Getting Eairth-y: Fabulous Phillipino Eco Fashion

I picked up some great Fall pieces at some of my fave Eco-boutiques in NYC last week, discovered some new lines (which I’ll be sharing soon in an upcoming post) and tried on A LOT of different stuff. I was really excited to try Eairth’s dresses, which I first saw at the Fashion Flipside event on the LES at the end of the summer. Kaight was carrying several styles, and I especially loved the dress above, which, paired with my over-the-knee black faux suede buckle boots made me feel like an eco pirate lass!

Besides all organic, natural (and super-soft) fabrics, incredibly low-impact dyes (you can see slight variations in color when you get really close to the dress above), the Eairth dresses both seemed very architectural, with boning in the bodice of the one at the top, with another layer of fabric over that, and many zillions of gathers below the waist of the second. I find that this attention to detail is pretty uncommon and I thought it lent an air or old-world style to both pieces.

For a great interview with Eairth’s designer, check out paolosavi.

A quick (and Fascinating!) excerpt:

….the anchor was truely when i was exposed to the mangyan tribe in mindoro during a hike through the jungle. stumbling into their little village.. I saw one of the mangyan girls wearing a thrashed, weathered ACDC rock tee shirt with a primitive woven frill skirt.. she had a machete(knife) roped around her waist … i was so inspired by this that i had to do it… the sun drenched colors all faded out… greys and this sort of chalky coral and stained whites….so we went on that trip to south africa to look for natural pigment sources… having a difficult time figuring out how to manage the importation of mud, claya and tea…. decided to look for resources here in the philippines. We found it…
realized that we were able to extract endless colors from leaves, fallen wood/bark….

For images of the dresses from the Fashion Flipside event, see pix 4 and 9 from my coverage of the day.