Image from London Undercover
It's autumn and the rain just keeps on coming. With one grey day after another, these delightfully British umbrellas will keep your spirits up.
Take cover under (too) vividly coloured pictures of fish and chips (wrapped in newspaper, of course), or a yummy full English breakfast. For the uninitiated that means baked beans, fried eggs, bacon, grilled tomatoes, toast and sausages. All over your head. Made from recycled materials, these
jolly brollies are environmentally sound, so they protect more than your hair-do....
Linda Loudermilk necklace and bamboo scarf. Image courtesy of Linda Loudermilk
Linda Loudermilk, one of our favorite Sustainable Designers-- we recently previewed her
Spring 2010 collection, here--is doing what she does best: highlighting environmental issues through fashion. This time she's taking on the water crisis with her "Water is a Human Right" campaign--can't you picture fellow
water advocate Jessica Biel in the bamboo scarf?...
Image via: Dave Newkirk
Now with the drop in temperatures for places in the northern hemisphere,
cyclists are going to need more layers and also more reflective gear as the sun goes down earlier and earlier. RF-Scarf now makes a scarf that comes in a sleek, black material that when exposed to bright light "magically" becomes
reflective. It's a perfect accessory for walking commuters too....
Sea Bags' Cure Bag; sailed around the world and recycled in Maine. Credit: Sea Bags
Sea Bags brings
reusing sails for good to another level with their limited edition
Cure Bags. Not only do these handmade bags have a story--the fabric has literally sailed the ocean blue--but they also help fund breast cancer research with 50% of sales proceeds benefiting the
Maine Cancer Foundation. View the bag up close, after the jump. ...
Chic cycling, street style at 'Bike Style' fashion show in NYC. Credit: Emma Grady
Hudson Urban Bicycles (HUB) in the West Village, New York City, hosted Bike Style Saturday night, a
fashion show premiering chic urban
cycling looks. Friends of HUB donned tailored bicycle wear--blazers, cropped pants, and caps--from designers
Lela Rose,
Reiss, Sheila Moon, and Outlier; strutted and danced 'cross the runway to DJ jams; mounted European-origin bikes from
Batavus, Abici, Moof, and Linus, and rode out into the rainy NYC night. Click through for our videos--the def jams might have you chair dancing--and more photos from the show. ...
Linda Loudermilk Spring 2010 collection. Courtesy of Linda Loudermilk
Eco-fashion extraordinaire
Linda Loudermillk is no stranger to TreeHugger -- we've covered
Loudermilk Men, her hand-tailored
Luxury-Eco line, her
denim collection, and named her one of our
Best Sustainable Designers. We first saw her spring 2010 collection at the
NOW Showcase in New York, where she told us about her spiritual experience with nature that continues to inspire her collection. Click through for photos of her vegan silk -- harvesting silk without killing the silkworm, bamboo, and organic cotton creations -- her silk tunics (above, center) have us wishing we could spring forward to summer, now. ...
There were some very natural necklaces at
Origin: The London Craft Fair this year. It's the annual juried fair where some of the most sophisticated craftspeople from around the world show their wares. In week one there was an emphasis on natural materials in many of the pieces.
These simple and beautiful necklaces are made of found pieces of drift wood and shells from the beaches of northern Iceland. The artist,
Helga Morgensen, collects the bits for her work on a special hideaway place where her family has been going every summer since she was a child. ...
Image: Walking Chair Gallery
Freitag bags are
a modern eco classic. Swiss brothers Markus and Daniel Freitag make their slick bags, wallets, iPhone cases, and other accessories from discarded tarps, the type used by long-distance freight trucks in Europe. Even their Zurich store is
made from shipping containers. Recently, the two suave gents were recruited by a Vienna art gallery as part of
Vienna Design Week to partake in "Urban Gardening," an art installation involving an active compost pile. Freitag supplied 100 limited edition compost bags to patrons on opening night on the promise that, for three months, they bring their food scraps back to the gallery to become part of the arty compost heap. The Freitag brothers kicked things off by making a big soup, feeding gallery-goers while inaugurating the pile with their peelings....
Image from bagcraze
Carmina Campus--the ultimate in decadent eco-fashion? Well it has to be up there--it's a new-ish brand owned and designed by a member of the
Fendi family--one of fashion's biggest fashion labels. Translated as "chants of the field", Carmina Campus bags are definitely a luxury item, almost in the
wretched excess department.
But they are made of completely recycled materials in a way that is clever, cool and elegant, all in one. And much of the profit is being put back into charities. If Fendi can carry it off, why can't Chanel, Prada, etc. etc. give it a go... More on eco-luxury after the fold.
...
SDN Designer Marcus Hicks in his own design; pant shoes. Credit: Emma Grady
The
NOW Showcase brought sustainable fashion designers out for a Spring 2010 preview at the Terminal Building in New York City this past week. Marcus Hicks of
Sarah Dixons Nova (SDN) -- a Brooklyn-based clothing company that focuses on quality and social responsibility -- showed innovative pant-shoes (above). We saw a
Linda Loudermilk dress created from a Steve McCurry photograph, lovely
T-Luxe lingerie in organic silk, a versatile bamboo jersey dress by
ANGeL RoX, what
Rebe can do with vintage fabric, and more designs. Click through for show highlights and for photos of what designs will be hot come Summer 2010.
...
Want to fight
zombies and look like a badass at the same time? Well, now you can with the hat worn in the
Zombieland movie. It's made from repurposed materials so you can protect the planet from
zombies and excess waste at the same time. ...
Environmental Journalist Olivia Zaleski at Green Fashion Week. Credit Emma Grady
We hit the green carpet
opening night at
GreenShows -- the premiere eco-friendly, ethically sound, and fair-trade fashion event during New York Fashion Week -- and spoke with model activist
Summer Rayne Oakes and environmental journalist
Olivia Zaleski -- one of our
7 hip green fashion icons -- on their style picks for the night. View our videos after the jump. ...
House of Organic Spring 2010 Collection at the Green Shows during New York Fashion Week. Credit Meaghan O'Neill
House of Organic's Spring/Summer 2010 collections at the Green Shows -- the place to be for style-minded greenies during New York Fashion Week -- featured designs by
Johanna Hofring,
Desiree Hammen,
Anja Hynynen,
Maja Gunn,
Meiling Chen, Eko-Lab, Mika Machida, Kaori Yamazaki, and Righteous. The designers worked with -- you guessed it --
organic fabrics -- including linen, cotton, hemp, and wool in natural colors hand-dyed with plants -- with woven, crocheted, and embroidered detailing crafted by hand. The sustainable clothing designs were reflected in the natural hairstyles; models sported a running-through-the-forest look created by
john masters organics' green team. Click through to the slideshow for a front row runway seat.
...
Hospital scrubs refashioned into a skirt and shirt combo. Credit Mallorie Knappert
In the spirit of
green fashion and the season of
New York Fashion Week we asked readers for their refashioned and upcycled clothing projects. From brown pants disassembled and sewn -- into a blue batik high waisted skirt -- and old bathing suits turned reusable produce and grocery bags, to the creative skirt and shirt combo (above) -- reconstructed from hospital scrubs -- readers put needle to thread in our
Readers' Best Refashioned Clothing Projects. And if you missed last week's
Readers' Photos it's not to late to view our
Commuter Bike Photos slideshow and stay tuned, later today we'll be asking for photos of every gadget you own in one pile -- how many?
...
Though she was billed as 'the most beautiful creature of the future', Barbarella's toys weren't too green. Photo via YouTube Barbarella trailer.
Vanessa Vadim, Jane Fonda's 40-year-old daughter with Roger Vadim, is a documentary filmmaker, organic farmer, and now eco-columnist living in Atlanta. And, according to
The Daily Beast, she's a fan of glass dildos or (even better) organic cucumbers for those in search of a greener orgasm. As we've
documented in TreeHugger, green sex aids are proliferating, though still in no way standard. Here's a new wind-up vibrator that even Vanessa might consider eco-friendly....
Images from NV Calcutta
We like to do our bit for ethical fashion and here's a handbag that makes it a fashion-breeze. These
NV Calcutta handbags tick all the boxes. They are good looking, hand-made, help poor people in Calcutta get a foothold and ethically made.
It's a wonderful story with an end product that combines the best of UK design talent with the age-old craftsmanship of the artisans. Sounds like a win-win all around. Now what about the purses themselves...
...
(Image: NY Times
As the world becomes a more perfect place, where
elephant landmine victims walk again, streetsigns are best used
as jewelry, and coal plants get
the royal STFU, we're gonna need more handy little things like the
VeloPocket. Along with its little brother, the Balzac, these handmade cycle pouches are a nice alternative to the nylon reflector-emblazoned saddle gear your racing buddies might favor....
Last year we alluded
one or
more times to the imminent arrival of a line of luggage-like accessories from the eco-clothier Nau. But due to the company’s untimely demise and subsequent phoenix rising those plans went into a holding pattern. Now with the release of their Fall 2009 collection those accessories have finally surfaced.
As the photos here (and more below) indicate, the clean, tailored lines of the company’s apparel have been carried through into nine different bags. The materials also reflect Nau’s adherence to using only renewable or recycled components....
One of the frustrations we hear time and time again is that when it comes to fashion, consumers are still looking for affordable and stylish eco-friendly finds for adults and kids. And even beyond that, consumers are also looking for fashionable clothing and accessories that are produced and distributed by environmentally and socially conscious companies, which makes it more difficult. Because of this difficulty, the folks at
Gretchen and Grace have made it their mission to bring together the best fashions from eco-friendly and fair-trade companies. That believe that going green doesn't mean sacrificing or limiting self-expression, and that green fashion has to be expensive, either....
Images from Freitag
We saw them at the Tate Modern Museum and you can see them if you are at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, or the MoCA in Los Angeles at the right time. It's the latest Freitag bag, sort of a status symbol since it's produced in a limited edition and only available at the museums or
on line at specific times. So get arty if you want one.
Normally Freitag bags are made from cut-up truck tarp's. For this collection they cut up art. The bags are made from banners from the shows at 4 of the great modern art museums. If you aren't into the messenger bag look, this chic bag may become the sophisticate's version of the
much-loved Freitag bag. ...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 11.19.09
