My basic philosophy about being an eco-friendly consumer: most of the time, the greenest thing you can do is not buy anything. I stand by that. If you junk your perfectly viable car to get a Prius, which takes a lot of energy to make, you might feel better in the Whole Foods parking lot but the only cause you’re helping is the thriving green-washing industry that wants to give you smugness for dollars.
But not all choices fall into the category of “to buy or not to buy.” Some are more like “to buy these boots or those boots.” So I was excited when last night’s launch party for sustainable style website Ecouterre introduced me to Kaight — a Lower East Side eco-friendly boutique featuring some familiar labels (Linda Loudermilk, Matt and Nat) and some new finds (dreamandawake). I wanted to shop! I wanted to mingle! I had to go to “Heaven”! In the words of California’s dubious patron saint of the environment: “I’ll be back.” (Although The Terminator never added “… to try on those really cool slim fit organic cotton pants,” I always felt it was implicit in his tone.)
Alemos bootie by Coclico
Discovery of the night was these boots (made in gray exclusively for Kaight) and the brand, Coclico. Yes, they’re leather — tanned with vegetable dyes. Read about the company’s sustainability aims here.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the leather thing recently. I wear leather shoes, jackets, belts, reasoning that it is a by product of the meat industry which, though I don’t contribute to it, is a very real fact. I wish there weren’t a giant mountain of dead cow skins, but since they’re there, shouldn’t we do something with them? Or is that lame, because by wearing leather I am just perpetuating the idea that it’s fine to slaughter animals to satisfy a whim? There’s the animals rights issue, and then there’s the environmental question. From the point-of-view of sustainability, isn’t it less wasteful of energy to use those hides for shoes and clothing that to manufacture those things from scratch? So many mind-boggling calculations, and before you know it you are living in a cave wearing shoes made of newspaper and banana skins.
And if you’re a vegetarian, you’re probably yawningly familiar with the old “you wear leather, don’t you?” chestnut (the spoken or unspoken follow-up being “you are therefore a giant hypocrite, so stop silently judging me and come chow down on this steak”). Why some meat eaters think it’s necessary or socially acceptable for them to call us vegetarians on our choices and stick them under their blurry (lard-smeared?) moral microscopes, I have no idea. If by “hypocrite” they mean “imperfect,” guilty as charged. But it’s illogical to suggest that a vegetarian who wears leather might as well be a full on meat eater. If I were a self-righteously evangelical veggie who flinched at the sight of a lamb chop and made barfing motions in the presence of bacon, I’d understand the need to niggle. I’m not and I don’t. But I sometimes think that switching to all vegan footwear and belts would at least save me from having the same discussion five thousand times. So I’ve been considering it, and I’ve been looking at vegan shoes, and it’s even harder than I thought to get anything aesthetically pleasing in between plastic sandals and Stella McCartney (neither of which is an option right now). Most of what’s out there and affordable is pretty uninspiring, as previously noted. Maybe sustainably produced vegetable-dyed leather is a good enough solution for now — or at least, for the next time I really need a new pair of shoes. I know it won’t keep the meat eaters quiet. I carry a ham sandwich in my pocket for that.
The really beautiful thing about being politically incorrect is that it provides such a wide array of fashion choices! Being of a Certain Age, I first had to cope with moral/political/philosophical/spiritual correctness when I foolishly wore the wrong outfit to an Anti-War Rally in Madison, Wisconsin. I *knew* I should simply clone the wardrobe from ‘HAIR” but naked wasn’t my thing even when I could have done it without drawing shrieks. In any case, I must get myself back to Manhattan to visit those gloriously vegan-lite boots at Kaight. After spending way too much time on Portobello Road recently, I’ve realized that despite my California penchant for wearing no-shoes-at-all and never-ever anything suffocating, it is time I invest in some seriously awesome boots. The ones photog’d above qualify bigtime. And who couldn’t love something named after fields of French poppies?
Going off to re-tweet you now. Loving the Eyebrow Chronicles and your brilliantly engaging writing. (And thanks for including GuruofNew.com in your blogroll!)
Made me laugh so much – with pleasure at the good sense and tart wit. I do think I may be one of the ‘don’t you wear leather?’ bores mentioned above. Yes, well, never again. xxxx
Love it! Love the boots! Love the Brow!
I hear ya on the whole greenwashing industry. A money-spinning mess of cynicism and hypocrisy. Or at least sometimes it is. Just yesterday my bank proudly offered me to opportunity to take advantage of their new “green” account (no cheque book, no paper statements). Since I already take care of all my highly complex banking needs online (money gets paid in, I extract most of it, sometimes I use my credit cards too much, I log on to my account and feel ashamed for a bit), no one writes cheques anymore except my mum who can never find her cheque book anyway and neither of these facts has anything to do with the environment, this was hardly what tossers I work with would call “value-added” or what I would call “honest”. But the poor chap was really keen to convince me I was getting a massive benefit and congratulated me effusively when I explained I always used internet banking anyway. Meanwhile I was concealing my amusement at the idea of the sharehlders of the second largest global financial services company in the world being sold said bank’s “green” credentials on the basis of such arse.
Harrumph.
More posts please Ms Brow!
Strange this post is totaly unrelated to what I was searching google for, but it was listed on the first page. I guess your doing something right if Google likes you enough to put you on the first page of a non related search.