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

Eco Chic Exhibit Now On at Scandinavia House, NYC

Righteous Fashion

Leave it to the Swedes to put together an exhibit concerning eco fashion that’s both beautiful and seriously thought-provoking. Eco Chic: Towards Sustainable Swedish Fashion, which runs through August 21st, is a multimedia endeavor that showcases the whys, the hows and the hows of sustainable design.

Video by Eco Chick Contributor Alicia Lubowski-Jahn

First up, I checked out the short film about Dem Collective, a grown-to-sewn operation in Sri Lanka which both pays workers twice the typical wage and still makes a profit (as well as utilizing low-impact fabrics in production). The film asks the right-now question, “Is there such a thing as sustainable globalization?”

Dem Collective tunic shirts

Striking to me was the exchange wherein the narrator of the film asks a local Sri Lankan worker (not employed by Dem Collective, but instead works for a typical garment manufacturer) who is agitating for local labor rights, “Should we be ashamed that we don’t pay you more for your work?” The seamstress answers, after a moment of thought, “Yes.”
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Recipe from Emeril LaGasse’s New Book “Farm to Fork”: Crostini with Ricotta and Spring Peas

Emeril LaGasse’s newest cookbook, Farm to Fork (available June 1, 2010), embraces local, organic, healthy food and recipes. From the man who hosts the popular Emeril Green cooking show on the Discovery Channel, the book covers how to cook up leafy greens, herbs, milk, eggs, cheese, meats, fish, grains, homemade preserves and fresh fruit for every season. Emeril explains his love of good, healthy food and shares a recipe with Eco Chick readers below:

“I have had a connection with the soil since I was a young boy. This was kindled long ago, from my Uncle’s farm to our backyard vegetable garden which I tended to with my father. As I got older, I began to take part in the milking of cows and collecting eggs from the chicken coop. It was this experience that really taught me how a farm works. I made the connection between the food we buy at the market and the people who grow it and that really stuck with me. Once I became a chef and began honing my craft, I knew the most important thing was to use the freshest and the best ingredients I could find. I also recognized that those ingredients, whether it be seafood, meat, poultry, or produce, should be grown and harvested locally.”

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Healthy recipes with little to no cooking, ideal for hot summer weather, include Baby Limas, Green and Yellow Beans, and Teardrop Tomatoes with Mint Vinaigrette and Tomato Tartare and Micro Greens with Shallot vinaigrette to Turnip and Radish Slaw with Lump Crabmeat and Chive Oil and Fresh Mint Tea. Refreshing drinks also include Apple Tarragon Granita and fresh Watermelon Limeade. To top it off, fresh from the orchard, is Nectarine and Mascarpone Tart in a Sugar Cookie Crust and Apricot Clafouti.

CROSTINI WITH RICOTTA AND SPRING PEAS

Fresh ricotta is actually a byproduct of cheese making as it is made from the whey that separates from the curd. It has a mild and slightly sweet flavor and a roughly creamy texture. Fresh ricotta is an incredibly versatile ingredient lending itself to both sweet and savory preparations.
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Brooklyn Designs 2010: Frameicarium’s Ant Farm Art

FRAMEicariums are the brainchild of designers Katie Vitale and Hugh Hayden, and they are seriously one of the coolest pieces of affordable art I have ever seen. They are ant farms reimagined as wall art, literally living sculptures made by the hard work of the ants enclosed in them. Using repurposed frames (some with and some without paintings behind them), these framed ant farms are reusable over time – just add more ants!

Check out the video below made at Brooklyn Designs, where designer Katie Vitale explains how the ant farm art works and where she and her co-designer got this crazy-creative idea from.

Pine & Calendula: Two Magical Herbal Oils for Beauty & Health

I’m no Drew Barrymore – I don’t use the word ‘magical’ very often. But sometimes it applies, and I’m not talking about supernatural phenomena here. I mean magic of an earthly sort, those moments of amazing interaction between us and the natural world where everything seems to fit together – well – magically.

To me, a prime example is the way certain plants can ease our ills and make us feel beautiful without any kind of laboratory manipulation. Two of my absolute favorites – pine and calendula – might be growing in your area right now, just waiting to be plucked and infused and allowed to work their particular magic on your body. Making infused herbal oils is so easy, they smell fantastic and it’s comforting to know that what you’re putting on your skin is as pure as can be.
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First Princeton Sustainable Fashion Competition: Creative Recycling at Its Best

The Sustainable Fashion Competition was held at the lovely Princeton Art Museum Galleries

I was lucky enough to be asked to judge Princeton University’s first-ever Sustainable Fashion Competition a few weeks ago, and it was so much fun. The event was organized through student group Greening Princeton.

Kelly Rouser, Chenyu Zheng, Laura Bai and Sarah Chen of Greening Princeton with one of the entries to the competition.

There were some extremely creative pieces entered as part of the competition; some of the nonwinning designs were still incredibly well thought-out, including an asymmetrical handmade dress from recycled t-shirts with a flourish neckline created from plastic bags that reminded one of petals in contrasting colors.

A robe created from cast-off tees in a patchwork design (the idea originally came from the entrant’s lightweight quilts made from the same materials), and a perfectly cut and sewn skirt made from Whole Foods paper bags were shown, as well as a bracelet made from wires salvaged from an old elevator. A Gary-Harvey inspired dress made from three pairs of jeans was one of my favorites, and also extremely wearable.

Maddie Douglas’ shoes from plastic cups

The winner of the competition was Maddie Douglas, a chemistry major with certificate in visual arts who created a shoe made entirely from #6 plastic cups, and a jacket made from the thick fabric-like foam packing material. Not only were both pieces made from some of the worst-of-the-worst garbage that gets tossed (foam and plastic takes thousands of years to break down, and releases toxins while it does so), but the designs themselves were elegant and well thought-out. The jacket was not only visually interesting, but keeps the wearer extremely warm (and allows the wearer to show off a pretty shirt underneath).

Maddie Douglas’ jacket made from packing foam.

The plastic for the shoes still showed some of the original cup shape because instead of simply melting the plastic down, Maddie ’slumped’ it, which is a chemistry term for collapsing a material up to- but not beyond- it’s melting point. Maddie told me it took 10-12 cups to make each shoe and that she found the cups in the trash cans outside the local bars in Princeton. The shoes she showed were her third round of experiments on the design and technique, and were totally rockin’.

Jessica Lander, Starre Vartan (middle), and Julie Dickerson in Julie’s recycled dress (right, made from tickets and movie posters) and a saucy hat (left, made from posters). .

Julie Dickerson, an Art and Archeology major and Jessica Lander, an Anthropology major took second and third places, respectively, for their recycled creations. A dress bodice made from gesso’d canvas that was left over from her thesis project, a glove from bubble wrap and an ‘Easter egg’ pouch/purse made up a whimsical outfit from Jessica, who said that it was important to ‘accept the funk’ that happened during the design process. Julie’s dress made from ticket stubs and movie posters went with the idea that this was a dress “for the theatre, by the theatre” and called her ensemble “Showtime”.

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