Green Fashion Event THEKEY.TO Shows Over 50 Designers at Berlin Fashion Week

Successfully launched in July 2009 in Berlin, the new International Event for Green Fashion and Sustainable Lifestyle THEKEY.TO arises now to its second edition: THEKEY.TO SHIFT, from January 20th to 23rd 2010. As part of the Berlin Fashion Week, THEKEY.TO is the first event of its kind in Germany, entirely and exclusively focused on stylish sustainable fashion. Half a year after it’s launch, it already counts as one of the largest green fashion events worldwide.

Over 50 exhibitors representing this new generation will come from all over the world to take part in the second edition (Germany, France, Denmark, Portugal, Switzerland, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Poland, Austria, Canada, USA). THEKEY.TO will gather a wide selection of the hippest and most contemporary upscale green brands alongside casual and street wear labels and a variety of innovative bags and footwear.

The Shift Sessions will feature a press conference and forum titled The Key to Shift and a series of diverse workshops focused on an active interchange of culture, information and visions among international experts, the press and the green community around the main topic of sustainability. The full program can found here: http://thekey.to/program/

As one of the Founders, I am glad that this Grass Routes initiated project is growing strong now, and look forward to the upcoming event. In February, the Grass Routes blog will be re-launched after a period of silence. We keep you updated!

Image: Van Markoviec

Grass Routes Presents: thekey.to, International Event for Green Fashion & Culture in Berlin

thekey.to is the new international fair for green fashion and sustainable lifestyle. Between 1st and 4th July 2009, a selection of sustainable fashion labels ranging from street-wear to high fashion will be on display in Berlin. The chosen brands are pioneers in fair and ecological production and will showcase innovative design combined with the very highest quality.

The fair itself shows a new direction: all display furniture will be made of impeccably sustainable materials. Thanks to its unique architecture concept, the event will be able to be nearly 100% recycled. And the fair will be about more than fashion. With slow-food gastronomy, sustainable design, organic beauty, cultural highlights, fashion shows, workshops and parties, thekey.to presents the entire progressive lifestyles spectrum.

This event is organized by Gereon Pilz von der Grinten and Rostislav Komitov (creative agency fairactivities) with Frans Prins (Grass Routes Foundation). To put it into Gereon’s words: “global trendsetters today want style with background and a committed attitude. This is exactly what is offered by thekey.to. We are presenting progressive and innovative designs, green avant-garde, which are set to bring about a fashion and lifestyle revolution for the future.”

Frans explains that “thekey.to is the first event to present the whole spectrum of this visionary consumer movement. Designers and buyers in this developing market will gain from the fair an early vision of the latest developments, as well as a place to network and develop ideas. With this event we revolutionize our culture itself. We no longer need lifestyles that destroy our nature and neglect our social values, we need lifestyles based on real sustainability and a sense of quality. thekey.to will be a forum for sustainability. Berlin’s creative climate makes it the ideal city for this fair. Together with Berlin Fashion Week and Bread&Butter, thekey.to will strengthen Berlin as a key fashion spot.”

Between 1st and 3rd July, the fair is reserved for accredited fair professionals and press. 4th July is public day, where visitors can get informed and buy products. The location will be kept a secret from the public up until two weeks before the opening: “we want to increase the excitement, to provoke people in a positive way and to realise an exclusive event”, explains Gereon, “thekey.to is the key to an open door.”

Picture: thekey.to founders Frans Prins, Gereon Pilz van der Grinten and Rostislav Komitov.

Earth Hour: Largest Climate Action Ever

This Saturday the largest global climate change action ever will take place. 2,140 cities, towns and municipalities in 82 countries have already committed to VOTE EARTH for Earth Hour 2009, “as part of the worlds first global election between Earth and global warming.”

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

Let’s see how far we can bring it… 1 billion people joining one action is quite LARGE…

How: switch off your lights for one hour

When: Saturday 28th of March, 8:30PM local time, wherever you live on planet earth. Saturday 28 March 2009

via: Sustainablog

World Water Day: Is Blue The New Green?

Today it’s World Water Day. We all know how important water is for life. Still, the process of privatization of water resources and exploitation of precious water areas for commercial use are ongoing. Who owns and has access to water is predicted to be one of the major topics for this century.

How much water is used to produce your T-shirt? The amount of water used to irrigate cotton is greater than that of all the households worldwide.

Some people say “Blue is the new Green”. This might be true, and the water issue is extremely important to ecology, but it can also become just the new toy for marketing gurus to play with. As green has gone mainstream, blue is just the next thing. Therefore I liked the statement of Nick Rosen who recently told Ode Magazine, that the environmental movement should choose brown as their new color, because the color and the word brown are harder to make sexy.

According to Rosen, green was a word that stood for an era of less materialism and zero growth. “It took us a long time to establish the word, but now it has been hijacked by the people we were trying to distinguish ourselves from. Manufacturers, advertisers, marketeers: They pretend we can live on with our lives the way we did, as long as we check the label. They have made ‘green’ into a fashion item. Now everything is green.” So, brown is the new green . Wait a minute, how many colors are there in the rainbow?

I think the answer is different. Look at the earth, what do you see? Blue. Green. White. Black. Brown. We don’t need a simple color to advertise sustainability. We need awareness and action. And we need to build this movement together, manufacturer, marketeer or old school eco hippy, those distinctions are from yesterday. What counts is what responsibility you take and how you live it.

Also see:

Worldwaterday in Berlin

Blue Planet Project

Do You Design “Open” Already?

Over the last years, Open Source Software has developed from a playground for hackers towards something defining for the mainstream market. But as there’s more areas where copyrights play an important role, there’s more work to do…

Nowadays music, culture, science, agriculture are all frontlines for heavy patent and copyright battles, a struggle between corporations interests and those of smaller organizations, farmers, musicians, and consumers. Often here it’s really about life or death, if medicins are available or not, if one single company can own the copyright of a species or of human DNA.

A lot of young people have grown up witha free availability of information, and apply this towards everything non-material. The future lies in open source and free access, because it’s in the mindset of the youth.

Now, here in Berlin there’s an active open source scene of webdevelopers and people from the cultural scene exchanging their vision and work in this field. Their mission is to create platforms for open collaboration.

Next Thursday in the Newthinking Store there’s a workshop on OPEN DESIGN, organized by Creative Commons and Open Everything, and as their aim is creative collaboration, there might follow a lot of interesting projects.

One of the first collaborations form the designer corner was the cooperation of Open Source Fashion Label Pamoyo and the theatre company Gutestun, with the Open Source Theatre Performance Copy Me (video), which had a premiere in Bordeaux and recently showed in Berlin.

I think there’s a lot of potential for this issue and we will hear more of this. But where’s the fashion scene hiding?

See also:

TAZ article on Copy Me

Nike and Creative Commons

Berlin Vista Social Bar

Wertvoll: New Eco Fashion Store in Berlin

Wertvoll is a new eco fashion store opening it’s doors in Berlin. They advertise with “an innovative and consequent fair trade concept”.

The store hosts a fine selection of eco brands for women, with designer fashion and Germany made knitwear but also brands like Kuyichi, Beyond Skin and the underwear label G98.

Wertvoll is founded by the two young Berliner fashion designers Judith Finsterbusch and Monika Lesinski.

For those interested, the opening of Wertvoll is at Friday 27. March from 2pm.

As also Glore is starting activities here in Berlin this summer, and some more surprises are foreseen, Berlin finally takes it’s steps towards the Berlin summer of love, peace & eco fashion.

The Future of Food

Just food for thought. Watch out: might be a bit radical for your mind. The rest of the film on you tube.

I am going out in the sunshine and play with my daugther… and get some earth and seeds…

via Sound of Sirens

Humana - People to Profit

“People to people” is their slogan. And considering the accusation of Humana being a cult, this slogan gets a slightly different sound. While you think you post your old clothes to charity when donating them to the Humana box, you might actually support a fraudulent cult that exploits both volunteers and people in development countries.

According to Tvind Alert, a Humana critical site, “it’s pyramidal structure, strict heirarchy, all-powerful leader, millennial goals, secretive nature and hostility to outsiders all match classic descriptions of a cult. Under the name ‘Tvind’ or ‘Humana’, it is listed as a cult by the French and Belgian governments and many cult watchdog groups around the world.” The organization also operates under the names “Planet Aid” and “Gaia”.

Peterson, founder of the organisation, has been disappeared for 22 years, and catched by the FBI while living in a Humana funded billionaire’s house near Miami. After courts in Denmark, he’s on the run again and since Jaunary 2009 on the list of Interpol.

The clothing collection is a profitable business. While the textiles are collected for free, the best pieces are sold in second hand stores, and the rest shipped to Africa to sell on the local markets. According to some specialists, the dumping of second hand clothing in developing countries has had a crushing effect on local economies. This is not a Humana problem alone, also more credible NGO’s have been involved in this process. Also, specialists don’t have one standing point there and some still state that sending clothing as aid works.

So, what to do with your next clothing dump? I suggest: organize a clothes swapping party. It’s much fun and you know where your clothes go. And with the rest? Also an NGO label on the container doesn’t give you any guarantee that your clothes are not gonna be sold on a profitable base. In Germany, the organization FairWertung informs about credible organizations and which containers to trust. In the future, I hope I can just bring my old clothes to the nearby climateneutral cradle-to-cradle machine and get fresh underwear out on demand. But yeah, until then we have to cradle to cradle with our bare hands…

also see: Kirstin Brodde, Korrekteklamotten, Sebastian Backhaus

Karmakonsum Goes Social Business

Where last years Karmakonsum Konferenz had a primary focus on LOHAS and marketing, this year the program has a stronger focus on social business, with speakers like Hans Reitz (Mohammed Yunus right-hand) and Peter Spiegel from the GENISIS, a Greencamp that also puts the topic of social entrepreneurship more into light.

Also a special “Sartup Awards” for startup green and social entrepreneurs celebrate their first edition with a Gala party. Startups can apply here until the 19th of April. The winner get’s a price worth 30.000 Euro in business coaching, advertising space and green office equipment.

It is interesting to see that the “LOHAS” topic itself is slightly moving out from the spotlights, and that Christoph and Noel have looked for topics that could be an answer to current economic events.

The Greencamp is organized in the tradition of a Barcamp; which is an open conference form where participants decide together over the program and where everyone can offer a workshop. While the conference has it’s price, the Greencamp and Awards Gala are are free of charge. What about really camping somewhere with the visitors of the camp?

Impressions from last years Karmakonsum conference:

Where’s the Plug?

We’re slightly re-branding our perception of reality. I remember a hilarious moment, having trouble with finding an actual spot, because on “google earth” reality looked different.

We accept this as normal. Thereby we often forge how far the technological and virtual realities we have created re-shape our perception of the world we live in.

The more we’re using new technologies and mix virtual and non-virtual reality, the more we will long for moments we can hide from our over-branded and technology-stuffed world, and get “unplugged”.

This will be a major issue, because as recent science fiction predicts: there might soon be no escape. And: is there still a plug?!?

The Google action is created by artist Filippo Minelli, it is really worth checking the whole series of Google images by Minelli

MC Donalds action by Keim & Zjomo;

Images via Rebel:Art;