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Why It's Good:
Tonic Gen is a company known for great fitting, beautifully designed t-shirts, and their current snazzy collaboration with British fashion maverick Luella Bartley is limited edition (hint, hint: Get one while you can!). And if you love anything about the 80s at all, designer icon Christian Lacroix helped defined that decade of glitter, pop and excess.
Why It's Green:
All Luella shirts are 70% rapidly renewable bamboo and 30% cotton blend, and with each t-shirt purchased, a survival good or service is provided to a child in need. All Lacroix shirts are made of pesticide-free organic cotton.
Where To Get It:
http://www.tonicgen.com/store
| $45.00
Luella and Lacroix T-Shirts Look Good, Do Good
I love Luella Bartley because she's a designer who understands that women are multifaceted. Just look at her Fall 2008 collection featuring witch hats, fire engine-red checked Elizabethan collared blouses, bizarre S&M Russian peasant ensembles, and sensible black velvet v-neck jumpers and herringbone double-breasted jackets. "Cute, but always a little sick—that's my girl," she says. First partnering with Target to create affordable London-inspired looks for thrifty consumers, and now working with Tonic Gen to create righteous t-shirts for fashionable yet conscious consumers, Bartley impresses with her quick-change abilities: luxury designer, affordable designer, mother of three under the age of five, and now socially and environmentally responsible designer. For each of the four different styles in the Luella Bartley t-shirt collection, a pair of shoes will be donated to a child in Haiti, soccer balls will be given to kids in Kenya, dental care provided in Colombia, and a quarter acre of coral reef protected in the Pacific Ocean. I already have two TonicGen tees which I am always told fit me so well (bless a v-neck extra long t-shirt!) and so for $45 bucks each, I will be pairing mine in a slightly twisted fashion with flowery skirts and big framed black glasses. I just think it's what the designer would want me to do.
But how should we wear an organic t-shirt created for the Environmental Justice Foundation by a designer who perhaps most epitomizes 80's trendy excess (and is the famous favorite of Edina of Britcom AbFab)? Christian Lacroix going gorgeous and green is a fashion mash-up of genius proportions. I want to take this fabulous colorful tee, throw on cigarette leg jeans, candy stilettos and a cropped, padded-shoulder blazer in highlighter pink. Power fashion, meet green fashion!—Margaret Teich
