By Brandolon Barnett
The voting is now underway for our Green Business Awards, and as the votes flow in we're going to be taking a closer look our nominees. Today, getting to know some of the great green food stores in DFW.
Resale clothing and sustainable fashion are areas that we’ve covered extensively here at Green Source (most recently with this week's story on Fashion Forward Cedar HIll), and for good reason. Some of the most impressive statistics on the volume of waste that takes place in America involves the clothes that we wear, specifically our propensity to discard items not because they cease to be of usable quality, but because we’ve simply grown bored of them. The resale clothing category of our Green Business Awards honors those companies helping to introduce sustainable clothing options into the DFW community.
Plato's Closet (the DFW Lake Highlands location) is a national brand known around the country for its sale of gently used clothing. By recycling products that remain trendy and retain their popular appeal, this chain of stores promote sustainability in our community by driving home the idea that not every item of clothing need be new to be fashionable. This is made particularly potent when you consider the generation that this message reaches, namely the young teens that consitute the store's core demographic.
Entering Pandemonium on Henderson Avenue in Dallas can feel a bit like falling through the looking glass. The store is full of collectibles and vintage clothing of stunning variety. Buried in the seemingly endless racks are treasures for folks of just about every imaginable taste.
Goodwill Industries of Fort Worth, Inc. is focused on recycling and re-using clothing. Backed by the internationally renowned Goodwill name, an organization that donated 82% of its earnings to employment, training, and support services to more than 4 million folks in 2010, a vote for Goodwill Industries is a vote for sustainable resale of clothing with ancillary benefits to underprivileged populations throughout our metroplex.
Zola' Everyday Vintage is a quaint shop located in the Bishop Arts area of OakCliff. A walk into the store is very distinctively a walk in the past, full of styles and items cared for with an almost palpably meticulous attention to detail. Praised in local circles and even hailed by American Express’s Departures as one of the world’s top vintage stores (that’s right, the world!) Zola’s fits right into a community at the center of Dallas’s push to integrate sustainable initiatives into its future – an area pioneering the use of bike-friendly infrastructure and with affordable organic and local fair on every street corner, Zola’s blast to the past is about more than reclaiming the Mad Men style. It’s about engaging a community with the idea that new is not always better, for ourselves, our community, or our style.
Bess & Evie's Vintage in Ft. Worth Texas has gained quite a bit of popularity since its opening in May of 2010. The store is the lifelong dream of Kalen Ruiz, who named the store for her grandmothers. Advertising vintage dresses, hippie tops, an entire wall of cowboy boots, and an atmosphere in which customers can not only buy items but feel comfortable hanging out and having a glass of wine, Bess & Evies Vintage is among the green stores in Dallas seeking to create a community with sustainability at its core.
Clothes Circuit in Dallas is unique for its focus on connecting luxury with sustainability. Given the historical challenge of battling the stereotype that consignment or resale denotes undesirability or poor quality, this idea is critical if resale clothing is to take root in the American conscious, making it easier for all of us to find and purchase items that haven’t added a new burden to our environment.
Check out the latest voting results and vote today to support your favorite resale cothing store among the group!
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