Green Options

The Untouched World™ brand is developed by Snowy Peak Ltd. in New Zealand. The private company wholly owned by the Drysdale family holds a succession of awards (founded 1981) for innovation, quality and design.

Snowy Peak founder and CEO Peri Drysdale grew up on her family farm where generations of fine wool was managed for more than 150 years. Daughter Emily worked in Europe as a freelance sportswear designer for leading international sportswear brands before joining the family business. She collaborated with world leaders in design, including Yohji Yamamoto’s former head designer Yu Homma, and Cameron Silver, listed in ‘Time’ magazine as one of the world’s 25 most influential people in fashion.

Congratulations Naia Rico, who received the winning contest announcement for Chíc Eco’s Best Eco-Creative Men’s Fashion Designer Poll while in India doing what she said she does best, ‒ designing and prototyping garments with intentions to make heads turn and to improve buying behaviors towards organic fair trade next summer.

Mottainai is a line of menswear that embraces organic denims, all natural vegetable dyes, korozo nut buttons, organic Italian cotton shirting fabrics, organic cotton knits, and small-scale production in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

This week I interviewed Leslie Richard who writes for our sister site Crafting a Green World and runs an amazing online eco-boutique called the Öko Box, featuring eco-styles like these:

Here is our Q & A:

1. Tell us more about how you came up with the name for your organization? I also dig your blog. Which one came first the blog or the company?

I have been deeply involved with the organic movement since the first day I walked into a health food store as a teen growing up in New Orleans. I naturally knew any business I would run would have to be related to health and preserving nature. So when my childhood best friend moved to Germany and began bragging about his “oko box” of affordable organic goods delivered from the farmers each week, his excitement really stuck with me. “Oko” is german for organic, and his descriptive stories of what arrived in his “oko box” left me feeling inspired- I knew I wanted to be part of a movement that made organic more accessible and affordable in the US with the ease he was experiencing in Europe.

Being that I have chemical sensitivities and some health probs I quickly became conscious of the connection that not only did our food need to be ecological & organic, but that every purchase we made, every product we used, every consideration must be done with the earth in mind. When I saw that there was plenty of organic baby products out there, but eco minded adults were being left behind by the organic fashion industry I decided to start “The Oko Box”. The catch for me, was it had to be affordable and break certain style barriers. I think I have a little something for everyone now, whether classy, hippy, punk, or suburban there’s a garment to love. The blog was born after the store and fairly recently, but has gained a huge following already which is a lot of fun for me! I really love to interact with customers and readers, your opinions totally matter to me.

2. The Öko Box mission is wonderful and we love that- “The Öko Box donates monthly to the National Wildlife Federation, in support of their Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program,” Please tell us more about your wonderful connection to these organizations and nature.

As promised in autumn, the Spring/Summer 2008 ZegnaSport menswear collection dawns a luxury solar jacket. One of the first to market in sunlight harnessing textile inventions, Mens Vouge calls the new ZegnaSport solar jacket:

A marvel of eco-friendly efficiency, it resists the elements you can do without—like wind and rain, –—and uses the sun to power the digital devices you can’t be parted from. Solar panels mounted on the jacket’s neoprene collar soak up rays and then convert the light into energy….               

This is not breaking news in the solar-textile field, because  in 2005 Konarka solar products partnered