A weekly round-up of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Take five. Here’s an at-a-glance chance to reconnect with or catch top stories you might have missed this week at EcoSalon:

1. Fashion writer Kelly Drennan thinks We Can All Afford To Slow Down, asking us to consider why it is we need so much in our wardrobes. Investment dressing, slow fashion and an awareness of clothing production are highlighted.

2.Frenzied marketing campaigns to move out excessive SUVs are the target of senior editor Luanne Bradley’s article on Greenwashing The Beast. Says Bradley: “While the sticker deals appeal to all consumers, the language lauding eco-flavored 2011 models is shamelessly aimed at a specific audience: The responsible buyer who might break down and crossover to a road hog at last.”

3. Is it possible to disappear off the grid and do it in style? Writer Leigha Oakes says yes with her article on an Australian eco-friendly retreat in No Water, No Electricity, No Roads. Architect and owner Rob Brown, of Casey Brown Architecture says: “You can stay and be at one with nature on a mountain. The ability to go to a place and be in solitude in today’s over-scheduled urban lifestyle is romantic, something perhaps we all long for.”

4. Food expert and chef Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate: Street Eats, shows how you can virtually travel all over the world eating street food from the comfort of your kitchen. From Banh Mi in Vietnam to Falafel in Israel, Barrington has even gotten you all the recipes.

5. Ever open your bedroom’s closet doors and realize your wardrobe is less than interesting? Writer Rowena Ritchie asks you to take a New York Fashion Week challenge in her Catwalk Considerations: ‘Why Not?‘, implementing five quick wardrobe fixes to make your closet runway worthy.

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This humble retreat of corrugated copper and recycled iron bark timber is off-grid, way off-grid. The site has no water, no electricity, and no roads (dwellers simply meander in on horseback). The self-sufficient solitary tower is the creative genius of Rob Brown, of Casey Brown Architecture.

The hideaway allows its owner (a Sydney-based graphic designer with the urge for an eternal campsite) to relish a 360 degree view of pure nature without a hint of humanity in sight.

“A simple cabin on a remote Australian sheep station is an eloquent answer to one man’s quest for a ‘permanent tent’ where he re-connects with nature.”

Two simple materials, oiled timber and copper cladding, encase less than 100 square feet of living space. This escape from urban chaos is designed to be warmed through glass walls, allowing solar heat to radiate under the sheltered copper awnings, which fold down to protect the delicate space from Mother Nature’s harshest elements. A powerful lone wood burning fireplace balances the nighttime chills, with heat radiating and rising to warm the insulated loft bedroom. “The copper won’t rust and will patina over the years and, like a boulder covered in lichen, recede into the bush,” Brown notes. I can hardly wait to see this quaint sanctuary after the kiss of time has lent its gorgeous, green patina.

Rainwater collection, a canvas shower among gum trees (poetic, right?), and an outhouse provide all the plumbing.

This little copper haven was erected with no machinery on the site, just old-fashioned labor (the building was prefabricated off-site). “It’s a creative person’s retreat,” says Brown. “You can stay and be at one with nature on a mountain. The ability to go to a place and be in solitude in today’s over-scheduled urban lifestyle is romantic, something perhaps we all long for.”

I don’t know about you, but my bags are packed, I’m ready to go…

(Images by Mikkel Vang. Click here to read the original Vogue Living article, written by Helen Redmond.)

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