It’s all how you spin it. As someone who’s worked in marketing and PR for a decade, it’s the blush in the face industry joke. And, there’s truth to it. Of course, some things are simple, authentic, truly beautiful. No spinning required. For other things, it gets a little dicer. Take vinyl.
Last week, I literally laughed out loud on an airplane, when my lovely friend Mia left me a voicemail asking if I’d ever heard of “organic vinyl”. Organic vinyl? Sounds like an oxymoron to me. True to self, I dug deeper. And, you won’t believe it. Organic vinyl DOES exist. That’s right. Certified by the United States Department of Agriculture and denoted with a little green and white label, just like you’ll find on your apple of your box of cereal.
Vinyl will be the first non-agricultural product to earn the coveted designation, taking advantage of a little known loophole in the law that apparently does not restrict the label to agricultural products, but makes it available to all “products” made from at least 95% organic “ingredients.”
Vinyl Association President Don B. Fulde welcomed the decision: “Our member companies have long maintained that ours is essentially a natural product – common salt combined with natural gas, which is essentially a series of carbon and hydrogen atoms, in other words, decomposed plant matter. Now we have a label that confirms this.”
If salt and natural gas make our world certifiably organic, then the future ahead may be more interesting than we thought. As for me, I’m sticking to the roots. From the ground. Organic. Good. And, tasty too.
(Photo compliments of Blunder. Thank you!)
Pratt fashion alumni celebrate timeless fashion for a new exhibit.
Pratt, one of the world’s leading design institutes and the oldest in the U.S. (this year marks its 125th anniversary), kicked off its retrospective “Principles of Design: Pratt Fashion Alumni,” on Fashion’s Night Out (September 8th), exploring future-facing lessons from past and present design talent.
Pratt is home to cutting-edge, cosmopolitan design from the likes of Mabel Julianelli (BFA 1927), Samantha Pleet (BFA 2005), Ariana Bohling (BFA 2005), Laurel Mae DeWitt (BFA 2005) and Siobhan Barrett (BFA 2009), all talents among the 19 on exhibit at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery from now to October 8th.
Samantha Pleet’s Shadow Cloak (on sale this Fall at Anthropologie.com)
At the opening night gala, I caught up with Sarah Scaturro, Textile Conservator for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and guest curator for the Pratt exhibit. “There is such incredible design all around us tonight,” says Scaturro. “My main work [for the Cooper-Hewitt] is to preserve clothing and fashion that lasts, so I’m clearly interested in timeless fashion – something strongly reflected here, tonight.”
Please enjoy my complete coverage at ecosalon.com! Thank you!
