Eco Fashion World

Who says you have to choose? Certainly not Sophia Amoruso, the founder of brand new online vintage shop Nasty Gal! Although always on trend, her selection of mint condition finds has something for all your different moods.

A sparkly mermaid colored mini dress with Balenciaga-ish shoulders will make you shine all night, but the next morning you can play it polished and poised in a white flowing number, unless you just need to hide from the day in an uber-stylish cape and one of the many cool shades in the eyewear collection…

Amsterdam Fashion Week kicks off tomorrow night! The Dutch sure know their sustainable style and we’ve compiled a list of not-to-miss events…as well as a couple of shops where you might find the perfect outfit to attend them:

If you’re looking for a fun family outing this Sunday (July 20, 2008) join the ethic girls of Sussex for the Fair Trade Fashion Show at the EcoFair in Horsham.

The three eco entrepreneurs organizing the event will each bring their particular flair and experience to the event, showcasing some of the UK’s finest ethical designers and shops.

We gotta give it to Project Runway for forcing their contestants to be creative with unlikely materials, last season saw them making dresses out of supplies found in the Hershey store, not so sustainable in itself, but it goes to show that you really can create stylish garments with just about anything.

This 5th season of the successful show, premiering tonight on Bravo , looks like it’s going to have some real green cred. First of all, one of the contestants, Oregonian Leanne Marshall, already designs her own eco-conscious line Leanimal . Although not 100% sustainable yet, the designs incorporate such textiles as hemp, bamboo and organic cottons. Marshall’s style is inspired by her favorite designers, Rodarte and Martin Margiela, with sophisticated embellishments and layered asymmetrical construction, but also an awareness of the body and movement inherited from her ballet background.

This is how it goes down behind the scenes: before the clothes get to your hot little hands, they go through a long chain of production and distribution, one of the last links being the fashion markets or tradeshows. As far as these go, few are as influential and respected as Designers&Agents: founded 10 years ago by visionaries Barbara Kramer and Ed Mandelbaum, acclaimed for their keen talent-spotting and inventive staging, the platform is now present in each of the five US markets in both New York and Los Angeles.

Word on the street (ok, on our favorite green gossip site…) is that Sheryl Crow is soon to launch her eco fashion line that will consist primarily of casual denim. Normally, celebrity fashion lines are a huge pet peeve of ours: bland, mass produced, disposable clothes that only serve to make the already superwealthy celebrity richer and more visible…not much to like. Now Sheryl Crow has already proven her involvement in environmental causes so we are hoping this will be a way of bringing more eco consciousness into the limelight while providing truly flattering sustainable and ethical clothes, because let’s face it, we’re always on the lookout for that perfect pair!

Innocent chitchat, summer 2008:

"What are you doing this summer?"

"Oh, not much, I’m going to use my staycation to do some upcycling and sort out my closet for the next swishing party."

Of course, before the advent of this new vocab, you might have said “Nothing, I’m too broke to go on vacation or shop, I’m just going to patch up some old things and see if I can exchange them at the charity shop”. But these days, with style.com running a story on glamorous staycationers like supermodel Karen Elson (who, by the way, is using the time to plot the imminent opening of her vintage shop: Mars and Venus), home is the hippest place to be. And while you’re there, why not take advantage of that to do some cleaning up?