Highlights from our event.

To kick off a green Fashion Week, EcoSalon was pleased to co-host a (Sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out party Thursday, September 8th in partnership with New York’s Textile Arts Center, Of Rags, and the New York City Fair Trade Coalition. Over 500 guests came by to nosh on raw, vegan brownies, swig delicious organic bubbles, talk eco fashion and check out new looks from some of New York’s rising green talent at the TAC’s new West Village location in Manhattan. We loved meeting with all the designers, artists, nonprofit folks, fair trade entrepreneurs and fashionistas in attendance.

Party goers also scooped up goodie bags and EcoSalon’s exclusive Feral Childe “Stop the Fashion Pirates” tee shirts, partial proceeds of which help to support Feral Childe, the indie brand currently embroiled in a lawsuit against Forever21. Scroll down to see some of the highlights of the event, which culminated after 10 p.m. in a surprise birthday celebration for Editor-in-Chief Sara Ost (who broke down in a shameless frenzy of gluten glory to eat at least two delicious frosting-topped cupcakes). Photo evidence, oh yes.

While we were all there to shop and support eco fashion and participate in Fashion’s Night Out, of course, these two editors have to say it: Damn if we don’t have some good looking’ readers. (Special thanks to stylish vegan man-about-town and EcoSalon’s favorite ethical raconteur Dan Mims for swinging by, as well.)

Jewelry and fiber designer Erin Considine and Textile Arts Center Co-Founder Owyn Ruck

Of Rags crew: Liz Westendorf, Liz Ricketts and Branson Skinner

Event guests mingle and talk eco-fashion

Knitwear designer Kaelyn Garcia, New York City Fair Trade Coalition’s Pamela Alimurung, Lori Imbesi, writer Alyssa Alimurung and Afia designer Meghan Sebold

EMpower’s Virginia Dooley

Designer Eliza Starbuck, EcoSalon Managing Editor Amy DuFault and EcoSalon Editor-in-Chief, Sara Ost

Our (Sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out bags were chock full of great goodies!

Nature vs. Future designer Nina Valenti and social media and marketing guru Camille Marchand

Designs by Feral Childe, Ohm-Mongo, and more

Kaelyn Garcia shows us knits are hot

EcoSalon Editor-in-Chief Sara Ost and writer and social media maven Alyssa Alimurung

Co-Founder and Editor of Green House of Fashion, Zanna Schumacher

Guests at our event were invited to cut the tags from their clothing and pin the tags to the corkboard. The Textile Arts Center will then trace the origin of their clothes, helping party attendants learn more about where their fashions come from.

Fashion writer and founder of Greta Guide and FASHIONmeGREEN, Greta Eagan

Designer Nina Valenti, Buddha Nose founder Amy Galper, RESTORE co-designer Celeste Lilore, Social Media expert and writer Anandi Premlall and the ever fabulous, RESTORE co-designer and mayor of New York, Anthony Lilore

Kestrel Jenkins, writer for Ecouterre and founder of Hoverstyle and Jill Danyelle, Occupational Therapist and founder of FiftyRX3

Erin Considine Jewelry

The feisty Eliza Starbuck ready for war wearing her exclusive Feral Childe for EcoSalon “Stop The Fashion Pirates” t-shirt

Shabd’s luxe maxi dress

Rachel Miller, Sustainable Fashion Professor at Pratt, Rhea Alexander, Founder and Designer of DIGS, DIGS architect Ali Soltani

Each designer provided an interactive statement for guests to learn more about the inspiration behind their brands.

Designers Meiling Chen and Eliza Starbuck

EcoSalon Managing Editor Amy DuFault and designer Nina Valenti

Exclusive Feral Childe for EcoSalon “Stop the Fashion Pirates” t-shirts

Source 4Style’s Elizabeth Cloyd and Afia Designer Meghan Sebold

The Textile Arts Center’s Manhattan Manager Addison Walz and TAC co-founder Owyn Ruck

Wool and the Gang takes knitwear to new heights

New York City Fair Trade Coalition’s Pamela Alimurung and DIG’s Rhea Alexander

Happy birthday to EcoSalon Editor-in-Chief Sara Ost!

Countdown to sugar high in 3, 2, 1…(please don’t tell Marketing Manager Anna Brones about the cupcakes).

The post EcoSalon at NYFW: (Sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out Party Highlights and Pics appeared first on EcoSalon.

EcoSalon, the Textile Arts Center, the New York City Fair Trade Coalition and Of Rags present a sustainable spin on NYC’s big night out.

For three years, Fashion’s Night Out has united designers, party-goers, retailers and shoppers alike who want to ride the wave of fashion hysteria that is New York’s famed Fashion Week. We at EcoSalon believe that for some who want to be a part of the week and yet can’t gain access to shows, this night is their one stab.

And guess what, we’re happy to oblige.

Enter (Sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out, a unique collective at the Textile Arts Center in Manhattan co-sponsored by Of Rags and the New York City Fair Trade Coalition and featuring fair trade and sustainable designers and shops carefully curated to tempt the tastes of all. The collaborative event, co-sponsored by EcoSalon takes place on September 8th, from 6-10 p.m. at TAC’s new Manhattan location and will gather sustainable and mainstream style purveyors under one roof.

We’ve just enjoyed looking at the RSVP list to see who’s coming!

We’re also more than a bit excited to meet you too, so stop in and meet a bevy of EcoSalon writers and editors including: Sara Ost, EcoSalon’s founding Editor-in-Chief, Managing and Fashion Editor (that’s me!) Amy DuFault, K. Emily Bond our super-hero Shelter Editor, Beauty Columnist Kristen Arnett as well as a host of writers we know you’ve read at one time or another on EcoSalon (some under false names as well). You know who you are Lagosi.

Current designers on tap for (Sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out include (below) Feral Childe who we’ll unveil a special secret about tomorrow in a separate post.

Shabd

Of Rags

The Sock Hop

Wool and the Gang

Erin Considine jewelry

Ohm-Mongo

Tompkins Point Apparel

A.D.O. Clothing

Kaelyn Garcia knitwear

Afia

Love is Mighty footwear

Digs Scarfitecture Project

Digs

The post (Sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out with EcoSalon appeared first on EcoSalon.

Maria Moyer goes from being a brand strategist to artist while still following a sustainable map.

What happens when you pick a road and stick to it? You get good at one thing and are ready for another. So goes the life highway of Wink Communication founder Maria Moyer. We’ve been big fans of Moyer for some time having discovered her work through an inspiring New York Times article on the Bureau of Friends back in 2009.

Successfully weaving sustainability and social issues into her work as a brand strategist at Wink, Moyer is now ready to examine the life aquatic with an art exhibit titled Blue, dedicated to the complexities of ocean based on her bi-coastal life in California and New York. The collection will be open to the public September 8th, at ROGAN in New York City and her pieces can be seen indefinitely  at BDDW.

“The collection is really a moment of reflection for me,” says Moyer, who has always lived by the ocean, having grown up in Southern California.

She says on her site that her childhood permitted frequent access to ocean landscapes and creatures, citing even at age 11, “while other kids played with dolls and Lego sets,” Moyer had an opportunity—under the watchful eye of a professor—to dissect a beached 18-foot squid. Years later, while her friends bought Eurail passes for trips abroad, she ventured farther into the Pacific, backpacking through remote areas of the Hawaiian Islands.

Susan Casey, O Magazine Editor-in-Chief and bestselling author of The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean and The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks, says Moyer’s work is a “gorgeous blend of sensitivity and sensibility; she never fails to spot the beauty of the natural world—even if it’s hidden 20,000 leagues beneath the sea. But it’s one thing to identify the sublime essence of, say, zooplankton or roses, and another thing to translate it into exquisite forms. For Maria, the former invariably leads to the latter.  There is no better word I can think of to describe her unique mix of whimsy, sophistication, and science than: delightful.”

While you can currently see some of Moyer’s art at BDDW in New York City, on September 7th, Bowery based fashion label ROGAN will host an invite only “cultural cross-roads of surf, fashion, arts and music in NYC creating a movement inspired by city and ocean.” ROGAN has invited friends to collaborate and create one-of-a-kind pieces and limited edition capsule collections for ROGAN VS. LOOMSTATE-SRF CTY, to be sold exclusively at the ROGAN store. The Blue collection will open to the public on September 8th, with 10% of all sales benefiting Waves for Water.

Julie Gilhart (with Anna Wintour) wearing Moyer’s Circle and Swirl necklace.

We were lucky to catch up with Moyer this week to ask a few questions about her collection and the inspiration behind it.

Here’s what she had to say.

One part of your life deals with helping others to set communication strategy and to develop clear messages (Wink Communication), the other asks you to create and tell the world who YOU are and what’s important to you through your art. Is this a challenge for you, or do they compliment each other?

I’m so glad you asked this question. It’s a good one. The answer: Both. Trying to do both is both a challenge AND these roles compliment each other. I want to be good at both. Making porcelain objects or creating things from wood is a great joy. It’s also intellectually and physically challenging. At the same time, it is somewhat solitary and a little self-absorbing as I persist in getting an idea across, or in my attempt to get a specific result from the material. On the other hand, my consulting practice is highly collaborative and in service to a person or an organization, many of whom are in pursuit of a greater good themselves. My work with Yves Behar, for example. Both compliment each other as they are the social and solitary parts of me. The challenge is time management. Isn’t it always?

“Untitled,” Unglazed stoneware frames (this piece contains 12 frames), sand, feathers, a eucalyptus leaf, a skate egg case, seaweed, and surf wax remnants.

Your Southern California childhood had a direct effect on your appreciation for ocean. Of all aspects of life lived by the ocean, why go for promoting “the tiny plants and animals at the foundation of the Earth’s food chain?”

Have you seen photos of plankton under a microscope? They are gorgeous. I will have a life-time of inspiration from them alone. Many of them come with a silica-based armor (not unlike porcelain) that protects them from predators – a most complex and miraculous architecture. If their beauty doesn’t get your attention, the facts might: Phytoplankton, including algae, sink more carbon than our Earth’s forests and they are also, as you said, a huge part of the world’s food chain. Beauty and power.
To know them is to LOVE them.

Temporary Bliss Bird Vessel (and necklace). Stoneware, unglazed porcelain and (azo, chromium and lead-free) leather cord. Available at BDDW in NYC.

What’s your favorite piece and why?

More than the resulting object itself, the process of making them is what makes something a favorite. It’s tough to choose between them. I’m very excited about a recent group that I call ‘vacuoles.’ They are in the “Blue” collection that I just (today) finished installing at Rogan in NYC. I also love and might not be able to part with an untitled wall installation at Rogan; it’s a bi-coastal archive of beach ephemera; a personal, natural-history journal. A lot of wonderful people in my life were involved in making this work. I had to get friends from all over to contribute sand from ‘my’ beaches. And I love a piece at BDDW that is a bird vessel.

Temporary Bliss Bird Vessel. Stoneware, unglazed porcelain and (azo, chromium and lead-free) leather cord. Available at BDDW in NYC.

Here’s a preview of more art from Blue at ROGAN as well as what you can find at BDDW.

Diatom. Unglazed porcelain. Approximately 6″ diameter.

Porcelain Breast Plate, (azo, chromium and lead free) leather cord.

Box of Hours. Stoneware and porcelain.

Blue Tab Necklace for ROGAN. Porcelain dipped in blue wash, (azo, chromium and lead free) leather cord. Various size and shapes.

Top image by Leslie Williamson

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