Vintage Fashions Theme For Opening Runway Show At Vancouver Eco-Fashion Week

Opening this season’s Vancouver Eco Fashion Week  (April 10 – 12) will be a vintage runway show presented by the mega-thrift store Value Village. The store also carries modern designer name brands including Calvin Klein, Banana Republic, Reitmans, and Eddie Bauer.

Value Village’s show was considered the ideal opening event because the store epitomizes many of the core values of the week, which include bringing new life to what already exists, keeping clothing out of landfills as long as possible, as well as supporting local community and global business initiatives.

The thrift store chain purchases its merchandise though “working relationships with 140 nonprofit partners across the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Over the past 10 years, we’ve paid more than $1 billion.” said Value Village.

The chain explains how they acquire their merchandise, saying, “Our nonprofit partners contact people in the community to ask for donations of reusable clothing and household items.

“We then pay our nonprofit partners based on the number of boxes and bags of merchandise they deliver to us. Additionally, we also pay them for donations delivered directly to our stores via our community donation centers. Our staff sorts through the donations to select the highest quality reusable items, then prices, and displays them.”

Besides clothes, Value Village sells merchandise includes: shoes, toys, books, kitchenware, sporting goods, infant products, suitcases, electronics, wicker items, furniture, and collectables.

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Eco-Friendly Fashion Designers Finding Unusual Materials For Making Sustainable Handbags

Vegan leather laptop bag by Matt & Nat accessories design.

What we wear always says a lot about who we are, what we care about, and of our sense of style.

While eco-style means making sure our clothes look great and are made from sustainable materials, it is also important to remember that our accessories need to be made the same way. And, what’s our top accessory – handbags!

I love handbags because besides looking good, they’re where we put all our stuff in, which hopefully is eco-friendly, too.

The tough thing about shopping for eco-friendly handbags - like all other things that are considered specialty items - is that they’re still hard to find in most department stores and boutiques.

Luckily, now many designers are using the internet as a way to get the word out about their sustainable handbags – from classic, urban, vintage, couture, and everything in between.

Some of this year’s unique trends in sustainable materials by eco-fashion designers include: vegan materials, repurposed candy wrappers, recycled plastic bottles, dead stock car upholstery (out-of circulation unused fabrics originally intended for use in American automobiles), and reclaimed tractor inner tubes.

Four of these unique designers letting their imaginations run wild are: Ecoist, Matt & Nat, Kim White, and Passchal.

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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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What’s Hot For Spring - Basic Colors With a Little Print Mixed In, Says Fashion Expert

Ashley Tisdale wearing Eco-Ganik’s popular stripe racerback shirt.

LOS ANGELES- Spring is here and women are shopping. The trend this year is having a lot of basic color pieces in your wardrobe, with a few prints to mix and match, says Hoda Mallone, design director of the eco-conscious design house Eco-Ganik.

One of the hottest items the design house featured this year was a black and white stripe racerback tank top, made from recycled polyester. “It’s a really nice fabric. It has a nice feel and it breathes unlike traditional polyester,” said Ms. Mallone, who added, “It was probably one of our best sellers. A lot of celebrates wore it.”

The design house’s current celebrity following includes such high profile names as Nikki Hilton, Ashley Tisdale, Jessica Alba, Ann Hathaway, and Selena Gomez.

Eco-Ganik gets a lot of the influence for its fashion lines from the array of California cultures ranging from Hollywood sophistication to the Santa Monica and Venice Beach scenes. “It’s very cool seeing all these different kinds of girls. They inspire us a lot,” said Ms. Mallone, who describes the design house’s style as “contemporary for sure, with some vintage inspiration; a little hippie-chic mixed with street-girl.”

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