Take the animal-print sweater look from runway to real life, in a conscious way.

Shirts and sweaters emblazoned with the faces of various animals are seen everywhere in Fashionville these days – from the runways of design houses like Kenzo and Givenchy to the backs of street style stars and pop singers like Rihanna and Pink. It’s a great look, but we know how to achieve it in a better way.

Rapanui’s Wolfpack Sweat features not a rottweiler or tiger but a wolf, an animal that has went from being nearly eradicated in the U.S. in the 20th century to making a remarkable recovery in many parts of the country to once again facing serious danger.

Made in a windpowered, Fair Wear Foundation audited factory using 100% organic cotton, the Wolfpack Sweat is also printed with phthalate-free inks and hand-finished in the UK. To cut down carbon emissions, it’s transported by boat, not air freight.

So you can be trendy without compromising on your ethics. If you would also like to help wolves, support the Defenders of Wildlife’s Campaign to Save America’s Wolves.

Street style images: 1 & 2

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British sustainable label Rapanui brings eco-fashion to sea by staging the first-ever fashion show held aboard a commuter hovercraft.

I’ve seen fashion shows in many strange places, but never on a hovercraft. Probably because it had never been done, until this past week when British sustainable fashion label Rapanui staged a guerilla-style fashion show on the Isle of Wight ferry crossing.

The show, which was held in advance of London Fashion Week, was a collaboration between the award-winning eco-fashion brand and Hovertravel, the company that operates the high-speed energy-efficient hovercraft crossing service across the Solent, from the Island to Southsea.

“Rapanui are a great eco-friendly clothing brand based on the Isle of Wight,” Loretta Lale, commercial and marketing manager of Hovertravel, says of the collaboration. “We are always keen to work with local businesses from the Island, especially ones that aim to make a genuine contribution to sustainability.”

The ship’s crew – turned catwalk models for a day – showcased the 2012 collection by walking down the aisles of the Hovercraft during its regular 8am crossing, surprising the hundreds of commuters onboard. The collection consists of casualwear made from organic cotton in an ethically accredited, wind-powered factory. Rapanui is also known for the award winning traceability and eco-labeling schemes the company has developed for their clothing.

Rob Drake-Knight, co-founder of Rapanui said: “We were really excited to bring fashion week to the Island in such a quirky way, giving the commuters a taste of the catwalk in their seats as we crossed Solent.”

It’s unclear what the commuters thought about the show, but one thing is for sure, they spent some time thinking about sustainability and fashion that day. Who knows what kind of effect small disruptive interventions like this can have? We’d like to see more of it, and we’re looking at you, New York Fashion Week.

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Rapanui and the U.K.’s Met have partnered to call attention to the weather.

It’s raining, it’s pouring and the old man is snoring, and oftentimes so are we when it comes to being inspired by weather forecasts that are random in accuracy. Enter the U.K.’s Met Office, the international authority on climate change research, as well as national weather service, and brothers Mart and Rob Drake-Knight, the founders of Rapanui.

“At Rapanui we think that it’s not that people don’t care about climate and the environment, it’s just that they don’t know where to start when it comes to organic, ethical or low carbon alternatives,” says Mart Drake-Knight, co-founder of Rapanui “Our brand is about making eco fashion cool and accessible. We were delighted when we were invited to design these Met Office t-shirts.  I think as well as being a nod to the Met Office’s heritage and expertise, we managed to add a bit of ‘Britishness’ and humour to capture the spirit of ‘the weather’ as a subject.”

The collaboration was designed to bring new audiences to the Met Office who might have an appreciation for not only daily weather, but why severe weather and climate change happen. Climate change is defined by The Met as “The term climate change usually refers to man-made changes that have occurred since the early 1900s.”

Luke Green from the Met Office says: “Weather fascinates everybody and these t-shirts provide a fun way of reaching new audiences about the work the Met Office does. The collaboration with Rapanui to design and produce these t-shirts is hopefully the first step in developing new partnerships to promote our brand.”

The organic cotton t-shirts are £24.95.

Brands like Rapanui represent an ethical and sustainable shift from mainstream fashion and are not only made from natural organic fabrics, but in a  factory that depends upon the wind to power it.

You couldn’t ask for a more perfect collaboration.

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When Rapanui founders Rob & Mart Drake-Knight launched their clothing line in the U.K, they knew consumers were keen to eco-brand’s greenwashing and that they’d have their work cut out for them when it came to showing credibility. So they came into the arena ready for war.

Not only have the brothers become completely transparent in getting consumers the information they want (as to how their clothing got to them) but they’ve also put a clear coat on how they market it as well. How? By investing a lot of time in communication design, eco-labeling to benchmark their products’ eco impact and offering interactive traceability maps “with images, video and figures of our entire supply chain for every product from seed to shop.”

“We’re saying that brands should start educating themselves, and their consumers, about their supply chains and reduce spin marketing and reconnect the consumer’s awareness of their environmental consequence – i.e, their buying action,” says Mart Drake-Knight in a businessGreen.com article.

Rapanui claimed their own 2010 Sustainable Business Award (the youngest winners ever) this year for not only their organic fabrics but for the renewable energy powered factories they work with, and the fact that they enforce fair labor at all points of their supply chain.

As more and more sustainable brands and stores are entering the marketplace touting green clothing, confused consumers being fed gobs of “green” information are recognizinggreenwashing tactics, which devalues the cause itself.  Will brands have to be much more transparent when claiming to be eco without being laughed at?

Absolutely.

Say the brothers on their site: “I don’t think we are going to be some kind of world saving company that is the solution to the 21st century sustainability crisis, but if we can inspire people to make wider lifestyle choices in going green and to spark a change in the industry or inspire some sort of wider change in the industry, then I think we have done our job in making a significant contribution towards sustainability.”

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