key aspects of the green movement, such as the Earth Charter and the Kyoto Protocol.

Metsavaht believes sustainability has to be a mission, not a short-term marketing campaign.

Rio de Janeiro’s Instituto-E is Osklen’s big partner in sustainability. Nina Braga, Instituto-E’s director, says the organization’s goal is to make Brazil a point of reference in sustainable development. The institute, chaired by Metsavaht, is responsible for conducting environmental research and curatorship for Osklen’s projects, from finding new materials for original collections to being a mediator between the brand and new producers, indigenous communities, and so on.

The institute, an NGO, was established in 1999 and has a project called “e-fabric,” which consists of researching sustainable, socially conscious, eco-friendly products and materials for any fashion brand. “Because we have this relationship with Osklen, when we discover a new material, we offer them first,” Braga says. In 2011, the institute carried out an acclaimed project in partnership with Osklen for the Italian Ministry of the Environment called “Traces,” in which it assessed the social and environmental impacts of six products made with materials used by Osklen: organic cotton, recycled cotton, recycled PET bottles, pirarucu fish leather, eco-jute, and organic cotton.

For Braga, one of the greatest challenges to sustainability in Brazil is lack of scale. “The big problem with sustainable fashion in Brazil is that we don’t have a large enough production scale. So usually, products end up being expensive. Most people can’t see the added value behind those clothes, only the final price tag. In other countries, people are more aware of this, but here in Brazil, we still need this kind of education,” she said. The country’s current economic crisis is another factor holding back growth. “We are living a huge crisis that affects all industries. Consumers would really like to be able to buy those products, but right now, this is not a priority,” she added.

As for the future of sustainable fashion, Braga believes there is in fact a market in Brazil. “The fashion industry produces a huge amount of waste. And the environmental scenario is increasingly worse, so people are starting to pay attention and be concerned about this. So I do think there is a sustainable future for fashion here. People tend to start buying less and buying better, bringing ethics and aesthetics together.”

We had a chance to talk to Metsavaht about Brazil’s fashion scene, the future, and, of course, sustainability.

VICE: How did you come up with the idea of making eco-friendly fashion?
Oskar Metsavaht: At home, I was always taught about environmental preservation and social equality by my parents’ actions. My last name means “forester” in Estonian. My grandfather had a great friend in Porto Alegre [in Southern Brazil] who was one of the first — or maybe the first — Brazilian environmentalist, Lutzenberger. We visited his house a lot when we were kids. Also, my father, who loved outdoor sports, taught me how to appreciate and respect nature.

With all that I learned at home, I started to travel and go on expeditions where I would camp in the woods, on beaches, and snowy mountains. So much so that Osklen started as an outdoors brand, as the idea was born after an expedition in the Andes.

In Rio, we’ve had Rio-92, the largest sustainability conference in history, and I was lucky enough to be there. It was where I learned about sustainable development, which was not only romantic regarding social equality and preservation but also a way of doing business considering the relevance of those issues.

In the late 90s, I started to develop projects with materials of sustainable origin, and I realized I could align my creativity and experience to transform them through the fashion language and quality Osklen intends to offer. I wanted to show how those raw materials and their origins are noble, because at the time, most people couldn’t see that. And if you can’t see them that way, you won’t buy them. After all, our consumer society was looking for current trends, for what was cool and luxurious. But my theory, which has been with me for 18 years, is that such vision is outdated, very last millennium. That idea had nothing to do with my values, which ended up being expressed in new sustainable-development thoughts and philosophies. Thoughts that are now part of Agenda 21, which points to the paths toward a world in the 21st century.

And definitely, I could see then that not only was this a good cause Osklen was supporting, but it would also be an important matter for the future, and not just a new trend.

Although sustainability is an important topic in fashion abroad, from haute couture to fast fashion, we don’t see those concerns (or trends) here in Brazil. Why do you think that happens?
Simply because “Fashion” does not exist in Brazil. What we have here is fashion, with a small F. Unfortunately, we are a country with a low cultural level, in both arts and design. Here we just follow trends, and the worst thing is, we only focus on what’s superficial about trends, and we don’t even understand where they are coming from, what a creator based their concepts on and how they rendered them in their designs and ultimately a collection. Our fashion industry just goes to Europe and the US and “researches.”

For most people here, sustainability was just a “trend.” And like any other trend in fashion, it fades. But sustainability is a trend in a millenary sociological movement; it’s a way of taking action and doing projects toward paradigm shifts in our civilization. You can’t understand it like that.

But here, everything is very superficial in fashion; people believe that, if something is talked about too much, then you don’t have to do anything else about it, because what matters is what blogger X is wearing. Also, the concept of sustainability was misinterpreted; people mistake it for attitudes like being a vegan, caring for abandoned pets, and so on. Being sustainable is crucial, imperative, for a brand in the 21st st century. Brands have to have projects that change the way they develop their products, even if it takes five, ten, or 50 years. Start with small projects, with 1 percent of your production, and then grow from that. Sustainability has to be a mission, not a short-term marketing campaign.

Do you think the way Brazilians consume is changing?
I think it is, for people with a higher social and cultural level (notice here I say social and cultural, not socioeconomic level). Schools, for example, have been teaching this topic for a decade now. The next generation will be more conscious. Too bad they mix things up in their heads by bringing politics into the discussion, which can get them confused, or worse, making it a very ideological topic, instead of focusing on the entrepreneurial and social aspects of it.

How do you see Brazilian fashion lately?
I think it’s poor, a cheap copy of foreign products that doesn’t aim at and doesn’t appreciate original creators and the quality of their products. It’s driven by the market right here right now, and the worse thing is, it pretends to be fashion, because there are no institutions in Brazil to care for our quality and originality. Absolutely none. From niche media to our schools, from textile and manufacturing institutions to our own fashion designers, there is no filter, no qualification, no prestige for the original creations. If we keep going like this, I don’t see a future for our fashion. It’s a shame. These things do exist abroad, and they get only stronger and stronger.

Do you think there is a lack of sustainability-focused projects in the fashion world?
Yes. Because sustainability is innovation, there are a lot of problems regarding investments, scale, and information. It’s a lot of talk and not a lot of action. And not only is it not enough; most of the times it’s pretty ordinary, but advertised as if they were big projects, so consumers and the media love it. And so they start to be confused with more consistent projects that don’t have the same exposure and support.

Osklen has partnered with Instituto-E for years. Tell me more about your partnership.
Instituto-E came up from a set of projects I created or supported over the past 18 years through Osklen – when they were fashion-related – and other projects in other areas. So it was born at Osklen, but it became an independent branch, because I realized the sustainable development issue should not be restricted to your own business. To make the practices you develop really noble and universal, you have to share them. Of course, every company has its competitive secrets, but in this case, I trust our creativity and original style as our leverage.

It’s Instituto-E that conducts research and curatorship for our projects, in addition to developing our own, along with other institutions working with social, sustainable, environmental, and cultural development. You will find more information at institutoe.org.br.

What was your favorite collection on the runway so far? What were the materials you used?
The best is always the latest! But in terms of sustainability, all of them. However, I have two that I consider conceptually stronger. The “A21,” which we did during Rio+20, where I presented a manifesto and our sustainability concepts and practices, with a super contemporary twist, breaking paradigms (see my A21 art book). I also did that for a collection called “Chuva,” at the time of the “I’m Not a Plastic Bag” movement, another naive campaign, although I get it.

At the time, I made sure to put pieces made from plastic and alligator leather on the runway to make people stop thinking Osklen was “sustainable” in the way they label sustainable development. And to make them stop and think about plastic and animal fur, which are very naive thoughts: It’s not the plastic that is our enemy, we are, because we use it too much and dispose of it like it’s nothing. We’re poorly educated and we blame the product. When it comes to animal fur, it can be well managed, using fur from animals bred in captivity for food. Or maybe fur from ecosystem management, which is nothing but a conservation effort, unlike what many people may think. Just as an example, I used the skin from an alligator killed by IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental protection agency, and plastic from sustainable origin. I did that exactly to expose the misinformation, which usually leads a lot of society to have sometimes over-the-top opinions about the meaning of sustainable development, which can be achieved only through environmental preservation and social equality that allows the inclusion of new production practices in the fashion industry.

This article was paid for by Copenhagen Fashion Summit and was created independently from VICE’s editorial staff.