AURALÍS' WINNING FASHIONS

Pretty frocks in pastel shades of papaya, grey, or cream and in bold, sensuous heathers; light, flowy fabrics for summer. Pants and skirts layered like petals. Filmy hand dyed wraps to ward off the night chill. Romantic wool capes and 1950s style jackets for cold weather. Happy bowler hats handcrafted by an artisan from Quebradillas using the roots of the Cupey tree. Welcome to Auralís Herrero-Lugo's winning fashions.

The fashion aesthetic of this young Puerto Rican designer who is making her way in the competitive world of fashion, is a breezy, stylish minimalism that aims to give women a feminine look without  fussiness, or cuteness.  Her easygoing clothes are built around "a sustainable relationship with the planet." Auralís uses organic cotton, hemp and silk  fabrics or recycled textiles which she likes to dye by hand using natural substances, such as tea or iron oxide ("My forte is playing with colors," she says.). Even the paper  label for her clothes is kind to the environment: embedded with seeds, you can plant it in earth and voilá, the next thing you know you have a little potted plant.

It's a thoughtful touch for this enterprising 30-year-old designer who is finding success in New York's big fashion world. Fashion has been on Auralís' mind since she was very young and her mother, who saved all of her designs-crammed notebooks for posterity, can't wait for her daughter to hit the big time so she can show them off.  At Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, where she studied design on a scholarship, Auralís was the only Latino in her graduating class. Degree in hand, it was off to New York to gain fashion experience. Five years later, she jumped into the fray as a full-fledged designer by launching her first collection at The GreenShows held during New York Fashion Week in Sept. 2010. 

Her most recent collection draws for inspiration on Puerto Rican sex icon Iris Chacón. Auralis imagined an ideal woman, much like la Chacón, traveling "to Scotland, wining and dining and leaving the men in kilts speechless." The collection includes sexy evening frocks in silk habotai and a marvelous, and very practical, jacket made of Harris Tweed with big sleeves, broad lapels and a 50s sensibility (Harran jacket made to order; $560).

Auralís' designs are currently available in San Juan at Concalma store in old San Juan and Love is You and Me on del Parque street. In New York, they can be found at Kaight, a boutique on the lower East Side. She even has a presence in Europe following the presentation of her 2012 Summer and Autumn collections at Amsterdam's MINT Modefabriek. Her fashions can be found at Blossom Echo Boutique in Oisterwijk, Netherlands. Clothes are also available online and range in price between $90 and $365.


www.auralistudio.com 

Concalma, 207 Calle San Francisco, 787.729.0800

Love is You and Me, 110 Calle del Parque

Kaight Inc., 83 Orchard Street, N.Y. 212.680.5630
Blossom Echo Boutique, Spoorlaan 44, Oisterwijk, the Netherlands

Photography by Denise Blasor

Life is very fleeting. It's important to be gentle and optimistic. We look behind and think what we've done in this life has been good. It was simple; it was modest. Everyone creates their own story and moves on. That's it. - Oscar Niemeyer

Life is very fleeting. It's important to be gentle and optimistic.
We look behind and think what we've done in this life
has been good. It was simple; it was modest.
Everyone creates their own story
and moves on. That's it.
- Oscar Niemeyer

   ☞ © 2013 Lorraine Blasor All Rights Reserved

           FASHIONING CHANGE





           "Conscious consumption: the action of actively
            thinking about, and considering where a 
            purchase comes from, how an item was made,
            the environmental impact of an item, and the
            ethical processes used to protect supply chain
            workers rights during the manufacturing of
             an item." from fashioningchange.com


HOW do we change the world to make it more sustainable? In a consumption-driven world, the answer is simply one purchase at a time.

When shopping for food, for example, you might consider buying organic fruits and vegetables. In so doing, you are promoting a type of agriculture that is respectful of nature and thrives on age-old traditional practices such as crop rotation, compost, green manure, biological pest control. Organic fruits and vegetables are grown without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers , or genetic engineering.

Things get a little tricky when shopping for clothes.  Fashion is "the
 second most polluting industry on planet Earth, employing one sixth
of the world's population with very little oversight resulting in
 environmental and human rights abuses," according to Fashioning
Change, a San Diego-based internet startup that is the brainchild of
 eco-entrepreneur Adriana Herrera.  Many of the companies that put
profits ahead of the environment and workers' rights include some of the
best known and popular brands in the marketplace.  Fashioning Change
points an accusing finger at the following companies: Prada, Diesel,
Guess, Zara, Ralph Lauren, Anthropologie, Gap, Old Navy, and Calvin
Klein. Their faults include: lacking a commitment to living wages,
absence of  transparency in their supply chain, dumping toxic chemicals
and using textiles that contain pesticides and harmful chemicals.

This scenario raises the question: How is one to indulge a natural impulse to wear appealing, trendy clothes and at the same time buy fashion that is made ethically and is environmentally kosher? Since there is no reason both should be mutually exclusive, you might want to patronize
businesses that sell eco-friendly clothes and, at the same time, are good
employers, meaning that they ensure their workers earn a fair living wage
and work under safe conditions.

 As an online green marketplace, Fashioning Change makes it easier to access these environmentally correct and socially conscious companies. In fact, its mission is  "to help shoppers make better purchases and create bottom-up change in the fashion industry." It does so by providing alternative clothing choices that match the style and price of favorite
consumer clothing brands that are skimping on their ecological and ethical duties.

The companies featured on the website are  screened to ensure the products they make appeal to mainstream shoppers on the basis of style and quality. For the most part, with a few exceptions, the clothing choices are indeed attractive and affordable. The website also shares information on the corporate practices of each listed brand. Take a.d.o., a New York-based brand that sells a ready to wear eco line. According to the information provided on this company, every aspect of the clothing it makes is sustainable: the fabric is certified organic, natural herbs and plants from India are used to dye the fabric, and the clothing is mostly manufactured in the New York City garment district.

Clothing sold through the Fashioning Change website is made out of textiles that are either organic or are made of recycled and reclaimed materials; also, the textiles are made using low impact dyes and chemicals.

In describing its vision, Fashioning Change cites these aims: "to reduce textile pollution and the Earth's contamination from apparel dyes and chemicals; reduced individual exposure to neurotoxins and carcinogens via the clothing we wear; putting an end to child labor, elder labor, and sweatshop abuses; and making the world a more just and beautiful place by creating access to better product options."

Buying eco clothing might not be possible all the time, but it is something worth looking into.



www.fashioningchange.com

"Side by side"
Photography by Ulrike Blasor Goerigk

"There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is
an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the
right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought,
he may think; what a cain has felt, he may feel, what at any time has
befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this
universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the
only and sovereign agent."

from History, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

A SIMPLE TIP --  Vinegar is a common, everyday staple
 staple yet it can be put to 1,001 useful uses. Here are three
of them: ) remove ring around the collar by rubbing
a paste of vinegar and baking soda into the grime then
put shirt in the washing machine; 2) to remove ugly
salt stains from boots, wipe them with a solution of
1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of vinegar; 3) to
brighten stainless steel pots and pans, scrub them
with a paste of baking soda and vinegar. Voila!

                                                                 
                                 "I MUST LIVE TILL I DIE"
                                                       Joseph Conrad

 © 2012 Lorraine Blasor All Rights Reserved✍