Style Expert Says Dress With Recycling in Mind : Leah Feldon of Ojai advocates low-cash-outlay, high-fashion shopping that is also planet friendly.

Here’s a way to look ever more fashionable while helping to save the planet: Just heed the advice of Ojai fashion expert Leah Feldon. This week she has been in Hollywood videotaping a series, “Focus on Style” for cable TV’s Learning Channel, to be aired later this year. She has her own spin on the environmental slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle.” An advocate of smart, low cash-outlay, high-fashion shopping, her message is “you can make yourself look twice as good for half as much.”

In her series of best-selling fashion books on this theme, such as “Dressing Rich: A Guide to Classic Chic For The Woman With More Style Than Money,” Feldon enumerates ideas that sound like something for the Birkenstock crowd: Dust off your sewing machine, rediscover stuff relegated to the back of the closet, even borrow clothes from husband or dad. Her approach is actually more upscale than it sounds, and it is planet friendly because these techniques reduce consumption and promote recycling.

When it comes to shopping, Feldon recommends that consumers “learn about the best. Start with Armani. Start at the top and work down.” Start at that level of quality--or at least study the fabrics and cut involved, suggests Feldon. Select a few classics and make good, long use of them because “there’s no reason to buy so much--a whole wardrobe every season,” she said.

Knowledge is the key. “You have to know something to shop well--whether at Loehmann’s or K mart.” After familiarizing yourself with fabric quality and workmanship, Feldon then advises consumers to hone some other skills. Buy and wear the thing the way it was intended, then figure out another way to wear it. Later, use the fabric for some other purpose around the house such as pillows, and then turn it into a cleaning rag. Nothing is to go to the landfill.

In this respect, Scarlett O’Hara should be our example. “She was the queen of recycling,” quipped Feldon. For today’s woman, Feldon offered this suggestion: hang onto your finery for a decade or more, then give it to your daughters. They will probably “think it’s funky by that time.”

Daughters are already hip to the idea of wearing secondhand clothes. The kids go “thrifting” with the sort of manic glee hunters have for deer. Two percent of the stuff in landfills is fabric, and it would be higher if the younger generation wasn’t cruising the thrift shops and the back of mom’s closet.

Feldon is quite thorough in her promotion of efficient use of materials. Her books advocate a form of triage when it comes to mail order fashion catalogues. “When they come in the mail, write back to the ones you don’t want to continue getting and tell them to stop,” she said. One reason is to avoid clutter at home. Another is that catalogues constitute a further 2% of what we heave into landfills.

Ventura County fashion mavens who have bought into the chic-but-thrifty trend may find happiness at a couple of local shops--Rodeo Drive Resale in Thousand Oaks and Delusions of Grandeur in Ojai.

Barbara Bernstein, owner of the east county store, echoes Feldon’s sentiments that shoppers need to study the top brands for ideas. “Ninety percent of my selling I do by educating the public. They learn about a ‘good suit.’ That doesn’t mean something with glitz.”

Because she runs a resale shop it’s in her self-interest to urge women to buy the best and then, if they wish, bring things to her on a consignment basis. But her manner of saying it is quite bracing--and applies to a lot of consumer items: “If it has to go around a second time, it better be good enough to qualify the first time.”

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* FYI: Ojai fashion expert Leah Feldon’s cable TV series, now in production, is scheduled to start on The Learning Channel later this year. But meanwhile, her bestseller from Villard Books, “Dress Like a Million--On Considerably Less,” is available at local bookstores. It advocates recycling.