Vegan XO

Quite literally... it is xo for vegan couture!

Last Fall, I was on the lookout for a winter coat that was warm, sustainable, ethical and vegan. The search was going to be tedious, had it not been for Leanne from Vaute Couture. I met Leanne last year at Vegan FNO and fell in love with not just the coats she made, but her enthusiasm for cruelty free fashion. All the coats are made in New York City fashion district with 100% recyclable polyester fibers. The coat liner is 100% recycled and recyclable fibers. This tag makes me happy.

Anyhoo, I invested in a Vaute winter coat, that I see myself wearing for many winters to come; and I wore this winter coat to New York Fashion Week to support Leanne and Vaute. Some photos below. But before that -

What I'm Wearing:

Jacket: Vaute Couture (Vegan, ethical, sustainable)

Collar: ZIBTextiles, Etsy 

Shirt: Basic black from Uniqlo

Shrug: Bought at a crafts market, India

Skirt: Bought eons ago in India

Tights: ASOS.com

Socks: American Apparel

Shoes: Vivienne Westwood for Melissa (Vegan, Made of recycled plastic, 100% recyclable; Ethical company)

...and they were rescue dogs on the runway, up for adoption! so cute, no?

Ho.Guests: De-Plastification

by Minu Agarwal

Hi P, thank you for inviting me to foocloho. Loving it! I'm here to share my thoughts about something I dread: PLASTIC. A friend once told me about a product-designer friend of his, who was designing packaging for a disposable shaver. The packaging looked cool, but apparently the packaging had more plastic in it than the shaver! That just stuck in my head and since then have been trying to rid my life of all unnecessary plastic.

First one to go was liquid body wash (contained in a plastic bottle) replaced by the trusty old soap bar. Who wants to smell like a pomegranate anyway after a shower? So in the last two years, we (my husband and I) 'prevented' or at least reduced the demand for 24 plastic bottles. I now buy soap at all kinds of discount stores like Marshalls etc. which have awesome deals on high quality triple milled soaps. They last longer, don't dry out the skin and leave less scum. Also got me a nice soap dish to make sure they dry out after use. I do keep a small bottle of liquid soap for guests, in case they don't want to use the 'communal' soap.

Also, when I buy soap bars, I look out for packaging that can be used in some way instead of just tossing it out. I found soap bars packaged in pretty boxes (as seen below) at Marshalls. I reuse them as a jewelry boxes or just to store small knick knacks. But no matter where you buy or what packaging the soap bars come in, I think we can safely assume that the soap bar packaging is usually less wasteful than liquid soap.

I reused this box to store jewelry

All images taken by Minu Agarwal

About Minu:
Minu works in the field of Sustainable Design. She shares what she enjoys most with her family and friends on her provocatively titled blog: "What's wrong with the right things?". She recently discovered her passion for being an entrepreneur with a venture started in early 2011 called realism.in. Minu lives with her husband in Atlanta working towards her way to a dream retirement in the Himalayas. When I asked her about what she likes to do in her free time, she said: 'apart from annoying my husband, I like to cook, snoop around the city on my bike and paint'.

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Thank you for your contribution Minu, I'm sure foocloho-ians will enjoy this read!

Clo.Chat: Toxic Curls

Source: StoryofStuff.org

Yesterday I re-watched the video on The Story of Cosmetics with Annie Leonard. Elaborating on the 'Toxics In, Toxics Out' concept, Annie mentions that there are carcinogens and reproductive toxins in her leading brand shampoo. I was curious to check what toxins I was washing my hair with so took up this little exercise:

I made a list of ALL the listed ingredients from four of my heavily used hair care products. I then looked up each ingredient on the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep website. This website was launched in 2004 to create online safety profiles for cosmetic and personal care products. Basically, they compare the ingredients on personal care product labels and websites to information in nearly 60 toxicity and regulatory databases. They then score each ingredient based on the health hazard and availability of data for that ingredient. Can you believe that there is no published data for some ingredients that goes into our cosmetics (scary!!!).

Anyhoo, below is snapshot of my little exercise:

Click to enlarge

What I found:

As you can see, all my hair care products have atleast one or two very high health hazard score (7-10) and a few moderate hazard ingredients (according to the Skin Deep website).  Read the names of the ones with "0" score; they are all natural extracts and water. Wonder why we can't have more zero-score ingredients in our products...

All in all, those reds and oranges and yellows in the chart above are all bad for me! my shampoo has a known carcinogen and a reproductive toxin. My conditioner has a very well documented human skin toxicant and my hair spray and styling lotion have a known human immune system and skin toxicant. This means that I'm inputting a lot of dangerous and unwanted toxins into my system. 

Time to listen to the elders and mum and start using shikakai :). And no, I'm not kidding. My mum had thicker, stronger and healthier hair at my age than I do now (she's got photographic evidence too). 

Shikakai is on my Indian grocery list now. I hope I can find the fruit itself and not the powder or paste.. In the mean time, if you want to find products that are safe, just go here and look them up or just look-up your product by brand or ingredient and see what's in your products.

For those who are interested in watching the Story of Cosmetics video, here it is: