Eco-Friendly Beauty

GIVEAWAY: Win a Beautorium Green Beauty Kit (worth $150)!

Have the parched winter winds got your skin in a dry and dull rut? Well, our friends at Beautorium.com want to rev up your sustainable beauty regimen and polish, brighten, and moisturize your cold-chapped face with a green beauty kit they’ve put together exclusively for Ecouterre! Worth $150, the five-piece kit comprises refreshing Saaf Pure Shower Gel, soothing Cattier Rosee Floral Beauty Lotion, renewing Trilogy Age Proof Replenishing Night Cream, healing Deep Scalp Follicle Treatment & Volumizer by John Masters, and softening Saaf Organic Foot Balm, all tucked in a cute and reusable Beautorium fair-trade, natural tote. So what are you waiting for? Enter our contest to get everything you need to get your skin glowing again!

TO ENTER THIS FABULOUS GIVEAWAY

1. SIGN UP FOR THE ECOUTERRE NEWSLETTER (This is important because we’ll be announcing our winner there.)

2. LEAVE A COMMENT below sharing your favorite green beauty tip with us. We’ll pick the response we like the best, so be as detailed and creative as possible!

Note: This giveaway is only available to residents of the continental United States.

Wearable Technology

Crazy LED Eyelashes Designed to Brighten, Enlarge Eyes

by Jasmin Malik Chua, 10/23/09

When it comes to the extremes we’ll go to achieve someone’s arbitrary ideal of beauty, at least these light-up eyelashes aren’t permanent. We’re not sure if they’re meant to be facetious or an earnest effort to pander to Asian women who desire to make their eyes appear bigger and/or look like a refugee from a sci-fi Cosplay convention. We’ll admit to one cool touch, however: The LED lashes are equipped with inclination sensors that track movement, so you can turn the lashes on or off by tilting your head. Click below the fold for an…um…illuminating video.

6 Eco-Friendly, Nontoxic Lipsticks to Get You Runway-Ready

Photo by Marc Jacobs

Between pale, barely there nudes (Alexander Wang, Donna Karan, Diane von Furstenberg) and opulent, theatrical kissers (Rodarte, Marc Jacobs, Jason Wu), runway lips left no middle ground at New York Fashion Week. We asked some of our favorite eco-beauty experts—including makeup artist Jessa Blades, Spirit Demerson of Spirit Beauty Lounge, Ann Francke of Beautorium, and Terri Bly of Nature of Beauty—how to play up our puckers without succumbing to offensive ingredients like parabens, petrochemicals, and lead. From understated neutrals to blistering scarlets, here are six of their best, lipsmacking bets.

SkinnySkinny Organic Soaps Help Clean Up Your Act

If cleanliness is next to Godliness, then SkinnySkinny must have some major pull with the Big Guy Up There. The purveyor of organic bath-and-body products, based in Brooklyn, handcrafts its cruelty-free, mostly vegan-friendly soaps in a local workshop. Besides using certified-organic ingredients, the carbon-neutral outfit also uses recycled, reclaimed, and sustainable materials for its packaging. SkinnySkinny wraps its cleansing bars in reclaimed papers, then slaps on a 100 percent post-consumer recycled belly band designed by Tara Hogan of Ink + Wit.

5 Eco-Friendly, All-Natural Moisturizing Conditioners

Photo by Aveda

These days, autumn seems shorter then ever, and this rapid change in climate can leave our hair feeling extra brittle. With the dry and dull tresses that accompany the season, many of us find ourselves trolling the aisles of our local drugstore looking for products that may have harsh chemicals that can exacerbate the problem rather than make it better. Don’t fret,there is hope yet for our hair! Here are our favorite naturally moisturizing conditioners that will restore your luster to your locks without harming the earth—or you!