Sweet Skins

My new fuzzy hoodie was your fizzy drink bottle!
Sweet Skins makes this super comfy Eco-fleece hoodie from 2-liter bottles - who knew soda bottles could feel so soft and cozy?

I love the simple design - it has a flattering contour, exposed serger stitching, and I'm a sucker for its belled sleeves. And it's comes in such a nice rich brown... anyone who knows me knows about my penchant for brown.

BTW...Is that a Providence thing? My friend Laurence was visiting this weekend from Brooklyn, and pointed out that everyone in Providence wears brown, as opposed to the NYC black standard. I thought she was nuts, but when I looked across the counter at Taqueria Pacifica, there were five diners in a row all dressed in brown silkscreened shirts. Hmmm....

But back to Sweet Skins...There is a wrap version of this hoodie that you should check out. It's really elegant, and it's what I originally hoped to purchase, but the site seemed to be sold out of it in my size and kept defaulting the order form to the pullover. I'm not disappointed though - I'm very happy with my purchase. I may just have to go back for the wrap version one of these days though! And maybe I'll do something crazy like order it in blue!

Green or Gimmick?
So I have been wondering about the whole Eco-fleece thing - is it really a sustainable choice? Does it use just as much energy in the recycling process as it does to make it fresh? Or is all polar fleece (polyester fleece) made out of recycled soda bottles? Is calling it Eco-fleece just a marketing scheme for up-pricing it?

I sleuthed around a little on the Internet and here is what I found, thanks to Answers.com, among others:

Polyester fleece Making polyester fleece from recycled PET bottles is a significant means to reducing the amount of plastic that is otherwise buried in landfills. One manufacturer estimates that for every meter of polyester fabric made of 80% recycled PET, eight plastic beverage bottles are kept out of landfills. Patagonia, the leading manufacturer of recycled polyester fleece garments, estimates that 25 soda bottles go into each jacket made from the fabric. Recycling PET into polyester is also alleged to be less damaging to the environment even than growing organic cotton, because cotton leaches nutrients from soil and requires so much open space to grow. The energy used to make polyester from recycled PET bottles is also significantly less than that needed to heat the chemicals for virgin polyester.

So my verdict is:
GREEN!

Kudos to the ladies at Sweet Skins for making this lovely green hoodie in its warm and earthy brown!