Lily Cole just made us feel really bad about our socks.

Because in her forward for the book, Green is the New Black, by Tamsin Blanchard, she explains how exactly your socks might have caused some undue damage to the world, and well, we’ll let you read all about it for yourself after the jump.

On a side note, it’s nice to read something from Smarty Miss Model that holds up to her reputation as the intelligent one, no?

Because we have to say, we were impressed.

This summer has introduced an interesting fashion predicament:

Half the day we’re sweltering, the other half we’re dodging sudden downpour. Still if we can’t find a good store to duck in to, or we just have somewhere to be, we wind up sloshing down the street anyway and our new ballet flats are the worse for it. Leather sandals are just as perilous and any flip flop has that annoying habit of splashing NYC puddle water on to the back of our calves. But it’s definitely too hot for rain boots, so what’s a girl to wear?

Enter the Melissa ‘sweet lips’ flat, the answer to this sticky situation. The shoe is made from rubber so you don’t have to worry about them getting ruined when you’re splashing down the street. And when the sun does actually come out, the flat is equally appropriate for warm weather. The bonus? All of Melissa’s shoes are made with 100% recyclable material.

— HAYLEY PHELAN

“But in an industry that thrives on newness, what will next season’s trend be? A backlash in favour of all things artificial and plastic - a nu-syntheticism? Call us cynical, but right now fashion is at risk of being greenwashed: subject to a superficial treatment that will bleed out in the next cycle of fashion seasons before it has a chance to become fixed. The result will be considerable consumer confusion - and ennui.” - Fiona Harkin, on the eco-fashion trend, in the Financial Times.

Lutz & Patmos’ smaller, eco-friendly line, Leroy & Perry, is returning for its second season for this Fall - and what kind of friends would we be if we didn’t let you in on the sneak peek?

The collection’s small, just like the very first one Tina (Lutz) and Marcia (Patmos) designed for this Spring. We don’t know how we feel about the mustard cape (click through) but we’ve already bookmarked the little vest at left to pair with a loose tee, tiny shorts and strappy sandals for October.

The line began with a conversation between Lutz & Patmos and Barneys - Barneys lamented that they could never find any good sweaters to sell, so Tina and Marcia spawned Leroy & Perry (named after the streets they each lived on when they first moved to New York) for Barneys Green. Most of the clothes are eco-friendly, and 1% of all proceeds go to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

Each piece retails for under $300, which we could live with - though you can buy the Zampa Tunic from Spring on sale for $169 right now…

Last week, we raised some hell about big companies making t-shirts that say “recycle” and “earth day” - even though the companies are major polluters, and exactly 0% of their clothing is 100% natural.

Someone at the Wall Street Journal must have heard us, because their Sunday fashion story broke down which major fashion companies claim they’re “green,” and which of them actually are environmentally and/or socially considerate.

Among the winners in the article are Loomstate (left), Patagonia, and Timberland - the latter two because they make their clothes and shoes with recycled materials; the denim because it comes from organic cotton.

Meanwhile, Edun gets a gold star for using fair trade fabrics and encouraging poorer global communities to sustain themselves through fashion endeavors - although the WSJ says fair trade companies can’t be 100% “green” because they use major fossil fuels to ship their clothes to America and Europe.

But the labels the WSJ says to avoid at all costs are the ones claiming their bamboo fabrics are “Green.” Although bamboo is a sustainable plant, the chemicals used to break it down to soft fabric are toxic, which cancels out the whole purpose.

The article is great and very informative, but we wish they’d mentioned one more option for recycle-friendly shoppers: Vintage! Wear something really gorgeous from the ’90s! It won’t end up in a landfill, and you’ll end up on the Sartorialist!

Our list of fashion pet peeves used to go like this:

Sunglasses with crystals on the lenses.
Any pant with a drawstring closure.
Shorts with thigh highs.

But now there’s something more serious on our radar, and it’s become our biggest fashion vice yet:

Clothes that say “Recycle!” or “Earth day is every day!” or whatever - that are made in factories with synthetic materials.

Of course, the number one offender is Forever 21, whose latest graphic tee screams, “What’s your carbon footprint?”

I don’t know, F21, what’s yours? Because between shipping your clothes from factories in Asia, using chemical dyes and fabric treatments, and handing out giant yellow plastic bags to every customer… well, you get the idea.

We’ve also spotted “eco tees” at Urban Outfitters, Victoria’s Secret, and Target - but at least they’ve paired with Rogan Gregory on an actual line of sustainable, conscious clothing.

Buckle up and do the same thing, Forever 21, because “carbon footprints” aren’t trendy - they’re dangerous, and sometimes, so are you.

End of rant.

It’s been a while since the last time we came across a spoof of the Anya Hindmarch “I’m Not a Plastic Bag” tote, but we think this one really beats them all.

Despite the bag’s popularity, and the good things we know came from it, we couldn’t help but burst out into laughter when we came across Fashion Indie’s “I’m Not a Douche Bag” tote on Cafe Press.

So seventh grade, and yet, so on point - we’d love to swing this around the Whole Foods salad aisle while enunciating our plans to offset the bag’s carbon footprint using only macrobiotic beets.

Tomorrow night’s events roster includes a fashion show benefit in support of Bobby Kennedy’s Riverkeeper Foundation and the Amazon Conservation Association.

The show will take place at the Hilton Ballroom, and will also be the premier of Maggie Norris’ eco-couture collection - we don’t know what that’s going to look like, but here’s a fun detail:

Lydia Hearst, newest Gossip Girl addition, will be strutting her stuff on the runway.

Her sister, Gillian, and Lauren Bush will be in the crowd, no doubt table modeling FEED bags.

We’ve always wished Teen Vogue had an uber eco-conscious fraternal twin sister who would be the founding member of her school’s Ethical Fashion Club, and tote around Naomi Klein’s No Logo as her boldest accessory.

Ok, so not really, but we do think BBC’s new online magazine Thread. is pretty cool, and fills a void we didn’t know we had.

The shoots are styled entirely with clothing that fits the magazine’s “Fashion Without Victim” tagline without looking extra crunchy.

Everything in the magazine must be at least one of the following:

- Made and traded sustainably
- Made of sustainable materials
- Recycled or vintage

As a part of the launch, on April 22, BBC Three will also air a four-part series called Blood, Sweat and T-shirts that sends six “fashion addicts” to experience life working in India’s cotton mills. We think it’s an excellent idea, so here’s to hoping Thread’s model selection improves a bit, and that the sentiment echoes with youth across the Atlantic.

Maybe next month’s issue can feature Alexa Chung visiting real sweatshops in India rather than setting up her faux sweat shops in London.

— JAZZI MCGILBERT

We were walking by LUSH today, and one of their employees was outside.

She was dressed in about a hundred plastic bags, all pinned to her apron to form a very ugly dress, and she was screaming, “Turn in your bags! Turn in your bags!”

It’s too bad we were so creeped out, because it was an excellent idea:

Bring in your plastic bags to LUSH and get something much, much cooler: The chance to sample some of the cool company’s signature bath and shower goodies, and the knowledge that instead of your bags filling a landfill, they’ll actually get recycled.

But what about recycling the bags yourself by wearing them as a dress?

We wouldn’t recommend that - it’s a little too Marjorie-The-Trash-Heap from Fraggle Rock.

Oh god, please tell us you’re old enough to remember Fraggle Rock…

If you were planning on using some old t-shirts as rags or just bottom-of-the-dresser-drawer fluff, you might want to hang on a couple more weeks.

Starting April 13, all Barneys stores will accept all those “vintage” tees from Urban you bought when you first started school, and hand them over to Loomstate so Rogan Gregory can turn them all into a way cooler limited-edition t-shirt collection to be sold exclusively at Barneys for the holidays. Proceeds will benefit 1% for the Planet, and the whole thing is sponsored by the Sundance Channel.

If it strikes you as a rip-off to return to Barneys after eight months and buy back your own old stuff (mixed with a bunch of other people’s old stuff), take comfort in that you’ll receive a 20% discount on the line (and on other Loomstate) for exactly fifteen days in April.

And if the whole thing strikes you as a little too cool for green, you could at least show up to the kick off event at Barneys on the 22nd to be DJ’ed by, of course, Paul Sevigny.

We all know green is the direction to which department stores (many kinds of stores, actually) have been inching.

Barneys’ holiday window theme was green, Nordstrom just announced its own earth-friendly plans, and now JC Penney is labeling all organic/renewable/recycled products with a “Simply Green” sticker to help shoppers make more environmentally conscious purchases.

And as much of a help all these different moves are for the greater cause of slowing down harmful effects to the planet, we’re starting to wonder, when will the inching stop and the real all out changes begin?

We’re surprised that no major stores have announced any plans to go completely green. We’re sure there must be little ones dotting the country somewhere, but when will major retailers like Kohl’s or Macy’s set a standard of totally sustainable practices? Like, solar-powered stores, totally recyclable bags - or better yet, charging people to use new bags - or selling clothes only from designers who watch their own environmental effects in their work?

We realize this is a long shot and is probably decades away, but we’re already sort of wondering who will be the first. We think it’ll start with a smaller but well known store, like Barneys of Maxfield, and then eventually the bigger chains would have to follow suit.

The question is, will we see it in our lifetime?

We couldn’t think of a better way to kick off fashion week than to watch our favorite girls strut down an eco-friendly, recycled wood runway at Earth Pledge’s FutureFashion show last night.

The show featured surprisingly ladylike looks from twenty-eight designers ranging from Marni to Versace. Each used sustainable, organically grown materials like bamboo, soybean fiber and even the leaves of wild pineapple plants.

Stam wore a very wearable Rodarte party dress; Coco rocked a 40’s coat dress from DVF; Irina wore Behnaz and the most perfect shoes we’ve ever seen. But it was Liya Kebede in vintage Moschino and Shalom Harlow in a gothic Margiela wedding dress who made our heads whip around for just one more look.

The studded peace silk suit by Givenchy made us gasp; the hemp and silk dress from Rogan made us wish the earthy designer made more dresses and less jeans, and we can’t wait for Donna Karan’s tea-stained sasawashi evening gown to make its red carpet debut. Cate Blanchett - can you abandon Balenciaga just once?!

If this is what environmental fashion looks like - count us in!

Colin Firth is getting into retail.

The actor best known for playing Mr. Darcy / Mr. Bridget Jones / Amanda Bynes’ Dad in What A Girl Wants is opening a shop with his wife called Eco that’s devoted to bringing fair trade and earth savvy products to London.

Besides selling things like organic cotton clothes and solar-powered cell phone chargers, the store will host occasional art exhibits and designer trunk shows with green outfits (not the color, the lifestyle).

Firth already owns two coffee houses in London, but we hope his new store encourages a homegrown fashion line to be sold exclusively in the shop - after all, if women can’t undress the actor, at least they could wear his clothes.

Anyway, with Rogan winning the CFDA prize last week, he might have a shot at even sheathing Anna Wintour…

We’ve always thought of bamboo- when we’ve thought about bamboo at all– as the snack of adorable panda bears. Or else, a furniture material found in homes more “zen” or “beach-y” than our own.

So we were a little surprised when we read in the Guardian today that bamboo is the latest and greatest arrival on the eco-fashion scene. Every item of clothing- from jeans to t-shirts and beyond- can incorporate, or be made of entirely, this earth-friendly resource.

We want to be all for it- the material is bio-degradable and won’t feel any heavier than cotton. We especially love that our use of it for clothing would not deprive any pandas of their favorite food.

But are bamboo clothes really soft enough? The Guardian writes that it’s “similar in feel to silk or cashmere,” but we’re not so sure. We checked out some bed sheets at Target last weekend and cotton/bamboo blends were on sale. Intrigued, we unzipped a package to inspect the texture, which turned out to be too rough to consider buying, even on sale.

Are we being too picky, or is bamboo still a bit too scratchy for everyday wear?

—ALISON COOL