Black Jeans, Business Casual

Note to self!

Buy black jeans for business casual events, poetry club meetings, etc.

Additional Note - Some brands, Walk Street for example, market specifically to people looking for business casual jeans. The top two photos here are from Walk Street.

Wearing the Same Thing Every Day

Let us pretend for a moment that you find a piece of clothing you really love wearing all the time.

For example lets say you really love white sweater dresses and you just wear them all the time (like the character Lana Kane in the TV show "Archer"). In case you are unfamiliar with sweater dresses, they are basically a sweater with a skirt attached. See the photos below.

Now is there something wrong with wearing the same things all the time? Not really. It definitely makes doing laundry easier if all your clothes are white, and you can still have some variety in terms of what styles of sweater dresses you have - or if you really love one specific style of sweater dress then you could just buy 10 copies of it. That way when you go to the closet and decide what to wear you don't really even have to think about it at all.

Although I do admit sometimes it will be too hot outside to be wearing a sweater dress - in which case you will probably want white knitted swimwear, white t-shirt, white shorts, etc. (Think of all the time you will save not having to worry about what to wear!)

Of course eventually inevitable happens and someone dies. Which means you have to wear black to the funeral. So you just get out your one and only black sweater dress.

Wearing the same things all the time is actually something frequently done by various successful celebrities. Here are some examples.

President Obama always wears grey or blue suits. He is a busy man after all and doesn't have time to be worrying about what to wear. He even explained this:

"You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits" [Obama] said. "I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make."

Steve Jobs wore a black turtleneck with jeans and sneakers every single day during his final years.

Mark Zuckerberg wears a gray t-shirt with a black hoodie and jeans when in public.

Albert Einstein wore several variations of the same grey suit all the time.

Having a diverse collection of clothing is overrated anyway. We waste so much time worrying about what to wear when in reality what we wear often doesn't really matter. Thus if you can pick something fashionable and then just stick with it, you will always be fashionable.

If you pick something that is timeless, looks great regardless of whether it is for work, play, formal or informal, well then you really don't need to worry about that any more.

And the sweater dress is one of those garments that you can do that with. It is good for everything, can be matched with pants or leggings for colder weather or you can choose to wear a sweater dress that is more airy when it is hot outside.

A sweater dress doesn't have to warm or thick during the summer months so it can be made with much lighter fabrics.

Organic Cotton Clothing

Organic Cotton Bra from rawganique.com

Organic Cotton Blouse from Etsy

Organic Cotton Hoodie and Shirt from Horny Toad

Are you looking for ethical clothing? The most ethical clothing you can get in the world is made from organic cotton.

Want to know the fastest way to get clothing made out of organic cotton? Just browse Etsy.

Etsy has 473,000 pages of organic cotton clothing!

AMAZING!!!

One BIG Fashion Tip for Vegans

On the PETA website ( see http://features.peta.org/how-to-wear-vegan/ ) they list acrylic, nylon and polyester as being "vegan materials" - totally ignoring all of the animals and even humans who are killed so the oil industry can make petrochemical fabrics and plastics.

So apparently PETA is okay with people wearing fabrics in which animals were killed in the Alberta Tar Sands to make oil to make petrochemical products.

Remember anything containing nylon, polyester, rayon or so called "synthetic materials" means animals were killed during the process.

Tar Sands = Oil = Petrochemicals = Polyester Shirt = Dead Animals killed by the Tar Sands

So basically what PETA is saying is "It is okay to wear clothing that indirectly killed animals, just so long as you are not directly killing animals and wearing those animals skin or fur or wool."

Learn more by reading Fashion Accessories for Vegans.

Conscious Evolution

If you are looking to lose weight and want to do it in a healthier manner, one way to do so is to become a vegan.

Check out book the Conscious Evolution by Lyn Rose.

Lyn Rose is a vegan writer living in Toronto and writes regularly on her blog Beautiful Vegan.

290 pages, full colour, vegan recipes and more!

If you are looking to make a healthy change to your diet consider reading her website or buying her book.

If you live in Toronto and are looking to lose weight then try getting a certified personal trainer from CardioTrek.ca.

Live well, eat well, exercise lots, and dress to kill!

Fashion Accessories for Vegans

Alberta Tar Sands Duck

Veganism is not just about what you eat.

For those who become vegans due to ethical reasons, veganism is an entire lifestyle that encompasses every aspect of life. When you become vegan you must not only think about what you eat must think about what you wear, what you use to clean your apartment, how you get around (choosing to use a bicycle or public transit instead of gasoline cars fueled by Alberta Tar Sands oil), where you go to have fun, what you teach your children. It really is about changing every part of your life so that the choices you make are cruelty free, animal product free, animal ownership free.

However this is no easy feat as most of the products we use on a daily basis has been touched by an animal at some point even indirectly. Even the plastics used in the packaging are from petrochemicals, which means that in Canada they're from the Alberta Tar Sands - which is a nightmarish ecological disaster of biblical proportions. The Athabasca Tar Sands alone is so large you can see it clearly from outer space, encompassing a space 200 km wide east-to-west and 400 km long north-to-south - roughly 70,000 square km. That is roughly 4.5 times the size of Israel.

Billions of metric tonnes of oil and tar from the Alberta oil industry is killing all the animals in the region - and killing fish and wildlife downstream from the tar sands too. And giving people in the region cancer from tar getting into the drinking water.

So if you live in Canada (and to some extent the USA, who buys a lot of the oil produced in Canada) every time you use gasoline in a car and every time you buy a product containing plastic or petrochemicals, then you are indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of animals and thousands of people in Alberta.

Alberta Tar Sands Ecological Disaster

So regardless of whether you are eating food at your favourite raw vegan restaurant in Toronto's Bloor West or going shopping for a new jacket, you need to start making vegan-friendly decisions.

Holding true to your vegan beliefs for ethical reasons means:

No buying leather.
No buying fur.
No buying anything containing an animal product. (Including certain types of dyes.)
No buying anything made of plastic or petrochemicals because animals/people were killed during the process.

These principles becomes even more complicated to stick to when you try to apply to non-food categories like fashion. You start to ask yourself "Is there such a think a vegan clothing and if so where do I find it?"

Well, if you are vegan you can rest assured that there are vegan clothing options available and below we will look at some fashion accessory options for vegans.

You can get belts, wallets, bags and even shoes at vegan exclusive stores both on the web and in the real world. These are real vegan products that provide you will a stylish option that adheres to true vegan values.

The belt on the right is from Roots of Compassion and is 12 Euros, and is made from polyester and steel. However polyester is a petrochemical product, so while it has "vegan" on the belt, the fact that it was made out of petrochemicals means that animals may have been killed during the process of getting the oil out of the ground.

If it was made out of cotton however then we need to consider whether the cotton was grown organically (with zero pesticides), so organic cotton is something you want to look for when looking for vegan fashion items. If you see the word polyester be suspicious.

Child Labour is popular in Bangladesh

Another thing you may not have considered it that when you look for a vegan product you may find some options in the stores, but often these products might have been made with low wage labour in poorer parts of the world. Child labour laws don't exist or are unpoliced in various parts of the world, thus making it very cheap to have clothing made there using forced labour, child labour, sweatshops, etc.

Veganism does focus on treating animals well both in life and death, but that does not mean that humans should be left out of the equation. It is truly in the spirit of veganism to try to ensure that the products you purchase treat humans being with dignity and respect as well and animals. Many fashion accessories do just that if they are vegan. They can provide you with the peace of mind of buying a product that treats all species well.

Vegan Vs Leather Products

There are always cotton options if you want to wear vegan clothing. Cotton is a natural plant product that if grown organically and without any animal byproducts or effort can be one of the best vegan products available to a practicing vegan. But if cotton is not your thing then why not try vegan faux leather products (faux leather = fake leather).

Yes, that's right, you can get faux leather products that look like the real thing. This includes products from belts to bags to wallets. Vegan belts can run you from $34 to $100 and are made from faux leather and cork. Bags come in a range of styles and colours including brown, black and teal. Bags can be made of vegetan bucky material, ultrasuede or nylon for $90 to $229. Wallets are also available in similar colour, materials and styles for $24 to $60.

Note: Nylon is also a petrochemical, so remember all the ducks, geese, fish and deer that got killed to make that nylon if the oil came from Alberta or other tar sands around the world.

Vegan Shoes

Vegan shoes come in a variety of styles even the most popular styles that most people look for including Uggs and Doc Martins. Shoes are often made of similar materials that the belts, wallets and bags. Of course prices vary with the style and materials, but prices can be from $99 to $199. These shoe options are not only stylish but will put your conscious at ease for being animal cruelty free.

There are many options available to vegans in terms of fashion accessories. They can look like real leather and come in styles that we are already familiar with. There is not need to think that because you are vegan you cannot walk the runway. Not at all, in fact your vegan clothing can turn heads and treat people and animals with dignity.

Okay, go back to drinking your vegan smoothie now. Hopefully you are drinking it out of glass instead of petrochemical plastic.