Consider the following responses to the same, straightforward, question: “How would you define discount tiffany fashion?” Frida Giannini, Gucci creative director: “Quality items that stand the test of time – it is this concept of sustainability, symbolised by a timeless handbag that you wear again and again, and can pass on, that I am always thinking of when I design.” Oscar de la Renta, designer, brand founder: “Sustainable fashion implies a commitment to the traditional techniques, and not just the art, of making clothes. I work today in the same way that I first learnt in the ateliers of Balenciaga and Lanvin 50 years ago. We need to ensure that the next generation of seamstresses and tailors have the skills necessary to develop clothes that are not only beautiful but extremely well made.” Anya Hindmarch, designer, brand founder, and initiator of the “I am not a plastic bag” initiative: “I would define the ideal as locally sourced materials that don’t pollute in their creation or demise (preferably recycled) and with limited transportation to achieve the completed product.” And, lastly, designer and brand founder Dries van Noten: “Most of what we may currently refer to as sustainable fashion is a contradiction in terms. It refers to how the fabric used for a new garment has been produced . . . Yet, I believe, we need to consider this issue from a more macro and profound perspective. Though a cotton may be unbleached, we need to examine how it arrives to the manufacturer or to us the wearer. What was the ‘carbon imprint’ of its delivery, for example?” Not all the same, then.

This is a problem, because words such as “sustainability”, “green”, “eco”, “organic”, and “ethical” are Tiffany Bangles a part of the fashion conversation. Last month the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva hosted an EcoChic fair, featuring a “sustainable fashion show” in which well-known designers created garments out of natural fibres manufactured in the “most sustainable way”. At London Fashion Week this month, an exhibit called Estethica will be devoted to “eco sustainable fashion”.

I am not the only one who thinks so. The blogger Fashionista-at-law, writing last December, asked: “Is Fashionista acting sustainably if she buys organic or fair trade clothes and what exactly are ‘ethical’ clothes? Fashionista would love to see those terms on labels so that she no longer has to spend her time researching a brand that claims to be ethical, green, organic, before facing the tricky question as to whether it is more ‘green’ to order the i tem of desire online or to check for its availability in a shop close by.” Christ ian Kemp- Griffin is chief mission officer for Edun, the sustainable fashion brand created in 2005 by Ali Hewson and her husband Bono, the lead singer of U2. At the Copenhagen conference, Kemp-Griffin told me: “The problem is there is no cohesion in this space. We’re all just doing what we can but, because there’s noofficial anything, no one knows the answer.” When Edun first launched, the brand identified its mission as driving “sustainable employment” in Africa – not anything to do Tiffany Bracelets the earth. But, four years later, it has expanded its definition; specifically, Kemp-Griffin said at the conference: “We found it was very important for us to know what was happening with the source of our cotton . . . not just the manufacturing, but with the farmers.” Nicole and Michael Colovos, creative directors of Helmut Lang, have taken account of this evolution too.