Living Like Ed by Ed Jr. (whitelam books .txt) 📗

is taking up space in my closet anyway; what better place to store a few T-shirts, some socks, and some underwear and toiletries than where they will surely next be used? This way I’m ready if I get a last-minute acting job or a speaking engagement. If someone calls and says, “Can you leave right now?” I really can.

Green Style: The Fashionable Compromise

I love clothes and shoes. I think I’m actually a borderline shopaholic. However, I’m all about comfort with style. Most days, I wear stylish casual wear, like a fashionable T-shirt and jeans.

Several nights a week Ed and I go out, and I’ll put on something a little more elegant. Even then, though, I like to be comfortable. There’s nothing worse than wearing a nice dress and tugging at the straps all night. I want to know that I’m going to be warm enough and I’m not going to be complaining about my lower back because my heels are too high. Having been a dancer and having hurt my body, I know the importance of good shoes, so I look for stylish shoes with lower heels.

I love fashion, but I’m not a slave to it. The most important thing about all my clothes is that they fit. If it doesn’t look good on my body, I won’t wear it. I know my body type and what colors look good on me.

Color is important to me. I love blues and spring and summer pastel colors because I’m a blond, blue-eyed, fair-skinned person and those colors just look better on my skin. Of course I also tend to wear a lot of black, because every designer does black. Most people look good in black, so it’s a great option. If not, try navy or gray.

Until very recently I would have never considered “green” clothing. It was not even on my radar. Why should I bother to go that extra step to wear organic?

Now, of course, I know the difference between pesticide-laden cotton and organic cotton. And then there’s the sustainability factor with the clothing manufacturer. How do you get your fabric? Is it fair trade? Those things are important, and they’re becoming much more important to me.

But style is important to me too, and many of the organic fashions I’ve come across are either Pacific Northwest or grunge or hippie-granola-girl style. I like a little more tailoring. For me the new frontier is finding eco-friendly clothing with a more couture attitude so I can know my clothes are created in a way that won’t hurt me, the people who made them, or the land—and are still the most stylish looks of the season.

For years, Rachelle would complain about organic clothing styles—or the lack thereof. But now a few designers are starting to use organic fabrics and create genuine couture, the kind of stuff fashion magazines feature not because it’s organic, but because it’s real fashion. As with anything, there’s a learning curve. Designers and manufacturers are having to figure out which fabrics will work for which styles. They have to research the way a material will hang, not to mention how it will wear over time and hold up to cleaning. And when we’re talking about some of the newer materials, like bamboo and coconut fiber, being used to make clothing, you can appreciate the steepness of the learning curve.

Rachelle used to complain about clothing made from hemp. She said it was too rough. But now fabric manufacturers have been able to blend it with silk or with organic cotton to make it more wearable. Advancements in the whole dye and fabric world are happening all the time, too. As demand for these organic fashions increases, we’ll see more money being spent on R&D.

Rachelle is actually working with a friend to design her own clothing line. I think it’s great. It’s a passion of hers, and if it can help the environment, too, I’m all for it.

Recycled Clothing

In Chapter 3 I talked a lot about the importance of recycling, and I touched on the value of purchasing recycled furniture—whether you’re buying antiques, thrift-shop bargains, or items made from reclaimed materials. Recycled clothing fits into the same category.

When you purchase something that already exists, you’re saving natural resources and all the energy used to mine or harvest them, to ship them to a manufacturing facility, to transform those raw resources into finished goods, then to transport those finished goods to warehouses and retail stores.

So, what do I mean by recycled clothing? I mean preowned clothes and also clothing made from recycled materials.

You can find preowned clothing—and shoes—in all sorts of stores and in all sorts of styles. Thrift shops, flea markets, and swap meets are great sources of inexpensive clothing that isn’t ready for a landfill—it’s ready for a new life in your closet. If you’re looking for something more upscale, some thrift shops do specialize in higher-end merchandise, or you might try shopping in a consignment store (sometimes called a resale store). These stores specialize in preowned designer apparel.

Another excellent option is clothing made from recycled materials. Some of the designers working in the organic clothing realm are using vintage buttons, so they’re recycling in that sense. Other companies are taking cool vintage clothing—sweaters, dresses—and remaking it in more current styles and sizes. Rachelle was telling me about companies that take old cashmere from sweaters and blankets and scarves and that sort of thing and recycle it into new clothes as well as scarves and quilts.

But scarves aren’t the only recycled accessories you can find. Some pretty impressive—you might even say mind-boggling—purses are made from all kinds of recycled materials, including automobile seat belts, license plates, bicycle inner tubes, vinyl records, 35mm slides, blue jeans, soda cans, old soda can pop tops, juice boxes, candy wrappers, skateboards, and magazines.

When you buy recycled clothing and shoes and purses, you’re keeping all of these items out of landfills and you’re