"Fashion is a tool for cultural creativity, innovation, self-expression and connection," says Sasha Duerr, founder of the Permacouture Institute through the Trust for Conservation Innovation in San Francisco. "Over-consumption, with limited understanding of where our materials come from or where they go is a huge issue in our modern times. We need to close the loop through practice and education."

Throwing a green event is more expensive and more complicated than you would think -- it's not just using recycled paper. For starters, in the self-proclaimed fashion capital of the world this past February, New York Fashion Week brought on sponsors with a greener edge. High-end skin and hair care product supplier, Aveda, rolled out a green initiative campaign, including supplying tap water and reusable aluminum water bottles (with the green-minded label, "Beauty Is, Beauty Does") in place of bottled water to event participants and attendees. The company also served organic, locally grown food to the production staff and models backstage.

"Aveda is an activist brand at heart, so we are thrilled to be a force of change in helping to reduce the carbon footprint of the Spring/Summer 2008 shows," says Dominique Conseil, president of Aveda. "The response to the program exceeded even our own expectations and we believe it has the potential to become a global movement in the world of fashion." Despite findings in an Associated Press investigation in March that New York City tap water has remnants of heart medicines and prescription tranquilizers, the water is quite drinkable and doesn't taste much different from most bottled water brands.

For an industry that barely existed in the United States three decades ago, bottled water itself has become a fashion -- but at a damaging cost. Only 10 percent of the 2.5 million water bottles consumed each hour in the United States are recycled, according to a 2005 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

It's not just paper and plastic materials dragging water down. Each week, nearly 1 billion bottles of water are being shipped from coast to coast by truck, train, boat and airplane. At the sky-high price of $124 a barrel already, one can just imagine how much gas is fueling the bottled water business.

On the opposite side of the country, Portland Fashion Week proudly proclaimed it was the world's first entirely green fashion production. Beyond using eco-friendly fabrics (such as organic cotton, linens, and silk) for the garments adorning the models, Portland organizers constructed the world's first bamboo runway, used recycled fabric for drapery, and installed energy-efficient LED lighting. Not to mention the invites were printed on recycled paper. And, all proceeds from the green event went to protecting Oregon's Willamette River.

The Portland event organizers intend to repeat their green strategies at the next fashion week this fall. "We are trying to be eco-responsible in every respect, we have tried to do something on every step to make the production sustainable. We will use a sustainable runway, sustainable hair and makeup, we're doing our media kit on recycled paper," Tito Chowdhury, the event's executive producer, says. "Portland is nationally known as sustainable city. We want to make this fashion week the place for sustainable designers from all over."