Tired of outsourcing? Made in the USA just got easier.

In the past year, I’ve spoken with dozens of designer entrepreneurs all looking for solutions to the same setbacks.

I can’t find someone willing to produce my minimums. I’m having such a hard time finding a sew shop that will work with me. I can’t find the fabric I need.

Without the right connections, the entire process of setting up a supply chain in the U.S. can almost seem impossible.

Those conversations are what led me to create Factory45, an accelerator program created for designers and makers who want to start sustainable and profitable businesses and keep everything made in the USA.

Why?

The domestic manufacturing industry can seem closed off. Sew shops don’t usually have websites and suppliers don’t always have email addresses. It can be very difficult to get a foot in the door without knowing the right questions to ask.

I created Factory45 to open those doors. I want local designers and makers to have the resources, tools and mentorship to start their businesses in the USA. We so often hear about the support of accelerator programs in the tech and software industries, but there are very few of the same resources available in the consumer goods space. Factory45 is one way to change that.

How does it work?

The program is six months, consisting of three two-month modules. Each module focuses on a different part of the process. By the time each participant has completed the program, he or she will have set up a U.S.-based supply chain, built a website and brand presence, created a crowdfunding campaign, and all of the little steps in between.

Through weekly group calls, bi-monthly one-on-one calls, mentorship, interviews with industry experts, and an entrepreneurial community of peer support, Factory45 guides the entire process of starting a business for designer entrepreneurs.

Who is it for?

The ideal applicant is a designer or maker with an idea for a consumer goods product. Maybe you have an idea for a baby blanket collection or a versatile dress or small-batch women’s apparel. You might only have an idea right now or maybe you’ve already made some traction with an Etsy store and want to scale production. If you need support setting up your supply chain, building an audience and brand presence, and creating a Kickstarter campaign, then you’re the perfect applicant.

Who is running the show?

I’m Shannon Whitehead, the founder of Factory45. In 2010, I co-founded {r}evolution apparel, a sustainable clothing company for travelers and minimalists that was featured in The New York Times, Forbes.com, WSJ.com and Yahoo! News. Our signature piece, The Versalette, one garment that can be worn over 20 different ways, became the highest-funded fashion project in Kickstarter history at that time.

After {r}evolution apparel, I moved on to become a sustainable apparel consultant, advocate and writer. In the past year and a half, I’ve worked with dozens of designers, startups and sustainable brands to grow their businesses and expand their reach.

Want more details?

Everything you need to know is on the Factory45 website here where applications are open until April 28, 2014.

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I truly believe in combatting fast fashion by supporting slow fashion. I believe that the local, independent designer has a place in this industry and can compete above and beyond the cheap and disposable goods churned out by big corporations.

The resources, mentorship and connections available through Factory45 will show aspiring entrepreneurs that it is possible to create ethical supply chains and do good business by supporting a revival of the U.S. manufacturing industry.

My hope is that Factory45 will create more entrepreneurs who can change the industry with me

Shannon Whitehead is the founder of Factory45, an accelerator program that gives independent makers the resources to start sustainable businesses in the USA. Shannon got her start in 2010 when she co-founded {r}evolution apparel, a sustainable clothing company for female travelers and minimalists that was featured in The New York Times, Forbes.com, TheWallStreetJournal.com and Yahoo! News. Shannon has appeared as a speaker at the World Education Congress, ECO Fashion Week, SXSW, and as a guest lecturer at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. Applications for Factory45 are now open until April 28, 2014.

Related on EcoSalon

The Absolute Best Mens Fashion Eco Designers: On Trend

Our 5 Favorite Upcycled Fashion Designers from the USA

New Zealand’s First Ethical Fashion Week Plus 3 Hot Kiwi Designers

images via Factory45

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The Southern Hemisphere is certainly stepping up in the sustainable style stakes! First, New Zealand announced their very first ethical fashion week, and now the countdown is on for Australia’s inaugural Indigenous Fashion Week (AIFW), being held in April 2014. AIFW is all about showcasing the best of aboriginal Australian design from across the continent, celebrating the world’s oldest surviving continuous culture—on the catwalk. Fronted by well-known Australian model Samantha Harris, the week is going to be one of Sydney’s most stylish.

The goals of AIFW are not just about what’s on the runway. It’s equally about ideals beyond fashion like a focus on fair trade, supporting the economic development of Indigenous artists and highlighting ethical practice.

Here, we take a look at three of the emerging designers who will get the chance to showcase down under in 2014.

Lilla Gagliano

Lilla Gagliano is the creative force behind Kaninda, a stylish label from Australia’s western state. Lilla has both Indigenous and Italian heritage and her designs reflect her passion for both her cultural heritage and the world of fashion. She also draws inspiration from living in the beautiful Pilbara country. A textile and batik designer, she produces her own fabrics (including hand painted silks!). Even though Kaninda was born in 2004, Lilla’s debut collection didn’t show until Perth Fashion Week 2012, but received positive reviews.

Natalie Cunningham

Hailing from Australia’s aptly named Sunshine Coast, Natalie’s Indigenous and Greek heritage influence her unique design. Initially, she started out as a model, but it wasn’t long before she turned her hand to design, launching her eponymous label in 2006 at just 24. Famous for her love of eccentric fabrics and her homage to the 80s through the use of pops of exciting color, Natalie certainly does things differently. She is also committed to supporting positive images of women in fashion, particularly given her experience as a model. Rumor has it this talented designer is set to release an Indigenous swimwear and resort wear line in early 2014.

Caressa Sengstock

Caressa is the edgy, unique fashion label from Caressa Sengstock. Caressa began working in the fashion industry in 2009, around the same time as she started to take art classes, which tapped into her creative flair. All of her fashion pieces have been inspired by her own paintings, depicting ancient Dreamtime stories. Her skills really got noticed when a Rainbow Serpent dress that she designed turned heads at the Indigenous Awards night in Sydney. Following this, she was then asked to design a dress for an Australian music awards night and from there, she really took off. One of her recent collections, Spirit Tree, depicts a Dreamtime story about the journey from death to heaven, in which the use of sequins represent the dots in the roots of the tree, as souls traveling into the trunk. The way she pays tribute to ancient stories through contemporary design is just one way this designer stands out.

Images: Caressa, Natalie Cunningham, Kaninda, AIFW

Related on Ecosalon: 

 Synthetic Fabrics Worse Than You Think: Fiber Watch

ALAS: Sustainable Cotton Sleepwear from Australia 

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Hong Kong-based fashion non-profit Redress launched a sustainable fashion design competition to inspire emerging designers from East to West to reduce waste in the fashion industry.

As you may have heard, fashion is one of the world’s most polluting and resource-intense industries, and our accelerating consumption and taste for fast fashion are contributing to environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources and human rights abuses. Integrating sustainability thinking into massive global supply chains often presents significant challenges to fashion brands, but that does not mean it can’t be done.

Reconstruction, by EcoChic Design Award 2012 China finalist Chen Qin Zi. Photo by Mathieu Lunard

Designers are the main influences when it comes to sustainability thinking and are thought to influence about 80-90 percent of the environmental and economic impact of a product through the choices they make in design sourcing and manufacturing.

The EcoChic Design Award is a sustainable fashion design competition with a mission to educate and enable emerging designers to create mainstream clothing with minimal textile waste. In its fourth year, The EcoChic Design Award 2013 is expanding its search for creative design talent to Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, UK, France, Belgium and Germany.

The competition is open to designers and students with less than three years of industry experience. For many of these emerging designers, particularly in China, this is their first introduction to sustainable fashion design. They are challenged to utilize zero-waste, up-cycling and reconstruction techniques to create their collections. Following nine months of education, design and judging, eight finalists will be chosen by a panel of acclaimed judges to present their sustainable collections at Hong Kong Fashion Week in January 2014, for a chance to win “career-changing prizes that will further ignite positive change in the industry.”

“Sustainability in the fashion industry is an over-discussed but under-actioned issue,” says Christina Dean, CEO and Founder of Redress, the fashion NGO organizing the awards. “Not enough focus is being put on reducing waste. We must crack the industry’s problem of excessive waste production and lost economic value. The EcoChic Design Award 2013 fires-up emerging fashion designers from East to West to make tomorrow’s mass market and independent fashion industries sustainable from the source.”

The winner of the EcoChic Design Award will get to design a recycled textile clothing collection for global retailer Esprit. “The collaboration with Redress allows us to bring talented emerging designers with new innovative sustainable ideas to the forefront of the fashion industry by bringing their works to life,” says Charles Dickinson, Head of Global Quality Management and Sustainability, Esprit.

The EcoChic Design Award Hong Kong 2012 Winner Wister Tsang

Kuan Teo, Winnie Cheng, Christina Dean, Sandy Lam, Margaret Kutt, Johanna Ho and Charming Ho at The EcoChic Design Award 2013 launch in Hong Kong. Photo by Colin

Zero-waste design on the runway by EcoChic Design Award Hong Kong 2011 Winner Janko Lam

Second prize is an educational trip to learn how jewelry designer John Hardy integrates environmental and social sustainability into the core of design, production and business philosophies. A Special Prize winner will get to design a sustainable outfit for artist Sandy Lam to wear on the cover of a fashion magazine to “redress” consumers’ attitudes towards sustainable fashion. All semi-finalists and finalists receive a career-boosting educational package, including a combination of mentorships, promotional opportunities and a selection of sustainable fashion books and journals. Entries are open now until August 15, 2013.

Images courtesy of Redress

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If you’re new here, we’ve been on a road trip down the West Coast this summer with our sustainable clothing company, {r}evolution apparel. You can track our journey here!

Whew. What a journey.

Over eight weeks ago, we set out to learn more about sustainable fashion and what we could do to help push the movement forward.

We met professors, designers, farmers, CEO’s, and people on the streets. We filmed it all. And this is a tiny, small bit of what we learned from these amazing individuals.

This is just the beginning for {r}evolution apparel; as we learn, and share, and converse, we realize that our work is crucial. We are all connected. We all matter. Every decision we make – from which tank top we buy to how we recycle our clothes – makes a difference.

Now, we’re taking time to sort through our footage, process our experience, and ultimately, create a short documentary chronicling our summer’s journey. Until then, we’ve loved posting here at EcoSalon and hope to stay connected to this community. We’ll be saying “au revoir” with a short trailer by our filmmaker, Steve Celano – enjoy!

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Local designers in Portland, Oregon come together to support Planned Parenthood on August 31, 2011.

We do love fashion for a good cause, especially when it’s a collection of stand-out local designers. Enter, Dress/Undress a benefit fashion event put together by Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, hosted on Wednesday August 31, 2011 at the Fez Ballroom in Portland, Oregon.

Dress/Undress is all about raising awareness and funds for PPCW’s Equal Access Fund, a program designed to provide gynecological care for women and transgender people who aren’t currently covered by Oregon state’s pregnancy-prevention services, and since we’re big believers in reproductive rights, we’re happy to be on board as a media sponsor.

Dress/Undress will feature some of the best in local Portland designers, including EcoSalon favorite Sword + Fern. The evening will feature a silent auction, cocktail hour, runway show and then a dance party hopefully long into the night. What more could you want from a Wednesday night? General admission tickets are $10, and you can get them here.

Enticed? Here’s a peek at the featured designers.

Idom

Sword + Fern

Heather Treadway

Golden Rule

Midge

Yo Vintage!

Benjamin Blak

StudioSKB

Kat Seale

the Metal Institution

We hope to see you there, and if you can’t make it, keep a lookout for our event recap next week.

Images:  Idom, Sword + Fern, Heather Treadway, Golden Rule, Midge, Yo Vintage!, Benjamin Blak, StudioSKB, Kat Seale, the Metal Institution.

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Great stories from EcoSalon you may have missed this week.

In San Francisco’s Fashion Incubator At Macy’s Heralds New Designers, fashion writer Rowena Ritchie notes that over the years there have been numerous efforts to breathe life into San Francisco’s struggling fashion scene, “so it was a thrilling day for industry pundits when the announcement was made from Mayor Edwin M. Lee’s office on Monday that a new fashion incubator would launch next year.” The Fashion Incubator San Francisco at Macy’s Union Square (FISF), now has a group mission to turn creative fashion apparel designers into successful San Francisco entrepreneurs. We can’t wait to watch and see what happens.

With the healthy future of our environment at stake and a younger, more urban generation so far removed from forest paths and babbling brooks, are we in trouble? In Wanted: More Urban Children To Embrace Nature, writer Sarah Lewis-Hammond says, “Widely reported problems with our increasing penchant for urbanization expand well beyond the economic and environmental, and issues ranging from increasing obesity to widespread depression and stress disorders have been pinned on our proliferation of concrete.” Time to bring in the jackhammers.

If you live in the city of Portland, Oregon, you’re fully aware it’s been rated a top green city in the U.S. so it’s not a surprise that in this past week’s Places & Spaces, the Avalon Hotel and Spa, in Portland, Oregon has been featured. Kara DiCamillo points out that “With a cool architectural design, this luxury retreat is the tenth hotel in the world (and the first in Oregon), to be certified as a LEED hotel by the U.S. Green Building Council.” Pack your bags and go west, young women.

Foodie Underground columnist Anna Brones is back with more cupcake analysis. “Trendy cupcake stores are one thing, and even if I can’t get behind the popularity of the baked good, I’ll agree that they’re colorful, cute and, if you have a sweet tooth, taste good. But restraint is not a virtue Americans possess, and so we weren’t satisfied with adorably stenciled hole-in-the-wall cupcake shops. Instead we had to make the cupcake a national trend on a level of the beanie baby. Cupcakes have literally taken over.” See all the bizarre cupcake accessories you can handle in Burned Out On The Cupcake Trend.

In International Train Traveling To Romance You, Shira Levine explains that “Train travel is one of the cleanest, greenest, and often prettiest modes of transport for seeing the world. Less carbon is burned when riding the rails vs. flying or driving alone and thanks to technology, traveling by train has picked up speed over the last hundred or so years.” Did we mention that it was also totally sexy?

The post The Friday Five, Vol. 20 appeared first on EcoSalon.

A fashion industry insider reports.

Charles Frederick Worth was one of the world’s first noted fashion designers (See his Court Dress, above). In 1845, a fashion designer was an artist, highly regarded and sought after by the society of the royal court to advise on their wardrobe choices. Worth’s main concern, as a designer, was to design and handmake one of a kind haute couture that would distinguish each of his customers. Associated with class, distinction, style, and influence, people like Worth have been labeled taste-makers for well over a century. Relics aside, today, the role of a fashion designer is far more complicated, competitive, and multifaceted than ever before.

Well known designers, such as Stella McCartney, have been known to express a desire to run away from the industry after a season. When she received harsh criticism after her debut collection from the press in 2001, McCartney told NY Magazine, “People think I’m strong, but actually I wanted to crawl away. I thought, I’m going to live in the country with my horse and I’ll get a nine-to-five; I don’t need this.”

However, with hundreds of new designers emerging to show at fashion weeks around the world each season, even negative press is better than the alternative of no press. Minor complaints aside, in the past few years, incidents suggest that there are more serious issues afoot plaguing designers than insults from the press. From John Galliano’s drunken Nazi rantings, to Marc Jacob’s repeated drug problems, and the most tragic being Alexander McQueen’s suicide last year, designers seem to be experiencing something beyond the usual industry stress. With all of these melt downs, one has to ask: Might these outbreaks just be symptoms of a larger system failure?

To understand the current circumstances, one must first understand the role of a designer. Today, the designer actually functions as a Creative Director, overseeing many different pieces of the company’s product design, execution, brand imaging and positioning, and much of the marketing and press. Another key part of the role is being accountable to the Financial Officer, also known as the “Money” of the business. Which means a designer really has to understand every step, cost and stage of their business to be able to make well informed decisions on how to steer the business. Below is a diagram to illustrate everything that must be managed and considered in order to produce and sell fashion on a mass market level. The arrows describe the tiers of power throughout the system.

In a cascade system, such as in a fashion house, each part of the system is dependent on the other. Therefore, if one part of the system fails, the entire system collapses. And yet, somehow, up until recently, this system has been quite efficient across the board for most well known fashion houses. This system has been able to maintain because the least powerful and the lowest paid group within the system, the laborers, farmers, and factory workers, make up the largest part of the system’s labor pool, keeping the costs and product prices low. Ironically, these links just happen to be what keeps the whole system going.

The other factor that the fashion system relies heavily upon, but also pays little for, are materials. However, if the costs of labor go up because, for instance, a country like China decides to enforce and increase their labor standards (which is currently happening), the standards raise across the board in other countries. Over time, the price of the product must go up as well. If cotton crops fail repeatedly due to climate changes, the cost of materials increase across the board due to shortages, and the price of the product goes up again. If the price offered to customers goes up dramatically, amidst all the cheep and cheerful overstock product flooding the market from last year, customers simply won’t buy it. After all, most people already have enough stuff. The brand will only sell items on sale, which results in job instability of everyone in the cascade system.

The Designer and the “Money” must take the issue seriously and find a solution before the system can continue on a healthy level. However, limited resources and rising labor costs are not an easy problems to solve, especially when you have an extremely competitive market and are running a complex system already set up to work only one way. Unfortunately, there are only a few options within the fashion industry to stay afloat:

The Iron Fist Solution, á la H&M: Make the customers temporarily happy by making and selling enormous amounts of low price-tag products of cheap quality. In this case, the cost of business operations is covered through the slivers of profit on each item sold, and multiplied by the tens and hundreds of thousands of items that are produced. With this solution, the brand needs to be able to sell directly through their own stores and the designer must have some kind of monopoly over materials and labor to keep the prices of the goods exceptionally low. This technique will destroy the competition, as long as the designer can continue running the business on minimum costs. However in the current environment, this is not a long term solution. The costs of materials and labor will go up as resources continue to run low, which is caused by the mass production of poor quality goods in the first place. At this point, the company is chasing its own tail, and even if  the company using the Iron Fist Strategy can hold out long enough to put the competition out of business, eventually they’ll put themselves out of business if they don’t innovate their process at some point so that they find a solution to materials shortages.

The Velvet Glove Solution a.k.a. the Luxury Market Method: Invest in maintaining the appearance and allure of a “luxury brand” while selling a lot (although maybe not as much as an H&M) of lower cost product at “luxury” prices. Examples of this would be the Diors and Chanels of the world. This is the Iron Fist Solution seasoned with a little better quality and taste, and disguised by marketing that allows the brand to make a much higher mark-up on the sale of each item. Therefore, even if the brand is selling less items across the board, they make more for the operations budget on each item. So while we, the customers, equate Chanel with haute couture dresses and iconic tweed jackets, they’re making their money on selling patent leather (a.k.a. vinyl) shoes, handbags and perfume at exorbitant prices. This also destroys the competition, who can’t compete with the marketed “luxury” brand allure and history. While this solution may last for some time, provided consumers don’t get wise to the marketing schemes or lose their taste for “luxury,”  it again does not address the materials and labor cost increase issue, which eventually will cut into the marketing budget and over time might cause detriment to the brand.

The Performance Solution: They keep the costs of products proportionate to the costs of materials and labor. This solution invests in manufacturing technology, textile engineering, and science to keep ahead of the curb. This would be the Patagonia’s of the world. In this solution, there is almost no competition, you create your own niche market, and through innovations, you gain customer loyalty. Be the only one to know where to get materials that are made of recycled or renewable resources, thus removing the dependency on natural materials costs and you have created a more sustainable future for your company.

The Innovator’s Solution: There are always new designers and businesses springing up with a new way to do things. Whether it’s tackling marketing, design, or materials in new ways, this group of oddball fashion designers and indie-houses are thinking outside the box to drive consumer culture and the market out of the old ways. With the current media and market focusing on all things “green” and “socially responsible,” this new crop of innovative businesses are popping up to fill the hole in the market through the use of unthinkable techniques, collaborations, and technologies. Examples of these designers might be BioCouture, who creates leather jackets from tea film, Christopher Raeburn, who’s been known to use left over parachute material from the military to make windbreakers, or perhaps, Bright Young Things, whose marketing tactics appear to aim to convince people to buy less. While this growing “innovator” circle has not fully matured into well known designers in the mainstream, perhaps the mass market is not an innovative place to be if a designer is trying to plan for a future with fewer resources and fairly paid labor. However, these designers might just be the ones who ultimately find long term solutions to the current fashion crisis.

With all that is going on in the world’s environment, markets, and economies, it is easy to despair. From the standpoint of a designer, who oversees enough of the business to understand how things work (or how things don’t work), it’s like watching the ship going down in slow motion.

From their mast heads, some of the biggest designers of our times seem to be doing just that. Perhaps they’re just on their way to becoming relics themselves, without enough knowledge to change the way that their industry works altogether. Well, not all of them.

Karl Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld is living in his ivory tower which he’s built so high that he might be the only one left with his head just above the water in the end. Recently he was quoted by Vogue as saying, “I have a lot more sympathy for people who have to take the train to work every day. What a load of nonsense.”

Sympathy, eh? “Designers are artisans who are extremely privileged to have a poetic profession. They are not artists. We have to stop saying that they are,”  Lagerfeld adds.

He makes the job look easy. Meanwhile those designers who feel all of the responsibilities behind the job, have panic attacks or worse. But let us remember back in 1975, in the thick of building his career to the empire he now owns, he mentioned to The Observer Magazine his philosophy on his own work practices, “I am a sort of vampire, taking the blood of other people.” With this work ethic he has gone very far, leading some of the most powerful and influential fashion houses in the industry, producing billions of dollars worth of product, and making people on all corners of the planet thirst for a wide range of products on an unprecedented level. Perhaps he actually is the bug that bites.  But then again, according to him, he doesn’t even take himself seriously. It’s a wonder that the rest of the world considers him a fashion guru.

Editor’s Note: Due to sensitive circumstances, the author has asked us to use a pseudonym. We have honored the request in this case.

Image: Joe Paczkowski

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AFINGOs Fashion Forum New York is gathering fashion industry innovators.

Back in New York April 1st to host another stand-out symposium, Afingo.com, a pioneering online platform connecting designers with esteemed fashion industry insiders, will host Fashion Forum New York at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s K.M. Amphitheater.

Liza Deyrmenjian, co-founder and CEO of AFINGO says: “The AFINGO Fashion Forum is a space where the fashion-interested and the fashion expert can meet and both walk away with more knowledgeable ideas and information to help move their respective businesses forward. It mirrors the mission of Afingo.com, bringing that online experience into a real-time environment.”

The event is slated as an all day affair with five themed panels chock full of industry greats such as Keith Pollock, Editorial Director of Elle.com, fashion consultant Julie Gilhart, and Jeffrey Costello & Robert Tagliapietra, co-founders and designers of Costello Tagliapietra, and geared towards a better understanding of the ever-evolving industry. While young designers just starting out (or even in the throes of their career) will gather lots of valuable information attending and networking, seasoned professionals might learn a thing or two as well.

Current panel titles and moderators include: Iconic Wisdom: A Discussion With Designer Cynthia Rowley, Ready To Launch Your Line?, moderated by founder and lead orchestrator of Mercedes Benz New York Fashion Week, Fern Mallis, Sustainability & Philanthropy, moderated by Jill Fehrenbacher, Founder of Inhabitat.com, Social Media and Publicity, moderated by Refinery 29’s Editorial Director Christene Barberich, and Innovation, moderated by Ben Fischman, CEO of Rue La La.

According to AFINGO, A portion of the proceeds from both a VIP reception the night before and the day-long series of discussions in New York will benefit the non-profit Goods for Good, “Specifically the organization’s tailor-in-Training program, which reroutes new and unused surplus fabric from the fashion industry to under-resourced vocational training programs in Malawi.”

If you think you’d like to attend, like this on Facebook, then leave a comment below and we’ll be picking a winner on Monday morning who will walk away with two free all-day passes to this event!

We look forward to seeing you there!

The post AFINGO’s Fashion Forum New York (And Ticket Giveaway!) appeared first on EcoSalon.

Designers offer insights on why some styles sell more than others.

Designers will be the first to admit that when it comes to their collections they have their favorites. But does their cloth-crush sometimes outshine the actual needs of the buyer?

A boutique owner has to be part fortune teller, part knowledgeable curator. A smart buyer realizes that above all, they need to be prudent. Getting caught up in the hype of Market Week with a designer telling them something is “Amazing!” and “Will sell through,” can translate to merchandise that doesn’t move.

What this means for you is an uninteresting store selection and a buyer whose investment isn’t going to give much return.

I caught up with a handful of sustainable designers at Market in New York this past week and had them show me a piece they loved, but was it what the buyers were choosing for their Fall 2011 assortments? Not necessarily.

Alice Wu, founder and designer of Feral Childe (above), says the Paganini Practice Shift was her favorite but the more colorful signature prints of her line were buyers’ favorites.

Lara Miller, founder and designer of Lara Miller: “The Callie Flip Cardigan was one of my best sellers and is also one of my favorites. Buyers like that they can wear it more than four different ways and get so much from one piece.”

Tracey Forrest, Owner of True Collaborative Showroom, representing Pendleton’s Portland Collection: “The Cape was placed by every buyer but the men’s pants were sometimes overlooked which typically happens in bottoms that are not denim or khakis-This is often a missed category for men’s clothing.”

Raina Blyer, designer and founder of Creem: “These two were my favorites and the buyers’ because they’re different, but not so different to alienate any type of customer.”

Moriah Carlson, co-designer and founder of Feral Childe, said her Rabbit Bump Dress was a bright spot for buyer’s ordering because she loves it and thankfully, so did they.

Lizz Wasserman, founder and designer behind the line Popomomo, says her A/W ’11 Ferus Shirt is a favorite of hers as well as the buyers: “It’s a shift in silhouette for the buyers but they’re able to see the piece has cross-appeal and accommodates lots of body types.”

The post At Market, Favorites Aren’t Always Best-Sellers appeared first on EcoSalon.

We’ve been falling hard for the NOW Showcase for the past three seasons at Market in New York City and are glad to be this season’s exclusive media sponsor. With all that amazing talent in one big room, not only are we excited to see all the new fall collections, we’re hoping we might even see you!

On two separate evenings, the EcoSalon team will be on hand to mingle and answer all the questions you ever wanted to ask us, like, “Is fashion columnist Gretchen Jones really 10 feet tall?” and “Does Fashion Editor Amy DuFault really have a thick New England accent?” and of course, the top question you’ve secretly been wondering: “Are they fun?”

We totally are.

So come meet our fashion columnist and recent Project Runway winner Gretchen Jones on Saturday, February 19th, 4-6:30 p.m. Jones, a designer and EcoSalon fashion columnist of “My Designer Life,” will be on hand to talk about anything you deem sustainable. About to launch her first collection since her Project Runway win, Jones will have look books on hand to show buyers and a leopard turban on to impress anyone else.

Fashion Editor, Amy DuFault (yours truly), will be on hand the second day – Sunday, February 20th, 4-6:30 pm entertaining a motley crew of eco-boutique owners (the ones you love shopping online but have never met), fellow sustainable fashion writers, and Garment District representatives. I’ll be at the ready with my Flip, pad and pen to take notes about anything you think might be EcoSalon-story worthy.

In addition to sipping fair trade wine from Appollis and Fair. vodka cocktails, you can warm up with hot Gypsy Tea and snack on some delicious Regal Vegan Faux Gras™ and then (ahem!) there’s the every-15-minute-giveaway on the 20th from Chem Line, Deborah Lindquist, Creem, NatureVsFuture, SDN, Lipstockist and Heidi Roland – all for the price of a business card.

If you weren’t able to make it to any New York Fashion Week events, this is a unique and special opportunity to meet the real designers behind the inspiring lines and see just what Fall 2011 has in store for us.

We look forward to meeting you!

For a complete list of designers showing at NOW, go here.

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