Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Congratulations to Titania Inglis, an Eco Chick Fave, for Winning the Ecco Domani Sustainability Award!

Ed Note: I am always excited to hear who has won the Ecco Domani awards, which gives $25,000 to up-and-coming designers for their next collection. In this case, it’s a designer we know and love (see the first part of the previously published excerpt of our coverage below).

The first time I saw Titania Inglis’ designs was last Summer at an eco fashion party at the Brooklyn Textile Art Center. She had a few pieces on a rack for sale, and I snagged a deep-V backed grey almost-seersucker sleeveless blouse. It was made of the lightest organic cotton and when I wore it to The Greenshows paired with my boyfriend’s jeans, and wooden-soled heels, I felt totally grown up, but comfortably so. I caught Titania’s recent show at the new Guilded showroom and the newest collection was just as exciting as those first few pieces I saw on that rack in Brooklyn.

String Theory — Titania Inglis FW11 from titania inglis on Vimeo.

The video for Titania’s Autumn/Winter 2011 line which played at her show at Guilded.

Naturally I wanted to know more about Titiana – and where she gets her inspiration for her future-perfect designs. Turns out that cotton blouse I so love is made with one of her favorite fabrics – a Japanese Organic Cotton – to design with: “The fabrics have a crisp, clean look that complements the geometric lines of my clothing perfectly, and their quality is unrivaled. I’m looking forward to working with Brooklyn’s Textile Arts Center on the dyeing for my next collection: they’re starting to grow a garden of dye plants, so although the fabric is sourced from abroad, the colors will be hyper-local,” says Titania.

To read more about Titania Inglis, click here for Eco Chick’s coverage of her work.

Love Natural Scents? Anjolie Ayurveda Soothes Body and Spirit with Homegrown Herbs

Being a scent-addict with a penchant for organic, natural products is not always easy to indulge. These days, however, as companies jump on the anti-synthetics bandwagon, we are seeing more body products that are sustainably crafted. One of the lines I have come to love is Anjolie Ayurveda. Founded by the mother-daughter team, Meryl and Cary Gabeler, Anjolie truly uses all-natural ingredients. A lot of pseudo-natural brands are claiming to be holistic but are using synthetics for fragrance. Ethically sourced plant-based scents are harder to come by but Anjolie proudly protects our bodies and the environment in their cultivation of ecologically sound botanical ingredients that infuse their line of soaps and body oils.

The Gabelers applied a life-long passion for Ayurveda to their formulas when they decided to create their line of body products. Having suffered with eczema, allergies, and skin sensitivities as a child, Meryl applied her mother, Carey’s knowledge of Ayurveda and traditional healing modalities to create skin remedies for sensitive skin. Combining therapeutic herbs with cold-pressed essential oils provides healing body products that leaves skin feeling nourished.

Anjolie has a ten-acre garden and nursery in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains (yes, please!) where they are growing roses, herbs, and tropical plants for use in their products. They support local farmers in India, sourcing raw materials directly from them in order to increase the direct income for their suppliers. Anjolie provides education for their employees and their employee’s families as well as supporting female work initiatives and grants for women entrepreneurs. Anjolie was recently awarded the Eileen Fisher Women’s Business Grant for small businesses in 2011.

We were very honored and excited to win! We are actually selling the soaps in Green Eileen, a new Eileen Fisher concept store, selling recycled clothing, with 100% of the proceeds going to Eileen Fisher’s Community Foundation.

Our efforts bring a positive contribution by empowering local people, educating their children and giving them an instrument of income that imparts a feeling of self-respect, dignity, and purpose in their lives.

These folks are doing it right! Highly recommended – try the spice soap for a warm, musky winter treat. Also, the Saffron Body Oil is absolutely amazing, especially this time of year. A warm but light sandalwood fragrance penetrates, leaving you feeling soft and hydrated. It is one of my go-to body oils during these dry months.

Eco Chick Escapes to Kaua’i: Hiking and Staying in Sustainable Style

The walk from the St. Regis Princeville to the beach.

My favorite kind of wedding to attend is, by far, the destination wedding. While an open bar is never not fun, it’s even better if the drinks are located in a country that takes a passport to get into. And a wedding is a genuine excuse to blow your budget to travel (I barely need an excuse to get out of town, but it’s always nice to have one).

So when my boyfriend received an invitation to nuptials in Kaua’i, I started planning the trip immediately, even though I had never met the bride or groom. Having sojourned on the Big Island and visited Oahu numerous times growing up, I was excited to check out “The Garden Isle” of Kaua’i, which I’d heard so much about.

The Makana Terrace at the St. Regis is just one of the hotel’s restaurants that serves local, organic food. Image courtesy St. Regis Princeville.

After scouring the web for ethical accommodations, I ended up at the St. Regis in Princeville, a stunning hotel in the old-school style, with impeccable customer service and a lobby that I’ll never forget (picture several story-high glass windows fronting a view of one of the most famed spots in Kaua’i and miles of ocean and sky).

While not a small lodging, the St. Regis is well integrated into its environment, and unlike many of the newer hotels I’ve lately seen, it doesn’t try to be more than its location. I have a major antipathy for cheesy, overdone, glitzy hotels that seem designed in Des Moines and plopped down wherever tourists are flying this year. The St. Regis is not one of these, but in its elegance, seems almost to serve to remind us why a boutique hotel isn’t always the way to go.

I had a bit of a stretch out on the rocks in the bay off the beach at the St. Regis.

I had the chance to have a lovely breakfast with Stephanie Reid, the Director of Public Relations for the hotel; she is both a native Hawaiian from Kaua’i (going back 10 generations) and a wealth of knowledge of the natural and human history about the area where the St. Regis is located.

To read the rest of this post, and see all the amazing images, please click over to our sister site, Eco Chick Escapes.

We’re Loving: ReuseThisBag.com

You know the story: Disposable shopping bags are evil for many reasons. Of course, we never fail to leave home without ours, and we’ve become fond of ReuseThisBag.com, a serious source for reusable shopping bags. From grocery and lunch bags, to all sorts of wine totes and woven bags, each is made from 100 percent recyclable materials and can be imprinted to suit you or your organization’s needs.

 

 

 

My New Year’s Intentions for 2012 and Beyond

In seeming contrast to so many writers and thought-leaders who think that New Year’s Resolutions are pointless exercises in torturing oneself, I find setting intentions for the year to be inspiring. I love all opportunities to fine-tune and rethink, to refine and change course, to challenge myself and my goals anew.

Intention: Spend more time in natural spaces

Two years ago I was lucky enough to spend 7 months travelling, and the bulk of that I spent outside in Hawaii and Australia. I have missed being out-of-doors, absorbing sunshine, swimming in salt and freshwater, and breathing the scent of tree sap and decaying greenery.

Plan of Action: Though I’m now back on my home turf of NYC and Connecticut, there are still many opportunities to get outdoors and enjoy the natural world. I’m going to start with iceskating on a regular basis in January and February.

Intention: Have the courage to begin a truly creative project

I’ve had several art/creative ideas floating around in my heart and head for the last couple of years, but have done little to realize them. Two in particular have stuck with me, including a novella-length fictional story that wants to be told, and a fabric that I am dying to see in more than my mind’s eye.

Plan of Action: I have made a list of the steps I need to take to achieve each of the projects I would like to see to fruition. I am going to take one step each week to making both my writing project and the fabric idea a reality. It’s ok if it takes awhile, these are things I want to do for myself, so I don’t have to stress about them, but they must actually move forward. In the past I have expected results too soon, and felt disappointed when relatively big ideas didn’t happen immediately. This time around, I am going to be more patient with myself and the process.

Intention: Simplify my Life

This sounds like a vague one, with an even bigger, vaguer end goal behind it, but I’m going for it anyway! I want to take my life from a static, live-in-one place existence to one that varies with the seasons or the year, and/or means that I can live at least part of each year as a traveller. But first I need to shed my life of everything that’s unnecessary.

Plan of Action: Like many Americans, I’ve managed to collect quite a bit of stuff, and I want to find a home for it that’s both responsible and not wasteful. This will take some time, but I’ve already started by changing the way I consume, and by how much ‘stuff’ I got rid of in 2011. I will keep going.

What are your resolutions, if you like to make them?