Ecouterre

If you’ve resolved to create a more sustainable wardrobe in 2013, today just might be your lucky day. We’ve hooked up with Fashioning Change to bestow one Ecouterre reader with a starter set from its line of “ethical knockoffs,” designed to offer the same style, fit, and price points as comparable styles from leading mainstream brands. Made in downtown Los Angeles from organic cotton and hemp, each piece from the KCA by Fashioning Change collection includes a scannable Quick Response code that tells you its compete supply-chain story. Enter now to win!

TO ENTER THIS GIVEAWAY

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

2. SIGN UP AT FASHIONING CHANGE

3. LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW BY FEBRUARY 5 telling us your favorite KCA by Fashioning Change style. Although it doesn’t hurt to get fancy, we’ll be picking a winner at random.

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Sean Miles is giving the term “walkie talkies” a brand new meaning. The U.K. artist has created a series of “handsets” by embedding cellphones into the soles of various vintage shoes, including a Christian Louboutin heel, a Nike Air trainer, a classic men’s brogue, and a Hunter Wellington boot. No new cellphones were harmed in the making of the wacky devices: Miles worked with O2, a mobile telecommunications provider that also pays people to recycle unwanted gadgets, to transform outdated Nokia and LG models into fully functional—and wearable—works of art.

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Battling breast cancer is a difficult enough ordeal; finding a post-mastectomy bra that fits shouldn’t be. And it looks like Victoria’s Secret agrees. After an online petition went viral in just over two weeks, the lingerie retailer met with the mother-and-daughter duo responsible for gathering 120,000 signatures in support of a “Survivor” line of post-mastectomy bras. “Many women who undergo mastectomy surgery because of breast cancer suffer from body image issues,” wrote Allana Maiden on Change.org “It doesn’t help that they don’t have the option of buying the pretty bras they wore before their battle with cancer, and specialty stores can be hard to find, forcing them to order bras online that they have to send back because they don’t fit properly.”

PREVIOUSLY ON ECOUTERRE: Victoria’s Secret Pledges to Detox Its Clothing, Lingerie

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Dana Jasinkevica and Dita Enikova’s wedding dress is a page from a gothic fairy tale come to life. The two Latvian fashion students created Swan in Oil.Before and After from more than a thousand paper ovals, artfully cobbled together to resemble the plumage of an elegant bird. The photo series juxtaposes images of the dress in its pristine glory with its double splattered in black paint. The emerging narrative, the designers say, encapsulates the “painful question of birds suffering from oil pollution in their natural habitat, with swans frequently among the potential victims.”

[Via MocoLoco]

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Anita Roddick, late founder of The Body Shop.

The end is nigh—for animal testing, that is. Starting March 11, the European Union will ban the import and sale of new cosmetic products that were either tested on animals or contain ingredients that were tested on animals. The ban, which has been in the works since 2009, is the result of decades of campaigning from animal-rights proponents, including Anita Roddick, the late founder of The Body Shop, who joined members of the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments in 1996 to present the European Commission with a petition containing 4 million signatures. The new regulations will apply to all personal-care products and toiletries, no matter how luxury or quotidian, from wrinkle cream to toothpaste.

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Dolce & Gabbana makes the stuff fashion dreams are made of: the sexy, trashy-chic attire of wanton peasant maidens, curvy cinematic goddesses, playfully tough Sicilian street boys…la bella figura. Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce have built a multimillion-dollar based on leopard print, lace, and lingerie as outerwear. So why, we ask, has the venerable Italian fashion house turned its tremendous talents to remaking one of the most pleasing things in the natural world, the scent of a newborn baby?

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G-Star Raw has moved from a “toxic greenwasher” to a “Detox leader,” according to Greenpeace. Following pressure from the environmental nonprofit’s “Detox” campaign, the Dutch fashion retailer committed on Thursday to eliminate all releases of hazardous chemicals throughout its global supply chain products by 2020, the 15th corporation to do so to date. G-Star’s announcement comes just a week after Greenpeace activists picketed the brand at the opening of Amsterdam Fashion Week for declaring a zero-discharge intention but failing to follow through with credible individual commitments or action plans.

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Woolrich wants to bring manufacturing jobs back to United States. In an open letter issued at the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market show in Salt Lake City on Friday, Woolrich president Nicholas P. Brayton pledged to revive Pennsylvania’s dormant garment industry by increasing the 183-year-old company’s American-made offerings. Although Woolrich operates the country’s oldest continually running textile mill, Brayton admits that it’s made the “same difficult choice” to outsource production in order to remain competitive. “In today’s world, the hard reality is that making things here is hard to do,” he wrote. “But like our customers who embrace adventure every day, Woolrich is preparing to tackle a new challenge…bringing manufacturing back to Pennsylvania, one step at a time.”

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