This isn’t going to be easy for me, because I know little or nothing about fashion, let alone sustainable fashion down under, so bare with me… You’ll have to do most of the typing. I know Australia for a few things, it used to be a prison planet… it gave birth to Mad Max and a whole new fetish fashion set… there’s weird tales of magic in the vastness… all of this must inspire a new green fashion magazine to reconnect with the elements… am I far from the mark?

Ha! Well funnily enough the screenwriter of Mad Max has said that the script was based on “the thesis that people would do almost anything to keep vehicles moving and the assumption that nations would not consider the huge costs of providing infrastructure for alternative energy until it was too late”. Sounds eerily spot on! I wish I could say it wasn’t the case here in Australia, but I think living in the city is the same anywhere – we have all lost touch with our surroundings and the magic of the land. I grew up in New Zealand so probably had more of a connection with nature while growing up, but it tends to get lost in the everyday living of city life. Then I had a baby… having a young child tends to make you look at things differently, you want everything to be clean, green and chemical-free. So I started looking into organics and other aspects of fashion and the environmental and social cost. The more I researched, the more I realised I couldn’t turn a blind eye anymore, so I dove in head first, and Peppermint was born! 

Paul Newman passed away last night… He had come to incarnate Westport, Connecticut. He moved here years ago, tucking himself on a large property hidden in the woods, with his wife Joanne Woodward, and their children. They helped prevent the building of a nuclear power plant on Cockenoe Island and the construction of a Nike missile base, which they later turned into a comedy Rally Around The Flog Boys! 

We all loved his movies, but not everyone loved his shifting politics. Most recently, last year, before his illness became public knowledge, to everyone’s great surprise and dismay, he agreed to speak out on behalf the relicensing of the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson river. His Newman-Haas racing team is in part sponsored by nuclear industries, and never once promoted Green Racing initiatives.

Now why would a man known for leftist tendencies, a supporter of the Center for Defense Information, do such a thing? That question may well remain unanswered for ever. What does it have to do with fashion? Let’s take a step back from green fashion for a second, and look at it in context with the whole fashion industry. Concerns for sustainability are relatively recent. Yet, the emerging market opportunities for independent new designers who have embraced green ethics as a business model, are doing extremely well… while older, more established clothing companies, often the ready wear divisions of famous old design houses, are starting to wane…

I made the trek from Connecticut to the Lower East Side again on Wednesday night… Seems like it’s where all the cool green stuff is happening. Boho magazine’s been on newsstands for a few weeks now, but this was their official release party, held at Kaight, a trendy low-profile eco-boutique which you’d hardly know is there walking down the street since there’s no sign out front. But evidently, fans of sustainable design have no problem finding it.

Boho is published by Gina La Morte (top photo), a celebrity stylist based in New Jersey, who acted on an idea whose time has come, a fashion magazine aimed at the green conscious bohemian, in essence, probably every smart teenage girl out there. It’s a class act, and it’s been catching on. Their initial print run of 48.000 doubled after they got international distribution orders, and secured shelving space from Whole Foods, this after the chain yanked 90% of all the magazine titles they once carried! Somebody out there is clamoring for Boho.

Someone said “Let’s have a fashion show,” just like Mickey Rooney in Strike Up the Band! Next thing you know, the whole town of Ridgefield, Connecticut, breaking rank with the Stepford Wives, is rising to the occasion. The Green ROCK Inn offered their quaint little suburban get away, but the fire marshall got wind of all the people who were coming, so the venue moved to Nature’s Temptations, the town’s brand new health food store, which couldn’t have been a better idea.

Starre Vartan of Eco-Chick was signing her book at Go Practically Green, also brand new. She assembled a wide selection of sustainable fashion designer clothing. Shine, the local Aveda salon, asked a few friends to strut down the runway… among the Sicilian olive oil and the 7-grain cereal boxes. Brian Clark Howard spun the sounds.

While everybody was busy debating Palin or Obama, I went to a fashion show, but not any fashion show, one hosted by Angela Lindvall, who has dedicated her life to sustainable design issues, and now stars with Adrian Grenier on the flip side of his Entourage, in a wonderful new TV show called AlterEco. All her cast mates from Planet Green made the trek from LA to support her. The event was held under the life size blue whale hanging inside the American Museum of Natural History’s Millstein Hall of Ocean Life.

On September 4th, at the height of New York Fashion Week, Angela’s agency IMG helped sponsor this benefit for the Sierra Club to launch Be EcoChic, a convergence of many different people, companies and organizations who share the same environmental concerns about the fashion industry, and who are all working together to instill practical sustainability solutions in both their personal lives and their profession.

You couldn’t have hoped for a better turnout or a hipper crowd. Lauren Hutton, who recently launched her own makeup line, is a hero of mine. Always an adventurer and an explorer, I suspect her picking giant live flying bugs from the air and sucking their insides out, around the light of a camp fire while spending time with an African tribe, was an inspiration for Survivor! Few years ago she got herself into a terrible motocycle accident. It was wonderful to see her goofing around at rehearsal, back on the runway wearing a beautifully green and romantic steampunk long coat from Maggie Norris, who four months ago invited Riverkeeper lawyer Philip Musegaas to walk her runway.

In 2005, Jenny Hwa and loyale clothing received the OSSA Award from the Sustainable Style Foundation and the Youth Award from the Collage Foundation. loyale contributes 3% of annual profits to Green Corps, a non-profit which has to date trained over 400 young people as our next generation of environmental leaders. Jenny has garnered quite a lot of great press over the years, most recently in Plenty magazine. Victoria E once quoted Jenny as a fan of Francoise Hardy. loyale clothing is carried by 45 retailers around the country. On the eve of another fashion week in New York, Jenny and I talk green shop for a little bit.

We keep looking for ways to make the anti-nuclear movement as cool as green is now. Maybe a line of anti-nuke yoga clothes? (says I half jokingly…) You pioneered organic cotton in yoga wear… Probably planted seeds for the Green Yoga Association. How is it that sustainable fashion has become a political statement, in the way we spend our dollar? Are we witnessing a re-organization of human culture around green ideals, one that may possibly alter the global world economy? Is the result of our green buying decisions being felt by cotton producing nations? Is the eco-fashion movement making a difference?
 
The eco-fashion movement is making a significant difference because it is creating a dialogue.  This dialogue begins to get people thinking and then acting.  People want to make a positive impact in their lifetime, but feel overwhelmed or don’t know where to begin.  With green clothing, for example, people know they need to buy clothing and get dressed in the morning, suddenly they hear about all this buzz about organic cotton t-shirts and say hmmmm…why do I care or need this?  Then perhaps do a bit of internet research and see that conventional cotton farming is using 25% of the world’s insecticides and that 14 million people a year in the USA alone are drinking pesticide contaminated water – that is the epiphany moment, when they realize why it is important to support organic cotton farming and then they tell their friends about it.  This is how green fashion is going to make a difference – each person taking a small step that creates a chain reaction.  This is my motivation behind loyale…It is not just about clothing, but the message and setting off a positive chain reaction.