It’s already close to the middle of 2014 and you’re in need of some mid-year inspiration. Here are 5 inspirational books that will give you the extra nudge you need to boost your mood and your outlook. Enjoy!

1. “Adulting”, Kelly Williams Brown

You may age in number but still feel like a kid. Many of us encounter this sentiment, but is it something we should fight or embrace? “Adulting“reconciles our desire to feel young and the need for us to fulfill the adult role in everyday life. This book was inspired by Brown’s blog, which helps people become adults in 468 easy(ish) steps.

2. “The Art of Tinkering”, Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich

This book features all the activities, workshops and quirky experiments that pay homage to the activity of tinkering. Defined as taking things apart, exploring tools and materials and building science/technology art, tinkering is about fooling around with tools, materials and concepts – learning through doing. For the handy reader with a knack for fun-filled, innovative projects, “The Art of Tinkering” will keeps things fresh and whimsical.

3. “The Gift of Adversity”, Normal E. Rosenthal

Contrary to popular belief, difficulties do more for us than cause us trouble. “The Gift of Adversity” sheds light on how adversity can strengthen and motivate us. Rosenthal helps readers understand why it is important to encounter struggle in our everyday lives.

4. “Stumbling on Happiness”, Daniel Gilbert

Written by a Harvard psychologist, “Stumbling on Happiness” explains to us how our thoughts limit our understanding of the future and the satisfaction levels. The book reminds us how little we really know about the people we are bound to become.

5. “Steve Jobs”, Walter Isaacson

The title speaks for itself. Steve Jobs was a visionary, a perfectionist, and someone who changed the course of many industries, including music, personal computers, phones, animated movies, digital publishing, tablet computing and so much more. This book was written off of 40 interviews conduction with Steve Jobs over the course of two years. What better way to be inspired than by one of the greatest tech leaders of our time?

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Photo Credits: Amazon.com

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In the face of both triumph and tragedy, fashion’s masked and intricate supply chain is becoming more transparent. So where is the industry headed in 2014?

I never ever dreamed I would find myself working in the fashion industry. But never say never right? And somewhere between scraping plates for food waste studies and being shoulder deep in a cow’s rumen for ecological restoration research, a lot changed.

Fashion was always an interest of mine, surely an influence from my Parisian mother and catty American high school upbringing, but I always saw the industry as vain–only meant for those that have too much time and money on their hands to care about anything else other than what they wore. For my future, I wanted to be part of something meaningful. So I turned my career efforts to the world of sustainable business. Yet eventually, my environmental blindness led me directly into a relationship I soon wouldn’t be able to untangle.

Unless you are a staunch nudist you consume fashion. As utopian as it might seem to some, few of us are nudists, and so it comes as no surprise that fashion stands as the third largest industry in the entire world, after only energy and food. And like the latter two, consumers want it cheap and fast.

But to churn out fast and cheap in a complicated global supply chain, means processes need to be slimmed, quality diminished and externalities bleeding out at all steps. For fashion, this manifests in thinner, less durable fabric, miniscule pay for workers and over-consumption by us. From growing and harvesting the fiber, to processing and dyeing the textiles, to designing, cutting and sewing the garment, endless resources–be it land or creativity–go into clothing. A lot more than a $5 price tag will ever tell you.

I recently heard ethical fashion pioneer, Elizabeth Cline, speak on her first eye opening experience, when she realized there was something amiss in the industry. In the introduction of her book, “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion”, she remembers how she found herself in a Manhattan K-Mart buying seven pairs of the same shoes because they were marked down from $15 to $7. “What was so interesting about the psychology of that [moment],” says Cline, “is I owned more clothing than anything else, and I knew the least about it out of anything I buy. And I probably cared the least about it. I didn’t consider myself into fashion, yet I owned so much.”

We live in an era of conscious consumerism and yet at large a void still exits between an eco-lifestyle and the clothing we wear.

Our desire for cheap, fast clothing pushed manufacturing out of the United States fast and hard. The heartbreaking estimations that 80 percent of apparel manufacturing jobs were lost in the last twenty years is real and clearly seen in those communities with factories left. On top of the shift to overseas production for the race to the bottom dollar, cut throat, almost impossible deadlines place inhumane pressures on factory workers. So where do we go from here?

The word sustainability is thrown around a lot, and really turns some people off. And I don’t blame them. What is sustainability? No one really knows exactly what it is, or even if we can achieve it. But we know for certain what sustainability isn’t. Sustainability isn’t having more than we need. But how can we know when owning too much clothing is too much?

“Can we actually make sustainable clothing–I mean, really sustainable clothing?,” posed Rhett Godfrey, Sustainability Director of the progressive organic cotton clothing company Loomstate, at the Manufacture New York Sustainable Textile Summit this past November. “It’s one thing using dyes which don’t require water or saving energy or having fair trade and so forth. But at the and of the day are we being sustainable in terms of a systems-thinking, sustainability in term of true ecosystem–in terms of supporting peoples traditional skills and supporting cultures and communities.”

Appreciating the intricate and skilled process of making clothing is vital to make informed decision as wearers. It’s looking beyond a label or tactical marketing campaign. For example, looking beyond just buying organic cotton or made in the U.S.–although these are great clues to guide consumers on how to shop better–it’s a whole system approach, and not it’s individual parts. Aristotle and Wendell Berry know “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

But there is no right or wrong way. Every designer and fashion house approaches the making process differently from the time an idea forms to the process of production. And it’s an ethical process we are seeking. It’s a spectrum of ethics and you need to decide yours to develop a more meaningful attachment to clothing again.

The heart of the issue is it’s about time we start building a fulfilling relationship again with our clothing. But can we really have a relationship with an inanimate object or is the relationship about the one with ourselves?

For all the tragedy which arose within the fashion industry in 2013, there was so much beauty that opened as well. 2013 saw some amazing steps for a more ethical fashion community. Like Nike’s Maker app geared toward designers that beautifully visualized the resource consumption of different textiles. Bib + Tuck, an online site to swap clothing. And Zady, an e-commerce platform dedicated to telling the story of the makers.

Fashion allows us to express our identity and put forth a sense of self. And through what I’ve seen, we are developing a new passion for clothing. Not one that is based on greed and vanity but one reflecting of values, quality and character–a new type of luxury. Clothing is damn hard to make and people are connecting with the beauty and craft of that process, just like we saw with food. “And that is what is so excited to me, clothing is amazing.. and the more you now about them, the more you know about how they are sourced, and the more fulfilling your relationship with them is,” says Cline.

What I had to realize about fashion, and where I think we are heading, is understanding the complexity of our clothing.

“It is about having personal relationships, it is about having transparency, and involvement of your supply chains,” says Godfrey.

So where is sustainable fashion heading in 2014? First, it is knowing there is no difference between sustainable fashion and fashion. In the end we are taking about clothing and expressing ourselves. Next, we are getting closer to a stronger relationship with the clothing we wear, and the story of how they are made.

Our loudest vote is our dollar. And 2014 will continue to shift the market as we put our money where our values lay. Nothing is perfect and everything is a process, but education is key to a brighter future. Ethical fashion champion Vivienne Westwood‘s words always ring in my mind “Buy Less. Buy Better. Make it Last.”

Here’s to 2014.

image: Juliette Donatelli

Related on Ecosalon

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Between The Lines: From NYFW to the Garment Factories of Pakistan 

 Popular Fast Fashion Brands Caught Selling Lead-Tainted Purses, Shoes and Accessories

Keep in touch with Juliette on twitter @spadesandsilk

The post Where is Sustainable Fashion Headed in 2014? appeared first on EcoSalon.

A picture evokes a lot of language, or something along those lines. So, from the shores of Thailand to the mid-western United States, we’ve rounded up 33 of the most amazing sunrise pictures of 2014’s first dawn.

After long nights or ambitious mornings, Instagram users around the world snapped shots of the sky at day break, like this radiant, serene photo above, taken on the shores of Vancouver, Washington by lanisakai.

Have a look around, and you might be inspired by the beauty and light this new year holds.

Taken in Doi Pha Hom Pok National Park Thailand by anna_bkk 

Taken in Brooklyn, New York by ilikefatass

neckerputs

Taken in Encinitas by mirallegirl

mar10stm

abanob_3atf

Taken in Nepal by ilarit

Taken in the San Francisco Bay area by rfreeman88

Taken in Tomales Bay, California by leajulene

Taken in Kansas by michellelalu

Taken in Camino Alto Preserve in California by jjungsten

Taken in Vista, California by itsjbizzle

Taken in Colorado by uelhp

Taken in Ras Shitan by nadimmaximilian

niki17a

oddbone

Taken in Paris, France by mullerfrans

Taken in Oakland, California by mr_marcus_asshole

Taken in Juno Beach Florida by journeyofnow

Taken on Lake Tahoe by mukpeace

pcn_anais

shannont101

Taken in Joshua Tree National Park by steveu1975

Taken in Oregon by rdavidson3

Taken in Praia Beach, Portugal by danncaldas

Taken in Thailand by dungwaaplanil

Taken by kikajasmine

Taken in Florida by miichellex0x0

Taken in Ha Long Bay, Hanoi, Vietman by chartan

Taken in France by lottietowell10

Taken in San Francisco by cherdendelions

Taken in Sardinia by jiggiola

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