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

Brooklyn Designs 2010 Green Finds: Colleen and Eric

It was a sunny and perfect afternoon on the Brooklyn waterfront (specifically, DUMBO) last Thursday, and also the opening of Brooklyn Designs, the annual local-BK event that highlights the borough’s most creative furniture and home decor.

Inhabitat has the full coverage of the event and all the green furniture (plus their awards!); I focused on the fun and fabulous (and green, of course) decor items that I found. First up, Colleen and Eric!

Colleen + Eric are brand-new to the furniture and design show, but their creations were some of my favorites. “Hold on Tight” Shelves, North Star End tables Flock of Birds wall decals ($55) and fab BKLN totebags ($35). See video below for close-ups and deets!

Eric of Colleen and Eric walks me through his booth at Brooklyn Designs

Behind the Scenes of the Project Green Search Model Competition Finals

Project Green Search, the first-ever green model competition, has a winner! Rachel Avalon hails from Los Angeles, California, and beat out over 130 other serious contenders for her new title as Green It Girl (read more about Rachel and her plans here). But before the winner was chosen, there were activities, photo shoots and some very good times.

The Ten Gorgeous (and Green to the Core!) Finalists Photo by Courtney Dailey.

Judging Project Green Search was lots of fun; I got a chance to go to most of the activities with the finalists and got to know them; what an impressive group of young women! From an Indy racecar driver to a natural nutritional counselor, to a college activist and an environmental educator, this was a talented and driven group of contenders. And as you can see, all of them were gorgeous too! The judging crew and I (see below) had our work cut out for us.

The judges! From left to right: Michael Zaliski, CEO of Omniquest Media, Anna Griffin, editor-in-chief of Coco Eco Magazine, Starre Vartan, author and publisher of Eco-Chick.com (I’m wearing an organic cotton dress by Doie), Remy Chevalier, Co-founder of Project Green Search, Deborah Lindquist, ecofashion designer, Josie Maran, former model and force behind Josie Maran Cosmetics, and Darren Moore, host of AlterEco and founder of Ecovations.

Day One: I got a chance to meet all the girls at a breakfast at our hotel, The Standard on Sunset Boulevard. Everyone was so excited to be there, and Taryn from EcoDivasTV started filming right away, and off we went!

Vanessa Meier even looks gorgeous in curlers! At Shades salon in LA. Image by Remy Chevalier for Lu Magazine.

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Rubie Green's Gorgeous Organic Prints and My Grandma's Chaise

I dedicated my book, The Eco Chick Guide to Life to my grandma for a reason; she taught me most of what I know about being both eco and chicky- an inveterate animal-lover, ecosystem preserver, and queen of all things green, she was also a truly independent, fabulous, and inspiring woman.

Luckily for me, I’ve inherited many of her wonderful possessions, from antique middle-eastern lamps to vintage saris, all bought on her round-the-world travels. And some of my grandma’s stuff was inherited from her mother, like the circa- 1915-1925 chaise, above, which was very well used by my gram and then by me. She used to sit in it and read, and there I’d find her when I came home from school, engrossed in a the novel-of-the-week.

So when it came time to recover the chaise I wanted to go further than reuse and do something that would look fabulous and also be really ecofriendly. I had read about Rubie Green in Domino Magazine several times, and thought her classy-cool fabrics would be the perfect pairing to my grandma’s chaise. I chose the organic cotton “Lakeview” pattern from this page.

I am so happy with how it turned out! This classic pattern compliments the lines of the chaise and it’s a nice soft but tough fabric sure to last for years. See the befores below.

My grandma’s chaise before, 1

My grandma’s chaise before, 2

Ecologique: Super-Styling by Kelly LaPlante

Check out what Kelly has to say about the Lexus Hybrid Living Suite she decorated in Washington, D.C.’s Fairmont Hotel.

The fabulous and accomplished Kelly LaPlante’s gorgeous first book, Ecologique, is a breath of fresh air. For several years now, ecofriendly decorating has had a definite aura of cool modernism, as if there was only one way to design a green interior, and that’s with lots of (sustainable wooden) cubes. LaPlante has different ideas. As she writes in the introduction, “Reconsider what you think you know about “the green look” — bamboo flooring, modular furniture, neutral colors, and all other icons of the sustainable design movement. Green is a standard, not a style.”

LaPlante proves that you can foster any style sustainably, by showcasing a pretty wide variety of decorating challenges she has take on over the last few years.

There’s the electric-car driving California politician’s office done up 50′s retro style, (with vintage typewriter to add interest and a houndstooth print rug made from recycled and recyclable carpet tiles), and the themed eco-cottages in Venice Beach gussied up with restored and creatively used antiques, recycled polyester fabric-covered sofas, and art by locals.

And then there’s the celebrity homes; Ally Sheedy’s Manhattan apartment that’s painted with low-VOC coral paint, edged-up with Sheedy’s own guerilla girl poster collection and mellowed out with antiques. Amy Smart’s sunroom is now complete with an organic cotton-covered sofa and vegetable-dyed area rug, and Michael Rappaport’s restored junk-store ‘tombstone chair’ which finishes off his Barton Fink-inspired bedroom.

You have to see these gorgeous spaces to believe them, each unique to the people who live in them, each one compelling in visual presentation but still completely livable.

Ecologique book cover

In LaPlante’s own words, “Ecologique is an invitation to apply a sustainable approach to your own sense of style, and to feel good doing it.” 100% of the books net proceeds benefit Global Green USA and The Blank Theatre in Los Angeles.

Ecoloqgique is available for order at Kelly LaPlante’s website.

Living Modestly Is Not Uncomfortable

I hate that living modestly is starting to be equated with disregarding the comforts that we’ve been given… instead of a noble and earth saving way of life.

I have a group of friends who all live together. In a maximum 6 person house (4 “real” bedrooms) there are 13 people. They have no television, only a couple of them have a computer, when I go over there are rarely lights on and they in no way went out of their way to buy new furniture or anything for the house. On top of these smaller things they also bike around – no one owns a car – cook together with vegan, organic, dumpster dived food and they run the house on grey water.

Just a quick summary for those who don’t know – dumpster diving is when you take food out of a dumpster to eat it. A lot of people get a little grossed out by this thought however having worked in a grocery store I assure you there is more than plenty of completely fresh and fine food being thrown out. Before knowing people who dumpstered I often thought “why would those dumpsters be locked???” but now I know that for whatever reason some grocery stores don’t want people stealing their garbage.

Grey water is essentially just reusing water. Most houses that are being built in Guelph are already implementing grey water systems directly into the house by connecting washing machine water to toilets. Said friends put the plug in during a shower and use shower water to flush toilets. And to be honest – the toilets don’t get flushed that often anyway.

For me, this would be an almost impossible way of living. I hate being cold, they never have the heater one. I live on my computer, they don’t have internet. I drink a liter of milk a day, they never drink milk. I will never will with a roommate ever again in my entire life unless I’m getting married, they live with 12 other people. It takes a lot of dedication and passion for the environmental movement to live this kind of lifestyle.

When I told my brother and a friend of mine about this they had the same reaction “that’s disgusting”. … I said that you would just have to get used it, but then they corrected me. Neither meant that it was physically disgusting, but that it was disgusting to see people choosing to live like “the poor”. They felt as though this was a mockery to people who couldn’t afford food, who couldn’t afford to live with just one family in a house and who couldn’t afford to keep their hydro on. Instead you have a household of by no means rich, but by no mean poor… group of kids who are choosing to not work and live like that. They choose to eat “garbage”, to be cold and to stay in the dark.

I brushed it off at the time, but it is now one thing that has been running through my head day in and day out. The only reason grocery stores throw out “almost” expired food is because if they lower the price people won’t buy the higher priced food – so they just keep it until it doesn’t make sense to sell it at the same price point and then toss out the perfectly good food.

Granted, dumpstering started out as a way to beat economic struggling but soon became a haven for “freeganism” (those who want to escape the consumerist life and culture) so it is backpacking off something poor people WERE doing. But with grey water… 50 – 80% of all residential water waste is from grey water.

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