Innovative fashion designers are turning to such things as horseradish and nettles to make sustainable clothing and accessories to the delight of a growing number of buyers.

While more consumers are paying closer attention to how the production of goods impacts the environment, old habits die hard. A buy-and-toss mentality persists despite a boost from celebrities helping to drive the upcycle and vintage movements.

Actress Maggie Q, who created an activewear line from recycled fabrics, is among activists who see plenty of room for improvement. She says she feels "sick about fast fashion.''

"You hear people say, 'Well, it was cheap and you need to wear it once, you throw it away,'" she said.

The British design duo behind Vin + Omi, a brand worn by Michelle Obama, Beyonce and Lady Gaga, is forever on the hunt for creative solutions to sustainability. They sourced latex from Malaysia, for example. However, they found the conditions for plantation workers appalling and bought the operation.

At their studios in the Cotswolds, in the heart of the English countryside, they grow a range of crops and plants for textile development, including chestnuts and horseradish. Their latest collection features garments made from nettles, alpaca fleece and recycled plastic from paint tubes. English designer Zoe Corsellis keeps the carbon footprint of her garments low by manufacturing them in London, with fabrics sourced in the U.K. and Germany. She makes them from wood pulp, sea waste and peace silk, considered more humane to silk worms than traditional production processes. A wood pulp gown feels like jersey to the touch.

Belgian designer Sebastiaan de Neubourg is recycling plastic bottles, car dashboards and refrigerators for sunglasses for his brand, W.R.YUMA. Plastic waste is collected and shredded to make 3D printer filament. Transparent frames are made from soda bottles, white ones from refrigerators and black ones from car dashboards.

"Waste, I believe, is design failure," he said. Fee Gilfeather, sustainability expert at the nonprofit Oxfam, said there's hope on a larger scale.

"The textile industry is getting close to working out how to do fiber-to-fiber recycling," she said. "So what that means is that when you take a garment that's no longer needed, you can break it down into the fibers and turn that back into a raw material to make clothing."

More celebrities are also playing a role, with some turning to vintage.

Amal Clooney, the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle and Kim Kardashian West have been wearing more vintage pieces and re-wearing outfits, something unheard of among many celebrities. Billie Eilish recently wore a custom upcycled outfit from Burberry to the American Music Awards.

"I'm trying to like waste less resources," the teenage singer said.

Singer Paloma Faith is an old hand at vintage.

"I've been wearing - and obsessive about - vintage clothing for my whole life and I feel like it's really an important thing to recycle and re-use, not just because the ideas in my view were better from the past, but also because we can't just keep contributing to the landfill, and we have to take a bit or more responsibility," she said.

For more than a decade, designer Stella McCartney has been in the sustainability fight. Her latest collection was her most sustainable yet, using organic cotton, recycled polyester, sustainable viscose and traceable wool.

"It's really important to me that you shouldn't notice that what I do is more ethical than other houses," she said. "You should just love it and want it and then the desirability means it comes into your life, and it means that other businesses have to change."

Brands that have heavily used fur in the past have reconsidered. Burberry, Gucci and Versace are among high-end houses opting for faux fur. Many others, including Chanel and Victoria Beckham, will no longer use exotic animal skins.

Burberry destroyed millions of dollars' worth of clothes and accessories every year to prevent the products being sold cheaply. It stopped in 2018, but the practice is still widespread in the industry. Greenpeace described it as the "dirty secret" of fashion.

The rate of change needs to quicken, Gilfeather said, cautioning that carbon emissions from the textile industry are forecast to increase by 60% come 2050.

Fast-fashion industry leaders including Inditex, which owns Zara and H&M, have launched clothing take-back schemes aimed at recycling old items. But recycling, upcycling and a zero waste approach is a relatively small sideline in the global industry.

"There are ways which large companies are helping consumers to recycle, but we know that there's a long way for others to go and to really sort of properly make a difference," Gilfeather said.

Vin, from Vin + Omi, said consumers must take more responsibility.

"What we should be doing is aiming for quality, aiming for origins of textiles, aiming for a real sort of look at each individual fashion company and saying, `'They're a viable business. I will buy from them.'"

Innovative fashion designers are turning to such things as horseradish and nettles to make sustainable clothing and accessories to the delight of a growing number of buyers.

While more consumers are paying closer attention to how the production of goods impacts the environment, old habits die hard. A buy-and-toss mentality persists despite a boost from celebrities helping to drive the upcycle and vintage movements.

Actress Maggie Q, who created an activewear line from recycled fabrics, is among activists who see plenty of room for improvement. She says she feels "sick about fast fashion.''

"You hear people say, 'Well, it was cheap and you need to wear it once, you throw it away,'" she said.

The British design duo behind Vin + Omi, a brand worn by Michelle Obama, Beyonce and Lady Gaga, is forever on the hunt for creative solutions to sustainability. They sourced latex from Malaysia, for example. However, they found the conditions for plantation workers appalling and bought the operation.

At their studios in the Cotswolds, in the heart of the English countryside, they grow a range of crops and plants for textile development, including chestnuts and horseradish. Their latest collection features garments made from nettles, alpaca fleece and recycled plastic from paint tubes. English designer Zoe Corsellis keeps the carbon footprint of her garments low by manufacturing them in London, with fabrics sourced in the U.K. and Germany. She makes them from wood pulp, sea waste and peace silk, considered more humane to silk worms than traditional production processes. A wood pulp gown feels like jersey to the touch.

Belgian designer Sebastiaan de Neubourg is recycling plastic bottles, car dashboards and refrigerators for sunglasses for his brand, W.R.YUMA. Plastic waste is collected and shredded to make 3D printer filament. Transparent frames are made from soda bottles, white ones from refrigerators and black ones from car dashboards.

"Waste, I believe, is design failure," he said. Fee Gilfeather, sustainability expert at the nonprofit Oxfam, said there's hope on a larger scale.

"The textile industry is getting close to working out how to do fiber-to-fiber recycling," she said. "So what that means is that when you take a garment that's no longer needed, you can break it down into the fibers and turn that back into a raw material to make clothing."

More celebrities are also playing a role, with some turning to vintage.

Amal Clooney, the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle and Kim Kardashian West have been wearing more vintage pieces and re-wearing outfits, something unheard of among many celebrities. Billie Eilish recently wore a custom upcycled outfit from Burberry to the American Music Awards.

"I'm trying to like waste less resources," the teenage singer said.

Singer Paloma Faith is an old hand at vintage.

"I've been wearing - and obsessive about - vintage clothing for my whole life and I feel like it's really an important thing to recycle and re-use, not just because the ideas in my view were better from the past, but also because we can't just keep contributing to the landfill, and we have to take a bit or more responsibility," she said.

For more than a decade, designer Stella McCartney has been in the sustainability fight. Her latest collection was her most sustainable yet, using organic cotton, recycled polyester, sustainable viscose and traceable wool.

"It's really important to me that you shouldn't notice that what I do is more ethical than other houses," she said. "You should just love it and want it and then the desirability means it comes into your life, and it means that other businesses have to change."

Brands that have heavily used fur in the past have reconsidered. Burberry, Gucci and Versace are among high-end houses opting for faux fur. Many others, including Chanel and Victoria Beckham, will no longer use exotic animal skins.

Burberry destroyed millions of dollars' worth of clothes and accessories every year to prevent the products being sold cheaply. It stopped in 2018, but the practice is still widespread in the industry. Greenpeace described it as the "dirty secret" of fashion.

The rate of change needs to quicken, Gilfeather said, cautioning that carbon emissions from the textile industry are forecast to increase by 60% come 2050.

Fast-fashion industry leaders including Inditex, which owns Zara and H&M, have launched clothing take-back schemes aimed at recycling old items. But recycling, upcycling and a zero waste approach is a relatively small sideline in the global industry.

"There are ways which large companies are helping consumers to recycle, but we know that there's a long way for others to go and to really sort of properly make a difference," Gilfeather said.

Vin, from Vin + Omi, said consumers must take more responsibility.

"What we should be doing is aiming for quality, aiming for origins of textiles, aiming for a real sort of look at each individual fashion company and saying, `'They're a viable business. I will buy from them.'"

Organizers wanted to make it clear the 99th Miss America competition isn't your grandmother's beauty pageant, and their winner did just that on Thursday.

Virginia biochemist Camille Schrier won the crown just minutes after wowing the crowd with science. Dressed in a lab coat, she gave a colorful chemistry demonstration of the catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide.

No longer called contestants, the 51 women "candidates," who hailed from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, competed for a $50,000 scholarship and the "job" of Miss America, a one-year paid position they hope to use as a public platform for their "social impact initiative."

For the second year in a row, women were judged in a swimsuit or how they look in an evening gown. Instead, a series of interviews and talent demonstrations will determine who is best qualified to wear this year's crown.

"To make it relevant for these young women, it was important for us as a scholarship and service organization to make sure that we were reflective of this generation, meaning that you no longer had to be defined by some sort of ideal," said Regina Hopper, president & CEO of the Miss America Organization.

Morgan Nichols, Miss Carolina, had her own message. She walked down the red carpet wearing a billowing, long skirt topped by a plain white T-shirt that read: "Stronger."

While Hopper acknowledges there has been some push-back from "old pageant" people who liked the old way of doing things, she said there's been greater interest in the competition since the roll-out of Miss America 2.0.

This year also marks the first time the multi-day event is being held at Mohegan Sun, tribal casino and entertainment complex in suburban southeastern Connecticut. Miss America organizers announced plans this summer to leave Atlantic City, New Jersey — for the second time in its history.

Miss America also switched from ABC back to NBC to broadcast the glitzy finale to an estimated 4.5 million viewers. And for the first time, preliminary events and the finale — held in Mohegan's 10,000-seat arena — are being streamed live on the NBC app.

"We've had many, many large events. This probably reaches the most people," said Jeff Hamilton, president and general manager of Mohegan Sun. "We're just really, really excited about it."

Miss America organizers and NBC have not yet agreed to a multi-year contract with the Connecticut casino. A decision is expected in the coming months.

Thursday night's ultimate winner succeeds 2019 Miss America Nia Franklin, a classically trained opera singer from New York.

The decision to drop the swimsuit competition did create great controversy and criticism of Miss America officials, including former board chair and former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, who said in 2018 that Miss America would represent "a new generation of female leaders focused on scholarship, social impact, talent and empowerment." Carlson has since stepped down.

Atlantic City businessmen came up with the idea for a pageant in 1921 as a way to extend the summer tourism season beyond Labor Day weekend. It became synonymous with the New Jersey seaside resort but moved to Las Vegas in 2005, returning to Atlantic City in 2013.

A female tattoo artist, a rarity in ultra-conservative Afghanistan, is taking a big risk with every customer she takes on.

It's been 18 months since Suraya Shaheedi started her mobile tattoo shop in the capital, Kabul. She's received death threats for taking on the taboo of the ink-on-skin drawings she does — as well as being a single woman willing to work with men.

"I have struggled a lot, even been threatened with death, because people in Afghanistan think doing tattoos is haram," she said, using the Arabic word meaning prohibited by religion.

"Whether my customers are men or women doesn't matter to me. I do tattoos for both," says Shaheedi, a 26-year-old, divorced single mother.

In a black curtained room, surrounded by his friends, a young customer shrieks in pain as the needle pierces and inks his skin.

"I can't leave the profession I love," Shaheedi adds.

She easily gets customers, whether men or women, as social attitudes toward tattoos loosen up and more ink parlors open. It's the kind of small, but important change that Shaheedi feels a return of Taliban rule could threaten.

After decades of war, Afghans want peace. A big concern for many like Shaheedi is that U.S.-led peace talks with the Taliban will boost the militant group.

"I am happy if the Taliban return results in peace, but if they disagree with my work and impede the freedom and progress of women, then I will be the first to stand against them," she vowed.

Women like Shaheedi have carved out a space for themselves in a society where custom heavily restricts women's roles and education. Close to 40% of Afghanistan's eligible girls are not allowed by their families to go to school, and almost 20% are forced by their families to leave school after grade six, according to a survey by the Asia Foundation released this year.

In areas under the Taliban, who now control or hold sway over roughly half of the country, women are not allowed to leave their homes without a male escort. The insurgent group ruled Afghanistan with a harsh version of Islamic law from 1996 to 2001, when the U.S. invaded.

Shaheedi divorced her husband eight years ago while she was pregnant. She and her son now live with her parents. Her father supports her work, even though Afghanistan's patriarchal society often forbids a woman from touching a man to whom she is not related or married.

Her parents and elder brother persuaded her to become a tattoo artist, Shaheedi said, after she got her first tattoo while visiting Turkey — an arrow piercing the image of an eye on her right hand, which she says symbolizes overcoming adversity.

Shaheedi's father, Hussain, 58, believes the strict customs controlling women in Afghanistan need to change. "I support my daughter in every way, and she makes me proud the way she's stood against this taboo," he said.

Shaheedi uses Instagram and other social media to find and meet customers. She prefers not to keep a parlor with a fixed address out of concerns for her safety.

She also does manicures and makeup. When she met one customer recently at a hair salon, the customer's husband recognized her from her social media pages as being the tattoo artist "Ahoo," the nickname she uses online. The husband threatened to kill Shaheedi if she kept posting images of her tattoo work on social media.

Tattoos were common in some of Afghanistan's rural areas, especially among Pashtun and Hazara women, but the ink piercings were used sparingly, often as only a few green dots on the face.

Tattoo artists say demand among the younger generation has risen for more flamboyant and personal designs, and with it, the number of ink parlors increased in the capital.

Omid Noori, 23, has 16 tattoos all over his body. He wants to add another on his left arm, showing the head of a lion with a crown and wreaths. But he only wants new designs on parts of his body that his clothing can hide, because he says he's tired of hearing people's negative comments about the ink piercings.

He also worries what would happen if Islamic militants caught him.

"I'm thinking that if the Taliban return, they'll cut off my hands and legs," he said.

He inked his last tattoos at a parlor belonging to a former Afghan army officer, Nazeer Mosawi.

Mosawi, 42, fought for seven years in Afghanistan's civil war with the Islamic insurgents. He says he is still fighting the war, but this time his battle is against society's conservatism, with his tattoo machine as his weapon.

Mosawi receives threatening phone and social media messages almost every day, demanding he close his tattoo business. "They even threaten to beat me, burn my shop," he said. "There is no alternative: I tell them, OK, I can't flee this country because of these threats. It's my homeland."

But for every threat he gets, Mousawi said he gets several messages with positive feedback or people curious to learn more.

Shaheedi said she is also working to put her 8-year-old son, now in second grade, through school. She is also studying business management at a university in Kabul.

"Being a woman in Afghanistan requires guts," she said. "I am proud of myself for having the guts."

Chanel brought its itinerant off-season fashion show the "arts and crafts," with its swath of VIPs including Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard, back to home ground in Paris on Wednesday to mark its first collection since Karl Lagerfeld died earlier this year.

New designer Virginie Viard teamed up with film director Sofia Coppola this season to imagine a cinematic opus that saw the house's 1920s Rue Cambon atelier — replete with crystal chandeliers and mirrored cubist staircase — recreated under the lofty roof of the Grand Palais exhibition space.

Unlike the seasonal collections that trickle down to set high street trends, the "arts and crafts" pre-collection aims at showing off and celebrating the work of the artisans that are the beating heart of Chanel, and the Paris fashion industry as a whole. Celebrating their technical know-how is one way that storied Paris heritage houses have tried to distinguish themselves in the face of increased competition from other fashion capitals, such as New York and Milan.

The first looks, in black with oversized statement shoulders, were simple enough as to let the embellishments do the talking: Large silvery art-deco waist bands with beading, bejeweled cuff bands or large geometric buttons with silver rims. A staple black sweater and knee length skirt were given life with rings of pearls that cascaded down to a black and gold chain belt that resembled the strap of the house's iconic handbag. Camellias adorned ethereal feathers as prints, while ears of wheat were constructed in glimmering gold sequins.

They set the agenda of the show. The fashion panache here was hidden down in the details that were delivered with couture-like finesse.

"The show was incredible," exclaimed Cruz, who reminisced nostalgically about walking around Central Park at midnight with Lagerfeld last December after last year's Egypt-themed Chanel show in New York.

Since 2002, the "arts and crafts" show has traveled around the world to highlight the fashion artistry of Parisian embroiderers, feathermakers, adornment-makers, pleaters, shoemakers, milliners and glovemakers.

After shows in Hamburg, Edinburgh, New York and other far-flung locations, Chanel returned to the French capital where it may be the last chance in a long time to stage it at the Grand Palais, which is scheduled to close for renovations next year ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

This year's homecoming echoes the very first show, held in the salons at 31 Rue Cambon — Chanel's storied Paris atelier.

It was the late house founder Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel who first understood the need to support struggling artisans in the field in the 1950s, culminating in the creation of the body of crafts, Paraffection, in 1985.

This vast network, which employs some 5,000 workers and includes famed embroider Lesage, does not work only for Chanel but also multiple other big names in the fashion industry.

"There is something so generous about how Chanel has supported the Parisian fashion industry as a whole," Cotillard said following the show.

"Chanel is a sort of ambassador for France and Paris over the world and it makes me so proud," she added.