Eco-Chick · Fabulously green

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Eco Designer Carrie Parry Wins the Green Fashion Competition at Amsterdam Fashion Week

Giveaway: Drew Barrymore’s “Big Miracle” Movie Tickets, Whale Toy and Tee for An Eco Chick Reader!

The New Source4Style: THE Eco Fashion Designer’s Key Resource

Polished Beauty Bar: Indulge in a Healthy Mani and Pedi

Jewelry by Pippa Small: Impactful and Joyous (in More Ways than Just Aesthetically)

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by Starre Vartan · 12/15/11

I’m loving London-based jeweler Pippa Small‘s oversized, colorful jewelry. After working under Tom Ford at Gucci and Phoebe Philo at Chloe, she has a fantastic design eye for what’s going to work with a dressed down frock, smart denims and a white tee, or even with a more polished jacket-and-skirt ensemble.

Smalls’ new online shop means that her designs are now easily available to anyone with an Internet connection, though her jewelry is available at all sorts of boutiques and is featured on net-a-porter too.

And the designer doesn’t just have an eye for style, she works with what is the world’s 1st registered Fairtrade gold mine in Bolivia, and partnered with Afghanistan-based charity Turtle Mountain, which is working to regenerate the country’s traditional arts. She also produced a collection with the Fairtrade company MADE based in Kibera, a slum area in Nairobi.

Read more about these various projects here.

“Pippa believes the art of jewellery making can enhance life and help alleviate poverty and protect precious traditions, helping to grow the confidence of crafts people around the world and reverse the tradition of exploitation associated with the gem industry over the centuries. Her jewellery is collected and coveted by many who appreciate the rough organic, hand made feel of the jewellery.”

afghanistan, bolivia, british, charity, cocktail ring, earrings, fairtrade, gold, Jewelry, necklace

Heroines for the Planet: NYC Botanist and Urban Ecologist Marielle Anzelone

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by Lindsay E. Brown · 12/13/11

If you’ve spent any amount of time outdoors in New York City’s parks, you’ve likely passed by Marielle Anzelone at one time or another. She wasn’t sitting on a bench sipping a latte, lying on a blanket reading a good glossy or strolling the concrete paths. No way. Marielle goes off the beaten path. She was the gal you may have seen studying native plants, observing her surroundings with her hands. It’s just what she does.

The renowned botanist and urban conservation biologist preserves and restores the floristic diversity of the five boroughs. In the city that never sleeps or fails to cease constructing, preservation of any sort is no easy feat. Her love and appreciation for nature inspired her to help her fellow New Yorkers see and experience the natural world too. Marielle founded NYC Wildflower Week so citizens can get to know the nature near them more intimately with a full week of events in all five boroughs.

I caught up with Marielle recently and we talked about NYC Wildflower Week and its growth, threats to conservation, our government’s role in preserving biodiversity and how we can each help protect the nature in our own backyard.

Lindsay: Where does your passion for flora come from? Did you have a “green thumb” from a young age?

Marielle: No, I really didn’t. I loved playing outside, just as all kids do. We rode our bikes around the neighborhood and seined for crawfish in a stream and ate mulberries off trees, but we also played kickball and pretended to be superheroes. I’d say my childhood was pretty standard suburban New Jersey fare. I fell in love with nature the end of college.

I had a class my senior year – a survey class in ecology essentially – and it just blew my hair back. One of the first lectures, I still remember, my professor talked about serotinous cones. In NJ Pinelands, pitch pine trees produce cones that are sealed tight with resin. Fires come through these forests often. If the fire is hot enough, it will melt the resin and the cone will release its seeds. At the same time, the fire has just burnt organic material, returning it to the soil, making the usually sandy, infertile soil the perfect nursery for the pine seeds to germinate. I had never heard of such a thing before. It sounded like magic to me. And honestly, even now, it still does. But it’s science! And it’s happening right under our noses. I mean, how cool is that?

Lindsay: What was the inspiration behind NYC Wildflower Week? What sort of progress have you made since its inception?

Marielle: The inspiration for NYC Wildflower Week is really that – bringing that kind of magic to New Yorkers. After that initial class, I had a field ecology class, where I essentially learned how to read the natural landscape, what the presence of certain species could tell us about a site’s land-use history. It was the beginning of my ecological literacy, I was beginning to read the natural world. Places I had seen my whole life were suddenly different and new. This new knowledge felt like the part of the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy’s world goes from black and white to technicolor. Sadly most people have limited, if any, nature education, so NYC Wildflower Week works to bring that bit of magic back into people’s everyday lives.

NYC Wildflower Week’s mission is to help people reconnect to a sense of wonder by engaging with the nature around them and celebrating the native biodiversity that makes it possible. For one week in May, New Yorkers get out and explore the city’s 53,000 acres of natural areas at more than 45 events in all 5 boroughs. Activities include guided botanical walks through the city’s woodlands and wetlands, tours of native gardens and green roofs, native plant workshops and giveaways, planting opportunities, and interactive children’s fairs.

May 2012 will be our 5th year. To celebrate, we are expanding nationally! We’re partnering with four other cities and the good people behind the Project Noah app to connect urbanites to the nature around them for National Urban Biodiversity Week. Very exciting to expand the conversation to the national stage.
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Handmade Hair Accessories Trend: Matching Themed Pins

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by Starre Vartan · 12/09/11

I have had long hair since I was a little girl; and on those days when it looks pretty flowing down my back, I am joyous. But those days are few and far between, and the rest of the time, I wear my hair in a bun or updo on top of my head. Whatever way I wear my hair, I love to keep pretty little hair clips or pins in there somewhere; there’s a lot of it and I need to control it a bit even when it’s down. Recently, I lost my last few fave accessories (they always disappear eventually, a fact you just have to accept) and so I thought Etsy might be a good place to find some uncheesy new ones. And I found several matching themed bobby pins, which I thought were really sweet.

(Above) iluxo has a number of handmade-from-veggie-tanned-leather hair pieces, like the matching octopus and bubbles (and there are a bird and feather, and a skull and flower, both of which I also love).

This sweet set is from prettyplsmpls, and is made from vintage materials.

Made from old books pages, these pins from Bits and barley are perfect for a writer or book lover.
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bobby pins, Etsy, hair accessories, hairdo, Handmade, updo

Stuff Pal: Share Your Fave Books, Movies and Video Games with This New Facebook App

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by Lindsay E. Brown · 12/08/11

Imagine being able to borrow books, textbooks, DVDs (maybe even a video game if that’s your thing) for free from your friends on Facebook. It’d be pretty darn nice, wouldn’t it? Sounds like a dream….but it’s not!

Stuff Pal, a new social media application, is making this sort of sharing available to everyone. Their personal media sharing library allows anyone with a Facebook account (which pretty much means everyone reading this), to borrow and lend, while saving money.

To start swapping with Stuff Pal, simply visit their site, log-in to Facebook, catalog your “stuff” and then get your borrowing and lending on. All without spending a dime!

We’re loving Stuff Pal as much as clothes swapping, (which really says a lot) because it’s good for the environment and your wallet. Similar to clothes swaps, StuffPal encourages great items like DVDs and books to be reused and shared, rather than bought, cutting your carbon footprint.

Watch this video and have a peak at this savvy, new application!

app, budget, dvds, facebook, games, lending, sharing, stuffpal, swapping, textbooks

Video: Heritage Donegal Tweed from Molloy and Sons

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by Starre Vartan · 12/07/11

Molloy & Sons: Heritage Tweed on Nowness.com.

This video is incredibly beautiful; I’ve been wanting to visit Ireland for years now, but this would most certainly be a wonderful reason to go – to check out authentic Donegal tweed. I would love a menswear-style vest with a satin lining and old horn buttons to wear over dresses and tights this winter.

Handmade, heritage fabrics are the way forward, as we look back.

Video via nowness.com, an absolutely gorgeous site.

Filmmakers Jamie Delaney and Keith Nally’s beautiful short, made in collaboration with heritage enthusiast and Acne Paper Editor Charlotte Rey, profile one of the last surviving weaving mills, Molloy & Sons. Based in the windswept County Donegal, Ireland, current father and son duo Sean and Kieran Molloy have a pedigree dating back over six generations and weave premium tweed from the famous Donegal yarn. “I think that with old crafts which are indigenous to areas like this, it’s really hard to divorce them from their landscape,” says Delaney. Over the course of three days’ filming, Delaney and Rey captured the family’s impressive artisanal skill and dedication to a dwindling industry. Amidst the bleak but beautiful scenery surrounding the mill, the textile masters explained how their authentic Donegal weaves were inspired by the muted tones and flecks of color in the local heather, bracken and wild flowers. “Tweed is part of the cultural DNA in a sense; it’s been there for generations and it’s a pillar of a fabric industry that is now disappearing,” says Rey. “What should really be shining through is the love and the passion of these people.”

artisan, Handmade, heritage fabrics, Ireland, tweed, wool