Style, Naturally: The Savvy Shopping Guide to Sustainable Fashion and Beauty (Perfect Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: sustainable style, cosmetics and personal care, fashion era, United States, Terra Plana, Did You Know (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Style meets substance in this lavishly illustrated highly informative and beautifully designed book on sustainable fashion and beauty. Summer Rayne Oakes fashion model eco advocate and resident expert on ?Treehugger.com and Discovery Network's Planet Green shows how to make informed choices when shopping. In addition to explaining the basics (from fair trade to organically grown) Summer Rayne showcases hundreds of her favorite designers such as Stella McCartney and Safia Minney and eco-friendly brands such as Levi's Loomstate and Aveda that have made earth-friendly materials and sustainable practices a priority. With over 300 photos pages of resources and eco-style stories from the hottest trendsetters it's the ultimate fashion and beauty bible for women who want to feel good about looking good.

About the Author

Summer Rayne Oakes is a Udall environmental scholar, National Wildlife Federation Fellow, and United Nations U.S. Partnership Youth Emissary. Based in New York City, she travels the world modeling eco fashions, writing on sustainable style, and speaking on sustainable design and environmental activism.

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; 1 edition (December 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081186524X
• ISBN-13: 978-0811865241
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #306,136 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice Idea for a Book but far from Perfect, July 30, 2009

By	Kitten Kisser - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

I guess in trying to be more environmentally friendly the book was made in a different sort of "hard cover" with no dust jacket, yet it has flaps like a dust jacket. It's like a flexible cardboard rather than a hard cover. Yet the book stinks of a weird chemical smell that hardly seems natural. Also the book is made in CHINA where else???
The author opens you up to a whole bunch of manufactures in the green biz. From clothing to personal care. Not everything is organic. It is based on more than that. Upcycling, recycling, organic, sustainable practices and the like. Some of the fashions are downright hideous (in my opinion) and very expensive. If you have the money to burn, and you like the fashion then hell yea spend it on something good for the earth that doesn't promote child labor & tearing down rain forests!
There is a section on personal care that could really use some work. Sure this stuff is way the heck better than the conventional poisons out there, but don't kid yourself, this stuff isn't perfect either! Rather than trusting her (the authors) judgement/opinion on these types of products, you would do much better to make your own educated decisions about what you put on your skin by visiting skin deep at[...].
The very back of the book has a section dedicated to all the different sources for all the topics she mentions. I find this is great because I can review these companies at my leisure. This section makes it easy to find the type of companies you are looking for.
I love the premise of the book & what it stands for. If you need some help in the sustainable/organic industry, then you would do well to get this book. It is also a great source of inspiration for creating sustainable products yourself! I will keep this on the bookshelf & use this as a reference but continue to make my own decisions & not simply follow the authors suggestions.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating look at eco-fashion!, June 6, 2009

By	Hoppaguy - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

So you might be wondering why a guy is reviewing a women's fashion book but I would consider myself an "environmental" person in that I have been trying to learn more about the conservation of our planet over the last few years. That being said, I found this book to give a very comprehensive look at the fashion industry and how "green and sustainable" has started to find its way into the industry. Summer goes in depth with designers discussing how they are trying to incorporate this new trend. Of course, I am not a good person to ask about the clothes and the products suggested but I have shown the book to numerous friends that are girls and they all really liked the style and the pieces. They were surprised that the styles looked so good because they were all under the impression that eco-fashion meant ugly. As a final point, I would have to say that this is one of the best laid out books in terms of design and organization.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kermit the Frog is wrong: It's Easy to be Green!, June 4, 2009

By	K. Varraso "Amazon boxes everywhere" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

Happily for all of us, Kermit the Frog is wrong: it's pretty easy to be Green, and you can look fabulous the whole time, too!

This was a fun book written from a point of view I hadn't considered: How to be Green while Looking Fabulous. Written by a woman with the improbable name of Summer Rayne Oakes, this thick book guides the reader through creating a sustainable lifestyle in the areas of clothing, accessories, jewelry, skin/body care, and makeup. (Now you know why the book is so fat!) Ms. Oakes has a website, treehugger.com, where her readers discuss things like whether it is more "green" to wear an old tee shirt or buy an organic cotton one; which something this reviewer had never considered. The book takes the stance that it is better to use what you already have, then thrift store/swap for an item that already exists, and only then purchase a new shirt, with each new purchase being made in a sustainable way. She also presents the idea that any old/unwanted clothing should be donated and not thrown away, something I always thought was a given. (I discovered that I have unwittingly lived a very sustainable lifestyle my whole life!)

One appealing feature of the book was a number of two page spreads called "Women on the Street," where women who live sustainable (and creative) lifestyles are interviewed, and each one speaks about what she does to live a way that leaves the smallest footprint on the Earth. One woman wore a surprisingly attractive dress made of discarded umbrellas found on the streets of New York after a storm(!) Another snooped in her Grandmother's closet to find vintage couture dresses in her size! The thought of anyone wearing Grandma's clothing to be fashionable has never occurred to me, because my Grandmother only wore flowered cotton housedresses and support hose, which isn't likely to make anyone look amazing. These women, many of whom had artistic backgrounds, gave me a whole range of ideas on what it means to be green. Many, if not most of the women lived in New York, which gave a more urban slant on fashion, but there were ideas that could be implemented by women living anywhere.

The volume is divided in two official sections: one for fashion, one for cosmetics/skin care. The skin care section reviews hundreds of products that are not only green in manufacturing, but were green in a way I hadn't considered: what the product leaves behind on your body. Apparently there are many items that claim to natural, but are so far from the original sources and are manufactured to be so different from anything natural that the end product is actually harmful to the buyer. Ms. Oakes also takes a stance that could be difficult for anyone in the beauty industry. She feels that less is more, and that most women look just fine without cosmetics. She proposes that one should cut down on cosmetic items for everyday wear, using only a sunblock and moisturizer, if necessary. That being said, she still reviews hundreds of items that are acceptable, giving the reader a list of the best of the best in skin care, hair care and cosmetics available right now in stores.

The last section of the book is huge, and isn't considered an official section at all: Ms. Oakes has compiled an enormous source list for every product, accessory and clothing item in the book. Most of the sources are online, giving the reader a green choice for shopping, too. It's a great resource and I wish I had thumbed through the book before sitting down to read, because I had been sticking post-it notes all through the thing before discovering that Ms. Oakes had done all the work for me! I'll be using her source list for quite some time to come, giving me a bonus that goes well beyond the initial reading of this book.

If you are a green fashionista, or just someone like me who wants to look nice while being good to her little spot on Planet Earth, I heartily recommend this book. I gave it four stars instead of five only because "what is fashionable" is a moving target, and the item that is amazing today is going to be dated tomorrow; and the cosmetic items are unlikely to be available a year or two from now. Still, the concepts Ms. Oakes proposes are sound and reading the book will likely make you think about your buying and wearing habits for a long time to come.