New York showed that it was ready for eco-fashion in a big way at this month's 11th Annual New York Fashion and Design Conference. This year, green is the orthodoxy. The conveners brought together textile artists and fashion designers from around the world including first class speakers like Penny Walsh, founder and principal of renowned London-based workshop Dyework, and designer Deborah Lindquist, noted for her sustainably-crafted wedding dresses. The conference addressed ways that craft could help foster a greater eco-consciousness, knowing that enduring design and craft are a form of preservation and that understanding how to carry on the small-scale and low resource requirements of time-honoured production traditions has the potential to show us how to conserve. More details about the conference here.

Here in Canada, cities are also thinking creatively about the environment. Shop Sustainable is a city-wide initiative in Toronto that challenges consumers to shop with their conscience this holiday season. A collaboration of Fashion Takes Action and Evolution Green, this program aims to raise general awareness for eco friendly products, that are made locally and small scale, made with organic or recycled materials, made fairly and with reduced or recycled packaging in mind, or made from natural materials.

Participating retailers include some of our favourite retailers from our Green Living Guide!: Baby on the Hip, Bullfrog Power, Caterpillar Baby, Chocosol, Daily Apple, Eco Flora, Greencricket.ca, GreenIsBlack.ca, Grassroots Store, I Recycle Computers, KaiKids.com, Kids on the Hip, Lileo, Merchants of Green Coffee, Me To We Style, Mountain Equipment Co-Op, Pistachio, Preloved, Sugar Moon Salon, Thieves, worldSALON, Zero Point and 889 Yonge.

Plus if you visit shopsustainable.ca you can enter for their chance to win a gift basket valued at over $1000, full of eco friendly products from the participating retailers.

Image courtesy Dyework.co.uk