Green Cotton

Vera Wang Collection at NY Fashion Week, 2008

New York Fashion Week has come and gone, and Green Cotton has been tracking the trends. Last week we showed you how designers have embraced the haute hippie with earthy, sixties and seventies-inspired looks. This week we’re zeroing in on another hot runway look, but we’re not going to just discuss the trend— we’re also going to show you some awesome eco-friendly clothes and accessories that will help you rock the latest runway styles in greener, guilt-free fashion.

As evidenced in several collections, the boho-chic trend is still thriving this coming spring season, but some fashion experts think “boho-rock” is this trend’s second life. Fusing the bohemian free spirit with a heavy metal attitude, this tough-yet-girly look is a fun way to shake up an otherwise basic wardrobe.

Check out these looks from the following New York Fashion Week designers:

Rodarte Collection, NY Fashion Week

Rodarte displayed classic rock-and-roll style with short leather jackets and skinny black pants, a major standout from their funky shredded sweater dresses.

Rag and Bone, NY Fashion Week, 2008

Rag & Bone’s blazer, skinny pants, studded belt and shiny flats gave rock star glam a little preppy polish.

DKNY Collection, NY Fashion Week, 2008

DKNY also paired a blazer with punky accessories: a pink rock t-shirt dress, chains and high-top sneakers.

If you want to flip-flop the pink and black color combo, try this look from Alexander Wang (featured below): a sparkly black top with gauzy black shorts, an oversized pink blazer, and some of the coolest shoes from all of Fashion Week.

Vera Wang (collection featured top), who favors gothic romance, sent a gorgeous glammed-up rocker look down her runway: a silver silk tunic with a long black vest, black cigarette pants, chains and crystalline embellishments.

If you think you can’t rock this look with eco-friendly wares, think again. Eco-fashion tends to be branded as anything but on-trend, but eco-fashionistas know that “organic” and “sustainable” doesn’t have to mean crunchy or boring! So grab your favorite vintage band t-shirt and try these on for size:

Edun’s “Sage” straight leg jeans in “Raven” (featured above) deserve star status in any eco-conscious closet! Founded by Bono, his wife Ali Hewson and designer Rogan Gregory, Edun is a socially conscious clothing company that specializes in organic style. These jeans are perfect for a night out with a vintage bomber jacket.

Try teaming them with a pair of wedge heels from Mohop (featured above). The black ribbons on these add a touch of gothic glamour. These shoes would also look hot with a frayed denim mini and black sweater tights, or these studded bamboo leggings by Covet (featured below):

Of course, no rock star outfit would be complete without awesome accessories. This sterling silver filigree butterfly necklace by Catherine Weitzman echoes the gothic romance-esque jewelry seen on Vera Wang’s models. It’s available from the Brooklyn boutique Sodafine, which features vintage, handmade and eco-friendly clothing and accessories.

Finish your look with Matt & Nat’s Tate (featured above) tote in grey. It’s made from recycled materials but has the look of leather, sure to please nature-loving and vegan fashionistas alike!

And have fun searching for your own eco-fashion finds, whether you want to follow the trends or express your unique style. Please let us know what you think of this trend and others from New York Fashion Week. And be sure to check back at Green Cotton as we track London looks from their Fashion Week!

All pictures in this post are from NYmag.com

Post By Erin Dale

We here at Green Cotton take pride in bring you (our eco-fabulous readers) the best, highest quality information in the world of eco-fashion, and are very excited to be voted in the top 10 eco-fashion blogs. Thank you Ecoable!  We appreciate your recognition of GC in top ten!

For those of you not familiar with Green Cotton, here is a quick run down. We cover issues from designers and fabrics, to hot styles and emerging trends. A few of our top posts:

• BAMBOO - What are the pros and cons of bamboo fabric? Bamboo resources, Bamboo processing I, and Bamboo Processing II?
• ORGANIC VS. CONVENTIONAL COTTON: How much is the market growing? What is the difference between conventional and organic cotton?
• ECO-CELEBRITIES Is this a fad or the real thing?
• NATURAL DYES: Are they a viable alternative to synthetics?
  
• 2008 BEST ECO-FASHION AWARD: $25,000 award offered by Ecco Domani

On another note, GC just returned from one of the largest and most cutting edge eco-fashion shows in America. Stay tuned for the low-down on some of the hottest new designers.

Photosource: www.passengerpigeon.ca

There’s never only one side to any story. Bamboo fabric is a classic example of a product that on the surface sounds very green. Bamboo plants grow incredibly quickly, can be planted in areas unsuitable for other crops, and rarely need any pesticides or herbicides. But issues arise with the way the fibres are processed and the fabric manufactured.

The most popular manufacturing process involves sodium hydroxide and carbon disulfide, both highly toxic chemicals to humans, and when released into the environment. The majority of bamboo fabric production takes place in China, a country not renowned for worker’s rights or environmental respect.

Bamboo fabric may have something to learn from another material that’s been produced quietly, with little environmental fanfare, for the last twenty years. Lyocell, sold as Tencel, is a fabric made from wood pulp. Tencel and Tencel blends drape well and are used predominantly in dresses and formalwear.

Tencel is manufactured in a proprietary process by the Lenzing Group, a international group of companies based in Austria. Lenzing describe themselves as “committed to the principles of sustainable management and very high environmental standards.” Tencel is manufactured in a similar way to bamboo fabric, but with important differences that may be the solution to green bamboo fabric manufacturing.

Here’s the recipe. First, take some wood pulp. Lenzing’s pulp mill uses hardwood – mostly birch and oak - from sustainable forestry plantations. The trees are chemically pulped and bleached. Lenzing say they utilise a closed-loop process and don’t use chlorine bleach to minimize environmental impact. However, Lenzing also buys wood pulp and their website becomes vague as to what conditions their suppliers’ wood pulp is manufactured under.

Next, the wood pulp is turned into fibres through a process called “solvent spinning”. Wood pulp is dissolved in a chemical called N-Methylmorpholine N-oxide (NMNO). The liquid is squirted through thousands of tiny holes in a spinneret, forming individual Tencel fibers. The spun fibres are washed, the NMNO is retrieved from the water, and it is purified, and reused in a 99% closed-loop process. NMNO can be toxic, but much less so than the sodium hydroxide and carbon disulfide used for processing bamboo. Small quantities of NMMO are actually produced in the body as a metabolite of several common drugs.

With a sustainable source of wood pulp, Tencel manufacturing has a much lower environmental impact than bamboo fabric. But despite considerate forestry practices, tree farms are more damaging to the ecosystem than growing bamboo. When natural forests are cleared for farms the local ecosystem suffers from the reduction in bio-diversity in the area. Bamboo is the slight winner here: it naturally colonises areas other plants find challenging and often grows with few other species for company, so it has less environmental impact when planted as a monocrop on a farm. Bamboo also grows much faster than hardwood trees, processing many times more CO2 from the environment than trees can.

Bamboo can be grown ecologically, and because of the increasing popularity of bamboo, companies are developing new, greener, ways to process the fibres ecologically, inspired by Tencel processing. Companies like Pure Bamboo are using new closed-loop processing methods, and hopefully more will follow.

Tencel is currently more eco-friendly to manufacture, and – depending on your standards – acceptably eco-friendly to grow. But bamboo fabric has the potential to be a true eco-friendly cloth.

For more on Tencel, What is Tencel on Wisegeek.

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This post was written by one of Green Cotton’s contributing writer’s Brit.

After four years of serving the e-commerce marketplace, Sean and Susan Bartlett recently announced that they will be closing up their Pangaya online shop. According to a correspondence with TreeHugger, the reason is that the company is not returning as much on their investment at this point, as hoped. The company will be missed by many, as a convenient, reliable source for some of the most fashionable, sustainable designs out there: e.g. Stuart and Brown, Ecoganik, Blue Canoe, UNDESIGNED, and others.

While on the one hand, statistics indicate that demand for organic cotton, and organic fibers such as bamboo, in general keeps increasing, the reality is that the green apparel market is still challenging to be profitable. Given the myriad of style, brand, price, convenience and other variables that factor into women’s clothing choices, it is no small feat to get that equation right for on-line shoppers. Being green, does not indicate sure fire success, and even being stylish does not, as Pangaya has proven.

Pangaya is a good example of a company that provided very stylish clothing at a very reasonable price in a convenient manner. If they could not create a sustainable business model, then what does this mean for others starting out or already in the early stages? Time will tell, but as demand for all natural fibers such as organic cotton, bamboo, soy, hemp and even organic silk and wool, increases, hopefully new companies will continue to enter the market and prove otherwise. We must thank Susan and Sean for carving the brave path with Pangaya, making it easier for others to follow in their footsteps.

All inventory will be marked down up to 80% until it is depleted, so buy your favorite designs now at Pangaya.

The first person to get all three questions right goes to Nathan Rosquist!
QUIZ ANSWERS

1. Tencel (e.g. brand Lyocel)
2. Processing with harmful chemicals. For more information, click here.
3. Jonano

ABOUT THE WINNER

Nathan Rosquist

Nathan is as a graphic designer and web-developer at the Interra Project, a nonprofit based in Seattle. Interra Project brings tools for communities to “shop locally and share locally.” Right now they are launching a community loyalty program in the Puget Sound (pugetsound.cc) that gives back to nonprofits whenever people shop at participating local and sustainable businesses. They launched in Boston last year (bostoncommunitychange.org).

Nathan is also in his final year of grad school, getting an MBA in Sustainable Business (with a concentration on Sustainable Community Economic Development) from Bainbridge Graduate Institute.

Nathan is in the process of starting a screen-printing business and is passionate about the idea of “Locally Grown Clothing.” Nathan states that ‘the local food movement has grown deep roots in the last few years here in Seattle, and [he'd] like to frame clothing in the same way. ” He posits that clothing is part of the food system…(which I would have to agree). Nathan would someday like to wear a stylish shirt made from Bamboo grown in and around Seattle, or BC hemp, or Cedar bark. Nathan is actively pursuing this path to see how far he can take it. Good luck Nathan!

Check out Nathan’s blog at www.carrotrope.com

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Last week’s questions:

1) What fiber is the closest to bamboo in terms of processing?

2) Name one reason why bamboo may not always be environmentally friendly to process?

3) Name one company that sells 100% bamboo clothing?

Last week’s complete quiz question post, click here.