Style mission: do good

Desire drives fashion. But as the high cost of our wants becomes clear, some businesses are evolving with an eye to helping people and planet. The new vision? Some local entrepreneurs are bringing it to focus.

STYLE MISSION: DO GOOD

Designers with a 'green' vision

Let's be honest. At times, the fashion industry seems inherently eco-unfriendly. It's built on the notion of seasonal obsolescence (imagine for a second that your lightbulbs were designed to go dark every two to six months) and more or less constant consumption. Clothes are often manufactured in faraway lands under sometimes questionable working conditions and then shipped long distances by pollution-spewing conveyances. If you think too much about it, buying next season's "it" bag can seem like the equivalent of backing over a harp seal with your Hummer. More...

Dosa's Christina Kim: Every piece is precious

In the course of developing her eco- and human-friendly couture, L.A.-based designer Christina Kim has braved riots in Nepal, violent religious clashes in India and a nasty, brutish standoff between striking teachers and the state governor in Oaxaca, Mexico. More...

PIERRE ANDRÉ SENIZERGUES: SOLE TECHNOLOGY INC.

Sole Technology skates toward a green future

Pierre André Senizergues can make skateboards do anything. When he was in his 20s, he steered them from the Paris suburbs to Venice Beach and turned them into the key to an apartment he could afford when he started winning skate competitions. In his 30s, he used them as the foundation of a multimillion-dollar Orange County-based footwear, apparel and accessories empire. And in his 40s, he made them the literal building blocks for a line of museum-quality furniture and even a springboard to being an executive producer of Leonardo DiCaprio's "The 11th Hour" documentary about global warming. More...

BLAKE MYCOSKIE: TOMS SHOES

Toms Shoes' model is sell a pair, give a pair away

The power of shoes. It's something most women and many men understand completely. And it is what transformed the young, shaggy-haired, rope-bracelet-wearing entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie into a visionary business leader hobnobbing with former President Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu in less than three years. The 32-year-old founded Toms Shoes based on the simple idea that for every pair of his canvas shoes you buy, a pair is given to a child in need. More...

DIY Style: Take inspiration from designers who retrofit fashion

Regardless of their past glamour, a few dresses in Doris Raymond's collection are, frankly, wallflower wear. The Chanel tweed jackets and Richard Tam gowns, of course, will never find their way to this category. But other specimens have funereal necklines, sequins that fail to seduce, drab silhouettes and floor-length skirts that leave everything to the imagination. They've tasted fashion's kiss of death -- they're passé. More...

Eco-friendly AND stylish fashions

The cliche about "green clothing" is that it's one step removed from a burlap sack with armholes and a felt appliqué of a peace sign or a tree. There is a lot of that genre out there -- especially T-shirts that make their "green" statement by literally being green or brown and splashing a "recycle" icon across the front. More...