EcoSalon’s favorite fashion designers, jewelry makers and artisans on the nature of creativity. 

“Beauty will save the world,” remarked Dostoevsky in the 19^th century. If ever there was a time to believe in the possibility of that statement, it is now. When our public discourse is reduced to ideological political posturing, the impact of beauty and creativity in our everyday lives offers both a vital opportunity for connection and a prospect for cultural renewal.

Over the years at EcoSalon, we’ve delighted in sharing the stories of the fashion designers, jewelry makers and artisans who are dedicated to creating true objects of beauty while choosing ethically responsible methods and practices that upend the customary business models in fashion, jewelry and art. Why do they do it? We asked them the question, “What compels you to create?” Here’s what they had to say:

Xing-Zhen Chung-Hilyard and Melissa Kirgan, Eko-Lab

“Creativity is a deep unconscious force. A process that reveals the unseen see-able and dreams reality. There’s a peace that comes from designing that in some small way we’re making the every-day more beautiful.”

Joy Opfer, Kyler by Joy O

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of  Eat, Pray, Love, has said that she believes there are currents of creativity and ideas circulating around the planet, looking for people to bring them into physical form. This idea is a lovely way of explaining the process of creativity – I often feel that I do not so much create, as synthesize ideas. When we work hard to be there, to be open and prepared for the muse when she arrives, to welcome her through sweat and tears, ready to manifest the boldest visions, a blend of the hive and our own minds – this is a gift.

Fashion is one of the biggest industries on the planet. To act as though it is frivolous is, at this point, a waste of time. Each person, through their choices can inspire change and awareness – and creating one more choice that supports handcrafted and carefully made goods is one that I am proud to be a part of.

Meghan Sebold, Afia

Life can be nauseatingly tragic with many things feeling out of our control. People can be corrupt, dishonest and disloyal – and often times it seems that those people win out. I see only two ways of dealing with the dark side of life: you can respond to corruption with conniving strategies, dishonesty with lies, attacks with counter attacks – or you can reject it and a attempt to create light and beauty in dark situations.

I’m certainly no hero to the women who produce my line – most of them are suspicious of my intentions. They think I’m there to use them for cheap labor – why else would I cross the world to be there? We stand in a room together across a table, having difficult conversations. Trying to trust each other. Trying to create a product together.

Shannon South, reMade USA

So many of us have the innate desire to create. It is what makes us human and what keeps our species going. It’s what fuels innovation. Those of us who are informed and concerned try to do so in the most thoughtful and sustainable way – a path that is not easiest or the most profitable, yet one that gives meaning and integrity to our vision.

Sasha Duerr, Permacouture Institute

I am a plant dyer because it immediately connects me to time and place, to my environment, to my community, and to indescribable depths of beauty. Plant color can ONLY be created – like an amazing meal you toast  to and savor with friends, or an heirloom peach that came to ripen in the sweetness of a perfect growing season – in that time with those conditions. It is a depth of experience that is often not repeatable – and therefore difficult to commodify.

I am consciously grateful to have chosen to make it my work – beyond promise of financial gain or security. This is why I started Permacouture – experimentation and knowledge needs to be shared if it is ever to be sustainable or regenerative to last beyond our own generation. This love for the wonder of the bigger picture has fueled my passion as both an artist and advocate for slower ways of being and creating. I am always awed by how much there is to learn.

Davora Lindner, Prairie Underground

The idea that “Creativity is it’s own reward” seems like such a universal truism. As designers and manufacturers our role isn’t entirely creative but we feel fortunate to work in an industry that demands this engagement. It has introduced us to the writers at EcoSalon and to like-minded women all over the world. That level of aesthetic communication is startling – it’s this connection that is the inspiration behind Prairie and remains the central theme of our work.

The photo (above) is from when Prairie Underground was still based in our homes.  We had received a large volume of orders for the Hard Times Dress that featured a hand painted print.  I needed to figure out a way to execute this in my studio apartment.  The solution was to paint the textile and feed it out my window to dry, then repeat.  Our passion to create is something that end users don’t often see.  The memories of this time are some of the fondest in my life.

Elizabeth Bruner, Piece x Piece

When you  start to seek out original and handcrafted crafted clothing, it feels like an important revelation. Handcrafted means respecting the time it takes to actually create something. There is meaning in the fact that someone has thought and carried out all the little steps it takes to make a truly unique item.

It’s never been about money for me. I know I’m not going to be a rich woman working with scrap fabrics but what compelled me to start Piece x Piece was the fact that I simply could not ignore what in my heart I knew I could change, if even on the smallest scale.

Alice Wu + Moriah Carlson, Feral Childe, 

When we started Feral Childe, we were young artists trying to make it in the New York art world, trying to fill the emptiness in our own closets, and striving to provide an antidote to fashion’s obsessions with brands, logos and over-consumption. We felt a responsibility to make things that were thoughtfully made, using available materials such as off-cuts and fabric remnants so gnarly and unloved in their raw state, but full of potential beauty in our hands. We believe in the power of the handcrafted to affect one profoundly. When something we have made touches an individual in a way that makes them think differently about the world we live in, we are inspired to continue our work.

Maria Moyer

It’s submission to the process. From inspiration to execution, I have to get out of the way and let my hands and my understanding of material attempt to catch up to some idea of what is possible. The result is always a surprise and that is a delight, sometimes a disappointment and always there’s something to learn. The whole thing is a miraculous privilege.

Kirsten Muenster, Kirsten Muenster Jewelry

I’ve always felt a need to create with my hands. My father helped me make my first ring in our basement when I was a kid. The feeling I had then (and still get today) from translating an abstract or conceptual idea into a tangible object with my hands is indescribably addictive.

Nature, unusual materials, ancient artifacts and crafting techniques inspire my work and process. Creating handcrafted objects is vital because they have the power to tell a story, carry on a tradition and remind us of the connection between every set of hands involved in the process or supply chain. I hope to influence others with my work to keep the cycle going. That’s why it is so important for me to know where my materials come from and whose lives they impact. We’re all connected.

Howard Brown, Stewart+Brown

At Stewart+Brown, the reason we do what we do is because we MUST have a sense of both passion and purpose in our work. And we must have beauty in our lives and not at the expense of the environment or supply chain stakeholders. We could not find that collision of ideals in the corporate world even when working at great companies, so we created it ourselves with our own company. It has been the greatest adventure of our lives. In a world of mass production and consumption there still needs to be value, integrity, humanity, and yes, great design without compromise. That is the goal we work towards every day.

Gretchen Jones, Gretchen Jones NYC

I believe it is our responsibility (the creative’s of the world) to be an instrument for the greater whole. We were given a gift, but in that gift is responsibility. Responsibility to be a communicator for humanity and the world, as we know it. We transmit cultural movements and the direction life is taking. Without us, we are collectively nothing.

Art in itself is about translating what cannot be translated in words. I take responsibility for that job. My “job” is to learn how to use my gift to better our lives. To open us ALL up to new ways of thinking and enable us all to live more enriched existences. I may need money to survive, but making money from my work is there by default. The passion to create is about the greater whole, not the ego or bank account… and that, is what the life of an artist is all about.

The post Beauty Will Save the World: Sustainability’s Top Makers on What Compels Them to Create appeared first on EcoSalon.

Take a new look at macramé with Cathy Callahan’s easy-to-follow tutorial.

I know, when you think of macramé you think of cheesy 70s dens, but the knotted handicraft has come a long way since then.

Learn the simple satisfaction of creating knotted designs and take a new look at vintage-style crafts from the blogger behind Cathy of California. Cathy will teach you how to use simple knots to create twists and movement in a macramé plant hanger made modern with vivid colors. You’ll learn the fundamentals of macramé, which can be applied and adapted to all kinds of projects, from jewelry to home décor.

Cathy was raised by a super crafty mom in suburban Southern California. As a result the crafts and design of the 60s and 70s serve as a never ending source of inspiration for her work.

Cathy has appeared on the Martha Stewart show and her work has been featured in The New York Times, Sunset, Anthology, Mollie Makes and Frankie magazines. Her first book Vintage Craft Workshop was released by Chronicle Books in 2011. In July 2012 she launched a jewelry and accessories collection that is currently available at Yolk, Poketo and Reform School in the Los Angeles area.

Cathy lives in Los Angeles with her husband and cat.

CreativeBug, a new series of how-to videos for DIY’ers, recently launched to inspire you. For $25 a month, subscribers have unlimited access to a continuously updated library of creative workshops in knitting, crochet, sewing, jewelry, entertaining, home decorating and kids crafts. Featuring some of the country’s biggest talents, instructors include Debbie Stoller, Stitch ‘n Bitch, Heather Ross, Weekend Sewing, Christine Schmidt, Print Workshop and Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin. Creativebug’s state of the art audio and video production quality, short video segments and entertaining presentation make the videos accessible to artists of all skill levels.

If you’ve got the handmade fever, share some of your very own handmade projects with CreativeBug during their very first CreativeBug + Pinterest: I Made This’ Pin-It-To-Win-It Contest. It launches today.

So, what are you waiting for? Make a pattern. Make a print. Make a difference.

The post CreativeBug Workshop: Make a Macrame Plant Holder with Cathy Callahan appeared first on EcoSalon.

Unzipping the floodgates: From a closure to decorative fashion statement, the zipper changed the course of fashion history. Shown here, Balmain’s SS 2010 zipper jacket.

Instantly recognizable by their exposed back zipper, Victoria Beckham’s signature bodycon dresses continue to be the toast of the town. The sexy design detail with little teeth has been giving Beckham’s otherwise demure mid-calf length dresses some serious bite since she launched at New York’s Fashion Week in 2009.

Victoria Beckham’s signature figure-flattering dresses with exposed zipper. 

As erotic a notion as, well, sewing notions can be, the zip and its semi-scandalous potential for exposing whatever is being hidden meant that it wasn’t until the late 1930s that the invention caught on. The popular name “zipper” was also a slow starter.

3.1 Phillip Lim’s recycled zipper dress kicked off the trend for Spring/Summer 2009. The black dress with golden meandering detailing was eco-friendly, made of a natural hemp and silk blend, hand dyed and adorned in recycled zippers and surplus remnants.

Closures prior to the zipper were limited to laces and buttons until 1851 when Elias Howe applied for a patent for his invention, the “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure.” Due to design flaws and the success of another of his inventions, the sewing machine, he did not attempt to seriously market the product. In 1914, Gideon Sundback doubled the number of teeth per inch of Howe’s version, creating the “Separable Fastener.” And then an improved version, called the “Hookless Hooker.” The hardware finally got its familiar name in1923, when B. F. Goodrich Company wanted to improve on the standard boot. It introduced the “Zipper Boot,” and the familiar name stuck.

Proving every thing old is new again… Elsa Schiaparelli created the first clothes with visible zippers in 1935. This Schiaparelli taffeta evening gown incorporates a decorative YKK plastic zipper placed diagonally on the front of the skirt.

Ever wondered why the initials YKK are stamped on your zipper? The YKK stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha. In 1934 Tadao Yoshida founded Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha or Yoshida Industries Limited.  YKK remains the world’s foremost zipper manufacturer, making about 90% of all zippers in over 206 facilities in 52 countries. Their largest factory in Georgia makes over 7 million zippers per day.

An ad for Talon nylon zippers first launched in 1960.

Mr. Yoshida endeavored to create the best zippers in the world, basing his company on the Zen principle of the “Cycle of Goodness”, as he called it.  Namely, “No one prospers unless he renders benefit to others.”  Thanks to his mass manufacturing strategy and innovations like using DuPont nylon in the 1960s to replace the metal models (that often rusted and stuck), the zipper has become a part of all of our lives.

The Rolling Stones put a zip that works on the cover of their 1971 album Sticky Fingers created by Andy Warhol.

Want to catch up on some more fashion history?

Now & Then: The History of Fashion Media

Now & Then: The History of the Bikini

Now & Then: The History of the White Wedding Dress

Now & Then: The History of the Ballet Flat

Now & Then: The History of the Breton Shirt

Now & Then: The History of the Pencil Skirt

Now & Then: The History of Skinny Jeans

Read more Now & Then articles here.

The post Now & Then: The History of the Zipper appeared first on EcoSalon.

Get inspired by a world’s worth of vintage clothing without leaving your home. 

How did Sophia Amoruso, founder and CEO of international fashion website, Nasty Gal, grow her vintage clothing store on ebay to become the fastest-growing retailer in the country right now? In addition to a hell of a lot of shopping, shooting and styling, she possesses an eye for detail that always makes things look their best. In her own words, it’s “really the difference between literally putting a plus-size ladies anorak on a hanger and taking a picture of it, and putting it on a cool girl and making it look like something beyond your wildest dreams that you can snag for way less than Comme Des Garçons.”

Whether you believe that a stylish eye is born or taught is not the point. Figuring out what shapes and silhouettes suit you is a process that takes everyone time to develop. Taking advantage of the imaginative styling behind some of the best vintage stores online is a great way to make vintage clothing work for you. Here is our round-up of the top 10 vintage stores online with enough cool girl vision to help inspire your own.

Nasty Gal – Selling highly curated vintage alongside designer pieces and their own Nasty Gal Collection. Amoruso says, “It’s a slightly repellant name, but one that is a good litmus test for weeding people out. If you’re really freaked out by the business name, then you are going to suck working with us, and you’re probably not our customer.”

1stdibs.com – Not exactly in most of our price ranges, but if you’ve been bitten hard by the vintage bug you’ll want to check out the amazing museum-quality vintage and jewelry dealers on this site. The curated collections are set in the social and political context of their time, making for an educating (and decadent) afternoon’s reading.

Vintage-a-Peel – Here you find yourself within the world of the most quirky, most elegant vintage around. Mainly concentrating on the British Boutique stars of the Sixties and Seventies, you can expect to find a timeless Biba, Jean Muir & Radley that will flatter you for years to come. Don’t miss the sites blog and its collection of inspiring vintage editorials.

Enokiworld – Half catalog/half e-zine, enokiworld is all about beautifully designed mid-century vintage designer clothing and accessories that are highly wearable. When Vogue describes the stock as,”of course, amazing,” you know there’s going to be some great stuff, to gawp at. Check out the vintage Ossie Clark, Lavin and Halston.

Wasteland – With stores in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Wasteland specializes in fresh new labels, hand-picked vintage and designer resale. Check regularly for the latest vintage finds. Currently offering handpicked selections from the “The Daydreamer” vintage wardrobe of stylist-designer, Erin Fetherston.

Sisters Of The Black Moon – Located in Gottenburg, Texas, Sisters Of The Black Moon describe their collection as, “Eccentricities for the shadows of your soul.” The site’s darkly brooding aesthetic is off-the-charts-cool and perfect for all of your rocker chick/Stevie Knicks wardrobe requirements.

Market Publique – An online vintage marketplace with an enormous selection of antique dresses, jewelry and vintage tees. If you’re looking to stock your everyday wardrobe with vintage finds this is the site to check out. Take a look at their great blog coverage of trends, plus “Babe of the Day,” and “Get the Look” features.

Bustown Modern – Gorgeous selection of top quality vintage with amazing customer service. The husband and wife team of Anessa Woods and Paul Fogt are truly fashion obsessed, as will you be after a quick session on their well-curated site. Check out their blog for special features on fashion, art, music, history and the latest store arrivals.

Squash Blossom Vintage – If you like nothing better than spending the day perusing yard sales and vintage shops for goodies, Etsy’s vintage fashion marketplace is the place for you. Squash Blossom Vintage’s Etsy store is a treasure trove of Native American turquoise jewelry and Southwestern Americana.

Spanish Moss – Get your gypsy on and explore Spanish Moss’ directional and statement-making vintage pieces. Shop top shelf vintage collections, artisan designers, and an in-house ready-to-wear, American Gold – designed and manufactured in Los Angeles.

The post EcoSalon’s Top 10 Favorite Online Vintage Stores appeared first on EcoSalon.

Requiring nothing more than a skein of yarn – this project might be the ultimate in low-tech crafting.

In this workshop Amelia Strader shows us how to finger knit chains of yarn that can be turned into necklaces, bracelets, garlands and much more. Amelia teaches the sequence in a chunky yarn so it’s easy to follow along. Despite its simplicity, the chains are stunning when worn in stacks for a modern and tactile look.

Amelia Strader has a lifetime of experience teaching and crafting under her (handmade) belt. She has been knitting and sewing since she could hold onto a needle. Having grown up in a family of artists and creative people, she feels lucky to have been surrounded by art supplies, fabric, and yarn at a young age.

Amelia graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a BFA in Fashion Design and for 8 years she worked in the garment industry as a technical designer. She uses the skills she developed as a technical designer to help work out GoGo Craft designs and patterns. Several of her projects have also been featured on “How-Tuesdays” on Etsy.com and Etsy Virtual Labs. She is also the coordinator of the popular monthly crafting event, Craft Bar with Etsy Labs at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco, CA.

The post CreativeBug Workshop: Finger Knitting with Amelia Strader appeared first on EcoSalon.

They’re hard to resist, but have modern-day fashion magazines lost their link to art and become too focused on celebrity culture?

French women as early as 1700 pored over magazines – then sketches of the latest dresses simply bound together – to see what was going on in fashion. Now blamed for causing eating disorders, wafer thin models and conspicuous clothing consumption, reading fashion magazines is a slightly spurious and increasingly guilty pleasure these days.

But before the influence of television and movies – let alone blogs and social media – fashion magazines were solely responsible for spreading Parisian fashion trends around the world. Both Harpers Bazaar, founded in the U.S. in 1867, and Vogue, in 1892 were created to provide sketches and patterns of fashion derived from Paris designs. Vogue was expressly designed to promote the superiority of French couture to an American clientele.

In 1900, fashion magazines began to publish photography and later fashion illustration by the most modern of visual artists, forever cementing the idea that fashion is an art form – and the glossy pages of fashion magazines, its catalogs.

Another perfect marriage appeared to be fashion and the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The first fashion magazines fueled the birth of today’s celebrity culture with readers eagerly following the exploits of early movie stars like Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow from its pages.

Nearly 100 years later – and inundated with dumbed-down celebrity fashion face-off stories- we might do well to reestablish the link between high culture and fashion magazines – and pay more attention to the effects on ordinary women of glorifying imagined “ideal” lives via mass media.

The Way They Were – Lets take a look back at some of fashion media’s most important milestones:

1886, Cosmopolitan is launched in the U.S. as a fiction magazine for the family.

1937,  Diana Vreeland writes her first “Why Don’t You?” column for Harper’s Bazaar, she eventually becomes editor.

1938, Harpers Bazaar editor, Carmel Snow hires Russian-born Alexey Brodovitch as Art Director. Revolutionizing editorial layout and design he was known for his signature use of white-space. He inspired some of the greatest visual artists of the 20th century (including protégés Irving Penn and Richard Avedon) to create some of fashions most legendary images.

1965, Helen Gurley Brown becomes the editor-in chief of Cosmopolitan turning it into the bible of single girls worldwide and the magazine for “fun, fearless, females.”

1988, Anna Wintour’s first cover as Vogue editor. Wintour wrote. “This one broke all the rules.”

2005, Scott Schuman’s street style blog The Sartorialist is launched, unleashing a tsunami of DIY camera-phone-in-the-mirror-shots online.

Want to catch up on some more fashion history?

Now & Then: The History of the Bikini

Now & Then: The History of the White Wedding Dress

Now & Then: The History of the Ballet Flat

Now & Then: The History of the Breton Shirt

Now & Then: The History of the Pencil Skirt

Now & Then: The History of Skinny Jeans

Read more Now & Then articles here.

The post Now & Then: The History of Fashion Media appeared first on EcoSalon.

Outspoken fashion designer Vivienne Westwood details her plan for Climate Revolution writing, “The fight is no longer between the classes or between rich and poor but between the idiots and the eco-conscious.”

British Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood is encouraging people to have a less is more attitude when it comes to buying clothes, even her own designs.

In an interview before her London Week Fashion show this week, she said, ‘‘Of course I try not to waste and my way of not wasting is to try to concentrate on quality not quantity. And you know my message, it is buy less, choose well, make it last. Even better, don’t buy anything. Don’t buy any clothes for ages until you really have to.” When questioned by a reporter whether she meant she didn’t want people to buy her latest collection, she insisted she was more interested in using fashion as a way to air her views on the environment.

More than ever Westwood is passionate about  social and environmental change. Dressed as an eco warrior in military-style shorts and a painted-on black eye Westwood strutted down the runway at the close of her preview show, while two models unfurled a banner with the words “Climate Revolution” behind her.

It may seem contradictory as the head of a multi-million dollar globally-recognized fashion business, but Westwood puts her money where her mouth is; this year she donated $1.6 million to rainforest charity Cool Earth. She is also a patron of UK-based human rights charities, Reprieve and Liberty and supports Amnesty International, Environmental Justice Foundation, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace’s Arctic Campaign.

Her personal brand of anti-consumerism finds an alternative in high art, believing, “an art lover is a freedom fighter.” Five years ago Westwood wrote her manifesto, Active Resistance to Propaganda, an ode to culture and learning designed to inspire young people to get out from behind the TV and off the consumer treadmill.

Her latest campaign to attack the issues of climate change is detailed on her diary blog Get a Life, which reveals “bits of my daily life to show you when I’m busy or relaxing. In my case fashion is a big part of my life. But the real reason for the site is to get my ideas across so that more people will join the Climate Revolution.”

Vivienne Westwood’s advice for changing our way of living and joining the Climate Revolution:

1) Money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. “I never waste money I spend it”- Oscar Wilde. Maybe you’ll give a donation to an NGO or charity. You can give your support in other ways. Just by following one you will learn a lot, this is support.

2) Quality v Quantity

3) Buy less, choose well, make it last (we don’t want the “latest thing” just for the sake of it.)

4) Prepare and cook your own food.

5) Cut out plastic.

6) Inform yourselves.

7) Consider the responsibility of not having or having children. Chances of survival will be clear by next Olympics.

8) Take an active part in events of the Revolution as it starts to build.

9) Engage in art and culture.

10) Your own idea.

The post Vivienne Westwood Says Don’t Buy Clothes appeared first on EcoSalon.

Fashion and fact and figures usually involve the number of runway presentations per season, or the measurements of the latest supermodel. Dutch visual sociologist Reineke Otten saw things differently. Using style as a medium for analyzing society’s overlapping patterns and orders, Otten created a series of World Skin Colors scarves that represent a country’s demographic data, such as population density, migration, GDP, temperature, UV radiation, and transport.

Together with LUST designers, Otten rethought how to present gathered statistics and translate them instead into a visual code that when printed on to silk scarves is both informative and beautiful. Otten describes creating the process for these layers of information to interact visually, “The beauty, for me, lies in the surprises — the unexpected ways that these shapes and colors come together.”

”Imagine people as color pixels. Flying over the world, you would look down and see … what?”

There are 231 unique scarves available,  representing countries include The United States, Aruba and the Netherlands. Otten writes, “the scarves reveal relationships, histories, and patterns of populations; they tell stories that you can fold, twist, drape, hang, or wear; stories to contemplate, discuss, or retell.”

The post World Skin Color Scarves: Turning Data Into Fashion appeared first on EcoSalon.

Whether you live in California, or just wish you did, Osklen’s latest collection is great fashion for every season.

Oh, what to wear? It’s all so confusing. Fashion’s current focus is spring next year. Midwesterners and East Coasters are mindful of crispening fall days but here in San Francisco; our famed Indian summer is just getting going. And lets not forget L.A. Where, apart from two wet and mad weeks in February; the sun shines in a-year-round haze – perfect conditions for growing ego’s the size of prize-winning pumpkins.

Seasonless dressing is not a new concept in fashion. Witness the growing recognition of intra-season resort collections, their relaxed easy-to-wear styles more suited to modern women’s wardrobe needs. Where previously we shopped for both casual and elegant clothes, now we need elegant casual clothes that take us all through every busy day of our lives in all manner of guises.

From my vantage point, one collection from the current New York shows really resonated. Brazilian brand Osklen, debuted its “Endless Summer” collection as a paen to California’s beachy aesthetic.

Known for their use of environmentally-friendly materials like salmon skin (a commonly discarded byproduct of the fishing industry) and vegetable dyed silks, Osklen’s first collection shown at New York fashion Week was crafted in surf-ready neoprene and an environmentally sustainable silk straw “e-fabric” developed by the brand’s creative director, Oscar Metsavaht.

Straight skirts, cigarette pants and tunics with dramatic slashed necklines had enough structure to convey a tailored look but remained fluid like gentle waves lapping the shoreline. Reoccurring digital prints on filmy organza of palm tree landscapes in saturated sunset colors further tempered the edgier vibe of the sleek silhouettes. The menswear-inspired capes and gilets cut from the newly developed “e-fabric” provided a rustic and grounding counterpoint.

Like Holly Golightly on beach patrol, the stunning evening gowns were cut in languid slit columns, perfect for a starlit stroll on the sand. In fact every detail, and especially the notably colorful and low-heeled shoes, suggested the collection’s beach readiness.

In the show’s notes, Osklen sets the scene for the collection as an “imagined summer day that wanders… a road trip along PCH1 (Pacific Coast Highway 1).” Describing the end result as “neither retro nor futuristic. It is modern,” Osklen captures perfectly California’s unique seasonless style and every woman’s golden state daydream.

The post Osklen’s Spring 2013 collection, ‘Endless Summer’ Suits California Dreamers appeared first on EcoSalon.

Reinterpret traditional cross-stitch embroidery by creating this colorful and easy-to-make pendant.

In this workshop, Anna Maria Horner walks us through the fundamentals of cross stitch, which results in this graphic pendant that adds handmade glamour to any outfit. Worked up in one of Horner’s signature bright palettes, the small scale makes this project terrific for new cross stitchers looking for a contemporary application of a traditional embellishment.

To many the Anna Maria brand means color & inspiration in the form of craft, sewing, needlework, books, and friendly how-to. Since 2006 her ever growing library of fabrics has delighted and adorned creative souls around the globe.

Anna Maria Horner grew up in a house full of her dad’s paintings and with a closet full of her mom’s handi-work. Beds were warmed by the hand-loomed wool blankets sent by her grandmother from Greece. The busy little bodies of Anna and her siblings were warmed by the beautiful handknits of their grandmother in Indiana.

She and her husband, Jeff, make their home on a rambling and not overly maintained two acres of happiness in Nashville. Their six children range in age from 3 to 20.  Anna Maria works from her attic studio where the tree house atmosphere inspires many lofty ideas and maintains her sense of wonder.  She is incredibly thankful to be able to seek out her artistic goals at home in the presence of her family’s encouragement. Here success means being surrounded by the work of her own hands.

CreativeBug, a new series of how-to videos for DIY’ers, recently launched to inspire you. For $25 a month, subscribers have unlimited access to a continuously updated library of creative workshops in knitting, crochet, sewing, jewelry, entertaining, home decorating and kids crafts. Featuring some of the country’s biggest talents, instructors include Debbie Stoller, Stitch ‘n Bitch, Heather Ross, Weekend Sewing, Christine Schmidt, Print Workshop and Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin. Creativebug’s state of the art audio and video production quality, short video segments and entertaining presentation make the videos accessible to artists of all skill levels.

CreativeBug now has multi-month packages. Subscribers can now get a discount for signing up for multiple months in advance!

• $24.99 monthly
• $19.99 per month, billed every 3 months
• $16.99 per month, billed every 6 months

Now through September 30, EcoSalon readers get $10 off for any subscription plan when they apply promo code ECOSALON12 upon signing up.

So, what are you waiting for? Make a pattern. Make a print. Make a difference.

The post CreativeBug Workshop: Anna Maria Horner Makes Cross-Stitch Modern appeared first on EcoSalon.