Ummm…what can we say? Two Florida college students wanted to create an eco-friendly underwear line. Uranus Apparel produces boyshorts made from soy, hence the nickname “soyshorts.” Soy requires less water, is more durable, and dries more quickly than cotton. It’s also super soft which is great for, ya know. (Excuse my cheekiness.) Out of all the viral vids the founders have put out on YouTube, the one above is our favorite. It has a bit of an Art Haus kind of feel to it. Enjoy Uranus!

If you’re one of us who could not make it to the Esthetica show at London Fashion Week last month, this is the best footage we’ve found to soothe our saddened Yankee souls.

Halloween is right around the corner friends. Don’t (like me) wait until All Hallow’s Eve to see what garments lurk deep in your’s closet archives that are funky enough to constitute a costume…and then end up as the Nerdy Catholic School Girl or 80’s something or other.

Thank the Internet, we have Rob Czar and Corinne Leigh of Threadbanger.com to inspire us with some inventive DIY costumes that can be made from recycled clothes, fabric spray, glue, and some serious gumption.
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Apparently the greenest thing about Portland Fashion Week is actually its DJ. Opening night of PFW was off to rough start with some rather ambitious music mixes by a DJ one can only guess was some executive’s little brother. Check out the musical stylings at Vigor Industrial, and you will see what I’m talking about. Ouch!

Sadly Defyance was not the only designer suffering from DJ trainwreck hell. Sportswear line Icebreaker was murdered by the tasteless 90’s classic “Ice Ice Baby” crashing into some whimsical Indie Rock jam. And then, WHAM!

Sorry to do that to you, the innocent reader of In The Loop. Thank goodness WHAM was there to finish it off. I never realized how soothing George Michael could actually be.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Am I crazy or does the whole situation just make you go, “WTF?! Just pay a professional DJ!” Sorry to go Perez Hilton on you, but it’s fashion week y’all. C’mon.

Mayor Villaraigosa has one major thing on his mind for this LA Fashion Week this year, and that’s green.  A far cry from last year’s eco-fashion preview on the lawn of the mayoral mansion, the “green” Villaraigosa pontificates about these days is more the cold, hard kind.

“Fashion is a $28 million industry, and it’s the fourth largest basic industry in the region. More than 200,000 people are employed in work which involves designing, producing and selling,” stated Mayor Villaraigosa at yesterday’s press conference at the California Market Center.

The Mayor’s singular focus was also illustrated in his only tweet regarding the press conference,”Kicking off LA Fashion Week – great to have creative talent, 53k buyers and sellers, and $50 million coming to LA!“

Though the press conference this year focused on the positive economic impact of supporting the LA fashion industry, there is actually a positive ecological impact as well. As one of the few thriving centers of manufacturing left in the USA, Los Angeles not only designs, but produces many of the country’s garments right in the middle of Downtown. Stimulating the LA economy through encouraging the local fashion scene results in significant reductions in carbon-heavy shipping on foreign imports. It turns out both shades of green will be in fashion for LAFW 09 after all.

If you’ll be in town October 12-20 or the 28-31, be sure to reserve your spot at one of the many events of LA Fashion Week.

***The most exciting runway show for us at LAFW 09 is of course, the eco rockstars of the LA fashion world, The Battalion. Sisters Linda and Chrys Wong will be showing their Spring 10 line on Thursday, October 15 at 5pm at MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art).

The designs of Paloma Soledad perfectly embody the steampunk aesthetic of the Portland underground. The materials for Soledad’s custom corsets and animé-inspired costumery seem to harken from a hundred years ago: lambskin, velvet, silk taffeta, steel spiral boning. Her expert construction of whimsically macabre costumes have earned her design positions with avante garde dance companies and the set of the meticulously-styled film Coraline.

Kristi Turnquist of The Oregonian recently gave the rundown on Paloma’s ideas on bloodthirsty pin-up girls and her early suspicions of nice people in the land of milk and honey…

Paloma Soledad
Age: 31
Hometown: Los Angeles; the family moved to Oahu, Hawaii, when she was 4

Experience: Graduated from the California Institute of the Arts; designed costumes for the movies “Cabin Fever” and “Hostel”; did costumes for the Portland dance troupe tEEth; worked in the costume department on the stop-motion animated feature “Coraline.”

Design visions: Soledad’s mother was a seamstress. “She would have me thread the elastic through her waistbands when I was little.” Youthful discovery of “Conan the Barbarian” and Alberto Vargas glamour-girl illustrations also formed her aesthetic. “It’s like a 1940s pin-up dancer — she’s going to dance on the table, and then jump down and slit your throat. We all have the power to be as sexy as we want to be.”

Signature pieces: Custom-made corsets, mixing sumptuous silks and velvets with leather and metal details, for a mix of masculine and feminine influences. “The boning is flexible, so you can eat in it, you can dance in it. It’s like a piece of art.”

Why Portland? “I was living in L.A., and the energy there’s so manic, it just makes you really crazy. My mom lives in Northern California, and she said, ‘You should check out Oregon.’ I moved here in 2006. When I first got here and people were nice to me, I thought, ‘What do you want from me?’ This is the land of milk and honey.”

Read more of Local Designers Take Over The Catwalk at OregonLive.com…

Does British eco fashion make you think of wet cardboard tied to pasty people, or is it just me? Don’t answer that. Brit-based eco lingerie line Enamore pushes the envelope on classic burlesque-worthy ensembles for the vampy eco fashionista. Don these skivvies made of hemp, soy, silk, tencel, and vintage fabrics and just see how good you’ll feel.

Check out the latest video featuring the spicy, sassy, sultry pin up girls of Enamore, and trust me, there ain’t no cardboard in here.

This past Earth Month, our fabulous friends at Inhabitat along with the US Green Building Council (USGBC) put on the 3rd Annual Project Earth Day. This event showcases the hottest eco fashion designers of the day as well as a fierce Project Runway-style student design competition. Longtime eco fashion superstar Bahar Shahpar was Co-Producer and Creative Director of this year’s Project Earth Day. Here, the lovely Margaret Teich of Inhabitat gives you a tour of the event…

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