Yes that’s right, we’re opening up one of our first intern spots for our new company, Source4Style.com. Check out the description below and feel free to send us your information!
SUPPLIER RELATIONS ASSISTANT
Company: SOURCE4STYLE.COM
Intern for the summer at a hot little start-up that helps connects designers to a global network of sustainable suppliers.
About the company: We are a business-to-business (B2B) online marketplace that allows designers and retail sourcing specialists to search, compare and purchase more sustainable materials from a growing network of global suppliers. Our mission is to make sustainable design possible by creating the world’s most innovative online marketing platform for designers and suppliers to showcase, connect and transact.
Job Position: Intern Location: Brooklyn, New York (Williamsburg) Compensation: Unpaid (with possibility of compensation beginning in Fall 2010)
Length of time: June-August
This position is for an organized, dedicated and friendly person with a specific interest in sustainable materials (as it relates to the garment industry), fashion and textiles. We seek someone with both sales experience (has worked directly with customers in person and/or over the phone) and terrific organizational skills to help in database management.
Someone who has specifically excelled and completed coursework and/or professional experiential work in programs such as, fiber properties, textile processing and design, textile/garment merchandising is a plus.
Tasks may include: database management, speaking with suppliers over the phone, conducting supplier interviews, and helping arrange photo sessions. Intern will work closely with at least one of our core team members and be exposed to the entire sustainable design supply chain.
Approximate hours/week: 4-5 days a week
Qualifications:
- An interest/knowledge in textiles, trade and fashion
- An interest or passion for sustainability
- Great organizational skills
- Sales experience
Application process: Concise cover letter + resume + Career History Form (please inquire at e-mail below for access to the “Career History Form”)
CONTACT: JULIA at julia (dot) gabella (at) groupsjr (dot) com for “Career History Form” and submission
Scott Harrison over at Charity: Water sent this plea out for clean water efforts during Haiti’s reconstruction. $1.3 million raised for 40,000 people. Tune in to UNSHAKEN: HAITI launching tomorrow – March 22, 2010 – for World Water Day. The video they shot is mesmerizing. Scott’s ability to give a face to human destruction, despair and hope is palpable.
Last year I did an extensive interview with Forum for the Future & Levi Strauss, Co. on Future Fashion in 2025. It was a pretty cool project and they interviewed a number of C-level folks, consultants, textile specialists and advocates to tease out the big trends. They came up with the four following scenarios: Patchwork Planet, Slow is Beautiful, Community Couture, and Techno-Chic as well as a full report here. Dive in and see what macro-trends we can expect.
Ecochic Geneve took to the stage at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland this January 20-21, 2010 in celebration/awareness of the Year of Biodiversity. Talented designers from around the world (many whom I’ve never heard of before) participated – from Diane von Furstenberg to Redley Exantus. The goal was to make the business case for biodiversity through the fashion and cosmetics industry.
Biodiversity – quite an esoteric, unrecognizable term for many – is essentially all the genetic, molecular, species and ecosystem diversity on Earth. Basically, the variation of life forms and biomes is a good thing and if we can support that through business – particularly ones that rely on raw materials (e.g., cosmetics, fashion, food) then we’ll be much better off.
Had a wonderful opportunity to present on a panel “Communicating Biodiversity” along with Allan Schwarz who presented BoM and a.d. schwarz – and later took part in the UNCTAD Ecochic Geneve show. All of us girls got to sport premature gray bobs à la Tavi Gevinson-style. I thought it was pretty cool – a real statement that “it’s cool to go gray,” but I don’t know if the other girls saw it that way.
Kate Dillon and I sporting the gray bobs
Talking about the benefits of alpaca fiber while sporting more side boob than I had expected!
Noir’s 100% organic, fair-trade cotton from Uganda + some pleathery goodness (even the back looked bad-ass)
Reem Al Asadi’s dress made from recycled turn-of-the-century corsets and ballet dresses
And finally Oliver Tolentino’s pineapple fiber dress (pina fabric) largely because it is so damn hard and technical to make something out of barong fabric. Well done! Runway photos compliments of Johann Sauty
I had a blast with Designer Anna Kristina Gilkerson from Deux FM and crew on the runway at The Green Shows. Her easy-going spirit and easy-to-wear dresses were a hit – and I got to take the O-Wool lace-corset dress home with me (sweet!)
Above Magazine re-launched with it’s new editorial team this past December at the Serpentine Gallery in London. As I told L’Officiel in a recent interview, “ABOVE is the first and last magazine on earth that celebrates human’s obsession with true natural beauty and everything that we do to (ironically) destroy it. It passes through the reverie and the reality of our existence – giving a vivid depiction of our present state. It’s refined aesthetic represents the souls of creators, artists, writers, subjects – who believe not only in their craft, but the sanctity of our environment. It is a magazine that foretells our future before we extinguish our own flame — and it does it all with a connoisseur’s eye for style, culture, and taste.” I’m happy to be part of the team and look forward to sharing the next issue with you!
Lapo Elkann and Publisher, Nicolas Rachline at the Serpentine Gallery
Peter even surprises himself with the photos!
Nicolas takes center stage
The exceptionally-beautiful Brenda Costa and husband Karim ay-Fayed
Above’s Editorial Director Randall Koral with Lapo. Nice cerulean blue shoes Lapo!
This past fall/winter I shot in chilly upstate New York with Lindsay Adler for SUBLIME Magazine. The pine and hemlock were the most unbelievable shades of green, ground sopping wet with a week’s worth of rain, and the redolent scent of decaying leaves. I have to say that it was a crazy amount of production on Lindsay’s team’s part. She even had a full bed over the stream. (We didn’t end up using any of those shots, but luckily it was all caught on video).
Summer Rayne Oakes was a champion of the environment long before it was big news, and has successfully brought concern about the planet to the world of fashion and beauty
November 09: the Gucci Group – owners of designer brands Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga – announces that all the paper used in the company, from copy paper to shopping bags, will not be sourced from endangered forests in countries like Indonesia.
For a company the size of Gucci to commit to such a cause is a big deal.
On Rainforest Action Network’s (RAN’s) blog, the headline announced: ‘Gucci Group Sets Indonesian Rainforest Protection as Fall Fashion Trend’. Long before supporting causes was fashionable, there was already a name in the fashion world using her work to spread her eco concerns. Of RAN’s Don’t Bag Indonesia’s Rainforest Campaign, Summer Rayne Oakes says, ‘Basically we’ve identified close to a hundred fashion companies that have been unknowingly purchasing bags made out of endangered Indonesian rainforest pulp. Indonesia has become the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States, largely due to rainforest destruction for paper pulp and palm oil … This is a huge deal, especially leading up to COP15, the climate-change negotiations in Copenhagen this December.’ Lafcadio Cortesi, Forest Director of RAN, says of Oakes, ‘She is a primary reason that we were able to connect with the green shows at Fashion Week, and has actively promoted us to friends and media outlets asking them to support our work and to sign up to our campaign. Through her, we’ve been able to talk to the Gucci Group and Levi’s, both of whom have since made commitments to protect Indonesia’s rainforests.’
Oakes’s involvement in socio-environmental issues is well known. Sustainability, climate change and waste management (forest conservation and restoration is the subject she is most passionate about) are just some of the topics that fire her up.
Since 2001, when she first began modelling, Oakes has become incredibly successful: her book Style, Naturally: The Savvy Shopping Guide to Sustainable Fashion and Beauty is used as a textbook by Kansas University’s fashion design programme. ‘Recently she spoke to nearly three hundred apparel and textile students at Kansas State University. The impact was so powerful that I even had a parent call to tell me that her daughter has never been so engaged in her studies, and that the impact of the eco-model has changed her life,’ says the department’s head and professor Dr Jana Hawley.
Oakes is unique. Using her modelling as a platform for her message, what she does bears closer resemblance to the work of an eco-activist. No staged protests on ships, or scaling to the top of buildings with a banner message here, though: instead, there are a lot of magazine covers and features in the pages of glossies such as Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan, always beating the drum of sustainbility and ethical issues. She has in the past turned down jobs if they did not fit in with her values. ‘It’s absolutely OK to say ‘no’ … It’s like Wayne from Models.com told me during our interview, “this is bigger than fashion”.’
Describing what happened with her book Style, Naturally, launched in 2008, she tells me what happened when the project took a different turn, which meant compromising her ethical beliefs. ‘Four days before the book was due they [her publisher] told me they couldn’t do recycled paper and soy-based inks. I was furious! We broke off the deal and pitched it around some more. Chronicle Books in San Francisco loved the idea, but they wanted to double the size of it and include both fashion and beauty, so I wrote two books over the course of a year and a half. Only one got published, however, and I’m glad to say it’s on recycled paper with soy-based inks and one percent of the profit benefits the planet.’
Oakes will also be making the transition from print to television. In November she started filming for her own show with Discovery Network’s Plant Green channel. The network goes out to 50m households: that is a massive number of people who could be watching Oakes in their front room, a great achievement for ecological causes if it happens.
Far from being a one-season wonder, Oakes has been fighting for socio-environmental issues since way back before it was fashionable. To understand Oakes, you need to know her background. Growing up in a north-eastern Pennsylvania town, Oakes started taking art lessons at six. ‘All my art was influenced by nature and Native Americans – so that passion eventually outran the art,’ she says. When she started modelling in 2001, no one understood what she was about. Ecological topics were off the agenda, and certainly an eco-model was beyond comprehension. ‘How do you explain to someone something that doesn’t exist yet?’ recalls Oakes. ‘You have to talk it into existence. You have to will it into existence.’ Not one to be put off by a challenge, she pushed on. ‘It was an opportunity to create it the way that you envisioned it because no one else was doing it.’
It was during her days at Cornell University, where she was training to be an entomologist and environmental scientist, that she started modelling. ‘I have to be honest: studying sewage sludge, mine reclamation and bugs has an audience of one, so I had to come up with some way of bringing it to a wider audience,’ says Oakes. By her second semester, she was sure fashion was the answer. ‘I had no connections to the industry, so I thought I could go in covertly, as a model.’ She met a photographer, John Cooper, ‘who was doing these beautiful organic portraits’. His plan was to publish the images in a book and give the proceeds to rainforest relief. ‘I loved it! I asked him if I could be involved, and helped develop the project further.’ Organic Portraits then turned into an artistic project promoting ecological awareness and conservation through avant-garde photography and sustainable fashion.
Now there was no turning back. Oakes would work exclusively with sustainable designers, projects and programmes. ‘I began rearranging my college schedule to go to classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and then I’d take a five-hour bus journey to New York City and spend Thursday night through Monday working on the project and networking with more people. By the time Tuesday rolled around, I was a student again and working on my research projects.’
In those early days of Oakes’s career it was an uphill struggle. Anyone with lesser steel and conviction would probably have given up sooner. ‘I didn’t identify with “traditional” modelling jobs, and my first agent didn’t understand that, so we parted ways,’ Oakes remembers. So she started her own company and listened to her gut. ‘If gigs didn’t gravitate in the sphere of my environmental work then it was just noise … it would classify as the stuff that took me away from what I’m passionate about, what I believe in – and it would dilute my mission and my message, so why bother?’ Unlike normal models, Oakes does not go to castings and does not have a comp card with her bust-waist-hip measurements. ‘My agent laughs because when she takes me to meetings, she just stays silent. She confessed the other day: “There’s nothing I can add! I am usually the one talking, not the model – and I don’t even know where to begin to interject in our meetings!”’
Presently, Oakes is working with Payless on their environmentally friendly shoe and accessory line, zoe&zac. LuAnn Via, CEO of Payless ShoeSource, describes zoe&zac as ‘democratising green by being the first-ever affordable green line of shoes and accessories with prices under $30 an item’. Oakes is working on the sourcing, design and communications, but she also recently spoke to the company’s sustainability team about waste, recycling and transportation efficiency. ‘We discussed campaigns they could do to inspire more employees internally, and the most pressing issues affecting the environment right now, and how they connect to the work they do on a daily basis.’ She enthuses, ‘It goes so much more beyond face value, and it’s worth every moment.’
Today, being green has become part of our lifestyle, and eco issues make the headlines just about every day. I asked Oakes if there was an environmental issue that was still under-represented in the press, and she very quickly cited the youth climate-change movement. ‘It’s the most diverse, exciting and inspiring movement to date – and I feel that so many people still don’t know about it – or care to report on it,’ she points out. ‘Just yesterday I was on the phone with the other founders of the Keystone Environmental Youth (KEY) Coalition. This is our newly formed statewide network that helped put on Power Shift PA during 23 to 25 October’s national days of action. On the phone one of the people asked, “What other audiences should we be engaging? Who is not being represented in these talks?” Those are all the questions that need to be asked when looking to build a diverse movement. The youth climate-change movement just seems to understand that.’
If you plan to be up in Ridgefield, CT this May 2, 2010 – I’d love for you to join me at the Aldrich Museum for a Sustainable Living & Design talk. You can pre-register here. And good news for fellow Cornellians: You get a discount. It’s quite amusing because we found out that there are plenty of Big Red alumni at the Aldrich, including the Museum Store Manager (AAP), the Internal Affairs Director (ILR, Cornell), and Chairman of the Board (Arts & Sciences, ILR) – so we thought – why not cut fellow alumni a break. Ping me if you want the code. ;o)
I’ll be talking about the sustainable development and design work happening with Allan Schwarz at the Mezimbite Forest Centre in Mozambique and showcasing/selling some one-of-a-kind pieces handcrafted in noble hardwoods, including kitchenware, home wares, and jewelry.
On my way to my agency on Broadway I ran by this sign in the Levi Strauss store window encouraging their customers to think about how they take care of their clothes. This follows Marks and Spencer’s “Think Climate” relabeling initiative that they launched in 2007. DEFRA recently reported that the environmental impact of clothes largely comes from the consumer-side (attributed to water and energy usage as well as toxicity of detergents), which just goes to show you how much responsibility we have.
Environmental impact of detergent formulations (DEFRA, Dec 2009).
Made-By and Edun Live partnered up to run a tee-shirt design competition in Amsterdam a few months ago at the Made By Anniversary summit. Check out the winning design above.
Next month I’ll release a collaborative design with Edun Live and Yoox.com, so stay tuned for the release – just in time for the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day!
