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It wasn't so long ago that making a commitment to eco-friendly fashion meant spending the rest of your days cocooned in an itchy hemp kaftan - of course, you could always slip on a sack-like tee and drawstring shorts just to spice things up a bit.
These days, however, a growing band of designers are whipping up clothes that are not only environmentally conscious but style-conscious, too.
Overseas the "green chic" fashion charge is led by Katharine Hamnett, the British designer best known for her oversized political T-shirts of the '80s, who now employs thousands of workers on organic cotton farms in Third World countries to produce her Katharine E Hamnett collection (now available at Melbourne's Order & Progress). Ali Hewson, wife of U2 frontman Bono, and designer Rogan Gregory have their own popular organic Edun brand, produced under fair labour practices.
Gregory also designs eco-cotton denim collections Loomstate and Rogan, and Danish designer Peter Ingwersen has an eco-luxury label, Noir, made from organic cotton, grown on farms he set up in sub-Saharan Africa.
Closer to home, there's British-born, Byron Bay-based designer Rachel Bending, who claims to be Australia's first climate-neutral business. Her eco-fashion labels, Slingfings (clothing and bags made from recycled vintage fabrics) and Bird Textile (eco-friendly fashion and homewares) are made from natural materials and water-based dyes and manufactured using solar-powered sewing machines.
"We looked at every aspect of our business, from the freight of raw materials...to the operation of the business, to the vehicles of me and my staff, to air travel and the freight of finished goods and we calculated the entire carbon emissions for the business and then we offset that by putting funding into projects that slow global warming," she says.
In an era of fast fashion, Bending is also committed to making fashion that lasts.
"I don't personally buy into the idea of throw-away fashion," she says. "What we are doing is producing something that might cost a bit more than something that's been manufactured, often under slave labour-like conditions in China, but lasts a lot longer.
"We've also taken a classic approach to the garments we design...we make fashionable classics, which means people can still be wearing them in 10 or 15 years' time."
Other local labels doing their bit for the planet include Melbourne label Skin and Threads, which makes "contemporary basics" from natural and organic fabrics, Sara Victoria's Organic Softwears, whose feminine designs are fashioned from "the finest certified organic cottons and wools", and Ashley Tell's Melbourne-based Darling Clementine collection of dresses, made from vintage fabrics sourced from around the globe.
Leading the way when it comes to ethical fashion are Cath Braid and Kirsten Ainsworth, of Sydney label Caravana, who overcame community opposition to Muslim women working in Pakistan's remote Chitral Valley to provide employment opportunities to more than 500 Muslim women across the region. The women are now able to earn money through embroidering and embellishing the pair's decorative and colourful designs. | 
