Just let that sink in for a second and consider all that it means. Heavy, isn’t it? But is it true? I’ve been batting this around in my head for quite some time actually, and have admitted already here that I find what I and other eco-fashion bloggers do hypocritical, to say the least. But I also don’t believe that producing and consuming are inherently evil or bad for the environment; there’s a fine line, however, between balance & excess in the world of fashion. I do believe that waste should be avoided at ALL costs (starting with the producers and ending with consumers) – I’d even argue that that’s more important that the actual materials used in producing a garment. It’s about resources, and using them intelligently and as ethically as possible.

Given the recent scandals with H&M throwing out clothing that had been SLASHED so as not to be wearable, and their disclosure that their organic cotton may not have been as organic as they said it was, thoughts and discussion about organic cotton and eco-fashion have set the blogosphere on fire. And I don’t want to be all “I told you so…” but I have always advocated shopping smaller boutiques & designers as opposed to fast fashion or large chain stores EVEN if you’re buying organic cotton clothing. In my mind, buying eco-friendly means buying more than just the item of clothing – you’re also buying into the company and its suppliers. I’m never really that surprised when a gigantic corporation discloses information like this – I almost expect it, which is why I prefer to focus on smaller designers and boutiques who start out and are guided by ethics and concern for resources. The idea that you can purchase organic cotton clothing at H&M or WalMart and that makes you “eco-friendly” is so misguided it’s not even funny…

I don’t mean to rant, but there was way too much shock & awe over recent revelations for my taste

But back to the original statement and title of this blog post: “I don’t think any eco-brand exists.” That’s a quote from SANS designer Lika Volkova from a video about her new “printable patterns” initiative & the idea of eco-friendly clothing in general. It provides absolutely brilliant insight into what it means to be an eco-friendly designer and the use of resources in the fashion industry. (Thanks so much to makool loves you for introducing this on her blog today.)

Her argument is essentially that as a designer, because you’re producing things, using up resources, you can’t possibly be eco-friendly. I don’t agree with that 100%, but there is a significant amount of truth to what she says. It would simply not be possible for all the producers to stop producing, not even for a small amount of time; economies would collapse, and nothing would be accomplished. It’s much more about using resources ethically and intelligently so as not to produce WASTE along with a product that’s important. And that is where the challenge lies: it’s relatively easy for a designer to just say, okay, I’m going to work only with organic cotton. But that does not an eco-friendly designer make. The hard part is deciding to work with hemp, to find uses for scraps, to makes smaller batches, to pay fair wages, and so on.

Please take a few minutes to watch the video if you haven’t yet – it’s really valuable. I love that Lika puts her money where her mouth is with her printable patterns and very unique designs. I don’t think anyone could argue against the fact that if you were to print out one of her patterns and create it yourself with a conventional cotton fabric it would be much more friendly towards the environment than buying organic cotton or even hemp clothing from a larger outlet. (I also just love to hear her talk) And she makes some very interesting points about “making things” for yourself and that being enough. This really hit home for me, as I’m wanting very much to get back into needlework and sewing and “making things” myself…

Do you think there’s such a thing as an “eco-brand?” What does it take for a designer to be eco-friendly in your opinion?

I’m so excited to present this guest post today by Brad from Commerce with a Conscience. I don’t do much shopping for men’s fashion items – my fiance isn’t interested in fashion, or shopping outside of Macy’s – so I asked Brad if he would do a simple post on Men’s ethical fashion to get some ideas on what’s out there. I love the look he put together – so perfect for Fall….

Aimed towards a new generation of socially conscious, yet aesthetically minded, men, Commerce with a Conscience (CwaC) is focused on stylish, affordable, sustainably and ethically produced men’s clothing and accessories. Striving to dispel the widely held dreadslocks / Birkenstocks / trust fund and smug sense of self satisfaction image of the modern environmentalist, CwaC highlights brands and products that make it possible to stay on-trend without any moral sacrifice, or overdrawn bank accounts. Guys can get their news from Treehugger, but take their style cues from The Sartorialist. CwaC explains how.

Clockwise from left:

• Steven Alan Reverse Seam Organic Shirt

  100% organic cotton

  Made in USA

  Best Price: $129.00 (PRE-SHIPPING) at Steven Alan

• ICU Eyewear Classic Recycled Reader

  100% recycled lenses, frames, hinges and details

  Responsibly made in Taiwan

  Best Price: $22.95 (PRE-SHIPPING) at ICU Eyewear

• Kuyichi Caddy Cardi

  100% organic cotton

  Fair Trade made in Hong Kong

  MADE BY trackable

  Best Price: ~ $132.00* (SHIPPED) at Adili

  *Price is listed in Pounds, so the exact cost will be dependent on the day’s exchange rates.

• Tanner Goods Waxed Canvas Tote

  Eco-friendly waxed cotton

  Vegetable tanned leather

  Handcrafted in USA

  Best price: $195.00 (SHIPPED) at Tanner Goods

• Terra Plana Wittgenstein Boot

  Vegetable tanned leather uppers

  Vegetable Tanned leather sole

  Made in Portugal

  Best price: $250.00 (SHIPPED) at Terra Plana

• Nudie Jeans Grim Tim Dry Dirt Organic

  100% organic cotton

  Low-impact dyes

  Made in Italy

  Best Price: ~ $127.00* (SHIPPED) at Dogfish

  *Price is listed in Pounds, so the exact cost will be dependent on the day’s exchange rates.

To wrap-up eco-beauty week, here’s a wonderful post by Stancie Wilson of Fig+Sage on her personal favorite beauty products (I’m totally trying all of them…)

Stancie Wilson is an avid researcher who’s passionate about organics and the personal care industry and is eagle-eyed when it comes to ingredients. She’s not a hippie or treehugger (though nothing wrong with that), she’s a working woman with a full-time career in the communications industry who loves spreading the word about truly pure and stylish products, helping educate others about the dangers of toxic ingredients and hopes to help others dicifer products that are greenwashed and those that are truly green.

She’s Co-Founder and Editor of the popular blog, Fig+Sage™ [www.figandsage.com] which won the 2009 Top Blog Award named one of the “Best Blogs By Women” by Blogtrepreneur, is featured in Alltop and was recently awarded Blog Pick Of The Day by RedOrbit. Gaining rapid popularity since its inception in March ‘08 is no surprise given its honest and refreshing voice in a sea of “crunchy” green blogs. It is the go-to online resource for discovering hip organic and fresh eco finds with a heavy emphasis on organic beauty.

Stancie is also Beauty and Fashion Editor for Feelgood Style [www.feelgoodstyle.com] and was the first to be awarded the ‘Eco-Friendly Expert Maven’ title by ThisNext.com last year where her recommendations are followed by millions of shoppers.

If you’re like most consumers its likely you’re overwhelmed at the sheer number of brands claiming this and that when it comes to natural and organic beauty.  At times you may even feel like a deer in headlights with so many options and claims being hurled your direction by savvy marketers.  Its important to remember there are brands who have a genuine passion for creating products with both performance and purity in mind and as one who has tried, tested, slathered, smoothed and used countless natural and organic beauty products, I’m  going to share with you some of my favorites, those shining stars that are now amongst my absolute must-haves, most of which are in my makeup bag right now.

 Intelligent Nutrients Anti-Aging Serum:

Its not often that I’m absolutely blown away by an entire skin care range, but this one does just that and its my #1 favorite (of the hundreds I’ve tried) at the moment.  Its no surprise really, considering Horst Rechelbacher is the brain behind this brilliant brand. He founded Aveda back in 1978, sold it to Estee Lauder in 2005 and is now the founder/formulator/visionary behind these USDA and Soil Association certified products, that prove “organic luxury” is not an oxymoron. I use just 1-2 drops for my entire face (including under eyes and eyelids), neck and décolleté.  If you have really dry skin, you’ll benefit from applying this before your moisturizer, but I just use the I.N. Serum at night and the I.N. Moisture in the morning.  Looking in a mirror in the morning can be scary, but I actually really look forward to it after I’ve used this serum.  Pores appears smaller, redness is gone and if there were any blemishes they have either vanished completed or on their way to recovery.  And I love the smell of this – fresh and herbal.  First glance at the price tag may raise eyebrows but considering how long this will last (approx. 6-8 months) and how your skin will adore it, its a total bargain.  In last months issue, Lucky Mag’s Beauty Editor raved about this serum, writing “there’s nothing better”.  In case you want to try it out before dropping a good amount of cash, the only places I know that offer samples sizes of Intelligent Nutrients are Spirit Beauty Lounge and The Nature Of Beauty. 

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This is a guest post by Jennine at THE COVETED. About Jennine:

Born and raised in California, Jennine’s always had a sense of adventure, spending most of her youth traveling and wearing many hats, art, design, and dressing up. Ok… nothing’s changed. It was only a matter of time before she discovered blogging, a way to connect and share all the beautiful things life has to offer. Jennine graduated from the London College of Communications, an experience which still influences everything about The Coveted, from the design of the blog to the quest for international style. In her spare time, she loves eating candy and running in the forest. Jennine is also the founder of Independent Fashion Bloggers, a resource and community of fashion bloggers.

Aside from not buying anything, buying vintage and used clothing is the greenest option for adding to your wardrobe. Although eco-friendliness is a motivator, and to tell the truth, it does weigh a factor in my head when buying clothing… I did not start out shopping vintage to save the planet.

My love affair with vintage started out in high school, then, it still wasn’t ‘cool’ to shop at Goodwill, but I just couldn’t afford to buy new with my part-time $4.25/hour minimum wage job. My friends and I would hit up Purple Heart Thrift and DAV for these crazy dresses under a dollar. I loved it, but as time passed my taste changed and my reasons for buying vintage changed…

The following questions/tips depict the process I go through when shopping:

1. Does it fit?

Shopping vintage clothing is a lot of fun, but isn’t always the easiest… unlike new clothing, where they have one desgin in several sizes, you pretty much have to match your size and what you like and they don’t always go together. I always like to err on the side of too big, becuase then they can be altered to my size. Vintage pieces are often a much higher quality than what you will find today. Many pieces are hand stitched using beautiful fabrics. But everything deteriorates. Some older pieces will tear easier than their contemporary counterparts. If something doesn’t fit properly (meaning, when you are breathing normally) it may give you problems. Up through the 70’s women wore Foundation Garments under their clothes. They were mostly used to hold up stockings and to give an hourglass shape. That’s how they were able to achieve such a silhouette. Go easy on yourself, besides, there is always Spanx.

When buying online, most vintage is sold measured flat, as sizes change through the years. It’s probably a good idea to measure flat some clothes that fit you well, and keep those measurements as a reference while you shop online.

2. Check zippers, buttons, seams, is everything working? Are there any stains, tears, weird smells?

A broken zipper can be fixed by a tailor, most dry cleaners can do it, or if you are a crafty one, then great. Factor that into the price, the amount of repairs or work that has to be done. As for smells, I’m not good at that, once I bought a cool army jacket, and I didn’t know until I got home that it reaked. Dry cleaning didn’t help, it was like a Seinfeld episode. The jacket had to go.

3. Picking pieces you are going to wear.

Unless you are a collector, buying dresses you’ll never wear is just a waste of money. I know lots of women who wear vintage in a very inconspicuous way. How they do it, is they look for elements that tie in with current trends. Blazers, high waisted trousers, crop tops, floral dresses, sequined anything are all things you’ll find at a thrift store, or a vintage shop quite easily, and for a fraction of what you’ll find them for new. I pretty much wear vintage every day, but it’s mostly integrated with new items so I don’t look too costumey.

4. Think out of the box

The great thing about thrifted and vintage clothing is beause of the lower cost, they make great DIY projects. A boring black tank top can be brought to date by adding a couple of rows of fringe. A long floral dress that looks matronly at mid calf length can be easily hemmed into a mini dress. Some purists don’t like to alter vintage clothing, but I feel that altering is very much the spirit of vintage clothing. My grandmother always altered her clothes to be more up to date, and she got more wears out of them too. You don’t always have to alter either… Last year I came across a pair of tye die, wide legged pedal pushers. These were so big, there would be no way they’d ever fit me. But I loved the tie dye and the weight of the fabric (rayon was very popular i the late 80’s)… so what did I do? I could actually fit in one leg of the dress, and it became a one-sleeve asymetrical dress. I’ve also been known to turn clothes upside down an backwards to see how they change. Play around, it’s amazing how clothes can easily transform.

Most of all, It’s important to find clothes you are happy with. When you’re happy with what you’re wearing, it shows. Developing an eye takes time and practice, have fun, the best part about vintage clothing is finding your hidden treasures.

Some of Jennine’s vintage treasures:

After seeing this piece on milk fabric designer Mr. Larkin on EcoStiletto and this observation about the eco-friendliness of using milk to make fabric on Seed & Sew, I really need to vent LOL!

How, exactly, is milk fiber eco-friendly? Seriously? Just being an “alternative” fabric, doesn’t automatically make it eco-friendly. As with bamboo, just making a fabric from something other than cotton doesn’t make it better for the environment – it depends on many other factors like how the original material is grown and the process used to break down the fibers and ultimately create the fabric. Bamboo is not always grown organically, and it is most often chemically processed – making it only marginally better than conventional cotton, a far cry from organic cotton. But I digress…we’re talking about milk.

How could milk fabric be considered eco-friendly?

• One company, Cyarn, that produces milk fabric uses an new “bio-engineering” process to manufacture the “protein spinning fluid suitable for a wet spinning process” and have been certified Oeko-Tex Standard 100 green certification, which apparently means that it is free of “chemicals which are known to be harmful to health.”
• Milk products/fabrics are considered more biodegradable
• It could use raw materials that would otherwise be discarded – not milk for human consumption – although there’s no significant evidence of that
• There are also claims that producing milk fiber doesn’t use as much energy or produce as much waste as conventional cotton

But…what is glaringly missing from all the considerations above are that on a large scale, the dairy/cattle industry is one of the most destructive industries to our environment. Besides contributing to greenhouse gases, cattle eat grains that could be used to feed humans, and dairy farming is an inefficient use of water. Companies that are producing milk fabric are only riding on the coattails of the dairy farming industry, they’re not big enough to influence it, but in using the materials produced by that industry, they are contributing to the continual degradation of the environment resulting from it.

On a personal note though, as a vegan, I choose not to consume dairy products, so I’m sure not going to wear them. I cannot sustain an industry that keeps milk cows pregnant constantly to get a consistent flow of milk and then takes away their calves within days; it is un-natural and exceptionally cruel. Besides that, milk from cows was meant to feed cows, not humans!!! I wouldn’t necessarily be averse to a dairy farm where cows were “naturally” milked and allowed to raise their calves, going on about a normal life, but that could be done only on a very small scale…and it would drive the cost of milk fabric up even higher than it is already (it is very expensive).

I’m not convinced. Milk fabric may be an alternative to conventional cotton, but THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT ECO-FRIENDLY. My opinion is that the environmental impact of the dairy industry and inhumane treatment of dairy cows completely negates any positive affect. I’ll stick to my organic cotton, thank you.

**I don’t mean to call-out Mr. Larkin specifically, other designers/companies are using milk fabric. Mr. Larkin is generally an eco-friendly designer, using organic cotton and producing locally. And her designs are PHENOMENAL. I do call out EcoStiletto though; this kind of feature without supporting information (why exactly $700 dresses made from milk are eco-friendly) contributes to greenwashing and overall ignorance about what eco-fashion REALLY is.

What do you think? Would you wear milk?