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(Picture: Juana de Arco's show at the Buenos Aires fashion week. Via event's website.) The latest edition of the Buenos Aires Fashion Week (which took place from August 20 to 21) showed more environmental awareness than its predecessor, the winter edition (which we covered in the post Buenos Aires Fashion Week Winter 2008).

While at the runway shows two brands had some kind of green in their collections, in the showroom area the Metropolitan Design Center presented a two week event about sustainable design to be held in the city in October. Find out more in the extended.

Via La Nacion. Metropolitan design center activity via Corazon Porteño.

Green Fashion at Buenos Aires Fashion Week Runway Shows

Cotton was the theme for this edition of the city's most important event dedicated to fashion, and the label Juana de Arco decided to bet on pure organic and environmental motives.

Characterized by crazy prints and mix-and-match patchwork garments, the label conducted by Mariana Cortés presented its collection Agua viva (which translates into something like 'living water'). The show was inspired in natural resources, with all garments produced with organic cotton and embroidered images of fish, sea horses and flowers in some of the pieces.

Ona Saez, a well known Argentine retail brand, was the other label related to green. In this season, the brand continues with its campaign to offer green tips through a line or t-shirts and in their clothes' tags. Although an engagement with greener materials would be better, we give them credit for trying to educate the consumer.

Some pictures of the Juana de Arco runway show (all via BAF Week website):

Ona Saez global warming awareness campaign, which began during winter and continues this season:

Sustainable Design Week in Buenos Aires

Another novelty of this season's fashion week was the presentation of the event Integrando al Futuro (which translates to 'integrating the future'), organized by the Metropolitan Design Center.

With a series of activities that will take place in October and November, the event looks to educate consumers on the effects of consume and production in the environment.

On October 24 and 25, the organism will organize conferences to treat subjects such as sustainable design, corporate responsibility and fair trade. Then, from October 26 until November 9, the center is organizing an exhibition in a series of design stores in Palermo, in which designers will be developing products with their own waste and showing them in their shop windows. Then, from November 17 to 28, there will be a series of workshops about re-utilization of waste from the stockings industry.

The call for designers who want to participate in this activity opens in September. More information via phone: 5411 4126 2984/2989. The published e-mail of the center for this activity doesn't work yet: integrandoalfuturo at cmd dot org dot ar.

Accompanying the announcement, the center presented the work of two designers working with recovered materials; both known to TreeHugger: Minima Huella and Gruba.