Magnifeco Holiday Gift Guide

Magnifeco holiday gift guide

Eco Getaway:

Bali

Ethical

Gift Ideas

Holiday DIY

Interview with Fair Trade Maven Magnifeco

Safia Minney

people tree

My Fair Trade

Cosy recycled yarn socks - £28

The little Red wrap dress

Wfroishl ist m ..

Super soft

Orla Kiely hand knit hat - £28

100% handspun Alpaca mittens

Quality hand feel

100% wool handknitted in Nepal

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20%

* *Insert Magnif 20 at checkout When you spend

Great gifts that give twice.. .

Selected lines available at

Wish upon a star - £12

Recycled sari clutch - £20 £50 or more.

Offer ends 10th Dec 2012

peopletree.co.uk

A Letter From the Editor

Kate Black

Welcome to our inaugural Ethical Gift Guide. Where ethics meets aesthetics, Magnifeco.com has been the digital source for eco-fashion and sustainable living since 2009 and are thrilled to offer our first ethical holiday gift guide. We want to help you navigate your way to a stylish, sustainable holiday.

©vive!genevieve

As a child, ‘holidays’ meant three things to me: fashion, tradition and fun. Fashion, because my grandmother made the most beautiful clothes and gifted them to her four daughters and her grand-daughter every holiday. Tradition came in the types of foods we ate, many only on offer at this time of the year. And lastly, fun - because they were. Whether we played board games as a family or took ski or beach holidays, fun was always part of the celebration.

On the following pages you will find plenty of all three; especially the fashion! Because eco-fashion means different things to different people, we’ve included a series of quotes from designers we featured on the blog this year; to show you how the ideas are about eco-fashion are as diverse as the designers who create it.

We also have a feature interview with Safia Minney, the founder of People Tree. For over 20 years, People Tree has been promoting the idea of fair trade and stylish sustainability in Japan and Europe. A very focused and inspiring entrepreneur with a great story.

And, of course, ethical gift suggestions for the kids and for the person who seemingly has everything. As you flip through these pages, I hope that you find something(s) that you like, that will work into the fashion, tradition and fun of your holidays. If you need more, visit us at www.magnifeco. com where we write about the latest in eco-fashion and sustainable living daily.

Enjoy!

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Contributors Katie Wynkoop is in

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between her BFA from Amherst and her MA at Savannah College of Art and Design, and spent the summer lending her immeasurable artistic talents to Magnifeco. An artist, maker, crafter, animator and a graphic designer, Katie used her numerous talents to put together our inaugural Ethical Gift Guide.

Rhea alexander

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is a Social Entrepreneur & Sustainable Design Expert. Her company DIGS.com is the nexus of modern design and ecofriendly ethics; where sustainable style and fair-trade principles come together for social change.

Rhea combed through the extensive DIGS.com catalog to come up with ten perfect gifts for the person who has everything.

Emma bigg

was born in England and currently works in London as a fashion website copy writer. Having graduated from university with a degree in fashion and culture last year, she has been immersed in the world of ethical fashion for six years. She’s put together some fashion ideas to suit all holidays.

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Conscious Traveller:

The Ultimate Ethical Fashion Guide

WORDS By Emma Bigg - Curated by Kate Black Holidays. We love them. Can’t wait for them. Need another holiday to get over them, in fact. But what is it about them that causes so much stress when it comes to packing the suitcase?

Between expected weather forecasts, the rainy season and luggage limits that threaten to cost us a small fortune, we can be forgiven for finding shopping for them a challenge.

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Fear not, we here at Magnifeco have you essential guide to getting holiday-ready. Whether it is a city break, family fun or a once in a lifetime experience, read on for our suggestions for creating a holiday wardrobe in conscious style.

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City Break Exploring the concrete jungle can be just as exciting as the real one, but to truly enjoy the experience, it’s essential to be prepared for every occasion. From museum visits to tourist sights, key jersey pieces such as tea dresses and loosely tailored trousers are great for easy transitions. But don’t forget to enjoy the nightlife with statement accessories that take you effortlessly from day to night.

Designed by Orla Kiely for People Tree, this optical owl print dress is perfect for city exploring. £95.00

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Three Leaves provides men with cruelty free, environmentally aware, socially responsible clothing, footwear and accessories.

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Scotch Natural Nail polish is Cruelty/Fragrance/Toxin/ Paraben Free, Hypoallergenic and Biodegradable. $14.99 USD

GreenPeople Soft red organic lipstick with natural colours. £11.25

Each Kayu clutch is handcrafted by artisans using traditional techniquesand natural materials like wood, shell and straw are combined in unexpected ways.

The unisex Raylan from Matt & Nat is an ideal size for your weekend getaway. Lighter and easier to carry than you’re average travel bag. $198 USD

Golden Grass Swirl Design Earrings, produced by Ouro do Jalapão artisans group. €18.00

Olsenhaus Vegan Wonder Black Crocs, $240 USD

Skunkfunk’s black bamboo jersey dress. £65.00

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The NOHARM black leather-free lace-up ankle boot is stylish and elegant. £209.99

Cri de Coeur’s Vegan Tassel Platform Boot with super high lift and the comfortability of a walking shoe are the city girl’s dream. $165 USD

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Beach Break The opportunity to just sit and relax is one idea of heaven, and dressing for a beach holiday thankfully causes minimum fuss. Look for statement swimwear and relaxed accessories for day and easy-to-wear dresses that will take you from beach to bar in seconds.

Made of 90% recycled polyester and 10% spandex, Greenlines makes boardshorts for everyone in the family.

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Emobi swimwear is made in Sydney Australia. All prints are original and designed in-house, using a range of environmentally friendly water-based dyes.

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Amazo and Gl materi uppers ÂŁ29.95

Each pair of Proof sunglasses is crafted by hand from sustainable wood sources. $90 USD.

Madara Flower Dust Shimmering Body Lotion - perfect to accentuate your tan or bring out natural skin colour, improves skin tone and adds a subtle shimmer. £22.00

This classic, fedora style panama hat can be rolled for travelling. From Fair Trade certified Pachacuti. £117.50

This Miyoko bracelet from LEJU, carved from organic sustainable ivory dyed using natural plant extracts. £22.00

Cocoa and Shea Butters combine with Olive and Jojoba to make a light, soothing total body balm for nourishing & soothing after sun. £6.99

This Cassidy Maxi from Nancy Dee is stylish, sustainable, and made in the U.K. £85.00

Made in Australia, these Bassike elastic waist shorts feature two back pockets. pre shrunk. $160 USD

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Knowledge Cotton Apparel has the perfect onas ECO Flip Flops, Sandals ladiators consist of 40% recycled Weekender, Large Duffel Bag, 100% Organic Cotton Canvas with leather details. €139.00 ial. Plus the PVC used for the s heavy metal/phthalate-free.

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Every tme you buy a Twins For Peace pair of shoes, they will invest in school meals, educational games, vaccines, water wells, & dormitories for the orphans of AIDS. Start at €69.00

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for the person who has everything

1 Mushroom Kit This grow-at-home Mushroom Kit lets you grow gourmet, tasty oyster mushrooms to use in virtually any meal!

Each box contains up to 2 crops, some may have more. The soil inside is 100% recycled coffee grounds, completely safe, organic and sustainable. $20 USD

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2 Dropp! Bowls A super fun gift for anyone with a spunky and artsy personality and great gift for kids as well. A soft drop of paint, frozen at the precise moment it hits the table and breaks into a spectacular, colorful spray. Comes in a gift bag, $115 USD each

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Candle Holders With its recycled origins and sleek, fluid design, each tranSglass vessel is a unique, one-ofa-kind piece. Perfect for a sophisticated and beautiful gift. $50 USD

Wooden Iphone Case Traditional Master Japanese Wood Carvers hand-carve each case in Gifu, Japan. So beautiful and unique, everyone will be asking you where you got it. Wood is from managed Japanese forests. $200 USD

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5 Cork Cases In 3 perfect sizes (sml,med,lrg) these sustainable cork cases can be used for virtually anything, which makes it the perfect gift. $22, $31, $42 USD

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RIKA Robots The perfect gift for anyone, from kids to toy and robot collectors. $57, $88, $99 USD

Handbag Definitely a conversation piece, this clever bag made of recycled coffee grain sacs and suede trimming will keep you looking stylish while offering you practicle features such as zipper top, padded handles, adjustable strap, 5 mtl feet and an interior zippered pocket. $156 USD

MOKSA Body Butter A great gift for any woman in the family, these body butters come in 8 delicious scents that will leave you feeling radiant while nourushing your skin. $16 USD

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Atris Necklace This playful design consists of colorful tagua spheres distributed along thin steel wire with magnetic clasp.

Stylish and colorful, its the perfect accessory for Spring and Summer!

Ethically handmade in Colombia using recycled Tagua seeds and eco friendly dyes. $85 USD

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interview

production, plus a new Indian excise tax planned that will increase the price of exported cotton. Then she continues to highlight some of the challenges People Tree and its sister charity are coping with - taking exception to U.S. government subsidies and working to save hand loom industries, as the introduction to power looms are taking away peoples income (one power loom takes work away from 10 employees).

with

©People Tree

After the presentation, Safia sits down for a rest and a cup of tea and we start talking about fashion and Japan. Minney came to Japan when she was 25. With a background in publishing and communications, (as well as advertising industry experience), she started to become interested in social issues and humanitarian issues and started a social marketing consultancy and working for environmental groups like Friends of the Earth.

People Tree’s

Safia Minney Safia Minney is having trouble keeping her voice. It is a press event in a district in Tokyo, close to the harbour, and she is discussing details of her recent trip from India and presenting the new collection. Flitting back and forth between Japanese and English, her energy and enthusiasm do not match her scratchy, and at times, absent voice.

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As I look around, I see the audience is almost entirely Japanese, except for a partner from India and me, and they are all nodding politiely and waiting patiently when her voice cracks or she needs to take a drink of water to continue.

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Minney is outlining some of the hurdles of the past year: global recession, cotton prices have risen 70%, dyehouses in India have been forced to close due to stricter regulations – resulting in slower samples and slower

“When I came to Japan I had a very narrow view of what Japan was but I was very excited about what the possibly of learning about human rights and environmental issues from an Asian point of view. So I started studying Japanese. I was working for the first Body Shop here in Tokyo and I was very excited about how intelligent and curious consumers were and very much wanted to be part of the solution. They would ask heaps of questions about volunteering, getting involved in different campaigns, about human rights and that’s really what inspired me to set up Global Village. Because at that time, certainly in Japan, the Body Shop was not at all political. It had been political in the UK, at the time that I was growing up, but it certainly wasn’t campaigning in Japan.”

Global Village was the campaigning organisation that led to the birth of People Tree, the highest-profile Fair Trade company in Japan. “Fair Trade is a more humanitarian way of doing business,” Minney explains. “It’s new economics.

It’s putting social and environmental into the picture, for a triple bottom line approach.”

After a decade, Minney took People Tree to her native U.K. and launched PeopleTree.co.uk in 2001. Today, they have 300 stockists in Japan and 150 in the U.K. and Europe.

As we ramble down memory lane from then until now, and how much fair trade fashion has evolved over those 20 years. It’s become much more sophisticated and even mainstream in some product and categories like food. Fair Trade food is very mainstream now. And we’ve started to see the mainstreaming of Fair Trade fashion so you can find People Tree in TopShop, John Lewis, and ASOS.com or in Japan, in department stores and beautiful boutiques.

So it’s exciting that it’s become not just the traditional Fair Trade stores and specialized organic mail order catalogues, but that it’s out there and made it into department stores and high end boutiques.”

As we talk about the past year, it’s easy to see why Minney might be a little run down. People Tree’s works closely with over 150 Fair Trade groups in 12 countries, creating livelihoods for 4,000 farmers and artisans around the world. Minney also collaborates with designers like Orla Kiely, Zakee Shari and Vivienne Westwood, and ecofashion starlets likes Emma Watson and Alexa Chung to raise awareness of the brand. And, through the People Tree Foundation, along with a consultant from the Body Shop, Minney was involved in RAGS, a British government initiative set to help an additional 4,000 artisans from Nepal and Bangladesh. Oh, and she released her third book Naked Fashion – The New Sustainable Fashion Revolution.

tag lines states, “For every beautiful garment People Tree makes, there is an equally beautiful change happening somewhere in the world.”

Naked Fashion

The New Sustainable Fashion Revolution ©People Tre

e

by Safia Minney

And then we talk about getting away from it all “If I’m in Japan, it’s Fujino machi, in Kanagawa ken, in the beautiful southern Japan Alps. I have a lot of lovely friends there who are artists and weavers and potters, and alternative media people. I used to have a house there where we tried to go for weekends we didn’t have. When I’m in London, I tend to go to the park or the common in the morning to walk around or run. And I love to hold big dinner parties and bake cakes – organic, Fair Trade ones, of course,” she says with a smile.

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If she’s tired by the interview, Minney doesn’t show it. But it was time to let her get back to work, for, as the People Tree

©People Tree

I ask her how she relaxes and if she ever unplugs. “First thing in the morning, I try and do yoga for about half an hour. Because I am working across time zones, I’ll usually pick up my phone when I wake up and I’ll find there’s a bunch of stuff from Japan I need to do or something incoming from Bangladesh, and then I’ll go do my yoga, then have breakfast and then I have a long commute into Brick Lane, east London, so it’s a good hour where I tend to read more email.”

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Travel

Bali

by Kate Black

As we head up the windy drive to the Bloo Lagoon, my heart begins to sink. We’ve come by driver from Ubud to the eastern coast on the lure of this ‘fabulous’ eco-resort, and my first impression is less than fabulous. Still under construction, with cars and worker vehicles clogging the circular car park, I suddenly feel like the 2 hours drive has been a huge mistake.

Yet, once we enter the front office and I see the burgeoning Blootique set up with local handicrafts and as we walk past the vegetarian-friendly café next to the pool on our way to our open air villa, I’m not only relieved. I am thrilled.

In the mix of large resort developments that are abundant on Bali’s coastline, the privately owned Bloo Lagoon Ecotourism Villas stand out as much for their owner-occupy possibilities as for their attention to the ecosystem. This ranges from hiring locally, stocking the villas and the restaurant with local food and supplies, to creating water catchment channels and reservoirs to conserve water. What appear to be water installations are actually channeling rain and water from showers and sinks into an artificial lake and ponds, which are planted with aquatic plants and fish, cleaning the water to be reused for irrigation and toilet flushing.

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Located in Pandangbai, Bloo Lagoon offers access to those who want to carry on the Lombok and Gili islands, but we were so taken with the extraordinary food, sleeping peacefully in the open air, and spreading our time between the pool and the lagoon down below, we couldn’t be swayed to leave.

for the kids

1 2 Smart Balance Bikes by Smart Gear are made from wood-harvested from a replenishable source and feature formaldehyde-free glue and non-toxic paints and lacquer. $89.99 USD

Preschool and kindergarten-aged kids will love this fun toy from National Geographic that’s packed with animal facts and sounds. $24.95 USD

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Colette Kids’ tee’s are fresh, age-appropriate and non-gender specific... meant to be shared amongst siblings! Made in the USA and individually screen-printed by hand with ecofriendly dyes by local printers. From $23.00 USD

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Eco-Dough is handmade, and entirely from natural and ecofriendly ingredients - fruit, plant and vegetable extracts. $24.00 USD

5 Fortune cookie slippers. Handmade from extra-plush fleece with floor-gripping soles, each slipper curls into a delectable cookie shape when not in use. $28.00 USD

6 Designer Lori Burley takes real fire hose material and makes one-of-a-kind accessories in honor of her firefighter husband. $29.00 USD

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7 What better way to foster team spirit and friendship than with handmade, fair trade soccer balls? Afghan women have been renowned for centuries for hand needlework.

Now the women of DOSTI, meaning “friendship� in Dari, have harnessed that heritage to handcraft club-quality fair trade soccer balls. $45.00 USD

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A petite pillow or plaything, the Gorilla Pico Pillow by Ross Menuez ismade from organic cotton. $28.00 USD

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We asked designers

“What does eco-fashion mean to you?”

“There are so many lenses through which you can view eco-fashion. When you look at the apparel supply chain, the first area where I saw a possibility of change was in sourcing.

I try to source materials locally to reduce our carbon footprint - when you buy a garment in a typical mall shop, it very well could have traveled to globe twice over to get to you.

By sourcing locally produced organic cotton knits and handloomed fabrics, we not only create additional jobs in Uganda, but we reduce our impact by creating only one journey - from Uganda to you.”

Halle Butvin, founder of One Mango Tree

“It is my way of thinking and a way of living. For me, it is a natural mindset. It is not a trend, but a deep interest for the environment/gifts of nature and the desire to make good quality fashion that people love to wear!”

Rianne de Witte

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“We really feel as though everyone should do what they can, where they can, to benefit their community and our environment. We think that the term eco-fashion is a bit of a grey area, it’s actually a term we try and avoid, it’s too general, what does it really mean? So we simply state what we do, transparency, and how we choose to run our business in the most sustainable way available to us.”

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Stacey Paterson, co-founder of dagg & stacey

” “The word is unfortunately misleading as it gets used without much discretion, but if I were to think of a definition it would be fashion made with environmental and social responsibility.”

Kavita Parma, founder of The IOU Project

“People don’t know.... but the working conditions in the factories that make the cheap clothes for the high streets are brutal. Child labor, adults subjected to violence and abuse such as forced over time, bad food, unhygienic living conditions, and very poor pay. I do not like factory conditions, and that’s why we at Made By... only work with artisans who live in their homes. We have about 80 to 200 contacts with workshops in Peru who work directly from their safe environments. They can work in their own time. If they have kids and have to attend them, that’s fine. We pay them their fair wage.”

Semera Faroog, founder of

Made By

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holiday diy Soy wax candles can be made using recycled materials and natural ingredients- very budget-friendly. via Ruffled

take the handmade challenge!

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This Chalkboard Serving platter is perfect for the foodie who has everything. via Wit & Whistle

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This Citrus Salt Body Scrub can be whipped together in five minutes and enjoyed in the shower as a full body moisturizer! via Paula Deen

Clothespin Advent Calender: Count down the days to Christmas with this creative calender!

Customizing a pair of His & Hers mugs couldn’t be easier. via A Beautiful Mess

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>> > Glass etching can upcycle bottles and jays into unique and beautiful kitchen dispensers. From Lilblueboo.com

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