UP UNTIL two months ago, I was both clueless and carefree about the origins of my clothes. I wanted high fashion and I wanted it quick, trendy pieces to be worn this season and probably discarded the next. When I admitted this to world renowned eco fashion designer Rebecca Earley, I anticipated a recriminating glare. But instead, she smiled with understanding.

Rebecca, too, much to my surprise, loves the high street. In fact, the day I meet her at the TechnoThreads Exhibition at Trinity College, she's wearing a navy cropped jacket from Coast.

'This is the difficult thing for anybody interested in eco fashion to deal with. I have all kinds of ways of dealing with my guilt. But if you love something you'll buy it. However, what you do is you wash them less, sponge clean, brush down, because 85 per cent of the environmental impact from any garment comes from washing. And whatever you do don't ever dump it. Update it, pass it on, or sell it on eBay,' she says.

Recently, Marks & Spencer took the initiative to relabel its garments, encouraging customers to wash garments at environmentally friendly temperatures of 30°C. It's amazing how such a simple thing can make all the difference. Rebecca is a rousing, articulate and dignified speaker who at all times resists the urge to rant. Despite her loyal championing of the ethical fashion movement, she's a realist. She doesn't expect people who have lived and loved a life of fast fashion to suddenly spurn it. She does, however, expect us to be more questioning, to educate ourselves and to make simple changes in our daily consumption of clothing.

I was particularly taken by her idea of organising a swap shop with friends. 'Get 10 pals round, bringing three dresses each that they haven't worn in a while. Get some Cava or Prosecco, have a little swap shop. You negate the need to go out and get the bus to the high street, you won't spend any money, your friends will love you for it and best of all you'll have a great time,' she says excitedly. Rebecca was impressed with the TechnoThreads Exhibition and with good reason. From spray on clothing to fermented Guinness dresses, it's an aesthetically stunning display of the extent to which science and fashion are inextricably linked. It's worth a visit, even for those who wouldn't necessarily have an interest in fashion.

The 38 year old London-based designer wasn't always involved in eco-fashion. Like most students looking to make their creative mark on the world, she went down the conceptual high fashion route during her days at the prestigious Central St Martins.

'At that point, I was quite a punk. I used pins, barbed wire, spanners, anything I could find that was the complete antithesis of florals. It was a lot to do with being 24 and living in London, single, out clubbing, being part of a real vibey culture. You want to reflect that in your work, so it seemed very natural at the time,' she recalls.

Rebecca's experimental and original approach of using real objects on cloth earned her a reputation as a 'Maverick of Textiles' and a wealth of celebrity clients.

'Bjork bought five pieces of my collection and the next thing I know it's on her album cover. Within a few months of graduating, I had Cher, Kylie Minogue and Bjork wearing my stuff,' she announces proudly. However, after a few years of single handedly fulfilling large orders for retailers, she burned out and had to temporarily stop production of her fashion label BEarley. Luckily for Rebecca, she had begun working at Chelsea University of Art and Design, which suited her both financially and creatively. She could educate the next generation of design while continuing to develop her own label.

It was a job that first introduced her to the world of ethical fashion. 'I was hearing conversations in the staff room and I began to pick up information as to what we should be doing better and what it is that's wrong. So I went back to my design studio and thought, 'What can I do to clean up my studio and my production?' I started cutting out all water pollution, using recycled fabrics and I developed a print technique which had no chemical pollution at all,' she says.

Since then, Rebecca hasn't looked back. She designs her wonderfully sexy eco wares from a little wooden eco lodge in the garden. Her sumptuous and colourful fleece scarves, which are made from recycled plastic, are her biggest seller. Rebecca is big into 'upcycling', an industry practice of reusing disposable goods and turning them into something better. Among her many design achievements to date, Rebecca has designed a sweatshirt that never needs washing. She also brought a team together to design an eco wedding dress. She curated an exhibition in London in 2006, the first eco fashion exhibition. 'It was the most visited exhibition the Craft Council had done in 10 years,' she says proudly.

Only an hour with Rebecca and I was already rallied into adopting more eco friendly practices. 'My aim is that when the students leave our hallowed halls, they are the most aware that they can be. They won't get this education again; they'll be too busy working in the design room of a high street store. I am not expecting them to go off after college and set up their own eco design company or only work for ethical clothing companies. That would shoot them in the foot. But I would like them to take the principles with them and find ways to make them work in their future jobs,' she says.

Rebecca repeatedly points out the extent to which designers have an inherent social responsibility to their staff, to their factories and their customers. As I learned from attending the Fashion Evolution seminar, designers need to realise that taking steps environmentally will benefit them financially. And let's face it, if economics doesn't sway them into making the shift, I don't know what will.

By Andrea Byrne

THE LATEST ECO DESIGN NEWS, FROM RE-EXIST