°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â

You have a hybrid in the garage, solar panels on the roof and drought-resistant native plants in your yard. But what's in your clothes closet? Join seven prominent sustainable fashion designers and consultants for a Sunday, May 18, symposium, "Designing with Conscience," sponsored by the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â Davis Design Museum.

The symposium, intended for design students, design professionals, clothing retailers and environmentally conscious consumers, will explore major issues facing the emerging sustainable fashion movement -- including how much clothing we really need, how our desire for new things can be balanced with our concern for the environment, and how sustainability can be made attractive to the consumer.

The symposium will be held from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Technocultural Studies Building on the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â Davis campus (just south of the Art Building). It is free and open to the public.

Among other goals, green fashion designers seek to reduce the 2.5 billion pounds of post-consumer textile waste generated in the United States each year -- the equivalent of 10 pounds for every person -- and to find alternatives to commercial cotton, whose production consumes 25 percent of all pesticides used in this country.

Some predict eco-fashion will go the way of organic foods and drinks, which, according to the Organic Trade Association, are now a $23 billion-a-year industry.

Symposium speakers will be:

• Tierra Del Forte, former designer for Mudd Jeans in New York City and now owner of the Oakland, Calif.-based Del Forte Denim company, which features high-end organic cotton clothing.
• Elissa Loughman, environmental analyst at Patagonia in Ventura, Calif., which is pioneering the use of recycled polyester made from used soda bottles and has earned widespread praise for its Common Threads program, in which consumers turn in used clothes for recycling.
• Lynda Grose, of Muir Beach, Calif., a consultant for the Davis-based Sustainable Cotton Project, which promotes California-grown BASIC cotton, a crop that is farmed using techniques that reduce pesticide applications by as much as 73 percent. Grose has been quoted in articles about green chic in the New York Times, Newsweek and other major publications.
• Amanda Shi, a Los Angeles designer whose brand, Avita, relies on such innovative sustainable materials as recycled cashmere.
• Anna Blossom Cohen, former designer for Max Mara, Patrizia Pepe, Guess and Binicocchi in Florence, Italy, and now owner of the Portland, Ore.-based label Anna Cohen, which features sustainable fashion.
• Sasha Duerr, founding director of the San Francisco-based Permacouture Institute, a collaboration with the Trust for Conservation Innovation to encourage the exploration of fashion and textiles from the garden to the hanger.
• Tawny Holt, the Modesto-based owner of Armour sans Anguish, a line of garments constructed entirely from salvaged and recycled materials.

Susan Taber Avila, professor of design at °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â Davis, will moderate the discussion.

For more information about the symposium or concurrent "Fashion Conscious" exhibit of sustainable garments, footwear and accessories at the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â Davis Design Museum, visit .