Isaac Mizrahi's Salmon Leather Shoes and Dress

[Shomore]

I just went to the Cooper-Hewitt's current exhibit, <a href="http://cooperhewitt.org/EXHIBITIONS/Design-for-a-Living-World/">"Design for a Living World."</a> Not only was it incredible and inspiring, but I learned quite a few new things.

From the website: "Ten leading designers have been commissioned to develop new uses for sustainably grown and harvested materials in order to tell a unique story about the life-cycle of materials and the power of conservation and design."

Would you ever guess the materials for your shoes could come from a place like this?

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And from a process like this?

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As far as I know, there was one and only one pair of shoes included in the exhibit. These lucky shoes were the innovative, talented (and highly funny, I think) Isaac Mizrahi sustainable Alaskan white salmon skin shoes show below. Sorry for the slightly blurry photo but I had to work with what I could get and enlarge from press shots since photo was not allowed.

Salmon skin, ladies!! SALMON. SKIN. I assume they de-smellified them!

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Consumers don't need the skins and so they just go to waste. Here's a way for those beautiful skins to go to use. Mizrahi sent the skins to Paris to be attached to flat, round paillettes and then attached them to make this lovely dress.

<a href="http://www.shoeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/picture-19.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9653" src="http://www.shoeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/picture-19.png" alt="" width="500" height="330" /></a>

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Mizrahi said in the accompanying exhibit video that he found that because the salmon skin was already pretty and iridescent, his work was cut out for him.

Mizrahi also said that he didn't believe sustainable fashion design could work by sacrificing any level of glamour. Point taken, point agreed with.

Also check out Ted Muehling's lovely jewelry from Micronesia.

This is the debut venue of the exhibit, which closes in January of 2010 to travel to other cities. Do go to see it if you love the place where design and sustainability meet!