HandCrafting Justice Wowed At NY Festival With Handmade Handbags From Recycled Materials

Thailand artisan woman. Photo by HandCrafting Justice.

Making people aware of the beauty of traditional artisan craftsmanship from around the world – often women from small, rural communities – HandCrafting Justice showed off at the NYC Green Festival last weekend with a collection of one-of-a-kind handbags made of recycled materials including telephone books, chip bags, and silk.

HandCrafting Justice is a nonprofit project of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd that markets over 1,000 different items through its website, wholesalers, and special events. Items sold include: handbags, clothing, jewelry, accessories, pottery, indigenous art, and toys.

HandCrafting Justice works with over 3,000 women in over 20 countries around the world, working within Fair Trade initiatives to make sure that they work in clean, safe environments and are paid fair living wages.

Featured at the festival were hand-woven handbags from recycled telephone books that were crafted by Filipino artisans from the Alay Kapwa Coop in Manila.

Recycled telephone handbags. Photo courtesy of HandCrafting Justice.

These unique handbags also featured bamboo handles and closed with wood bead latches. The bags were waterproof coated for stiffening and being safe in the rain.

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Fashion Seeing An Explosion of Styles Emerging in Hats Made With Eco-Friendly Materials

I love hats, especially eco-friendly hats because they boost my style, and they limit harm to the environment.

Eco-Friendly Wool Felt Hat from Millinerium.

Today, eco-friendly hats are made in every style. The only real differences between hats made the eco-friendly way and ones made the traditional way are the materials they use and the processes used to make them

Right now, there are eco-friendly hats for every personality – whether you’re fashion sense is really flamboyant, chic, retro, urban or classic conservative.

When looking to buy an eco-made hat, the challenge is no longer finding the right style to suit your tastes and needs, but finding one at all! It’s often considered a specialty item, and most conventional retail stores don’t carry them. Online is often your best option, and I found three places that have some of the hugest collections of eco-hats: Millinerium, hats.com, and JustSayHats.com.

Millinerium

Millinerium is great because it’s a women’s boutique site from Ginger Strand, a designer exclusively devoted to making eco-made hats.  

Millinerium’s collection runs the full gamut from street hats to fascinators (the tiny hats that Kate Middleton wears) to wedding headpieces.

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Vancouver Fall/Winter Eco-Fashion Week Growing In Designers and Styles

Kim Cathers’ Kdon fashions at Vancouver Eco-Fashion Week Sept. 2010. Photo courtesy of myvancouverstyle.com.

Vancouver’s bi-annual eco-fashion weeks just keep getting bigger and better every year, expanding in designers that are continually coming up with new materials and designs for clothes and accessories. This week will be no exception.

Vancouver’s historic Salt Building will be the venue for the fashions shows, exhibits, seminars and other events that will kick off this Wednesday for the public.

With over a dozen clothing designers showing off their styles, and even more accessories designers, this will definitely be a can’t-miss event. Some of the more established design brands whose fashions will be strutting the runway will include: Kim Cathers’ Kdon, Echo Rain, and Nicole Bridger’s NBD.

Kim Cathers’ Kdon

Kdon’s new fall/winter collection is called ‘suture’ and will debut at the show. Cathers’ press says there are “a grand many reasons this word is the ultimate title and presentation for this coming collection.” It will blend and tie together many contrasting forms and colors.

Cathers specializes in handmade, draped dresses. The designs will include a lot of flowing cuts, with a palette that will include single color pieces, prints, and strips. Cather’s collections are inspired by a mixture of vintage, urban, and couture styles.

All of the fabrics used in Kdon come from Our Social Fabric’s recycled materials. Cathers is also on the board.

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Eco-Sunglasses: Keeping Your Eyes Healthy and Improving the World at the Same Time

Beautiful eyes are subjective - whether it has to do with color, shape, or something else - everyone has an opinion. Though beyond looks, our eyesight is one of our most important assets, which doesn’t make the sun our friend.

Image courtesy of davidicke.com.

Experts are finding that ultraviolet light can cause a number of short-term and long-term ocular problems.

 Dr. Troy L. Bedinghaus - a board certified optometric physician, who owns and operates Lakewood Family Eye Care - says, “Studies show that ultraviolet radiation can accelerate the development of cataracts.

“The bright sun can also cause pinguecula and pterygium, which are benign growths on the surface of the eye. Ultraviolet radiation can also cause cancer of the eyelids and the skin surrounding the eyes.”

Dr. Bedinghaus adds that, “Ultraviolet radiation can also cause photokeratitis, which is a temporary but painful burning of the cornea. Photokeratitis often occurs while water or snow skiing without sun protection. Studies are also showing that long-term exposure to the sun’s harmful rays may contribute to the development of macular degeneration.”

As a preventative measure, he suggests, “At the very least, you should look for sunglasses that block at least 99 percent of both UV-A and UV-B radiation, and screen out 75 to 90 percent of viable light.”

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Fashion Show to Launch Designers’ New Sustainability Awareness Campaign

loyale summer outfit. Photo courtesy of inhabitat.com.

Wanting to show younger Americans that they can look fashionable and live more sustainable lifestyles too, designer Jenny Hwa held a campus-level fashion show this week at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., where she also operates loyale, her eco-friendly clothing company.

Ms. Hwa said that she’s trying “to inspire the regional community to live stylishly green.” The goal of the show was “for all guests and participants to walk away with a sense that incorporating eco-friendly attributes into one’s daily life is fun and doable,” she added.

The designer’s 2010 collection has an open airy simple feel to it, which is themed after the American road trip experience of the 1950s and the idea of just getting away from it all. loyale’s design style embraces vintage and feminine tones, with silhouettes and some prints. The pieces are made primarily from organic cotton and factory reclaimed overstock fabrics, which would otherwise become landfill waste.

Other designers at the show included: Lara Miller, John Patrick Organic, Stewart + Brown, and Bodkin.

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