Some of you might remember my love for Nau. Since many of their pieces are so sporty, I haven’t featured them in a while, but isn’t this new Down Stole beautiful?

Nau’s ethics are absolutely unwavering. In this piece, the face fabric and lining are made from 100% recycled polyester, and the 850-fill goose down fill is naturally renewable.

It’s $230 and will last you forever, both in style and quality — which is just one more of Nau’s awesome design tenets.

If you haven’t heard about Nike’s green design movement, I’m not surprised. The company has intentionally not promoted it significantly. As I wrote before, Nike product designer Jane Savage said that Nike wasn’t promoting the Considered message more because “the average sneakerhead isn’t ready for that message yet.”

The fact that the company is taking significant strides toward cradle-to-cradle product design and not even promoting it as a selling point of the shoes is absolutely incredible. Nike will gain credibility for green design where some eco brands will never dream — because Nike is still putting performance first, and when satisfied Nike-wearing athletes eventually do learn about the their shoes’ green-cred, sustainable design as a whole will WIN.

Read more about Nike Considered’s internal design standards here, from my February 2008 article.

Thanks to nitrolicious.com for an extensive and exciting update on Nike Considered, recounting its Spring 2009 launch event in NYC on Tuesday.

“For Spring 2009 Nike Considered Design will be featured in all six of Nike’s key categories, including ACG, tennis, running, soccer, women’s training, men’s training, sportswear and basketball. Nike’s best selling running shoe, the Pegasus, celebrating its 25th anniversary, is the first pinnacle running shoe to be Nike Considered Design.”

Read the full report from nitro:licious and glance through her 20+ pics of products and installments at the event. Check out my report from last February when the newest Air Jordan went Considered.

I have had the privilege of covering Nau’s comeback for Worldchanging.com, and with that has come the treat of meeting Mark Galbraith, Nau VP of Design, and Gordon Seabury, president of Nau’s new sister company, Horny Toad. HT purchased (saved!) Nau about six weeks after its close.

Nau’s fall/winter line had already been designed before the company’s close in May, and Mark was generous enough to share an exclusive preview with me. More behind-the-interviews info at the end of this post, but for now, I proudly present: Nau Fall/Winter 2008!

And Horny Toad has a fall line, too!

The major details of the Nau+Horny Toad partnership are covered in the Worldchanging article, including the evolved approach to webfronting and Community Partners, and where Nau will be sold in the future. My inquiries about how much Nau would change were all answered with confident assurances that it will remain just as transparent and innovative a company as it’s always been — and, more importantly, that both companies will end up stronger together than they were apart.

Like Nau’s new use of Planet Access Company for its distribution. Ah, PAC… it has my heart. A first-rate distribution center employing developmentally disabled adults in Chicago, Gordon worked on the side to found this company a year after founding Horny Toad in the mid-1990s. When we talked, his passion for this cause was clear and sent us both on a little digression. He told me about how the idea for PAC came about.

“We’ve always wanted to be the best environmental citizen we could be,” he says. “Where we can be leaders is in the social space, and now more and more of our peer organizations are thinking about this. It gives Nau a whole other social responsibility venture.” (Amen!) “When our relationship with Nau started, I was most excited for PAC,” he said. “This will really put their organization on the map.”

What Horny Toad offers to Nau in this new distribution partner, Nau offers to Horny Toad in paving the way for it to join the webfront model, the Community Partners program and incorporating more sustainable materials. “We’re at about 70 percent sustainable with our products now,” Gordon said about the HT line. ‘We’re trying to close the gap to 100 percent.”

Mark recapped a wonderful list for me of how Nau will still lead the sustainable fashion sector:

• Factory code of conduct with a third party audit by a non-profit labor group for all garments we produce.
• Restricted substance list for dyes and finishes — many companies use some percentage of organic cotton or recycled material but do not look at dyes and finishes. The testing for these substances is also done by a third-party lab.
• All our textiles are of the highest level of sustainability: All cotton is 100% certified organic. All polyester is recycled and designed to be recycled at its end-of-life. Many companies use a blend of organic and non-organic cotton or only a percentage of recycled poly with virgin poly. Generally this is to done to keep costs down and margin up. Our approach is to maximize the sustainability of our garments. The only non-organic or non-recycled materials we use are very small percentages (2-15%) of performance fibers that are not yet available in sustainable options. These are fibers like Spandex, which give a garment stretch and good recovery over the life of the product.
• Sustainable design aesthetics and functionality, which includes ideas like: Multi-functional garments you can use for sport and daily life. You can buy less stuff that works over a wider range of activities… urbane to outdoor. Color and design aesthetics that are timeless and classic. Durable, well-made garments that last. All these ideas are a solution to the consume-and-discard mentality and the need to have a specific outfit for every activity.
• Garment care: All our garments are designed for low-impact care. No dry cleaning needed. All can be washed in cold water with good results.
• Giving program that is customer choice directed.
• Close partnerships with non-profit change agents.
• Garment end-of-life programs: Garments are designed with an end-life strategy in place. They either can be recycled into new garments/fiber or composted.

On the outside, the two companies will continue to operate separately. On the inside, they will combine their strengths into not one, but TWO brands that will innovate and change the way we shop.

Which tells me that this time, Nau is here to stay. With its new partner close by its side.

Still want more? Treehugger broke the Nau 2.0 story with a wonderful overview, including more about the impassioned consumer response that was the impetus for re-birth (just read these comments!). Nau’s blog, The Thought Kitchen, is chronicling the transition from the inside.

The new Nau website and fall/winter line will launch August 1.

Today is Earth Day, which, by the nature of my blog, I guess I should be celebrating. So let’s celebrate! It’s all-you-can-eat today…

1) Rashida Jones, better known as the season-long obstacle to Jim and Pam’s imminent romance, even better known as Karen from The Office, has launched an eco-friendly clothing line. Read a not-so-enthusiastic mini review at Gretchen’s Closet and judge styles for yourself at Steven Alan.

2) Chicago seems to have been amassing an impressive earth- and people-friendly fashion scene lately, with Pivot Boutique topping the list. Pivot brands include Beau Soleil, Stewart+Brown, Sling & Stones and Linda Loudermilk, plus many more awesome designers I covered at last fall’s Portland Fashion Week. Sadly, Pivot doesn’t offer online shopping, but join me in using their Contact Us email address to request it!

3) Around the time I was posting about Michael Jordan’s sustainable XX3, Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns was premiering his own green shoe: The Trash Talk is made of recycled leather scraps. Bless you, Nike, for being amazing.

4) Remember Elle Magazine’s news-making Green Issue last April? It felt like a huge stride then — just 12 short months ago — and this April, the mag is casually hitting newsstands with “our annual green issue.” What, social responsibility has become banal? Yes, yawn, of course it has. (I mean, of course it has!)

5) American Apparel and H&M have only been increasing their use of organic cotton. I’m happy to see that AA is expanding their organic color options, though barely — most pieces are still natural-colored cotton with green contrast stitching, but I could get into these unisex undies.

Several years ago, we saw a new side of Nike in the earthy-looking Nike Considered line.

Now, Considered isn’t a line of shoes — it’s a paradigm. At the AIGA Compostmodern conference in San Francisco last month, Nike product designer Jane Savage gave a surprisingly transparent presentation on Nike’s sojourn to become a poster child of corporate sustainability. In time, the principles of “Considered design” will affect everything they do.

As if to prove this point as emphatically as possible, may I introduce the XX3: Not only the 23rd and potentially last-ever Air Jordan — but also Nike’s most socially-responsible basketball shoe ev-er.

Skeptical? I’m not. Not at all. This paradigm shift has been in the works at Nike for years now, and we’ve unknowingly seen glimpses of its evolution. For one, Phil Knight’s defensive reaction to labor practice violations about eight years ago — while Nike still doesn’t claim to have it all together on the topic, these advancements were in the works at the time. (When companies do openly share about their CSR, they are unwittingly opening themselves to scrutiny in all areas of their business. When watchdogs find an area to harp on, however large or small, it frightens the corporate transparency right out of them.)

The XX3 meets Considered’s new Gold standard. The Considered group has refined a matrix for products to be rated on, much like LEED building standards, with Gold, Silver and Bronze standings. The matrix is made up of a sliding scale in three areas: 1) Toxins, 2) Waste creation and 3) Product innovation. For a product to achieve a ranking, it starts with a game of give-and-take. If an aspect of the product requires the use of more toxic adhesives, it must generate less waste and be more innovative. Et cetera.

Nike’s big goals in product design are based entirely around its Considered certifications. By 2011, all Nike footwear will meet the Bronze standard. By 2015, all apparel, and by 2020, all equipment.

Right now, the XX3 isn’t the only Considered Gold product out there. Jane also teased us with images of the Feenix, a women’s running shoe, and a jacket (whose model name I need to check my notes on — I’m dislocated and writing from memory at the moment!)

As for labor practices, rest assured. Well into Jane’s presentation, she said that when Nike is advising other companies on corporate social responsibility, their first piece of advice is to set straight the company’s labor compliances. Nike’s attitude toward labor practices is one of humility and learning, and they really appreciate the magnitude of the topic: “When we look at our overall footprint in the world, the needs of the nearly 800,000 workers in our contract supply chain overshadow any other group,” reads a page on the wonderful nikeresponsibility.com.

Speaking of advising other companies, Jane reports that Nike’s been going above and beyond. While innovating low- to nontoxic adhesives, recycled materials, waste recycling and much, much more, Nike has been sharing their knowledge with partners and allies around the globe. Think they’ve got a tip you could use? Just ask!

I could go on and on here with this list of good gestures. To name a few, Nike is eliminating their use of PVC, a carcinogen. They’ve developed a nontoxic glue that they’ve shared with the entire footwear industry. Their Beaverton, Oregon, HQ was the first LEED-certified Gold for an existing building. They were the world’s largest buyer of organic cotton until recently (a title now held by Wal-Mart — more on that coming soon.)

Of course, this feel-good story begs the question of why we all didn’t already know all this. Why it’s not a cover story of every major newspaper, magazine or blog you read.

For starters, the XX3 was able to scale so easily to the top of Considered rankings because it was designed by a very small and elite group — it didn’t have the rounds and rounds of reviews that most Nike products go through, where Considered design elements can be sacrificed for lower prices, faster production times, etc. (Since completing this shoe, veteran Jumpman designer Tinker Hatfield now says he doesn’t want to design a shoe that’s anything less than Gold. How’s that for a convert?)

But the biggest reason we haven’t heard about this before is Nike’s own perception of what their buyers want. “Marketing (the department) says the average sneakerhead isn’t ready for that message yet,” Jane admits — suggesting that it’s up to us to convince Marketing otherwise.

Using the email address given on nikeresponsibility.com, we can all weigh in. As consumers, we buy the Nikes, we have the power. Write now.

Just do it!

Today, Feb. 23, marked the official Air Jordan XX3 release.

If I were a betting person, I’d bet you’ll LOVE this dress/jacket in Nau’s spring line.

Haven’t yet read all about Nau? By all means, please do. They’re a world leader in conscientious clothing production, from labor practices to materials innovation to digitally-driven stores and beyond. In the particular description for this dress/jacket, its suggested uses range from off-road biking in the rain to going out for drinks. Which is entirely by design. In addition to their garments being extremely durable and long-lasting, their design aesthetic is self-described as “vague and inconclusive” so that each piece may be used in a maximum number of settings. What it all means? That the $198 for this dress is a hell of a deal.