ICInyc Redux

In an earlier article, we mentioned the ICInyc eco-event for the eco-elite in New York (for delicious inside pics visit Remyc and the 50rx3annex blog) and we discussed briefly the three eco-entrepreneurs (Summer Rayne Oaks, Chuck Heckman, and Josh Dorfman), but we forgot to mention the other two presenters - Treehugger.com and Lü Magazine.

Treehugger.com is a hugely popular “green” blog and useful ecommercial that is dedicated to reporting on all products that have a modern aesthetic and are environmentally responsible. The focus of Treehugger.com is not so much on gizmos for their own sake as it is on environmental products that provide sustainable and eco-friendly solutions. A global team of about 18 writers in many major international cities provide the eco-product news and reviews while Graham Hill, who started Treehugger.com in July 2004, attempts to orchestrate the direction from wherever he happens to be around the world. Graham Hill has stated that his goal is to help push sustainability into the mainstream of public awareness and Treehugger.com is an excellent low-emissions, green vehicle to drive this effort.

Lü magazine is perhaps more properly written as the Chinese character meaning “green”. The creative refection of Remy Chevalier, Lü is a green fashion magazine that is still, and perhaps will always be, a gestation-in-progress. The air surrounding Remy Chevalier must be charged with ideas and eclectic tangent quarks which merge in and out of our normal reality. Remy has dubbed Lü as the Viridian magazine of fashion and design.

The edgy Viridian design movement is an interesting story.  It was founded by artist, designer and eco-futurist Bruce Sterling and is a word play based on a durable bluish-green pigment coming from the Latin word viridis for green.   In its most pedestrian definition, Viridian design is environmentally sustainable design that can recreate a new ethic of sustainable communion and community on this planet. Or as a Viridian product commandment asks "What if Green Design Were Just Good Design."  The Viridian design movement is centered around the Greenhouse Effect and overcoming society’s addiction to fossil fuels and our substance-abuse problem with carbon dioxide. Bruce Sterling’s poetically sobering Viridian Manifesto should be required reading by everyone concerned about the environmental future of our planet. If they weren't so serious, the Viridian design movement would be the Merry Pranksters of the eco-movement.
 

But back to Remy who has been championing a rangy variety of environmental and green social efforts for many years.  Remy Chevalier has a long, long history with the fashion industry elite. Born in the US but raised in Paris, Remy’s childhood playgrounds were the photography studios of Elle magazine where Remy’s father was a dominant creative force and in the home and parties of Helene Lazareff, Elle’s founder and domineering editor. Remy has pieced together a troubling autobiographical sketch of these years in his e-memoirs, Elle on Earth. Think what you like, it is a fascinating read – as is his article “How Green Is your Catwalk” about the suppression of fashion models who had environmental concerns by designers and modeling agencies in the 80’s and 90’s. Speaking of a Victoria’s Secrets fashion gala in NYC, Remy sums it up with “it’s not easy being green when you are dressed in feathers and treated like a toy.”

By supporting the environmental efforts of eco-fashion designers like Katharine E. Hamnet, Linda Loudermilk, and Deborah Lindquist, and eco-models like Summer Rayne Oakes and by exposing the glitzy destruction lavished upon the earth by the conventional fashion and garment industries, perhaps we can increase the awareness of the need for positive change.