When natural beauty makeup artist Jessa Blades and eco fashionista Greta Eagan recently got together for an Eco-Chick style photo shoot, the theme of the day was radiance. Jessa, who is passionate about promoting beauty that is connected to health, aims to help women look and experience their most vital selves.

Jessa Blades
Photo by Clement Kois

Not only does she offer an amazing expertise on cosmetic safety, but her stellar makeup artistry is convincing women of all ages—from savy fashion clients to impressionable teens—that natural beauty products should absolutely be the norm.

Blades Natural Beauty
Photo by Clemens Kois

Greta’s promotion of eco fashion—both through her personal blog Greta Guide and her creative agency FashionMeGreen—is also dedicated to conscious beauty.

Greta Wearing Rice and Beans Vintage and Nicole Bridger
Photo by Clemens Kois

Her eco fashion modeling as well as green style makeovers and city guides take readers along on her sustainable fashion journeys and offer them entry points for deepening the shades of green of their wardrobes.

Pretty in a Schiaparelli Pink Henrietta Ludgate Dress, Jetsonish pocket details made from upcycled baseball caps!
Photo by Clemens Kois

For the Eco-Chick shoot, Greta effortlessly put together fabulous looks by retailer Rice & Beans Vintage and designers Nicole Bridger and Henrietta Ludgate.

Greta Wearing Rice and Beans Vintage from Head to Toe
Photo by Clemens Kois

So just what’s going on in order to look radiant? And just who is the shiniest person of all? The answer is you are the most radiant when you exude joy, ease, and vibrancy just like a happy baby! Although exfoliation often crops up in a discussion about chasing away dull complexions, Jessa prefers to focus on what makes you glow.

Blades Natural Beauty
Photo by Clemens Kois

So that ranges from offering a client a wellness experience from the inside out to teaching her about the best beauty products and makeup techniques.

Blades Natural Beauty
Photo by Clemens Kois

For this look, Jessa applied these natural beauty products to enhance Greta’s own natural GLOW:

True Relaxation Stress Remedy, Hope Gillerman Organics

Honey and Jasmine Mask, The Organic Pharmacy

Kahina Toning Mist, Kahina Giving Beauty

Dark Brown Eye Pencil, Zozimos Botanicals

Living Luminizer, RMS Beauty

PurePressed Base Mineral Foundation, Jane Iredale Mineral Makeup

Un Cover-Up, RMS Beauty, mixed with Living Nature Concealer

Leone Luminous Shimmer Eyeshadow, Alima Pure

Black Tea, Fruit Pigmented Mascara, 100% Pure

Dr. Hauschka Summer Impressions Bronzing Fluid #02 bronze

TO WASH MAKEUP AWAY:
Dr. Alkaitis Organic Mascara Eye Makeup Remover

GENTLE EXFOLIATION:
Oat Facial Polish, Naturopathica

Runway To Green Photos by Patrick McMullan Company

The Runway to Green collection launched last week with a fashion show in New York City. The spectacular collection of eco-friendly evening gowns, bags, jewelry, jackets, and shoes is now available on www.net-a-porter.com.

Lauren Bush, Founder of Feed Projects Photo by Clemens Kois

The comprehensive range of couture to casualwear demonstrated that there are greener choices in various pricepoints and styles. There is little not to love about Runway to Green as it is donating a percentage of sales to a Bid to Save The Earth and challenging major fashion players, including Prada, Gucci, Jason Wu, and Michael Kors, to become more sustainable.

Arlenis Sosa Photo by Clemens Kois

Sylvana Ward-Durrett, co-founder of Runway to Green, set out to prove that organic and green is luxurious and can become the fashion industry standard.

Angela Lindvall Photo by Clemens Kois

With the help of the Natural Resource Defense Counsel (NRDC), one of the environmental beneficiaries of sale proceeds, all of the participating designers implemented the Clean By Design educational guidelines.

Michelle Harper photo by Clemens Kois

Glamour and green went hand in hand as designers and their muses sparkled in New York City to support the environment.

Constance Jablonski and designer Thakoon Panichgul Photo by Clemens Kois

Diane Kruger & designer Jason Wu Photo by Clemens Kois

Eco Cover Model Almudena Fernández Photo by Clemens Kois

Crashing Wave with Dream Sky by Isack Kousnsky

The countdown has already started towards New York’s glitzy environmental fundraiser Bid To Save The Earth. March 29 will mark the second annual Christie’s green auction and a new collaboration with Vogue. While Christie’s New York will be putting up on the auction block big-ticket fine arts, collectibles, and extravagant experience packages, Vogue will be unveiling a Runway to Green fashion show of Fall 2011 eco styles by 20 notable designers.

Audrey Hepburn by Douglas Kirkland, 1965

Beyond the March 29 gala event, there are several ways to participate online in the Bid to Save the Earth initiative. The MYBID video encourages all of us to enter the conversation. It asks us to answer the question “How are you making a bid to save the earth?” and share it with others. Vogue’s Runway to Green collection will also be available online for purchase on NET-A-PORTER following the runway debut. One can imagine that supporting global fashion labels like Marc Jacobs, Gucci, Burberry, and Prada in this unique Runway to Green collection will encourage them to continue to green their future collections.

Comic and Tragic Pretzels by Andy Yoder

Making a bid on über-luxe auction lots, an array of prominent art collectors, philanthropists, and celebrities—including event co-chairs Susan and David Rockefeller, Salma Hayek, and Francois-Henri Pinault—are bringing their resources together to save our blue and green planet. The recipients of the funds raised on March 29 will be four outstanding environmental not-for-profits—NRDC, Oceana, Central Park Conservancy, and Conservation International.

Everest Valley by Michael Doven

In addition, CharityBuzz is asking us to splurge on behalf of the environment with a companion silent auction. Between March 17 (a very green St. Patrick’s day!) and April 8, CharityBuzz is auctioning online a range of exclusive lots—including once-in-a-lifetime experiences such as “Sit Courtside at 2 Knicks vs. Nets Games with Hip Hop Legend, Jay-Z”, ” Meet Heidi Klum on the Set of Project Runway in NYC”, and “Attend a Taping of The Colbert Report in NYC and Meet Stephen Colbert.” I’ve included in this post a selection of some of the art and photography in the silent auction. Beyond these extravagant donation opportunities, one can also text GOGREEN to 20222 to make a $10.00 contribution.

Bidding as high or low as you want to go, this year’s Bid To Save The Earth is gaining momentum to raise public awareness and funds for the environment.

LeeMoXO: MapleXO jewelry collaboration with LeeMo

Lindsay Holmes began her Portland-based jewelry company MapleXO back in 2005 inspired by her passion for skateboarding. She has since then been crafting vibrant jewelry from broken skateboards. Holmes has refined the process of drilling, cutting, shaping, and sanding the boards to preserve not only the amazing graphics of the original skateboard designs, but also to reveal the contrasting colors, wood grains, and layers inside the skateboard decks.

LeeMoXO

In this season’s collection she has expanded her line to create LeeMOXO jewelry pieces, a collaboration with origami jewelry designer Leela Morimoto, of LeeMo, and to produce a series of limited-edition iPhone skateboard cases in collaboration with Grove Made.

Holmes’s inspiration shows the natural link between the outdoor sports we love and a commitment to the environment. As she expresses: “Recycling the boards has been my way to give back to this community by reducing the environmental footprint of skateboarding and giving the old boards new life.”

Sitting indoors waiting for spring to arrive in NYC, MapleXO’s rad designs took me on a little West Coast daydream carrying the flow and sunshine of skateboarding itself.

BFF Bangle Sets of 2 are made from the same board

MapleXO collaboration with Grove

With so many fashion and accessories designers working with recycled materials, it comes as a surprise that we’ve all ignored something right before our eyes…or I should say directly up above them.

HIGHBROW + CHROMEO WILLIAMSBURG WATERFRONT MIRRORRORRIM

Therein comes the designer Jessica Sapick, who recently launched Highbrow. Highbrow is Sapick’s line of handmade upcycled eyewear with signature clip-on eyebrow ornament.

VPL S11 SHOW

Sapick, a native of Detroit, transforms broken and unusable frames that she’s received from New Eyes for the Needy into unique pieces available through custom order on her website.

HIGHBROW does LACE

While setting a trend to recycle existing eyeglass frames is amazing in itself, I love the inspiration behind an eye-catching design that literally make us all look up

RICHIE RICH || IVANAHEL SINKI

I am so thrilled to have received my very own pair of Highbrows to encourage reducing waste through upcycling manufacture!

Alicia Lubowski-Jahn in her Highbrows.
Photo by: Kevin Kwan

Each artwork is a limited-edition print designed and signed by an artist who has dedicated a percentage of sale proceeds to a designated charity of his or her choice.

Here at Eco Chick, I have selected a few prints carried by The Working Proof that benefit some amazing animal refuge and environmental protection organizations….what could be better than supporting artists and supporting groups that work so hard to keep our world gorgeous, diverse and healthy!

My Secret Self/At Rest, by Olivia Jeffries Print type: giclee Print size: 8.25 in. x 11.75 in. (image is 7 in. x 9.5 in.) Edition of 50 15% of the gross sale of this print goes to: Transportation Alternatives

Wildlife of Vietnam, by Brendan Wenzel Print type: digital Print size: 8.5 in. x 11.5 in. (image is 6.75 in. x 9 in.) Edition of 50 15% of the gross sale of this print goes to: Jane Goodall Institute

Mating Hera Buckmoths, by Gretchen Wagoner Print type: gocco Print size: 8 in. x 10 in. (image is 6 in. x 8 in.) Edition of 50 15% of the gross sale of this print goes to: Jane Goodall Institute

This Land Is Your Land, by Amy Ruppel Print type: digital Print size: 8 in. x 10 in. (image is 5 in. x 7.5 in.) Edition of 100 15% of the gross sale of this print goes to: American Forests

Blue Water, by Sarajo Frieden Print type: giclee Print size: 16 in. x 12.25 in. (image is 14 in. x 10.5 in.) Edition of 50 15% of the gross sale of this print goes to: American Forests

Untitled, by Caitlin Keegan Print type: digital Print size: 8.5 in. x 11 in. (image is 7 in. x 9 in.) Edition of 50 15% of the gross sale of this print goes to: Farm Sanctuary

The Bear Trap, by Lauren Gentry Print type: screenprint Print size: 8.25 in. x 11.75 in. (image is 5 in. x 10 in.) Edition of 50 15% of the gross sale of this print goes to: Farm Sanctuary

Optimist Club, by Dan Funderburgh Print type: letterpress Print size:11 in. x 14 in. (image is 8.5 in. x 12 in.) Edition of 75 15% of the gross sale of this print goes to: Transportation Alternatives

I can’t think of a more perfect time of year to feature the landscape fabric and quilt artist Liz Burow than at this moment when summer is abruptly shifting and transforming itself into fall. Just like the cycle of the four seasons, Burow’s textiles capture an in-between, unfastened environment of transition and movement.

Prospect Park (Green)Topo Quilt
Dimensions: 22”x40”
Materials: Wool and Polyester felt, batting, upholstery thread, machine sewn

Eco Chick: Your artist statement describes how the “Topo-Quilts and Ivy Walls transform our wild landscape into interior décor.” What does that domesticating process mean to you? It seems like there are several steps of abstraction taking place since your textiles render a cartographic and architectural impression of nature (maps, blueprints, and urban plans) rather than a direct visualization of place.

Liz Burow: Domestication: My work is a critique of our efforts to domesticate our landscape and to use motifs from our landscape as domestic ornament. Rather then drawing inspiration from pastoral scenes for inspiration, I’m interested in urban conditions, cars, roads, infrastructure, transportation and mobility, and how these conditions are a part of our aesthetic lives. We live in a very controlled and domesticated environment, yet at times life can feel like complete chaos. My work uses the city as inspiration and the work plays with the idea of control and chaos, natural and artificial, disorder and pattern, plainness and ornament, pastoral and urban. Imagery, patterns, colors and textures typically ignored as an aesthetic are instead enhanced and abstracted and turned into patterns and items for the home. By working with textiles and clothing, and techniques like sewing, quilting and felting the work it is more approachable by being more ordinary and familiar as well as useful.

Abstraction: I come from the architecture profession, where we are trained to make drawings to describe a space that does not yet exist and how to build it. The outcome of the architecture design process is a series of highly detailed standardized drawings made up of many lines, textures, symbols, and abbreviations. The drawings may look confusing, but the advantage of this system is that each consultant and builder can extract what meaning or information they need, based on their specialty or expertise. No one reads the drawing in the same way for the same reasons. I think this way of thinking and working has great influence on my artwork. Pictorial and figurative representations of space don’t leave much room for interpretation. I want people to be able to take from the information what they find useful, what they find meaningful.

I don’t start with the idea of a direct visualization of a space and then reduce it to an abstraction. I’ve been trained to see the world through abstractions and am able to visualize a place from these bits and pieces. So, I feel like that is what my art can do too. I like to assemble the sense of a place, or an urban condition through select form, textures, symbols, line work, in order to capture feeling or attitude.

Ivy Felt Wall
Dimensions: 72”x 96”
Materials: Polyester felt, batting, muslin, upholstery thread, hand stitched and machine sewn.

EC: How do you conceive of the relationship between our bodies and the environment in your textiles? What is the place of gender in this relationship?

LB: I think about the human scale and the human experience within the city a lot. For example, a portion of my work is about spaces and landscapes made for people, and spaces and landscapes made for cars. They are two very different scales, and in urban planning and city dwelling, the person and the car are often in competition with each other. This can be seen in the Car Scene series.
I’m interested in fashion and culture as they relate to identity and territory and the boundaries of people as they relate to their environment. These relationships are critiqued by playing with human scale verses an environmental scale, the individual versus the collective. This can be seen in the Ivy League wall.
While I’m working the materials and techniques typically associated with ‘women’s work’, I tend to work with textiles because their properties are aligned with the themes I am trying to address. I’m interested in textiles as material we use to cover ourselves with, but also as a way to express the landscape and environment. Textiles are pliable, conforming, soft to the touch and easily mobile. They are in part are defined by their context- Textiles can be used as body covering or decoration, shelter, container, space divider, or as a ritual object.

Wall Brooches: GreenInterchange
Dimensions: 20″x 20″x 6″
Materials: Industrial felt, wool felt, upholstery thread, hand stitched

EC: Several of your artworks, such as Car Scenes, have explored the relationship between constructed and wild environments. Your scenes not only define environments, but seem to take us on journeys moving through space (walking, driving, and bicycling) as well as the transitions of borders and frontiers. Could you please comment on this impression of journeying through an environment?

LB: Systems, objects and services that enable a certain level of mobility in our lives inspire me. I’m not sure I can explain why. I’m sensitive to how easy it is to be mobile in the world, and I can see how this ease of mobility affects friends, my colleagues, family and myself. Many people love to drive and equate their car to individuality and freedom while others, by choice or not, share the collective experience of public transportation. Mobility can be about a journey of discovery or exploration, but it can also be about fleeing or a refusal to settle or commit. It is very connected to our emotional being. It can be a necessity or pure pleasure. Being in motion is one way to avoid complacency, but being in constant motion can also be a kind of complacency. How we get around is a part of who we are and how we relate to the world.

Ivy League Wall
Dimensions: 18”x 36”
Materials: Used blue oxford shirts, muslin, interfacing, thread, hand stitched and machine sewn.

EC: Could you please tell me about your projects for Wave Hill, New York?

LB: This past winter at Wave Hill I developed new felting techniques and quilting techniques for an ongoing textile series, called Topoquilts. The Topoquilts transcribe and transform a landscape into an accoutrement for home living by displaying, through textures and stitching patterns, the topography of a specific landscape. The topography I’m interested in working with are landscapes that have been designed and built as recreational spaces. These are landscapes that have been enhanced as well as domesticated by the control and design of topography, vegetation and accessibility in order to be more easily inhabited by people. A good example of these landscapes can be seen in the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, who was responsible for designing many of America’s well-known urban parks.

I returned to Wave Hill this summer to do a public artwork project—a ceremonial picnic quilt finished during a public quilting bee. The felting volunteers worked with wool roving (lose wool that comes from the sheep) to create textured felt inspired by the surrounding Wave Hill landscape. This felted textile becomes the top fabric for the quilt. Together we traced and then stitched the topographic lines of Wave Hill’s land into the felt. The quilting took on the form of a large public quilting bee over the course of one weekend in mid July. The quilt is on display at Wave Hill until the fall of 2010.

Quilting Bee, Wave Hill Cultural Center, Bronx, NY

Jean Screen
Dimensions: 60″x120″
Materials: Discarded jeans, pvc piping, wood frame

Brooklyn Art Project is currently featuring Liz Burow at the West Elm Store, Brooklyn.

David Belt, Creative Director of Macro Sea, is the man who last summer in Brooklyn conjured swimming pools out of dumpsters.

Belt and the team of creative developers at Macro Sea have brought their ingenuity to the fore again with a creative recycling center for glass and, more effusively, human aggression. The visceral energy of type-A New Yorkers invited to hurl and smash truck-loads of empty glass beer bottles from Brooklyn’s breweries make for one massive opportunity to let it all out, I mean, really let it go full-throttle!

Tossing the Bottles. Image by Chris Mottalini

Participants, who are invited to both hurl the glass and be under its direct line of fire, are given the chance to be on both ends of the spectrum of the cathartic glass throwdown. Inside the recycling cage—an artifice of bullet-proof glass and steel circuited with light sensors—colorful bottles whizz through the air, shatter with a glorious fanfare of noise and illumination, and then cascade into an evanescent silence and darkness like a glorious fireworks display.

Check out what goes down at Glassphemy! Video by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn.

Indeed, behind the gritty business of emotional outpouring or the shattered glass of a city street, GLASSPHEMY! reveals the astonishing beauty of fragility and breakage.

Lamps filled with glass recycled on site.

Christie’s Green Auction: A Bid to Save the Earth lit up NYC on the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day with a megawattage push to raise funds for four leading American environmental agencies.

Stefanía Fernández of Venezuela, Miss Universe 2009, and Kristen Dalton of North Carolina, Miss USA 2009

The environmental not-for-profits Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana, Conservation International, and Central Park Conservancy will be the recipients of the proceeds raised by the April 22, 2010 live auction as well as an April 8-May 6, 2010 online silent auction.

Willie Garson, Actor from Sex and the City

Christie’s CEO, Ed Dolman, jovially boasted that the fine art auction house, founded in 1762, is one of the oldest institutions to be active in recycling! Kidding aside, Christie’s together with leaders in the worlds of art, business, and fashion, and celebrities came together to emphasize the importance of bridging art and science.

Jim Simon, Executive VP of Oceana, Doug Blonsky, President of the Central Park Conservancy, Peter Lerner, Executive Director of NRDC, and Peter Seligmann, Chairman and CEO of Conservation International, eloquently expressed this marriage between culture and environment as a mission to care for people and thus bridge humanity and the planet through agriculture, water, and other health and economic systems.

Almudena Fernández, Model

In addition to the inspiring artworks and experiences up for auction, symbolizing this vital connection between art and environment, more modest donations can be made to the A Bid To Save The Earth initiative.

Fashion director for Barney’s, Julie Gilhart and friend.

One can contribute $10 by texting “GOGREEN” to 20222. The proceeds of Loomstate 100% Organic Blank Tees priced at $40, available for sale at Barneys and Loomstate, will also benefit the Green Auction as well as 1% For the Planet. A Bid To Save The Earth celebrates the interrelation of cultural creativity and the vitality of our blue and green planet.

Ted Danson

Target dog, Corporate Sponsor

All images and video by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn.

No commuter wants to add more time to traveling to and fro. But if there ever was a time to get stuck in transit (aside from an ash-cloud shutdown by an Icelandic volcano), then give it up for Earth Day’s 40th Anniversary at Grand Central Terminal.

Grand Central Terminal’s pink-marble Vanderbilt Hall gets a splash of green style as TheGreenShows EcoLux sets up an eco fashion, jewelry, and beauty boutique for EarthFair, Monday, April 19 through Sunday, April 25 (10:00am–7:00pm).

Joann Berman

Reco Jeans

The fabulous eco-fashion labels at the EcoLux shop include Samantha Pleet, House of Organic, Bahar Shahpar, deux fm,

Study by Tara St. James

STUDY by Tara St James, Ajna, Allison Parris, c. marchuska, Auralis Studio, Willian, Joann Berman, Nixxi, H. Fredriksson, and reco jeans.

Dex New York

Dex New York Cosmetics is offering complimentary organic beauty consultations and makeovers, and is selling at the shop, together with IMAGINE Skincare Organics and Nima Nyima.

Imagine Skincare Organics and Nima Nyima

You’ll be able to shop an array of other green brands while energized by Sambazon, which is serving up complimentary açai smoothies and juices.

It’s fantastic to able to check out the stars in ecofriendly design alongside Grand Central’s constellation-sky ceiling in the Main Concourse as we celebrate planet earth this week!