Fashion Week tries casual elegance for bad economy

September 13, 2008 - 12:30pm

The spring 2009 collection of designer Oscar de la Renta is modeled during Fashion Week in New York, Wednesday Sept. 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

By SAMANTHA CRITCHELL
AP Fashion Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - Despite all the harem pants and corset tops _ or maybe because of them _ the spring styles previewed at New York Fashion Week received a mostly warm reception given the elephant on the runway: the down economy.

Designers seemed collectively aware of the harsh times at the spring previews that ended Friday, but they had many different approaches for conquering the slump, which has hit the apparel industry hard.

Some big department-store names such as Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger promoted optimism with classic American sportswear. Happy, upbeat colors and styles are something retailers look for when customers are pinching pennies.

"They have to make it enticing, it has to be something the customer is going to want to add to her closet," said Ken Downing, senior vice president fashion director for Neiman Marcus.

Even with different road maps, many designers got to the same place. The dominant silhouette was easy and loose, but not messy, with a focus on casual elegance.

That meant many designers turned away from embellishment and frills. Luca Luca's new creative director, Raul Melgoza, offered bustiers and corsets, but also one-shoulder, bias-cut gowns in satin that looked liked liquid silver.

"There's a fine line of economics," he said. "I'm using luxurious fabrics but a lot less embellishment, which is very expensive to do. I'm not doing it only as a cost-cutting measure, but it doesn't hurt."

Others took the opposite approach. If you're going to spend $6,000, after all, the dress had better be special. Neither Carolina Herrera nor Oscar de la Renta pulled back on the luxurious handiwork they've made their names on.

"Last season there seemed to be a direct impact _ a lot of gray, banker's strips _ that all seemed to be directly impacted by all the thoughts of the economy," said Jayne Mountford, vice president of trend reporting for Stylesight, a fashion-forecasting company.

"But for spring, people are coming away from that. Designers feel they have to make very special pieces so if someone is going to spend a lot of money, they're going to get a show-stopper."

Donna Karan and Vera Wang stuck with looks that jibed with their desire to provide strong and sexy clothes to women; Ralph Lauren toned down the glitz but not the glamour, while Franciso Costa, the head designer for Calvin Klein, went with a high-concept artful look.

Narciso Rodgriguez courted a hard-core customer with a Ninja death-star print. Marc Jacobs shook up an early 20th century look in a kaleidoscope.

There were two strong palettes of the season, both rooted at the beach: natural sand colors and tropical brights, including the blue hues of the ocean.

"We love the color, we always look for color," said Downing. "We are loving the floral prints, they really speak to our customer."

Mountford, the trend analyst, identified the muse of the season as the ethereal type who loves layers. She's not so angelic, though, as she also wears toughened-up accessories. Top fashion editors were already wearing that look by the week's end, Mountford noted, stomping around in studded, lace-up high heels with their dresses.

Dresses have been the big story for several seasons, and for spring a draped, easy cut is a must-have, said Suze Yalof Schwartz, executive fashion editor at large for Glamour magazine.

"There's a return to ease and clothes you feel good in," she said "Clothes are loose but it's not about volume. This look won't overwhelm."

Pleated trousers with a relaxed shape, cuffed or rolled right above the ankle, were offered along with contemporary utility pants, made softer and more luxurious by washed silk fabrics.

Then there was the harem pant. An interpretation of a genie pant or at least a track pant with gathered ankles was on almost every catwalk.

Perhaps it was an extension of the influence that the mid-'60s to mid-'80s had on the collections. DKNY, celebrating its 20th anniversary, might have made the most obvious references to highlighter colors, miniskirts and jumpsuits, but it certainly wasn't the only one. Isaac Mizrahi's models wore visible neon unitards under glamorous gowns, and Alexander Wang, a mere baby in the decade of excess, fully embraced the vibe with crystal-studded sweats.

The first time Yalof Schwartz saw the harem pants on the runway, she thought they looked modern for a young trendsetter, she said. But after eight days she had seen too many.

"They're good for girls who didn't experience them in the '80s," she said. "For the rest of us, don't go back, go forward."

(Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

also on wtopnews.com

• LA Fashion Week has '50-50 chance' of continuing
• Court makes Conn. 3rd state to allow gay marriage
• Fashion Week tries casual elegance for bad economy
• Fashion under fire as crisis deepens

also on the web

• Fashion embraces casual elegance as designers try to squeeze by elephant on runway: economy
• Subversive Jewelry Designer Justin Giunta's Fashion Week Report
• Pour The Bubbly

By SAMANTHA CRITCHELL
AP Fashion Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - Despite all the harem pants and corset tops _ or maybe because of them _ the spring styles previewed at New York Fashion Week received a mostly warm reception given the elephant on the runway: the down economy.

Designers seemed collectively aware of the harsh times at the spring previews that ended Friday, but they had many different approaches for conquering the slump, which has hit the apparel industry hard.

Some big department-store names such as Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger promoted optimism with classic American sportswear. Happy, upbeat colors and styles are something retailers look for when customers are pinching pennies.

"They have to make it enticing, it has to be something the customer is going to want to add to her closet," said Ken Downing, senior vice president fashion director for Neiman Marcus.

Even with different road maps, many designers got to the same place. The dominant silhouette was easy and loose, but not messy, with a focus on casual elegance.

That meant many designers turned away from embellishment and frills. Luca Luca's new creative director, Raul Melgoza, offered bustiers and corsets, but also one-shoulder, bias-cut gowns in satin that looked liked liquid silver.

"There's a fine line of economics," he said. "I'm using luxurious fabrics but a lot less embellishment, which is very expensive to do. I'm not doing it only as a cost-cutting measure, but it doesn't hurt."

Others took the opposite approach. If you're going to spend $6,000, after all, the dress had better be special. Neither Carolina Herrera nor Oscar de la Renta pulled back on the luxurious handiwork they've made their names on.

"Last season there seemed to be a direct impact _ a lot of gray, banker's strips _ that all seemed to be directly impacted by all the thoughts of the economy," said Jayne Mountford, vice president of trend reporting for Stylesight, a fashion-forecasting company.

"But for spring, people are coming away from that. Designers feel they have to make very special pieces so if someone is going to spend a lot of money, they're going to get a show-stopper."

Donna Karan and Vera Wang stuck with looks that jibed with their desire to provide strong and sexy clothes to women; Ralph Lauren toned down the glitz but not the glamour, while Franciso Costa, the head designer for Calvin Klein, went with a high-concept artful look.

Narciso Rodgriguez courted a hard-core customer with a Ninja death-star print. Marc Jacobs shook up an early 20th century look in a kaleidoscope.

There were two strong palettes of the season, both rooted at the beach: natural sand colors and tropical brights, including the blue hues of the ocean.

"We love the color, we always look for color," said Downing. "We are loving the floral prints, they really speak to our customer."

Mountford, the trend analyst, identified the muse of the season as the ethereal type who loves layers. She's not so angelic, though, as she also wears toughened-up accessories. Top fashion editors were already wearing that look by the week's end, Mountford noted, stomping around in studded, lace-up high heels with their dresses.

Dresses have been the big story for several seasons, and for spring a draped, easy cut is a must-have, said Suze Yalof Schwartz, executive fashion editor at large for Glamour magazine.

"There's a return to ease and clothes you feel good in," she said "Clothes are loose but it's not about volume. This look won't overwhelm."

The Casual Banker: In Fashion Shift, J. P. Morgan Dresses Down

by Kate Kelly | February 13, 2000

| Tags:

• Real Estate
• Anne Hollander
• JP Morgan Chase & Co.
• Pierpont Morgan
• Wall Street

J.P. Morgan & Company, bastion of the old way of doing things, has surrendered. One of the world's most formal institutions has opted to jettison the business suit as a required form of dress. Henceforth, every day is casual day at the mighty Morgan.

At the beginning of February, departmental heads at the firm's headquarters at 60 Wall Street began distributing memos to their staffs announcing the new dress policy: Effective immediately, employees would now be permitted to dress "business appropriate" five days a week. Oh, yes, they'll be expected to have a suit handy, just in case, but from now on they'll be allowed to show up for work dressed like their ideal clients, the open-collared technology entrepreneurs who have all the prospects and most of the money.

For once, the firm was ahead of the curve. While many of its competitors have experimented in recent years with casual Fridays and dress-down summers, none of the big investment banks have gone full-time casual. Now J.P. Morgan, eager to stem a tide of defections to dot-com startups and buy-side investment boutiques, has thrown a bone to its young employees and sent a signal to prospective clients: J.P. Morgan is hip.

Inside and outside the firm, the news inspired a host of reactions-relief, surprise, disgust. "That's ridiculous," said one competitor.

"It shows how desperate they are," said a banker at a rival firm, who still wears a suit to work. "You don't walk into J.P. Morgan looking for a guy in chinos."

A former Morgan employee summed it up simply: "What are the firms you would absolutely expect not to change? I would say that J.P. Morgan's at the top of the list."

But change it has, and the firm's investment bankers will simply have to adapt, broadening their fashion horizons to meet the demands of a work environment that, dress-wise, may become something of a free-for-all. Firms like Merrill Lynch & Company and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Inc. are already fully casual in certain departments (though not their investment banks). Other firms like Deutsche Bank A.G. and Goldman Sachs & Company have instituted casual Fridays and summers. The experience at these and other places suggest that the Wall Street is lurching into a fashion disaster, as armies of young men in golf shirts, tight khakis and Topsiders march around lower Manhattan, profaning the towers of granite, glass and steel around them.

The shedding of the business suit further erodes the boundaries between Wall Street and the rest of the world. As on-line brokerages have flourished, as the Internet has opened up the formerly arcane secrets of the Street to the investing public, the guys in the temple have ceased to be the high priests. So they are shedding their robes. If the suits aren't wearing suits, what will we call them?

Couch-Potato Friday

"The big problem is that nobody knows what casual means in specific terms," said G. Bruce Boyer, the men's fashion editor of Quest magazine and the author of several books on the topic. "A couple of years ago when this started, the boss thought it would be good to promote camaraderie and to make life easier for his workers, so he said, 'Starting next week, we're going to have a casual-Friday dress-down.' And the next Friday some of the guys came in with, you know, cutoffs and flip-flops, and the boss was in a cashmere blazer and silk Polo shirt, and he looked at them and said, 'What the hell are you doing? I said casual!'"

"Men love to make sure they don't look like fools; this is the most important thing for men's clothes," said Anne Hollander, a "scholar of dress" who wrote Sex and Suits , a history of professional wear. "You don't have to look sexy, but you do have to look right for the occasion. The only people who don't mind looking stupid are performers and people who have no power, and they can play with interesting, jolly stuff that makes them look like a fool. But this is not how your standard male person wishes to operate in the world."

"To adapt themselves to some new thing tends to make them feel very resentful and resistant," Ms. Hollander went on. "Now casual clothing is going to allow everyone to think they're being liberated, but they're all being imprisoned in a different set of rules."

Uniformity will eventually prevail. The trading desks where the casual-attire rule has been in place for a while already resemble Dockers commercials. While the bankers signing off on the idea may have envisioned cashmere blazers and gray flannels, they're getting the Gap instead. Executives' legs may no longer feel scratchy, but the belts will still feel tight.

"People have taken this dress-down Friday thing and turned it into couch-potato Friday," said Paul Wilmot, a public relations executive. "These people just look terrible."

Indeed, Wall Streeters-especially the ones still wearing suits, who have nothing to worry about yet-can vouch for the lousy taste of their casually wardrobed colleagues. "Certain departments that really aren't as client-focused have gone casual Fridays, and we are talking about people who basically take it way too far," said a 24-year-old analyst at an old-fashioned corporate bank. "They're wearing sweats. Like, maternity gear."

"I think it depends on the level," said a Merrill Lynch investment banker in his early 30's. "When you're a really junior person, you have no money, and then your casual wardrobe isn't as expensive. So with analysts, it's a little sketchy. You see people in jeans, and in my opinion that's inappropriate. And I think the secretaries, sometimes, don't really dress the way the firm would like them to dress." The banker was dressed in standard business casual attire: slacks, blazer, black Johnston & Murphy lace-up shoes and a "kicking Armani shirt" (no undershirt).

The transition into casual wear is not any easier for women. "You'd get, like, long skirts, with, like, a t-shirt," said Kate Hartwell, 24, who worked for two years as an analyst at Merrill. "It was weird, what the women would wear. I would always just wear a sweater and pants." She recalled one male colleague who got it right. "He always wore this horrendous tie clip. But on casual day, he didn't wear the tie clip."

Despite firms' attempts to offer guidelines for newly casual conference rooms and trading floors, the problem with dressing down is that there are so many options. The standard uniform has always been simple, despite variations according to taste and cost: two-piece suit, conservative dress shirt, conservative tie, black belt, black socks over the calf (intended to shield skin from view, even when legs were crossed), and black or dark brown shoes. It was a formula that worked and, what's more, it was flattering.

"The suit looks so good on everybody fat, and so good on everybody skinny, and so good on everybody who never worked out," said Ms. Hollander. "I mean, it was always just a magnificent sort of idealization of your body, without the pain every time you got dressed. You wear a thing that hides the uneasy relationship between your top and your bottom, if there is one. A harmonizing effect was possible with suits."

The simplicity, according to Mr. Boyer, was "what was great about getting dressed 50 years ago."

Naturally, the basic ensemble has its accessories, which vary according to rank-cufflinks, for instance, which an investment banker tends not to wear until he became an associate. Or suspenders, reserved for vice presidents, back-office lackeys or showboats, along with bow ties, loud colors and other attention-grabbing accouterments not appropriate for the junior staff. "You don't want to bring attention to yourself," said a 25-year-old analyst who worked at J. P. Morgan for several summers. "Because, inevitably, everyone says, 'Who does he think he is?' If you're a big swinging dick, it's perfectly fine. But if you just started, it doesn't cast you in the right light."

Still, there have always been levelers. What would Wall Street be without the Goldtoe sock? The Goldtoe, a nearly knee-high, yellow-toed dark sock with elastic so tight that it has a depilatory effect on a man's leg, is the official sock of the Street. "It stays up, almost to the point of pain," said the corporate finance analyst. "Older men on Wall Street have no leg hair below the knee-because there's been no blood to the hair. When I wear my Goldtoes with khakis, it's just kind of weird. It feels like I'm wearing pantyhose." And wearing pantyhose is not conducive to mastering one's universe-if one is a man.

What Would Pierpont Do?

The need for more casual gear is not lost on high-end clothiers, many of whom have expanded their dress-down departments. George Longoria, assistant store manager of the Brooks Brothers financial-district shop, said that almost every week he hears of companies toning down their dress policies. "It has really helped guide our business down here," he said. "We just renovated our store, going on about six to eight months ago, and expanded our casual wear. As a company, that's our biggest expanding department." Brooks Brothers also runs seminars for companies helping them to figure out how to do the casual thing.

Michael Ostrove, the general merchandise manager of Paul Stuart Inc., pointed out that while sales of suits had been flat in the last year or two, "sport jackets [are] in double-digit-percentage growth … at least three or four seasons going strong now, more than double-digit. Same thing with sport shirts, and knitwear, and sweaters … but with the suits, it's definitely a trick to hold the line."

The line is eroding, as Silicon Valley sets the tone for business practice and culture in the new century. Wall Street is now forced to cater to them, rather than the other way around.

Kristin Lemkau, a spokesman for J.P. Morgan, said the firm's new dress-down policy had a lot to do with employee input. "The idea of business-appropriate really gained momentum internally and was well accepted by both our employees and our clients," she said. "With some employees, it's actually an advantage not to wear a suit."

"There's something happening here, which is certainly related to the West Coast, but it may also be related to some subtle alteration of the generation which is now in their 20's and 30's," said Samuel Hayes, a professor emeritus of the Harvard Business School and investment banking scholar. "They are not just interested in business as a career. They want to have a quality of life which doesn't have to be postponed until they reach the top, and there may be some kind of subtle signal that's being transmitted in that shift."

Mr. Hayes was surprised that J.P. Morgan, of all places, would go casual. He recalled the firm's founder, the legendarily gruff and formal J. Pierpont Morgan. "I've never seen a picture of him where he didn't have a tie on," he said. "Even when he was on his yacht, or in his gardens. He was always dressed to the nines."

BOOK REVIEW: EcoChick’s Guide to a Greener You

by Adrianne Jeffries

The Eco Chick Guide to Life is a roadmap to greener living for the modern girl. Starre Vartan covers fashion, makeup, cleaning supplies, pets, drinking, food and more in this easy-to-read guide. When it comes to transitioning into a greener lifestyle, Vartan leaves no questions unanswered. She explains food and clothing labels, breaks down the reasons to go vegetarian, and spells out every acronym.

London Fashion Week’s Estethica Spring/Summer 09 Showcase

by Abigail Doan

New York Fashion Week has come and gone, and devout fashionistas have since migrated onto London for the next wave of Spring/Summer 2009 showings. We still have more details to follow up from events here in NYC, but we wanted to sneak in a quick report on the much-talked about British Fashion Council’s Estethica exhibition at London Fashion Week. Created to showcase eco fashion that meets fair trade and the most rigorous sustainable design standards, Esthetica has become a go-to guide for the latest ideas and innovations on the green style circuit. Now in its fifth season, we were excited to see some new names added to the line-up as well as some old favorites that continue to build momentum on these shores and across the big pond.

SUSTAINABLE STYLE: BOA Studio’s Organic ‘Pamuk’ Collection

by Abigail Doan

Istanbul is definitely one of my favorite places on the planet. For one, it is where I spent my honeymoon, and I have fond memories of the potpourri of sites, sounds, and delicious smells that envelope you like a cloak, custom-tailored for the Bosphorus. So naturally, I was really excited (and nostalgic) when designers Sena Çevik and Seray Cengiz of BOA Studio contacted me about sharing their eco-conscious organic cotton (’pamuk’) collection, hand-crafted in this rather magical city. Not only was I instantly smitten with the creative fusion behind their label, but also inspired by how the seeds of green fashion were being nurtured by these two talented and adventurous Central Saint Martins and Bilgi University design grads. BOA studio is a clever celebration of global style with an outlook that is hands-down future-forward and resourceful in spirit.

Dresscode (BDSM)

In BDSM, a dresscode is a policy of appropriate dressing for social events such as fetish clubs and play parties. It specifies how guests have to be dressed to be admitted into the event. Dress codes are usually strictly enforced.

The most important rule in a BDSM dresscode is that guests' attire should be erotic and/or fetishist. This usually makes it the opposite of a standard formal dresscode - although casual "jeans and T-shirt" is excluded from both, what is included in one is generally excluded from the other. There are two reasons for having a dresscode. One is to discourage those people not in the BDSM scene from entering the event solely to ogle at the guests, and another is to raise the event's atmosphere by ensuring guests are dressed excitingly enough to attract others' attention.

By far the most BDSM play parties and other social events require a dresscode. However, in some cases, it is possible to enter in normal casual clothes at a higher entrance fee - this is called a "party pooper fine". Some Nordic BDSM organisations do not have a required dresscode at all in their minor social events, but still encourage fetishist attire.

What kinds of attire a BDSM dresscode includes varies slightly from place to place, but usually follows a general guideline. The following is a list of generally accepted attire:

• Rubber, latex and leather clothes are considered "safe bets".
• Military uniforms are usually allowed, especially for men. They do not have to be from the guest's own country, any country's uniform is allowed. The only major exception is Nazi Germany. Especially in Germany and in some places in the United Kingdom, wearing a swastika is absolutely forbidden, even without a purposeful connotation to Nazism.
• School uniforms from countries that mandate such uniforms, for example United Kingdom or Japan, are allowed in some places, especially in countries that do not themselves mandate specific uniforms for schools.
• Formal dress wear (black tie for men, long evening dress for women) is allowed in some countries. Historic dress wear (for example, from the 18th century) is usually preferred to contemporary dress wear. Usually, formal dress wear by itself is considered too neutral, so it is given a more daring edge with accessories. Such accessories might include a whip (if the person is dominant) or a collar (if the person is submissive).
• Crossdressing is nearly always allowed, and sometimes even stretches to more casual wear than would be allowed for the "right" sex. Overly feminine clothes, like ballgowns, are allowed for men, and "macho" clothes like construction worker uniforms are allowed for women.
• Exposing the more erotic parts of the body aids towards inclusion (although this usually favours women over men). At least in Europe, women may partially or fully expose their breasts, but bare genitals are usually forbidden, regardless of sex. However, note that the emphasis still has to be on the clothing - entering an event naked or clad only in underwear is taken more as exhibitionism than fetishism.

Criticism of dresscodes

Not everyone in the BDSM community agrees with mandatory dresscodes. Some common criticisms are:

• Dresscodes are ineffective against unwanted outsiders. A normal vanilla guest wanting to enter a BDSM event solely to ogle at others merely has to invest in kinky clothing, he/she does not have to actually have a kinky mindset.
• Dresscodes favour some fetishes above others. Rubber and leather fetishes are the most common, but other, much more unusual fetishes also exist. Some people are even attracted towards woolly jumpers^{[citation needed]}, but wearing such a jumper would never get past a dresscode.
• Dresscodes sometimes favour women over men. Even in the mainstream, women enjoy a greater deal of variety in their formal dress than men. This is emphasised in the BDSM scene, where a woman merely has to show enough of her body to get past a dresscode.
• Dresscodes seldom allow "streetwear" even in the context of another highly formalised look - typically skinhead, where the wearing of denim is completely central to one of its forms, and where wearing anything else (such as rubber) is totally inappropriate - unless it is a specifically gay event.

NOTE:

sleepwear & nightgown

el flash shoelaces

fashionable ladies shoes

dragon toy slipper

fuboru brake shoes

hign visibility vest

hotel towel slipper

fabric invisible bra

women beaded sandals

kids' sewn panties

stock basketball shoes

max 2006 shoe

ladies' short pant

women's fashion slipper

polypropylene raw materials

women's sports wear

china hogan shoes

Sneakers Sport Shoes

assos bicycle wear

medicine raw materials

kid's jeans pant

eva sole slipper

stock lot apparel

e-001, ladies' pants

elegent evening wear

Hi viz vests

fdp brake shoes

blauer safety vest

High Heeled Slipper

Woman s Vest

NY FASHION WEEK: ‘Be Eco Chic’ Fashion Show

by Abigail Doan

It’s not unusual for folks to flock to the American Museum of Natural History here in New York for planetarium stargazing or dinosaur spotting, but it is only once in a blue moon that eco fashionistas and scientists might congregate under the museum’s model of a big blue whale in the Millstein Hall of Oceans. Such was the case last Thursday night for the NY Fashion Week opener, Be Eco Chic. Hosted by model Angela Lindvall of Discovery Planet’s Alter Eco, the night’s lineup pushed the edge of eco chic style with the smart presentation of sustainable fabrics on the runway, and lifestyle products and designs in the event’s Aveeno ‘Project Greenhouse’ VIP lounge. ‘Being’ eco chic is obviously a path of personal choices, but it is impressive that fashion week is finally becoming a bit more about how rather than who when it comes to the process behind the label.

Malin Ackerman (actress) in Sue Stemp recycled black evening dress ; Alek Wek (supermodel) in Ralph Rucci recycled raffia jacket, white cotton pants and turtleneck, and eco bag by wek1933 (runway photos by Starre Vartan of Eco Chick)

Be Eco Chic was created as a showcase for luxurious eco fashion designs conceived by celebrated contemporary designers - Carmen Marc Valvo, Chado Ralph Rucci, Vena Cava, and Edun - to name a few. The event was a fast-paced multimedia spin on the current evolution of green fashion coupled with some exotic celebrity spotting. Where else might you see a menagerie of designs crafted out of seaweed à la Linda Loudermilk, recycled crêpe de chine with found hardware by Vena Cava, and recycled raffia by Ralph Rucci? Talk about biodiversity in today’s fashion! Highlights also included the very gorgeous Lauren Hutton sporting that fantastic, gap-toothed smile, Patti Hansen in Nicole Miller, and supermodel Alek Wek with her new eco bag collection, wek1933. One of my favorites was Carmen Marc Valvo’s 100% silk chiffon evening dress printed with low impact dyes – crafted out of sustainable fabrics provided by CLASS showroom.

The Be Eco Chic fashion show was a national awareness campaign supported by Johnson & Johnson Beauty Care and its brands AVEENO®, Neutrogena® and Neutrogena® Cosmetics, Mercedes Benz, Continental Airlines, Lycra, PJ Madison’s, and the event’s Advisory Board which included Carl Pope from the Sierra Club, Fern Mallis of IMG Fashion, and Kimberly Pinkson of Eco Mom Alliance.

A special thanks to our eco fashionista friend Starre Vartan of Eco Chick for providing us with runway shots from the event. For eco-fabulous tips of living the green, sustainable lifestyle, check out Starre’s new book, The Eco Chick Guide to Life: How to Be Fabulously Green available at Amazon.com.

+ Be Eco Chic

+ Eco Chick

Lauren Hutton (model) in Maggie Norris Couture military coat, jodpurs and cotton shirt (photo by Remy C.) ; Tori Praver (model) in Edun organic denim evening gown, followed by Coltrane Curtis (MTV host) in Converse by John Varvatos vintage linen suit and cotton shirt (photo by Starre Vartan of Eco-Chick)