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

HessNatur and PlanetGreen Eco Tee Design Challenge!

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by Starre Vartan · 07/21/09

Get your design printed on a beautiful organic cotton t-shirt like this one, original design by Eco chick fave, Miguel Adrover.

Are you an aspiring designer? Just love creating fun t-shirts for your friends and family? If so, then check out Hessnatur and Planet Green’s Eco-Tee Design Challenge which has just gone live on PlanetGreen’s site.

The public will vote for the design they feel is most creative and original. After the pool is whittled down to five finalists, the esteemed panel of judges will choose a winner. The winner’s tee will be made at Dr. Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Knitwear project, with 50% of the proceeds going back to the foundation. In addition, the winner’s tee will be sold internationally at Hessnatur’s website

Judges include Hessnatur designer Miguel Adrover, Toms shoes CEO, Blake Mycoskie and Eco-model Summer Rayne Oakes, as well as Miranda Purves, lifestyle editor at ELLE.

The official date to enter designs is from August 1st to September 1st, but all necessary tools are available to get started, so check out all the details here and get designing!

Wolf Luedge and Dr. Mohammend Yunus, founder of the Grameen Foundation

contest, design, PlanetGreen, Summer Rayne Oakes, t-shirt

Tell the USDA to Regulate GE/GMOs

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by Kimberly Jordan Allen · 03/17/09

Genetically modified organisms were not sufficiently tested before entering our food chain. Today, more than 60-70% of packaged foods contain ingredients that have been genetically engineered. Loopholes have allowed industry to avoid disclosure regarding genetically altered food products and it is time to demand testing and regulation. Concerned citizens have the chance to voice their concern to the USDA.

The folks at FoodDemocracyNow! have sent out a simple form letter that you can copy and paste. It is time to stop experimenting on our bodies. Do you really want to eat a tomato that contains the genetic information of a grouper?

Here is a copy of the form letter – send yours! You can also contact your local legislators, join grassroots activist groups and work to strike up dialogue with anyone who cares about what they eat!

How to Submit Comments to the USDA:

Include “Docket Number APHIS-2008-0023” at the top of your correspondence or in the subject line of your email.

Online Instructions:

1. Click here to send your comments to the USDA electronically or go to:

http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail&o=0900006480903a8e

The result with Document ID number “APHIS-2008-0023″ is the Interim Final Rule for comments on Importation, Interstate Movement, and Release into the Environment of Certain Genetically Engineered Organisms

2. Click on the “Add Comment” icon and follow the instructions on the next screen.

Tell USDA to: 1. Withdraw the proposed rule; 2. Release the EIS for public review and comment and to be used as a basis for further rule-making; and 3. Suspend all new GE crop approvals until the above has been satisfactorily completed and unless and until GE crops are proven safe.

SAMPLE LETTER (Please cut and paste)

To whom it may concern,
Docket No. APHIS-2008-0023
Regulatory Analysis and Development
PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8
4700 River Road Unit 118
Riverdale, MD 20737-1238.

Re: Docket No. APHIS-2008-0023, Importation, Interstate Movement, and Release into the Environment of Certain Genetically Engineered Organisms.

I am very concerned about the risks posed by genetically engineered crops. They threaten human health, family farmers, and the environment. I urge USDA to withdraw the proposed rule, publish the Environmental Impact Statement for public review and comment, and suspend all new GE crop approvals in the interim.

After USDA releases the EIS, a comment period of at least 90 days is needed so the public has the opportunity to fully participate in a transparent process on this important issue. This will not only aid in the development of the final EIS but also in the drafting of a new proposed rule. The current proposed rule does little to close the loopholes in the regulations the rule is designed to replace and it creates more gaps than it fills.

Sincerely,
Your Name Here!

car, design, farm, Food, fur, health, local, spa, trike, USDA

Design Glut: It's Scrumdidilyumptious!

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by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn · 03/03/09

Liz Kinnmark (right) and Kegan Fisher (left), Co-founders of Design Glut, wearing respectively earrings and a necklace from their Currency Collection

Liz Kinnmark: As a company, it’s our job to entice you.  We need people to desire our products, in order to fulfill our desires, like paying rent!  That’s the way the system works.  So we, like every business, try to tempt you to consume our products.  But unlike every business, we also have a lot of blue-sky ideas about changing the world for the better.  I think tempting becomes toxic when businesses care only about selling and not about the long-term health of the system.  In the long-term, your business won’t survive if you don’t take care of the consumers you sell to and the environment we all live in.  I’m a big believer in socially-responsible capitalism.                        

Black Crude Necklace

EC: It’s fascinating how consumption is expressed in your products.  You have highlighted several ways that we (over) consume materials — including our use of economic, dietary, and energy resources.  Can you please comment on how the role of the consumer provides a point of view for your designs?

LK: Design is about creating objects for other people, for consumers, for the market. That’s where I draw the line between design and art.  Art is about creating something because you want to create it, to express yourself.  So by that definition, the role of the consumer is essential to any design.  I think the design world often times tries to pretend that it’s not about commerce, that it’s about beauty and refined tastes and something much classier.  We make fun of that.  We embrace the fact that this is about consumerism.  If you’re buying something because it makes you feel good or cool or whatever, fine.  We all do it.  Just have the decency to admit it. And think about who or what you’re supporting when you spend those dollars.  You don’t need to give up consumerism, but you should consciously decide what to support.

Smoking Gun

EC: What are we craving through objects?  Do you see the possibility of our society restraining the consumer diet or being satiated by a more nourishing kind of product?

LK: Everyone craves something different.  I don’t see the appetite receding any time soon, but I do think people can be satiated by a more nourishing kind of product.  With our jewelry, for example, I see it as feeding people’s appetite for fashion and yet slipping in a vitamin.  You’ll look good wearing it, of course, but you just might start a conversation about important current events.

Kegan Fischer wearing World Links Brooch

EC: What is the educational mission behind the Design Glut webzine? What is the vision behind this design forum?

LK: Well, we stumbled right out of art school into trying to run a business.  And it immediately became clear that school hadn’t prepared us for the business world.  We ended up getting into all these crazy situations, like having pallets of merchandise delivered to our apartment, having to break them down on the street and then figure out where the hell we were going to store everything.  We started talking with other entrepreneurs, and we realized we weren’t the only ones who had no idea what we were doing in the beginning!  You learn by screwing up, and then getting up and dusting yourself off and trying again.  Every start-up has these great stories about the trials and tribulations they’ve gone through.  So we started collecting the stories and posting them to our website.  We hope that they will inspire others to follow their own dreams.  The central lesson, in my opinion, is that no one gets to the top because of their super-human abilities.  They get there by working hard, not giving up, and a healthy dose of luck and coincidences along the way.

Slow Food Tray

EC: Tell me a little bit please about your creative collaboration. What brings the two of you (Liz and Kegan) together as designers?

LK: When we did our first show together, it was just because it logistically made sense.  Neither of us had very much money or very many products, so we shared a space.  And then halfway through the preparations, we looked at each other and were like, “Huh, I don’t usually like working with other people, but this is going really well!”  We both work really, really hard.  We both have a similar aesthetic.  If you look at our personal artwork, it’s almost eerily similar, except Kegan works on a massive scale and I work on a tiny scale.  But probably most importantly, we both have grandiose dreams.  We convince each other that we can pull things off that, to everyone else, seems crazy and impossible.  And then we do it.

gilded eggs nestled in their Egg Pants beside Kegan Fisher

EC: What’s coming up for you in 2009?  Next steps?

LK: Well, we’ve always got grand plans and new products in the works.  We’re almost ready to launch one of them, so keep an eye out!  Our next show will be ICFF (May 16-19, ’09).  In the meantime, we’re really interested in continuing to grow the website.  Readership has increased a lot recently; it’s very exciting.  Right now we’re working on a redesign of the site.  The look and feel will stay pretty much the same, but we’re bringing in more creative entrepreneurs to blog about their experiences.  In celebration of the 1-year anniversary of our blog (July 2009) we’ll be holding a show with work from some of our favorite creatives that we’ve interviewed.  I’m getting really excited about the play that can happen back-and-forth between the digital world and the physical world.  For example, bringing a group of people, who share having their names listed on our website, together in a physical space.  We’re also thinking about releasing a printed magazine.  We’d like to approach designing a magazine from a product-design point of view; design it like an object which we want people to love and keep.  We’d pull articles from our website which all fit a certain theme, and tie them closer together, elaborating on what the central message/lesson is.  Eventually I’d love to make a book.

consumerism, design, Jewelry

Brainforest: How Does Community Sustain Us?

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by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn · 03/03/09

Brainforest is a Chicago-based creative agency that has integrated an ethos of social service (people) and sustainability (planet) into the workplace (profit).  The Triple Bottom Line  seems to come effortlessly to a company that volunteers at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, dedicates pro bono service per annum to a specially selected client, including the Gilda’s Club Chicago, and established a non-proft organization Bfriend, Inc. to support charitable projects.  

Most recently Bfriend, Inc. implemented a supply re-use program called Creative Pitch.  Art materials donated by Chicago-area design and marketing businesses are gathered and distributed free of charge to neighborhood schools in need of art and educational supplies.  Similar creative re-use programs have sprung up in other cities, including New York’s Materials for the Arts, Fort Lauderdale’s Trash to Treasure, and Oakland’s East Bay Depot For Creative Reuse.  Unwanted and unused materials that would ordinarily be pitched in the dumpster, are creatively re-purposed and re-cycled to pitch in. 

A reciprocal exchange lies behind Brainforest’s  ”good works”  initiatives, which are designed as “giving back to the community that sustains us.”  As Dian Sourelis, a Partner at Brainforest and Founder/Chairperson of Bfriend, Inc, explains, the projects have grown organically from a wholehearted desire to serve others: “We are generous people.  We think about what we can do for other people.  People who work here really want to do that.”  Behind Brainforest’s acts of giving back to the community, lies a message about the many returns of a circular sustainability.  Through giving, lies the potential to receive again and again.

business, cities, community, creative reuse, design, Food, giving, Hair, Home, Organic, rainforest, reuse, schools, sustainability, trash

Alabama Chanin's Super Sustainable Eco Fashion: "It's Time to Garden"

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by Starre Vartan · 02/23/09

The model tableau in Alabama Chanin’s open, sunny show space

The Alabama Chanin show, titled “The Songbirds” last Friday was definitely a down-home version of a fashion-week event, and all of us in attendance couldn’t have been happier about it. It was relaxed, it was filled with music, it was, in these stressful times, a relief.

Following the anti-runway trend, the models at Alabama Chanin’s show donned different outfits, posed for photographers (I loved taking shots at my leisure and playing with the light), ate and drank and even mingled a bit. And why not? They are people too, and after all the stories of the catwalk coterie biting it in amped-up runway shows, I’ll bet these girls were happy to behave like (gorgeous) human beings rather than skinny-legged stompers.

Natalie Chanin, designer of Alabama Chanin

I also had time to speak with Natalie Chanin, the creative force behind her label of completely handmade clothes (there is NO machine-sewing in any of the pieces and in fact each one is made by hand in cottage-industry production made up of women working from their homes). She told me that she’s coming up on ten years of designing (first for Project Alabama and since 2006 for Alabama Chanin) and explains, “I’ve planted a lot of seeds, and now I’m letting them grow.”

A model with the folksy/country musicians who kept it light, mellow, and energized.

Besides branching out into home furnishings (a natural for her incredible overdyed, hand embroidered fabrics) Natalie is moving and expanding into accessories, including both hats and jewelry (The bijoux are unexpected combinations of metals, metals that incorporate fabric elements into their patterns, and actual fabrics). She has also been working with a small-batch indigo dyer (who dyes in a church in the Bronx) to create Alabama Denim, which was shown in several pieces.

The detail on each of these is just knock-your-socks-off amazing. Some pieces have been worked on by more than five women.

Natalie continued her garden metaphor, apt since cotton (the primary fabric used in her designs) and indigo, (used to dye them) both grow from the Earth. She explained her collection: “What we have right now is very round, and I need to be patient and it needs space to grow. This is the time to garden.”
And in case you were wondering, all the fabric used in the designs is 100% organic cotton and is “grown-to-sewn” in the southern USA.

Note the layered skirt on the left, which worked even on a slimmer design; this is an easy look to wear and versatile too (models sported cowboy boots or sky-high stilettos; all seemed to work with the designs).

The details on the designs are gorgeous and look handmade and hyper-organic, which I love in an age of white buttonless pods and glass everywhere.

A close-up of the pretty layering; a perfectly easy way to wear the pattern-on-pattern trend.

Love the 1920′s feel about this. Maybe a bit of recession-chic?

Check out the natural Indigo-dyed Alabama denim on the model at right.

The all-white collection inspired all sorts of cloud-and-snow fantasies in me- the texture of white embroidery on soft white cotton was just magical.

The new Alabama Chanin jewelry collection (here laid out for the models) was a study in texture and pattern – and color!

Button detail on one of the gorgeous long coats that are an Alabama Chanin signature.

Hats laid out for the models, with their handmade labels

Starre Vartan with an Alabama Chanin coat (I want one of these so much! Perfect with jeans and a tank, over a dress, with shorts and boots….eminently wearable!

Check out The Alabama Stitch Book: Projects and Stories Celebrating Hand-Sewing, Quilting and Embroidery for Contemporary Sustainable Style to learn some of the secrets behind Natalie Chanin’s designs (and use them as inspiration for you own!)

design, ecofashion, Fair Trade, Organic