Archive for February, 2008

29 year old Lower East Side based jewelry designer Sarah Perlis incorporates 22k recycled gold and responsibly mined alluvial diamonds from Pride Diamonds, a socially and environmentally responsible diamond mining company which reinvests profits in source communities. Beautiful bangles, necklaces and earrings from the “Grounded Jewel” and “In the Rough” collections run $100 to $1,800. sarahperlis.com

Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel and Ikea added organic cotton linens and FSC Certified furniture products to their catalog this year but no other furniture or home retailer has even come close to commiting to the green and social causes like ABC Carpet & Home. With their ever expanding selection of lustworthy organic and sustainable furniture, linens & decor, their own line of green organic cleaning products, solar power panel installations, and their Home & Planet Foundation, ABC won this one hands down!

At $55 a pop, beautifully designed, long lasting, and powerfully scented Diptyque candles have long been my very un-green guilty pleasure. They were irreplaceable by any organic soy wax candles on the market which are usually homemade looking votive or pillar candles that are always only available in the same five scents; lavender, jasmine, vanilla…yawn. How terribly unfabulous!
Now there’s Dirt Candle Co. Their $24 candles are made with organically grown American soybeans, scented with essential oils available in 24 intricate aromas & come in beautiful recycled glass jars.
Current favorite, Nitty Gritty, contains organic soil, ripe tomatoes, fresh Mediterranean sage, Malabar grass and celery seed.

JEAN OF THE YEAR: Serfontaine
I am serious about jeans. I own more pairs than I care to mention, wear them about 360 days a year, and spend countless hours and dollars in search of the most figure flattering and fashion forward pairs. Thanks in part to Barney’s Green initiative, organic denim labels are flying into the mainstream while mainstream denim labels like Levi’s and Earnest Sewn have incorporated several organic cotton pieces into their regular lineup. While Loomstate,Edun or Del Forte are possibly the greenest jeans on the market, I was glad to see American made Serafontaine jeans, known for their sexy butt boosting fit, finally did the right thing in 2007 and went green with their production using organic cotton and organic fruit enzymes to treat the denim.

PlantLoveâ„¢ Botanical Lipstick by CARGO
Mainstream beauty companies often have little incentive to “green” their packaging and products and use manufacturing limitations and cost as an excuse. Let this $20 lipstick, a bestseller at Sephora stores nationwide be a sign of things to come.
The lipstick tube is made entirely out of corn and the carton is made of flower paper embedded with real flower seeds that grow real flowers when planted!
It’s a great sheer lipstick; hydrating with mango seed oil, meadowfoam seed oil, jojoba and shea butter and no mineral oils or petroleum. Sadly they chose to taint all those luscious botanical oils with a nasty, toxic paraben preservative.
It’s a shame too since CARGO is donating $2.00 from the sale of every tube to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.