Dream all you want, you’re never going to live in Barbie’s eco-friendly mansion.

The winning design of the American Institute of Architects’ Barbie Dream House competition (really) is a four-story, eco-friendly Malibu mansion with pink sliding doors. Too bad Barbie and Jen (as in Aniston) are the only gals who can afford to live there.

The green manse features 1,500 square feet of entertaining space, an open chef’s kitchen, separate library and client-meeting room, an “inspiration room” floor, rooftop greenhouse, and a landscaped garden for her assortment of exotic pets. True, the last time we checked the giraffe on her lawn was listed as an endangered species, but not only is Barbie an architect you see, she’s evidently a world-renowned zoologist as well.

Philosophically speaking, 21^st century Barbie is like Lara Croft and Richard Branson rolled into one.

Barbie’s eco-manor also features solar panels, bamboo flooring, low-flow fixtures, and locally sourced materials. Recent Harvard grads Ting Li and Maja Paklar created the design, which is in line with the principles set forth by U.S. Green Building Council, while remaining “true to all the needs of a classic California girl,” the pair adds.

The AIA created the competition as a way of promoting Barbie’s latest career move on the glass escalator that is the “I Can Be…” series, which aims to inspire girls to be anything they want to be.

I can get behind that. Who knows? Had I owned the “I Can Be a Lifeguard” doll at age four, I might have passed my treading-water-with-a-brick test at age seventeen instead of sneaking behind the pool house for some ganja.

I Can Be…Pamela Anderson

If only I’d gotten that Leeza Gibbons face-and-body transplant. I could have been an entertainment news host.

I Can Be…On Entertainment Tonight

Applying myself in the biological sciences instead of the biology of my hormones could have led to an exciting career in veterinary medicine. How sexy is that frock?

I Can Be…a naughty nurse (but only if you want me to be)

Oh well, I’ll just have to settle for a job in a call center.

I Can Be…a telemarketer

Like George Constanza, I too have fostered fantasies of becoming an employable architect. Thanks to Barbie that dream is now a reality. I just need some chunky glasses, a construction hat, and a pretty hot-pink place to store my blueprints.

Landing a job might prove difficult, however, particularly if I showed up to a job interview looking like this:

Darn you, Beetlejuice! Back to the drafting table, kids. I wonder if Barbie’s princess charm school offers a PhD program.

Fortunately for California’s coast line, Barbie’s green dream house is not set to actually break ground, or plastic, ever. It was imagined for promotional purposes only. The concept though, is sweet and the house – if you’re a zoologist/movie star/media mogul – is viably sustainable.

Though, philosophically speaking again, Barbie’s got a few more eco pit-stops to go, like trading in her Vacation Glam Jet for a stay-cation.

Images: FastCo; Barbie; The Daily Mail

Designers aren’t alone when it comes to being held responsible for their claims of eco-design; so are the boutiques that carry them.

In fact, as greenwashing heats up and the public is able to be more informed, all participants of the manufacturing and selling process are being held accountable and nobody wants to look stupid.

Shows like D&A (Designers &Agents) and the NOW Showcase are making that quest for transparency a lot easier. For example, with green leaf icons at D&A serving as code for sustainable designer’s booths and with the NOW Showcase, an established venue offering various shades of green depending on the hue you so desire.

Still, nothing is perfect. In fact, at the last D&A show when approaching a designer toting a green leaf (for my own boutique), I was left to stand and have her waste 15 minutes of my precious time explaining to me why she had acquired her green leaf.

“So are your chains reclaimed?” I asked her.

“No, we give women fresh out of prison jobs to support their new life,” she answered.

“So nothing is recycled or reclaimed?,” I asked again horrified.

“Ahhh, no,” she said, now looking at me in bewilderment.

I had at least three other run-ins with designers marked with the green leaf that were, in my opinion, not even mint green.

While venues keep improving, we buyers keep pushing forward with our rigorous drills on designers, asking lots of questions and hopefully getting the right answers.

While in New York for Market Week, I bumped into Shana Yansen, owner and buyer of Jute and Jackfruit for a buyer’s love fest.

Here’s what she had to say about her adventures as a buyer.

Ever considered what happens in textile factories when your clothes get made? Most of the textiles that don’t make it into final products simply ends up getting thrown away, with the average textile factory accounting for about 60,000 pounds of waste a week. Portland based company Looptworks wanted to change that, and in 2009 launched with the intent of re-purposing “abandoned materials into meaningful, long-lasting and limited-edition products.”

I caught up with Looptworks’ Scott Hamlin last week at Outdoor Retailer – where they had constructed their booth with all repurposed materials, even the flat screen – to learn a little more about the brand and just what makes their design unique.

EcoSalon Chats Upcycled Design With Looptworks from EcoSalon on Vimeo.

Images: Looptworks, Anna Brones

Sometimes we envision the perfect wall sconce, chair, or bookshelf that will tie a room together just so, but actually finding it can be an uphill battle. Custom Made, an online marketplace for artisans of handmade furniture and home goods, is a great place to look for someone to bring your decorating ideas to life.

Search the site by geographical location or type of furniture you’re looking for (custom cabinetry, handmade lamps, hand-carved signs, and more). Then check out the galleries of various artisans and contact them directly to discuss your individual needs.

Custom Made is filled with portfolios from people who make everything from standard fare like chairs and mirrors, to exotic humidors and custom clocks. You’ll find plenty of furniture made from bamboo and eco-friendly FSC-certified wood. For example, check out this nightstand from Denver-based Tilde Design Studio. Made of Cherry wood and coated in a non-toxic finish, it sports two handled drawers and a secret compartment behind the front-facing apron. Elegant and discreet at the same time? Love it!

If you’re an artisan, you might want to look into having your work featured on Custom Made. There’s a small monthly fee to join, but then you can post pictures of your work and let customers find you. Although Custom Made is a lot like the popular online marketplace Etsy, its main focus is connecting customers and artisans for customized pieces, not selling pre-made work in a retail environment.

Custom Made is a real gem of a website. The next time you see a home furnishing you can’t live without but know it hasn’t been created in an ecologically-responsible manner, hit up an artisan on the site and see if she can whip up something similar for you.

New York City’s Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) recently welcomed their first 12 designers to the CFDA Fashion Incubator located in New York City’s historic Garment District.

CFDA president Diane Von Furstenberg led the designers on a tour of their new home just last week.
The first 12 designers are: Alice Ritter; Bibhu Mohapatra; Rachel Dooley of Gemma Redux; Grant Krajecki of Grey Ant; Waris Ahluwalia from House of Waris; Joel Diaz from Jolibe; Prabal Gurung; Dao-Yi Chow & Maxwell Osborne of Public School; Yuvi Alpert & Danna Kobo from Ruby Kobo; Sang A Im-Prop of Sang A; Justin Giunta from Subversive Jewelry; and Tom Scott.

According to a press release, the incubator was announced in November 2009 by Mayor Bloomberg as “Part of the City’s efforts to foster the development of entrepreneurs across all industry sectors, and to encourage small businesses to locate and grow in New York City.”

New York City currently has five incubators currently open or in development throughout the Five Boroughs, with at least two additional spaces expected to open by the end of 2010. Other cities like Chicago, L.A., Atlanta and Dallas have their own incubators which foster affordable work spaces, networking opportunities, and financial support to designers loaded with talent who might not otherwise be able to thrive.

With this mentoring and cultivation of designers sponsored by the CFDA, will we see New York’s Garment District slowly come back to life from its rapidly decreasing amount of tenants? And from an eco-design standpoint will there be opportunities so that more than just two of the 12 are afforded and educated on sustainable materials for their collections?

We can only hope.

Regardless, NYCEDC President Seth W. Pinsky says “This diverse group of designers is a reflection of the depth of fashion talent New York City is known for. It is because of designers like these, as well as the retailers, wholesalers, and numerous fashion-related businesses that choose to locate here, that New York City is, and will remain, the world’s fashion capital.”

Image: Gemma Redux

No matter how confused the media appear about what eco fashion is, one mantra rings true: to create a sustainable wardrobe is to buy clothes designed to survive the short-lived trend cycle.

Happily, this theme appears to have dovetailed, so that timeless chic will be what we soon find in our favorite stores. Understatement and restraint seems to have tied together the designs shown during New York Fashion Week and the Green Shows.

Donna Karan, celebrating her label’s 25th year, declared she was going back to basics (together with Vera Wang), sending out models in basic black. While fall colors are traditionally, well, fall-colored, there was a distinctively hesitant palette from which many of the collections drew, lending itself to multiple matching opportunities within an existing wardrobe.

The glowing response to Marc Jacobs‘ groomed, yet safe, collection highlighted the macro trend of clean, more focused and comfortable clothing. This unstoppable current flowed through his Autumn/Winter 2010 collections. Jacobs’ sophisticated separates in neutral shades of camel and gray, relied on his tried and tested sweet vintage-inspired style that resonates with the house’s many fans.

Beauty is found in the details and true eco designers such as Samantha Pleet have their sensitive fingers firmly on the current pulse. Pleet’s collection managed to incorporate usually bulky details like quilting and pleating into streamlined, easy, comfort-driven pieces.

“I’ve always designed for the busy person, someone who is running around making life happen,” says Pleet.

Fashions have to change. Times must change and designers try to reflect the changing circumstances in which they live. And while designers are meant to push fashion forward and challenge concepts of size and shape, this season’s straightforward collections reflect the current tentative climate.

Designers like Anna Gilkerson, of Deux FM, and Lizz Wasserman, of Popomomo, are showing similar influences.

Gilkerson heightened her supple loungewear basics to include sturdier day and night looks to tempt us out the door.

Wasserman continued to display her signature dresses attention to the revealed back, yet there was a telling contrast between the exposing cutouts and the warm hemp and cotton fleece she utilized. “I found myself wanting to cocoon the popomomo girl in warm, soft layers,” she says, adding, “In some ways, I think the new look of clothes act as a layer of protection and warmth against a cold uncertainty.”

Thieves designer, Sonja den Elzen, named her urban-nomad collection, “Conscience.”

“The dark palette is for me a reflection of the mood of those who are consciously aware of the distress of what is happening to the planet and humanities slow pace to respond to it,” she said. “I feel that we are in a very serious time”¦ though it often feels like swimming against the current.”

Image: Thieves F/W 2010 (photo courtesy Dream Sequins)

Magda Rod recently took her LA boutique Visionary on the road.

We are a society used to getting immediate gratification so why wouldn’t we want clothing as quickly as we can get a Big Mac?

The shift in consumer desire to want more now has led us, over the years, to the current state: body care and electronics being sold in vending machines, a craving to know more about where your friends are 24/7 through social media and those energy drinks to help you move faster to get everything, you know…now.

Eco-designers and boutiques are not exempt from this Nowism.

From Pop-up shops in major cities where designers can have a temporary storefront (and for a short time only!) to Etsy sites (once scoffed at by many designers I know) to create limited editions with their end-run fabrics, the race is on.

These pop-ups offer what Trendwatching.com calls “temporary brand manifestations that add an element of surprise, urgency, and must-have/must-see to shopping, dining, entertaining, lodging, exhibiting and so on.”

And with this quest to quench the insatiable with what’s new NOW, we don’t have to wait until January to buy our spring dresses at our favorite boutique before they’re bought out. We can buy them now. We may even be able to ask the seller to modify them for us.

The lines have become blurred. What kind of an effect does this have on your own purchases where once you planned seasonally? And when it’s eco, immediately, how eco is it?

Some words of advice: With all that is Nowism being forced down your throat, keep yourself in check with what you really need despite the hype and yes, even the immediacy of the vending machine.

Can you imagine designers promoting something like pencil skirts in all sizes in a machine in your city? Would you buy one?

With 55 million pounds of pesticides sprayed on clothes yearly, the EPA considers seven of the top 15 of these pesticides used on cotton in the United States as “possible,” “likely,” “probable,” or “known” to cause cancer in humans.

Thanks to various agencies safeguarding what we wear, “Eco-Friendly” clothing is being subjected to many production standards much like the green building industry from organizations like the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), the International Market for Sustainable Apparel (registry required) and the Organic Trade Association.

Which organization do you trust to set the standard for accountability? The jury’s still out.

One thing we know is that as the green movement proves it’s not just a trend, designers, buyers and shoppers will want proof of purchase so they can put their own green towards sustainable lines – and not feel so gullible. Until we have one standard to go by here are a few things you can do:

Do your homework. Many times we just accept that an item is organic without doing some research. A garment can be organic but still have a large carbon footprint.

Learn about different eco-fabrics that are available. Organic cotton and wool, tencel, soy and modal are some of the more popular choices.

Email the designers. Realize there are many ways designers can up the ante on eco-conscious production methods by recycling and using alternative energy at their design houses, implementing fair-trade practices and using natural dyes. Many of these eco-friendly designers are accessible through their websites.

Buy locally-sourced. Support your local designers and artists who use less fuel to get their goods to local stores. Not only will you help to sustain a small business, you’ll feel better knowing exactly where your goods came from.

Now that you have all this helpful information, what do you plan on doing with it?

Editor’s note: Please welcome our new fashion writer, Amy DuFault. You can learn about Amy here.

Image: ontwerpplus