by GOODGIRLGOODS.COM -- A NEW FREESTYLE, RESTYLE RESOURCE, ewire.com
October 19th, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, Oct. 19 -/E-Wire/-- Want to decorate your living room without using neutrals or tribal patterns? Hemp sundresses not your thing? Until recently, those with eco- or fair trade sensibilities were left with few options in the realms home décor or fashion. If one wanted to find items reflecting taste and conscience it meant hours of research and pavement pounding.
 

No more frustrating searches. At www.goodgirlgoods.com, the Fabulous List features the current best in freestyle, restyled goods and services! What does this mean?

FREESTYLE

We want to be able to see things we like and buy them.

We don't want the nagging burden of knowing that most of our beautiful stuff has an ugly past. We don't want to do loads of research to find things we like that haven't hurt anybody. We don't want guilt over not finding the time to find such things.

We want our style free of:

• Mean chemicals • Ingredients that will never disintegrate • Plants that can never grow back • Efforts from underpaid or cheated people • Animal experimentation or abuse

That's freestyle.

RESTYLE

Restylers are like optimistic guidance counselors for culturally irrelevant objects. They somehow know that yesterday's fluffy prom dress should become pillow shams or that an old LP would make an excellent popcorn bowl. They're visionaries expertly weaving the recent past into our minute-by-minute present.

That's restyle.

Green products have mainly been marketed to niche audiences. There are those with firm environmentalist identities who will make the best effort possible to buy green out of conviction. Then there is that oft-identified Baby Boomer preoccupied with health, wellness and longevity. Organic Style magazine is targeted the likes of affluent "downshifters" who have fled urban areas in an effort to simplify.

www.goodgirlgoods.com is a shopping resource for the busy, style-minded and urban-minded who care about social and environmental issues. They're not obsessed with antioxidants or looking to escape their culturally rich lives.

"Though it's wonderful that there is such a growing green audience, like those who will attend the upcoming Green Festival in San Francisco," says founder Kyeann Sayer, "I want to appeal to people who wouldn't necessarily go to the Green Festival. And I hope that resources like good girl goods pop up all over the place to reach people with all sorts of different tastes and affiliations. We shouldn't have a rigid notion of what it means to lead a 'green' lifestyle."

good girl goods' approach is similar to what architect and furniture designer David Bergman has coined "transparent green." This approach incorporates the goals of eco-design, but without the outward appearances often associated with green design -- the ecological aspects of materials and processes remain transparent. You don't have to be a green consumer to be drawn to a beautiful dining table that happens to be ecologically beneficial.

Though the Fabulous List vibe is fun and consumer-oriented, Sayer contends that she doesn't want www.goodgirlgoods.com to be perceived as a perpetuator of "greenwashing". She says that it's difficult to find feature-worthy items that also reflect high standards. "Not every item is perfect, but we try. I recently saw a gorgeous canvass tote in a popular eco lifestyle magazine. It was so cute. I wanted to post it. But when I followed up, the tote was made from imported conventional cotton, toxic dyes, and the company didn't have information on factory working conditions. What's the point? It's so disrespectful to the readers to make them feel like they're making a helpful consumer choice when they're not."

www.goodgirlgoods.com also features articles on freestyle and restyle trends. A recent article explores design world hype surrounding bamboo's eco-friendliness. Sayer says many articles will cut through eco-friendly PR hype so that readers don't have illusions about their consumer choices. The articles will also explore urban environmental lifestyle issues not covered by other outlets.