Fernanda Ly Is Tropical Houseplant in Dion Lee SS 2021 Campaign by Bryan Huynh

Taking one look at the Dion Lee Spring 2021 campaign, AOC hoped that the Australian brand has strong sustainability credentials. Given that I’ve taken to talking to flowers and house plants, expressing gratitude for their positive impact on my daily life, the Monstera-inspired Dion Lee dresses and tops blow me away.

Model Fernanda Ly is styled by Cece Liu in the Dion Lee SS 2021 campaign ‘Sylph’, lensed by Bryan Huynh [IG] / Hair by Jonathan De Francesco; makeup by Marcelo Gutierrez

Gaia surely is smiling, except that — like Fashionista, — she want to remind us that “a warming planet shouldn’t just inspire aesthetic choices for designers. It should also inspire action on things like sustainable material sourcing, which can help reduce fashion’s contributions to climate change.” {Note that representatives from Dion Lee had no response to Fashionista’s Oct. 2020 query about any sustainability credentials that the brand has in this terrific collection.}

You can’t look at these images and not think of Stella McCartney’s epic presentation of Mylo™ [mushroom] leather this week. The protypes aren’t yet in production but soon is around the corner. Talk about exciting!

There is no information that AOC can find about where ant Dion Lee materials are sourced. The designer worked on a fabulous (AOC’s word) leather furniture collab in 2019, writes Dezeen. All commentary is about design and there is no mention of sustainability.

AOC sincerely hopes that the leather isn’t coming out of Brazil, as dramatic new research was posted this week, that all the fires in the Brazilian rainforest — clearing the land for cattle — have now made it a net emitter of climate-impacting gasses.

The Amazon continues to absorb carbon in lower quantities. In the aggregate, though, the Amazon rainforest is now doing more harm than benefit to the environment. This is a singularly concerning new imbalance in Gaia’s biosphere here on planet Earth. The world’s largest companies, including H&M, have stopped purchasing leather from Brazil.

AOC simply adores this Dion Lee SS2021 collection. But as Fashionista suggests, the sourcing back story is every bit as important as the design and marketing story. Otherwise, such a Gaia-inspired collection teeters on absolute hypocrisy.