Jewelry designer John Hardy is teaming up with supermodel and Alter Eco star Angela Lindvall to launch “Hijau Dua,” a handcrafted collection of jewelry made with recycled sterling silver or 18k gold.

As part of the “Wear Bamboo, Plant Bamboo” program, for each piece of jewelry purchased, the brand will plant bamboo seedlings to offset the carbon emissions used for travel and advertising.  Lindvall recently visited Bali, where John Hardy is based, to help plant 600,000 bamboo seedlings for the Bali Province Government’s “Bali Clean and Green” program and model in the John Hardy advertising campaign. Hear from Lindvall in a behind-the-scenes video, and the full article by Emma Grady on Treehugger.com

Photo Credit: Originally posted on Treehugger: John Hardy Creative Director Guy Bedarida and supermodel Angela Lindvall in Bali. Photos: courtesy John Hardy

I’m thinking more “world-wide pharmacy tour.” Please enjoy the video and decide for yourselves.

Questions for you, the viewers…

1. Why is Pam holding up her A*Muse wrap/dress/mumu throughout the entire press conference?
2. Is the A*Musing part of the line that the clothes don’t actually stay on without some serious effort by the wearer?
3. Why aren’t the mannequins behind them wearing any clothes?
4. Why is Richie Rich always in roller skates now?
5. What are they on exactly?

Joining the likes of of Emma Watson, actress Selena Gomez is prepping a new fashion line for young girls that will debut late next year. The UNICEF Ambassador, who recently spent time in Ghana to help raise cash for children in poverty, plans to make the line as eco-friendly as possible. “I want the pieces that can be easy to dress up or down, and the fabrics being eco-friendly and organic are super important,” she said. “Also, the tags will all have some of my inspirational quotes on them. I’m just looking to send a good message.”

Read more of Selena Gomez To Launch Dream Out Loud at Ecorazzi…

7 Hot Green Male Models Who Are Also Environmentalists

Red hot model and carpenter Carter Oosterhouse. Credit Carter Oosterhouse

1. Carter Oosterhouse: Red Hot & Green

Green living enthusiast, carpenter, and model with dashing good looks Carter Oosterhouse rose to fame using his handyman skills on the hit TLC show Trading Spaces. He now lends his talent in sustainable design as the co-host of HGTV’s Red Hot & Green, where viewers learn simple ways to go green and how to cut energy costs, and see the latest in green gear — all without sacrificing style. Oosterhouse also founded Carter’s Kids — a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting fitness and self-esteem for America’s youth.

2. Hayden Christensen: Organic Vegetable Gardener

Credit Gordon and the Whale

Hayden Christensen, otherwise known as Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader) in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People, isn’t just an actor: His modeling days date back to Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2005 ad campaign. When Hayden’s not posing or acting, he’s working away on his 200-acre farm–outside Toronto in his native Canada–growing organic produce. Christensen also ran a public service announcement for Do Something, a non profit youth organization that inspires young people to change the world. The organization has initiatives for the environment, disaster relief, poverty, and more. Via Wikipedia; Gaiam.

3. John Abraham: Speaks up for Animals

Credit John Abraham

Indian male model turned Bollywood actor John Abraham is a vegetarian and has worked with Habitat for Humanity and PETA. Simran Kodesia of PETA speaks to his influence: “When John Abraham speaks up for animals, young people across India listen. His close association with PETA means that the message of compassion for birds and all other animals will reach more people than ever before.” Via OneIndia.

“Read” more about hot male models who are also environmentalists at Treehugger.com…

Framed by a lush Amazonian tableau, Dame Vivienne Westwood’s Spring/Summer 2010 show kept in step with her support of Prince Charles’s Rainforests Project even as she squired visions of an Anglo Arcadia down the runway. Wide-brimmed straw hats were the order of the day, paired with deconstructed pinstriped shirt-dresses, bloomers festooned with harlequin diamonds, and dainty gingham frocks.

Photo credit: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Fusing fashion with activism, the “Godmother of Punk” has become one of the environment’s most vociferous advocates of late. “Governments just treat [climate change] like it’s one on a list of things to do, but it’s really a matter of life and death,” Westwood tells The Telegraph. “We already may be too late, but the terrible irony is that we probably are in time if we act.”

By Jasmin Malik Chua via Ecouterre.

See Visionary on AlterEco video clip.

Aysia Wright is flying down from Portland to LA to meet with four of our Project Green Search judges who will be on hand to give a press conference announcing a series of open casting calls where green models, or models wishing to start pursuing green avenues in their career, can learn more about our project.

Omniquest Media – Michael Kaliski
Friday: August 21. 11am to 1pm
1416 N. La Brea Ave. Hollywood, CA 90028
323.802.1630

The green bloggosphere is starting to pick up on it, so hopefully our contest will come to the attention of models everywhere who aspire to shift their career in the same direction they have taken their personal lives.

We’ve been written up on Eco-Chick, the Daily Green, Mother Nature Network, Elephant Journal, Ecorazzi, Kaight, Greenopia, GreenGirlsGlobal, LiveEarth, Sustainablog, Inhabitat, Magnifeco, Christy Coleman and Treehugger. Friends of Lü and the Greenloop are telling all their friends on facebook, Model Mayhem, MySpace and other networks.  

We have on board with us some terrific people. Photographer Courtney Dailey, who helped launch CocoEco magazine with publisher Anna Griffin and Emma Pezzack of Future Natural, is building an all green photography studio in downtown LA’s fashion district. She will be on hand with her green make-up and styling team to photograph all the contestants.

In her upcoming book Chasing Molecules on Island Press, Portland resident and author Elizabeth Grossman writes:

“Cosmetics and electronics – may seem poles apart, but they have some surprising similarities – as illustrated by the work of Amy Cannon, an energetic researcher with the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry and cofounder and executive director of its associated educational non-profit, the BeyondBenign Foundation. Cannon’s work focuses on electronics, specifically formulating environmentally benign chemicals for use in semi-conductor and solar-cell production. Development of “green” chemicals for cosmetics, however, has emerged as a sideline thanks to the curious gallery of overlapping polymer applications – and the musings of inquisitive graduate students.”

One of our judges, Josie Maran, is perpetually developing better green chemistry for her cosmetic line. The realization that what goes on your skin, goes into your body, is reinventing the chemistry of all beauty products. We can no longer ignore that spraying your hair for decades with dangerous polymers breathing all that synthetic glue didn’t have anything to do with the dramatic rise of cancer rates in our modern society.

This is the work our media sponsor Teens Turning Green has been doing with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, educating young people about the chemical soup they subject themselves to if they are not careful in how they pick the companies they spend their money on.

A model or actress, living and advocating the green lifestyle, can no longer lend her image to advertising cosmetic companies which have not committed to a deep study of all chemicals used in their formulation. By doing so, they are giving birth to new industries down the line of manufacture, which will put a stop to the destruction of our air and water.

All these topics are intertwined in a mesh of responsibilities. To quote animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot in a recent interview for the French magazine Philosophie: “Beauty will save the world!”

On June 12th in New York, Fashion Delivers hosted its second annual Pay It Fashion Forward event at the club M2, a space once called Crobar and Mansion, in the news this week after Beyonce decided to cancel an appearance there at the last minute, costing owner Joey Morrissey $100.000. 

Over 600 guests attended, some in the VIP balcony treated to tasty octopus confections by ilili, while the rest munched on organic potato chips in the gallery below.

Jewelry designer Elizabeth Muir, recently back from a two year stay in Afghanistan, where she met her husband, held up the result of that union to a kind,  accomodating LL Cool J, star of the new NCIS LA spin off. 

Elizabeth has been away from the USA so long, she was eager to catch up on all the latest green fashion news.

Star reporter to the Hamptons, Michael Wudyka, worked the red carpet with his mike and video crew, interviewing the organizers.

Starre Vartan of Huffington Green and Brian Howard of The Daily Green pose with Linda Loudermilk and the vice-president of her company, Michael Rivellino.

Other honorees included I/denti/tee, Jessica Moment & Sally Fowler of Philanthropist, Jones Apparel Group and Chloe Jo Berman of Girlie Girl Army.

World Wildlife Fund has painstakingly organized citizens, businesses, and communities around the world to turn off their lights at 8:30pm local time for Earth Hour. Earth Hour began two years ago in Australia, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. Last year, along with 50 million individuals, major landmarks all over the planet helped to make this statement of conservation, including the Golden Gate Bridge, the Roman Colosseum, Sydney Opera House, and one of the longest running digital billboards in Times Square.

For 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote for government action on climate change.

More than 80 countries will be participating, including over 150 cities in the US alone. Here in Los Angeles, there has been major celebrity sign-on: Will.I.Am, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Janeanne Garofolo, Alanis Morissette, the Los Angeles Kings, as well as national television shows like Entertainment Tonight, CSI, and the Price Is Right. (Go CBS!) Los Angeles landmarks from City Hall to the iconic pylon light installation at LAX, Capital Records, and The Getty Museum will go dark for Earth Hour. Angelenos will be celebrating together at LA Live at the Nokia Plaza, in a night of music and education hosted by Mayor Villaraigosa. Performances will include Gina Rene (an extraordinary cross between Alicia Keys and Lauren Hill) singing her soulful ballad “Be The Change” as the official anthem for Earth Hour LA.

WWF plans to present the results of this historic global statement to world leaders meeting at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December. America busted ass to get Barack Obama elected. Now it’s time to go before all the government leaders of the planet and VOTE EARTH.

Take Action…

1. Turn out your lights for one hour at 8:30pm on March 28th.
2. Get your friends to do it, too. Share this link with them on Facebook and MySpace: http://www.earthhour.org/
   
3. Get our government involved. Write the First Lady and ask her to include the White House in Earth Hour 2009. (She turned the White House fountain green on St. Patty’s Day, for godssake.)
   The White House
   Attn: First Lady Michelle Obama
   1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
   Washington, DC 20500
4. Sign Up Now!
   

I guess that’s why they say: ”I love you to death.” I just got through writing about how I love magazines, and how the new sustainable trends in fashion are changing the way we are going to reinvent our media… but this afternoon, on the newsstand, appears this aberration. At a time when launching new magazines seem like corporate suicide, Conde Nast UK sends out this absurd love note to the world and falls flat on its face.

I couldn’t have imagined a worse way to miss the mark, to be so far out it demonstrates that the fashion strata hasn’t learned a single thing from the green fashion revolution that’s taking over the hearts and minds of young girls and women all over the world, who have come to realize their close knit relationship to everything they love, buy and wear… the world they live in. Women who have learned to care.

The magazine is called LOVE… flipping through its pages, you FEEL it… it’s infectious, and disheartening, because it’s love for all the wrong things, love for oil, coal, virgin paper clear-cutting Siberia, love for toxic inks, love for pesticide laden fabrics, love for poison cosmetic ingredients… yes, LOVE, for everything that’s wrong with fashion!

Is this the last gasp of a world gone awry… the last throws of a demon machine grasping for breath? The magazine is page after page short interviews with fashion mavens asked what they love… and they l-o-v-e indeed, with all their might, a love so strong as the love found in the court of Louis the 16th before the peasants rush through the palace gates and drag out a silly 17 year old girl, who knew no better, to chop her head off! All in the name of love.

There is not a single hint of social redemption in LOVE, other than a page with our beloved Lindvall, who probably had no idea what the final product would be like. LOVE is a gaudy, bombastic, pretentious appeal to our worse instinct, keeping the monster afloat with splashes of fresh paint. I dare you to flip through its pages, a testament to the often predicted but never witnessed fall of Western civilization.

Feel the love… misdirected love, misconstrued love for misbegotten affluence… It’s no wonder Hermes and Louis Vuitton have never sold better, it’s all the wives of Exxon/Mobil and AIG planning trips to the Riviera, to join the wives of Russian mobsters and Arab sheiks! Is that the meaning of Beth Ditto on the cover… there’s MORE to LOVE… a mirror for gluttony? LOVE magazine… obscene! It flaunts excess… it might be the love we want, but it’s not the love we need. It’s just a box of artificial ingredients chocolates.

I don’t hate LOVE… I’ll just pour my love elsewhere, hoping the new generation is smarter than the Conde Nasties give them credit for.