House of Tammam Debuts U.K.’s Only Ethical Ready-to-Wear Bridal Gowns
House of Tammam has launched the first, and so far only, ethical ready-to-wear bridal collection in the United Kingdom. Founded by Lucy Tammam, who also serves as the label’s creative director, House of Tammam is based in London’s Bloomsbury district, where novelists such as Virginia Woolf and Mary Shelley lived just around the corner. Whereas Woolf and Shelley were mavericks in literature, the same could be said for Tammam with respect to fashion design. A Central Saint Martins graduate, Tammam was classically trained in tailoring. Because of her passion for animal and human rights, she became a pioneer in ethical couture, voyaging to India as early as 2004 to locate suppliers who would meet her criteria for fair-trade and sustainable materials.
Sourcemap Traces John Patrick Organic’s Supply Chain From Sheep to Sweater
Jennifer Sharpe wants to know where your clothes have been, even before they become “your clothes.” For her master’s thesis, the Parsons The New School for Design student looked to Sourcemap, a free online tool that traces supply chains across the globe, making it ideal for addressing the complexities of garment manufacturing. Because Sharpe wanted to test the platform in the real world, she approached John Patrick, the genius designer behind Organic. “I explained my work with Sourcemap, and my focus on clothing traceability, and John was completely receptive in allowing me to document and source-map his supply chain,” Sharpe tells Ecouterre.
Bloomingdale’s Fashion Director, Stephanie Solomon, Opens Up About Eco-Designer Carrie Parry
Designer Carrie Parry at her Bloomingdale’s trunk show.
A relative newcomer to the eco-fashion scene, designer Carrie Parry added a notch to her belt when she kicked off Bloomingdale’s Earth Month festivities last week. Parry was on hand all weekend, meeting and greeting Bloomies’ shoppers as they perused selections from her inaugural collection. But the “shopper” who stood out most from the crowd was Bloomingdale’s own operating vice president of women’s fashion direction, Stephanie Solomon. Ecouterre saw Solomon’s enthusiastic response to Parry’s line firsthand as she flew in and out of the space. We kicked off our shoes and chased her down soon after to pick her brain about Parry and sustainability in fashion.
U.K.’s Offset Warehouse Combines Ethical Shopping With Fabric Sourcing
Introducing Offset Warehouse, the world’s first online destination to combine affordable ethical-fashion shopping with hard-to-find sustainable fabrics. Founded by 25-year-old Royal College of Art graduate Charlie Ross, the site was born from her own frustrations sourcing ethical fabrics in the smaller quantities she needed, as well as her desire to change the perception that ethical fashion is more expensive.
VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Interview With Eco-Fashion Designer Samantha Pleet
It’s no secret to Ecouterre readers that we’re fans of Brooklyn-based eco-fashion designer Samantha Pleet. We’ve gushed about her playful and provocative eco-apparel and even played dress-up with her clothes at the Designers & Agents showroom. Naturally, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to interview the designer in her studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (We even got a chance to try on some …
For Alyce Santoro of Sonic Fabric, Off-Grid Living is Always in Fashion
Multimedia artist Alyce Santoro may be best known in the fashion community for her woven cassette-tape Sonic Fabric, but the conceptual artist, activist, and homesteader contains multitudes we’ve only begun to see. Once a member of a grassroots artist enclave in Brooklyn, Santoro now holds court in West Texas, where she lives an almost off-grid lifestyle accompanied by the hum of her solar-powered sewing machine. We caught up with the creative powerhouse to learn why she considers Sonic Fabric more conceptual art than upcycling statement, the reason she abandoned New York City for the Texan desert, and how she managed to whittle her electric bill down to $14 each month.
EcoSkin Pioneers Use of Zero-Waste “Wholegarment” Tech For Eco-Fashion
From pheromone-pumping dresses to underpants that send text messages when you wet yourself, we like to think we’ve seen it all. (Obviously, we haven’t.) EcoSkin’s use of Shima Seiki’s zero-waste, seam-free Wholegarment technology, however—a first for any eco-fashion label—is so elegant in its simplicity we want to slap our foreheads and go, “Why didn’t we think of that?”
Noon Solar Launches America’s First Natural-Dye Production House
Few people, perhaps, understand the seasonal alchemy of Mother Nature better than Jane Palmer, co-creator of the Noon Solar line of bags and now the founder of the first—and so far only—natural-dye production house in the United States. Launched in January and based out of Chicago, Noon Design Studio is committed to using sustainably harvested natural materials as a low-impact alternative to toxic fabric treatments. More significant, however, is that it endeavors to do so at a cost-efficient, production scale.
Jennifer Wen Ma’s Hand-Paints Add Moody Drama to Eko-Lab’s Fall ’10 Line
Jennifer Wen Ma’s beautifully dappled charcoal prints at Ekovaruhuset’s New York Fashion Week show so mesmerized us that we simply had to find out more about the Emmy Award-winning artist and her work. Ma collaborated with Melissa Kirgan and Xing-Zhen Chung-Hilyard of Eko-Lab to create the smoke-hued pieces, which were painted freehand using water-based, low-impact inks. The result? A misty, atmospheric effect reminiscent of Chinese landscape paintings and Zen calligraphy.
reMade USA Upcycles Leather Jackets into One-of-a-Kind Bags
I’ve been making handbags for almost 15 years. It’s a weird obsession that started in 1995 after I spent a semester studying in London. A few years ago, I had small business producing really cute, hot-pink PVC laptop bags in China. As I learned about the state of our planet and the impact of the fashion industry, I felt increasingly guilty about the path I was on. My new line, reMade USA, was borne out of my frustration over the dearth of durable materials that didn’t harm the environment. My solution: Used leather, a material found in spades at thrift stores in the form of jackets, many of which are probably en route to a landfill. Because no two jackets are alike, the process of deconstruction and creating a bag is unique.
Stewart + Brown’s Karen Stewart Gets Grilled By Our Cub Reporter: Her 6-Year-Old Daughter
Photo by Torrey Simonsen
Hazel Stewart Brown was born in 2002, the same year that her parents, Karen Stewart and Howard Brown, founded their pioneering eco-fashion label. Stewart + Brown, which they pronounce “Stewart Brown,” rather than “Stewart and Brown,” was named not after themselves but for Hazel—and six years later, for her brother, Huxley, as well. Here, the budding eco-fashionista hones her journalism skills by interviewing Stewart + Brown’s co-founder and design director, whom she happens to know by another name: Mom.
JulieApple’s Eco-Friendly Bags Take a Bite Out of Water Footprint With AirDye Technology
For former LeSportsac veteran Julianne Applegate, who went rogue in July with her own line of boldly patterned stuff sacks, great design is synonymous with green design. “To create great, green design, you must have inspiration, skill, and the right materials,” she tells Ecouterre. In creating JulieApple, no detail was spared, from green fabrics (recycled-plastic canvas, organic hemp, purposed sailcloth) to a new ecological dyeing method that uses virtually no water.
Patagonia’s Sugar & Spice: A Disassembling Shoe That Makes Recycling a Snap
Despite its groundbreaking premise, the Sugar & Spice hasn’t been the roaring success that Patagonia had hoped it would be. The first—and so far, only—shoe of its kind in the ethical activewear brand’s stable, the otherwise unassuming Mary Jane features components that snap together and use minimal glues or cement. There are a couple of reasons why it never quite took off, theorizes Les Horne, senior product manager of Patagonia’s footwear division and one of the designers behind the disassembling shoe.
Recipe for Success: Permacouture Stirs Up Bold, Plant-Based Hues For Mr. Larkin
With all the fashion-forward inroads made at The GreenShows at New York Fashion Week, it’s obvious that today’s eco-fashionistas are savvier than ever about the alchemy of eco-couture. What they may not be privy to, however, are the custom recipes that go into hand-dyed garments like those of standout label Mr. Larkin. Thanks to The Permacouture Institute’s slow textile-dyeing methods, eco-friendly fabrics can now be artfully imbued with a rich palette of organic materials that are readily available at your local farmers’ market or garden.
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