With the transition to all-digital broadcasts, the planet isn’t exactly hurting for obsolete TV sets. Which is why vegan footwear purveyor Olsenhaus is making a switch of its own—by cladding Its entire Fall/Winter 2010 collection of pumps, wedges, stiletto booties, and knee-highs in an innovative polyester microfiber made from trashed television screens.

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Lynda Fassa, founder and designer of Green Babies

Fifteen years ago when I founded Green Babies, the term “green” was so disassociated from fashion (or anything else for that matter), that people would ask my husband and business partner: “Green Babies, what’s that?” And he’d answer, “It’s an adoption agency for Martian children.” “Oh”..they’d say, slowly nodding and backing away. Sometimes I’d tell them what it really was and they looked equally perplexed. Things have changed, for the much better and brighter, but the question still remains: Why does organic cotton matter?

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Elvis & Kresse’s bags and accessories are so hot they might as well be on fire. Luckily, the U.K.-based company had the foresight to craft them from decommissioned fire hoses, which it scrubs clean of 25 years worth of soot, grease, and built-up gunk before reincarnating them into luxe-looking totes, toiletry bags, belts, and wallets.

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“Barkcloth” takes on a whole new meaning when you involve actual trees, specifically the Mutaba (Ficus natalensis) in Uganda. It’s this arboreal textile that makes up Refinity’s roughhewn, leather-like trench coat, which fastens shut—sans buttons—with the Dutch design consultancy’s click/fold system. Barkcloth, like leather, is durable and does not fray, yet it doesn’t require the same chemical-intensive tanning.

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‘Tis the season for the flu, and if the regular strain wasn’t bad enough, we have a new, porcine terror to contend with. These brightly patterned medical face masks, however, may ward off H1N1 and its brethren simply by virtue of being stylish—looking like Wacko Jacko in his latter days notwithstanding. Designed by Marjan Kooroshnia, a Swedish textile-design student, these face masks have a bonus feature: They’re printed with thermochromic ink that changes color with any uptick in breathing temperature.

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Who knew seat belts were so multifaceted? With Harveys’ new Lola Ruffle collection, the erstwhile safety straps pull a complete 180, morphing from brooding body armor to demure, frilly carryalls. The fresh, unabashedly feminine silhouettes, underscored by the dusky pink hue, mark a daring bur welcome departure from Harveys’ signature woven-basket aesthetic. And if your tastes run more Team Jolie than Team Aniston, don’t fret: You can also purchase them in black.

+ Lola Ruffle $94-$198

+ Harveys

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Unlike most technical-apparel lines, U.K.-based Finisterre provides tough, fashion-forward, and comfortable clothing that treads lightly on the environment. Taking a page out of Mother Nature’s playbook, Finesterre has developed a new, high-performance fabric that is designed to ventilate and protect in the harshest of conditions.

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We can’t all afford $750 solar-powered jackets to keep us toasty when the mercury takes a swan dive, but when the alternative is to bundle up with more layers than an onion-fanciers’ convention, Uniqlo’s supremely affordable, lightweight heat-generating innerwear for men and women appears nothing short of inspired. So does the HeatTech fabric that absorbs your body’s moisture and converts it to heat—at first blush, anyway.

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There is definitely something haunting about rendering the invisible “visible,” particularly when it comes to dissecting layers of the corporeal self. Austrian designer Sonja Bäumel goes one step further with her “(In)visible Membranes: Life on the Human Body and Its Design Applications” project, a fusion of fashion, philosophy, and science that explores how bacteria on our skin could be used to create clothing. Or, in her own words, how we could witness the “transformation of invisible skin bacteria on our living body to visible bacteria on a body-external medium.”

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For former LeSportsac veteran Julianne Applegate, who went rogue in July with her own line of boldly patterned stuff sacks, great design is synonymous with green design. “To create great, green design, you must have inspiration, skill, and the right materials,” she tells Ecouterre. In creating JulieApple, no detail was spared, from green fabrics (recycled-plastic canvas, organic hemp, purposed sailcloth) to a new ecological dyeing method that uses virtually no water.

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