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

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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Barefoot Walking and Running: Best of Both Worlds with Vivo Barefoot Sneakers

My Viva Terras. Cute on the trail or off.

Last summer, I was walking up from the beach at Gay’s Head on Martha’s Vineyard. (They’ve renamed the place Aquinnah, but I’m sticking with the original name, thank you very much) and then headed up the steep dunes, and over the top. When I got to where the sand meets the more rocky soil, I stopped to put my Chakos back on, but then decided to go barefoot instead.

As I walked up the path, seagrasses waving in the setting sun all around me, I could feel what was beneath my feet change. It started more sandy, and warmed from the sun, then small pebbles cropped up, and as I went around a bend, I felt the ground cool and dampen and the pebbles recede into the soft, more claylike walkway. As I headed up another rise, warmth again seeped between my toes, and as I reached the road to wait for the bus, the concrete burned my feet and I put my shoes on.

On that ten minute walk, I remembered something I knew as a child, which is that you miss tons of information from the earth when constantly wear shoes. I used to spend entire summers essentially barefoot (I grew up at the end of a dirt road in the Hudson Valley) and when I was 8 I could have told you how long it had been since rain from the viscosity of the mud that pushed between my toes since I spent hours I playing in the wetland next to my house. I don’t know if I could tell you that now, though I’m certain I could learn again.

Men’s Vivo Barefoots at the Terra Plana store.

So when a couple months ago I heard about the barefoot running movement, and the new book, Born to Run, I was intrigued. The premise is that our fancy $200 uberpadded sneakers are actually BAD for our bodies when running, and can actually cause or exacerbate injury. Which makes sense if you think about the fact that we have only been wearing such contraptions for about 20 years (flat, unpadded Converse All Stars were the sneaker of choice for basketball players for years). So I went hiking with a friend in Connecticut and took off my sandals and did a bit of trailrunning with naked feet, which was fun as long as I was careful (and this forces one to focus on each step, which is interesting). And then…

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Starre Vartan and Eco-chick.com Featured in Glamour's 70th Anniversary Issue!

I am so honored to have been invited to take part in Glamour Magazine’s 70th Anniversary issue, out this month (look for Katie Holmes on the cover of the April issue). To celebrate, they brought together 70 of the most influential women in green, including me! Standing next to me are Jill Fehrenbacher, design blogger extraordinaire (Inhabitat and Inhabitots), and Laurie David (Larry David’s wife, and more importantly, founder of Stopglobalwarming.org). I also got to chat with Christie Brinkley, Alicia Silverstone and Summer Rayne Oakes who were featured too.

We had our picture taken as a group in Central Park and it’s featured over a three-page spread (along with a great article about how far we have come in terms of environmental awareness, and how important women have been in that area.)

Thanks Glamour, for recognizing all these great green women! Check out Ecorazzi’s coverage here, with behind the scenes photos!

Look for the article in this issue!

New Green Magazines from Australia, Sweden and America

Coco Eco Magazine is the brainchild of Anna Griffin, who’s known in the LA scene for keeping tabs on ecotrends, hooking celebs up with green, and has hosted videos for Ecorazzi. She put together a superstar team for her mag:

I have the best and brightest people in the eco-scene working with me. They really are mavericks! My Beauty Director is Emma Pezzack, CEO of Futurenatural.com, our Photo Director is Courtney Dailey who is one of the hottest new photographers in LA, and our Senior Stylist is Robin Garvick who is THE eco-celeb fashion stylist in town. We also have Contributors like the legendary Barbara Kramer of Designers & Agents, Stefanie La Rue, breast cancer survivor and Founder of SLAM.

Read more about the mag (which launches officially this weekend!) on The Greenloop blog.

Peppermint is Australia’s first ecofashion magazine, and it’s first issue is chock full of fabulous green resources from Down Under. In an interview with Remy C on The Greenloop blog, the editor of Peppermint, Kelley Sheenan, runs down the list of Aussie and Kiwi ecodesigners and natural beauty products (excerpt below-the whole interview is worth checking out!):

It’s an exciting time as eco fashion is still in it’s infancy in this part of the world, so there are some fabulous new designers emerging now as the ‘green’ consciousness spreads – leading the way would definitely be Gorman, Akira, Bird Textile, Skin & Threads, Bassike, Darling Clementine, Elsom; all of which are world-class designers.

However there are lots of small labels that are appearing too – like Heidi and Seek, Fourth Daughter, Mother Maria, Kara Smith, Moneypenny, Thea & Sami, Rebecca Ward Jewellery… I could go on and on! There are some great green designers in New Zealand too – Untouched World, Starfish, and Kowtow all deserve a mention.

Natural skincare and cosmetics is definitely an area that is well-represented in this part of the world, with beautiful chemical-free products coming from companies like Miessence (the world’s first skin care range certified organic to food standards), Sanctum, Jurlique, Living Nature, and Perfect Potion. Model, photographer and activist Hannah Fraser is someone we hope to work with (known for her trip to Japan with Hayden Panettiere) and of course Isabel Lucas, who you may have seen in Alter Eco on Planet Green.

Read the original entry for links to all the brands listed above!

I haven’t read Sweden’s EcoQueen Magazine- I’ve only heard about it, but from the cover the editors are obviously taking a very light-hearted look into green fashion. Here’s what one Swedish blogger had to say about the first issue’s contents:

EcoQueen, who’s attitude towards ecological aspects could at best be described as more playful. Even Vecko-Revyn is publishing a piece on ecological dresses from several Swedish fashion companies. However, they focus more on H&M than thoroughly ecological clothing company DEMCollective (also based in Göteborg) who act as true societal entrepreneurs using their company to impact the clothing industry.

Spread from EcoQueen Magazine. Courtesy of Remy C.

The New York Times Features Eco Chick Guide to Life!

Wow, I really wasn’t expecting this, I must say! In the Style section of the Sunday edition of the paper, right where I belong

You can read the review on the Times’ site here, or below. I have to say it certainly IS bizarre to be mentioned alongside Sarah Palin, whose policies I couldn’t object to more (especially her support for the Alaskan wolf-shooting free-for-all that was a program I specifically organized against when I worked for Friends of Animals). Her pro-drilling stance (we need alternative energy, not more oil to exacerbate global warming) and anti-birth control positions (like the world needs MORE people!!) are horrors to this environmentalist’s heart.

But maybe Ms. Palin will pick up a copy of my book after this- who know? Enjoy!

EVERY now and then, someone comes along who shows the rest of us how much we take for granted the freedoms of our daily lives. The eco-journalist, blogger and all-around green genie Starre Vartan is one such person. In “The Eco Chick Guide to Life,” her earth-first program for glamorous but environmentally conscious living, she mines new lodes of guilt, finding gems of awareness and providing detailed eco-wise shopping guides for the body, the closet, the home and the larder.

Not everyone will find it easy to get with her program. Ms. Vartan shares her tips for eschewing wasteful packaging products. For example, did you realize you could make your own toothpaste, dog toys and mildew remover? And turn stained scraps of cloth and tarps into handbags?

Still, she understands that most people prefer to go shopping, and allows for substitutions. For instance, once you’ve sworn off leather and pleather (whose manufacture unleashes “known carcinogens and water polluters”), you can splash out on shoes made of hemp, canvas, car tires, or wood and cork. But if you’d like to hew to her line, she has plenty of recommendations, not only for when you’re up and about, but for when you’re in the bedroom. Shun furniture from old-growth forests, and buy vintage whenever possible. As for the bedroom, “Once you see your bed as a product of the industrial chemical industry” — tainted with formaldehyde and toxic glues, and topped with a mattress “suffused in flame-retardants” — you may want to spring for one of the organic mattresses that Ms. Vartan prefers. “Sexy AND healthy,” she explains.

This all may sound a bit obsessive, despite its upbeat, energetic presentation. But Ms. Vartan argues that nature’s warning signs are so plentiful that “nobody can ignore the fact that there’s an environmental crisis going on.” She cites “wacky” weather, the spread of toxins through the food chain and the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species.

MS. VARTAN’S sensibility may be catching on. Only last week, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the Republican nominee for vice president, backed off somewhat from previous statements that diminished the human role in the environmental crisis commonly called global warming. During an interview with Charles Gibson on ABC, Governor Palin said, “I’m attributing some of man’s activities to potentially causing some of the changes in the climate.”

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