YES! Upcyling Car Seats into Couture!

pic from Sustainable Brands blog, thank you.

I am so excited about this year's Redress EcoChic Design Awards competition.  Look what these designers came up with by upcycling car seat covers from the Ford Motor Company!  

Redress founder and CEO Christina Dean commented: “Waste-to-landfill is a big issue our planet faces and we at Redress work to raise awareness about how we can reduce this. The Redress Forum: Ford Design Challenge was a great demonstration of how sustainable design thinking is as relevant for fashion as it is for the automotive industry.”  (Sustainable Brands blog entry)

The winners were Veronica Lee from Malaysia and Amandah Andersson from Sweden with this entry: 

From Ford's website: 

“We scored the foam on the reverse side of the seat fabric, revealing color and texture reminiscent of the stone walls of the legislature,” said Andersson. The award-winning, architecturally inspired outfit was handcrafted in three hours.

Amandah Andersson is definitely a designer to watch.  You can peruse her amazing creations on her website here.

Veronica Lee doesn't appear to have a website yet but you can see her sketches here. 

The Most Chic Shopping Cart You Never Did See (Until Now)

One day designer Xavier Degueldre was asked by his young son where Les Chariots de Supermarche (French for Shopping Cart:) go when they die.  After learning they have a meager lifespan of 10 to 15 years he decided to do something about it.   After much prototype development and testing he came up with several clever chairs crafted from retired carts. And in honor of the original question, there are child size options.
This perfect blend of post-consumer waste upcycling and uber chic design is a perfect ambassador for the eco design world, no?

All are numbered and can be custom ordered in colors of your choosing.  They run between $750 - $1400Euros.

Etoile - child sized roller chairs

Cowhide! 

The Haussmann & Versailles I 

The perfect dining al fresco set up for your chateau lawn:-)
CRAZY about this green! 

Upcyling a Jet - Malibu Style and Earth911

It's time to break the silence on the Southern Front.  It's been a busy, kid monopolized summer, but here's something amazing for your enlightenment nevertheless - - -

Have you seen the Wing House in Malibu?  Designed by David Hertz of the Studio of Environmental Architecture in Venice Beach,  it is largely constructed from a dismantled Boeing 747. 

Many of the large pieces had to be flown in by helicopter.  Hertz was devoted to upcycling as much of the jet as possible, even making a fire pit on the patio out of parts.  You can read a shortie about the house on my new favorite eco blog -  Earth911 - More Ideas, Less Waste. 

Click to watch a video tour of this magnificent house

I wonder how many centuries it will take to save up enough pennies to hire SEA to make a beautiful house & studio for me - - -