It's gold for green designer

By Adam Tschorn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Photo: from Treehugger.com Wallpaper interview with Rogan Gregory (left).

Eco-friendly clothier Rogan Gregory wins Council of Fashion
Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund top prize.

SCORE another one for the green team: Rogan Gregory, a New York City designer of socially conscious, eco-friendly brands, has won the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund top prize.

The award, created to support emerging American designers, comes with a $200,000 prize and a track record of raising the profiles of those who have won it. Last year's winner was Doo-Ri Chung, with the Trovata collective winning in 2005. Earlier this year the Valentino Fashion Group bought a 45% stake in Proenza Schouler, the label launched by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who took home the inaugural prize in 2004.Gregory's win was announced at a New York gala to benefit the CFDA/Vogue Initiative for HIV/AIDS on Nov. 15. The runners-up, Philip Crangi and Phillip Lim, will each receive $50,000. All three will receive a year of business mentoring.

Gregory, 35, is best known for the Edun line of men's and women's sportswear, a collaboration with U2 frontman Bono and Bono's wife, Ali Hewson. The line was launched in 2005 with the goal of providing sustainable employment in developing countries. In 2001, Gregory launched the Rogan denim label (with business partner Scott Hahn), followed by the all-organic Loomstate denim collection in 2004. In addition to selling at high-end department stores (Barneys New York) and boutiques (Hollywood Trading Co.), there is a Rogan retail shop on Franklin Street in New York City. In a phone interview, Hahn said the prize money had already been allocated "many times over."

"We don't need it for any one thing like putting on a runway show or opening a studio. We need it to help develop things like our sourcing, which is crucial for brands like ours," he said, referring to the company's goals of organic and sustainable production.

The Fashion Fund is supported by Gap, Vogue magazine and a handful of fashion manufacturers and retailers.

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Rogan Gregory Interview at Wallpaper.com
by Collin Young, Seattle

Hot on the heels of a feature in Wallpaper's EcoEdit, designer Rogan Gregory (the guy behind Loomstate and Edun -- that's him on the left) sat down for an interview with the style and design mag. He talks about what it's like to work with Bono and wife Ali Hewson, as he did with Edun, combining high fashion with social equity in Africa, about which he says, "We are pushing though, wherever we go, to create sustainability." Rogan's line of bespoke industrial-style furniture and objects, Rogan Objects, is also a topic of discussion, allowing the designer to elaborate on his personal design and sustainability values. "I am definitely aesthetic-oriented. If I don’t like the way the way something looks but it’s super-eco, I don’t give a shit. It’s got to look nice," he says. "I’m just not so extreme and I don’t expect people to be so extreme. I expect people to buy things for the way they look. I don’t count on people to do it out of the goodness of their heart, I don’t think you can." Yeah, we know this stuff is more expensive than conventional alternatives, but when it comes to looking good when walking the walk, not to mention Rogan's part in helping create a new green cultural zeitgeist, it doesn't get much better. Read the whole interview here at Wallpaper.com.

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Fashion is an art

from The Fashion Gurus

Fashion is an art, like architecture and music. Fashion is an ever-changing phenomenon that captivates the entire world. Though there are signs from earlier, it can be fairly clearly dated to the middle of the 14th century, to which historians including James Laver and Fernand Braudel date the start of fashion in clothing. The pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and women's fashion, especially in the dressing and adorning of the hair, became equally complex and changing. Fashion Art historians are therefore able to use fashion in dating images with increasing confidence and precision, often within five years in the case of 15th-century images. Initially changes in fashion led to a fragmentation of what had previously been very similar styles of dressing across the upper classes of Europe, and the development of distinctive national styles, which remained very different until a counter-movement in the 17th to 18th centuries imposed similar styles once again, finally those from Ancient regime France. The habit of continually changing the style of clothing worn, which is now worldwide, at least among urban populations, is a distinctively Western one.

The "Spanish style" of the end of the century began the move back to synchronicity among upper-class Europeans, and after a struggle in the mid 17th century, French styles decisively took over leadership, a process completed in the 18th century. Fashion The fashions of the West are unparalleled either in antiquity or in the other great civilizations of the world. Men's fashions largely derived from military models, and changes in a European male silhouette are galvanized in theatres of European war, where gentleman officers had opportunities to make notes of foreign styles: an example is the "Steinkirk" cravat or necktie. The pace of change picked up in the 1780s with the increased publication of French engravings that showed the latest Paris styles; though there had been distribution of dressed dolls from France as patterns since the sixteenth century, and Abraham Bosse had produced engravings of fashion from the 1620s.

Although tailors and dressmakers were no doubt responsible for many innovations before, and the textile industry certainly led many trends, the History of fashion design is normally taken to date from 1858, when the English-born Charles Frederick Worth opened the first true haute couture house in Paris. Since then the professional designer has become a progressively more dominant figure, despite the origins of many fashions in street fashion. When people who have cultural status start to wear new or different clothes a fashion trend may start. The terms "fashionista" or "fashion victim" refer to someone who slavishly follows the current fashions (implementations of fashion).

One can regard the system of sporting various fashions as a fashion language incorporating various fashion statements using a grammar of fashion. For some, modern fast-paced changes in fashion embody many of the negative aspects of capitalism: it results in waste and encourages people qua consumers to buy things unnecessarily. Other people, especially young people, enjoy the diversity that changing fashion can apparently provide, seeing the constant change as a way to satisfy their desire to experience "new" and "interesting" things.

Ioana Magdas

Ioana Magdas

Born and raised in Romania, Monica Magdas Miller learned and fell in love with knitwear and other hand crafts ever since she can remember. Under her mother's and grandmother's guidance, she learned hand knitting, weaving and lace making techniques.

After moving to United States, she graduated with honors from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, CA. Since then, she worked for prestigious fashion companies such as Miguel Adrover in New York, MaxStudio in Los Angeles, Robert Rodriguez in Los Angeles and BCBG Max Azria of Los Angeles.

Ioana Magdas develops high quality knitwear in fine yarns such as: merino wool, cashmere, mercerized cotton, etc. Her inspiration comes from her cultural background and from a vivid interest in history and cultures of the world.

IOANA MAGDAS Baby Girl Striped Hat

IOANA MAGDAS wool hat for girls made of ultra soft Italian Merino wool stripes and hand rolled edges. Measurements: 6 inches tall X 18.5 inches circumference.