It’s been a while since we did a Friday Etsy Find, but this week’s pick is so great you’ll forgive the delay.

If you’re constantly trying to stay organized — and let’s face it, who isn’t? — you’ll discover the In Touch Clutch by Etsy seller DownstairsDesigns fills a black hole in your life. This multipocket organizer has space for everything you might need on the go, whether it’s a notebook and crayons to keep your kids occupied or your passport and boarding pass when you’re leaving for the airport.

The clutch folds up flat and stays shut courtesy of faux pearl snaps to keep everything secure. It comes in 600 different designs that you can custom order to pair with a sturdy and utilitarian unbleached linen.

We seriously might need two or three to keep everything we need at the ready.

DownstairsDesigns In Touch Clutch in Wallflower Greens, $27 at Etsy.com.

While not as urgent a need as the need for blood donations and clean water, the ongoing relief effort in Haiti will now benefit from the donation of clean clothes, thanks to casual brand Aeropostale.

Through February 12, the mall retailer is accepting donations of gently used jeans and will match each donated pair with a new one from their own line. And Aeropostale is offering a 25 percent off coupon to anyone who brings in a pair from his or her closet.

And there’s no reason to hold back: If the company collects more than 100,000 pairs of pants, the surplus will be donated to local charities and homeless shelters.

For more details, check out the Teens for Jeans page on DoSomething.org.

An Oregon man who set himself on fire in protest of a Portland fur boutique has died, police are saying.

Witnesses described the scene as pretty gruesome:

[A witness] said that after setting himself ablaze, the man tried to enter Nicholas Ungar Furs  at 1137 S.W. Yamhill St. He said the man also had something in his hands, but could not see what it was.

Cheema said a police officer was at the stoplight at Southwest 12th Street and Yamhill Street when the incident occurred and immediately responded.

By the time firefighters arrived, two police officers and bystanders had already put out the flames, Simmons said.

A short time later, charred materials remained on the ground around the building, including a shoe, but most were unidentifiable. Yellow police tape surrounded the scene.

The fur store has been the site of frequent animal-rights protests in the past and Cheema said the man was yelling something about the world ending and animals dying.

“People always come every day protesting,” Cheema said. “They’ve done some extreme things.”

Our condolences to his family, but this kind of violent protest has got to stop. No matter what you believe about the ethics of fur or other animal products, destroying a human life does not further the cause.

Vancouver is looking to lock down its position as the world capital of green fashion, and we’re pretty excited for Vancouver Eco Fashion Week, this year from April 20 to 22.

And if you live in Vancouver or will be in town next month for the Olympics, kick the party off early with an event on February 19 at the Vancouver Public Library.

The deets:

Enjoy an evening filled with live music by international performers Jill Barber, Vince Vaccaro, Adam Thomas and the Mike Allen Quartet, live painting by Caroline Weave, and DJ Phoenix Olivia. Opening speeches will be given by Lindsay Coulter from the David Suzuki Foundation and Our Social Fabric’s Kim Cathers.

You won’t want to miss the fashion show featuring favourite eco-friendly designers like Adhesif Clothing (adhesifclothing.com), Ashley Watson (ashleywatson.net), Dotted Loop (dottedloop.com), Kim Cathers Elements (kimcathers.com), Nixxi (nixxi.ca), and WE3 (we3.ca).

Mark your calendar for the Eco Fashion Forward Fundraising Night on Friday, February 19, 2010 at 8pm, happening at The Promenade at the Vancouver Public Library (350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC).

Tickets are $45 and can be purchased online at EcoFashionForward.EventBrite.com. Part of the ticket price will be donated to the David Suzuki Foundation, a Canadian environmental charity.

Want more info? Check out VEFW.com.

A month ago, when we were running our BrilliantEarth.com giveaway, we got a few emails from our vegan readers to complain about the labeling of pearls as ethical.

For them and others who refuse to wear fashion derived from any animal, there’s a new book out that explores the pearl industry and how the Chinese are revolutionizing the way pearls are made and marketed.

DeepGlamour.net reviews Tears of Mermaids: The Secret Story of Pearls:

As Chinese technology got better, more and more freshwater pearls came on the global market at a fraction of the price of their international counterparts. By the late 1990s, the best of the Chinese freshwaters were virtually undetectable from increasingly scarce Japanese akoyas, and soon, the Chinese pearls were available in even larger sizes than the Japanese species would allow. Symmetrical freshwater Chinese pearls now come as large as 14 millimeters (that’s as big as a marble), and are getting larger. Their skin can be flawless and comes in a multitude of colors (pink, blue, violet, orange, gold, gray), some right out of the shell, others the result of dye, chemical, and radiation treatments.

The flooding of so many Chinese pearls into the world market presented a problem for producers of more expensive pearls (just about every producer outside China). It’d be akin to the De Beers diamond syndicate discovering a competitor had come up with a new process that could create a genuine diamond, not a zirconium knockoff, but a real diamond that cost pennies to the thousands De Beers diamonds fetch. No wonder the worldwide pearl industry started screaming.

To be clear, the Tahitian pearls we gave away in our sweepstakes came from a farm that sustains an entire indigenous population without wasting freshwater or electricity, so while the pearls are harvested by sacrificing oysters, there can be good that comes from such an industry. But as with most ethical outlets, the good comes from a smaller production scale that values quality over quantity.

Earlier this month we reported on H&M’s Garden Collection and its lofty promises to clean up the fast-fashion retailer’s act. Unfortunately, new information may torpedo H&M’s big green hopes, if you believe genetically modified (GM) cotton shouldn’t bear an organic label.

As Ecoterre.com reports:

Roughly 30 percent of the tested samples contained genetically modified cotton, says Lothar Kruse, a director of Impetus, an independent lab in Bremerhaven, which examined the cotton fabrics in question. The contaminated cotton was traced back to India, which is responsible for more than half of the global supply of organic cotton, with an output of nearly 107,000 tons of fiber in 2009 alone, according to thee Organic Exchange.

India supplies more than half of the global supply of organic cotton.

The controversy over GM and organic cotton is far from over, but we can’t help but notice they have fairly compatible goals. Organic farming is designed to reduce farmers’ reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers that run off the crops and poison the habitats of native flora and fauna. Some strains of GM cotton have been developed to diminish the desirability of cotton for its main pests and to increase the crop’s heartiness in poor soil, meaning less pesticide and fertilizer are needed altogether.

So while it doesn’t excuse H&M for defrauding its ethical consumers, shouldn’t we be revisiting the GM debate to see if it’s worth berating a market leader for trying to do the right thing?

Prince Charles is reportedly planning new initiatives to bring wool back into fashion by promoting it as a green alternative to other textiles.

According to Luxist.com:

The Prince hopes his efforts will help make wool more popular once again for both clothing and carpet and rugs. Wool has a bad reputation as being bulky and itchy but the new push for wool plans to highlight the green benefits and beauty of wool compared to synthetic materials. Modern wool fabrics are also sleeker and softer and are being used in more innovative ways by top designers showing up in traditional Savile Row suits but also in wool bags from Marni and trendier pieces from Burberry and Paul Smith.

The Prince has his own organic flock of sheep and is aware of how lowering wool prices have affected farmers. British wool competes with wool from Australia, New Zealand and China among other countries.

In addition to the new label, Prince Charles is planning to help plan Wool Week, which will precede London Fashion Week this fall. Wool Week will be sponsored by British chain Marks & Spencer.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) is set to release a tee-shirt to raise money for earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti.

Designed by Peter Arnell and manufactured by contemporary brand Theory, the CFDA tee titled “Hope Help Heal Haiti” will donate 100 percent of the proceeds to the Bush Clinton Haiti Fund.

CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg says of the effort:

“The tragedy in Haiti has affected everyone and most of us individually have given money for relief … However, I think it is now important to send a message and create a channel for funding from fashion as an industry.”

You can buy the $25 tee starting February 12 from any retailer whose designer is a member of the CFDA or from CFDA.com.

Sign me up for any skin-care product that promises soft, smooth, hydrated skin in the winter. My legs always get crazy itchy! Like, for example, the sugar scrub by natural beauty line Simple Sugars. And not only does it make good on its claims, but it’s totally organic and vegan too.

What makes the sugar vegan? It uses raw sugar (like the stuff you get in the brown packet):

The only difference is the crystal size of the vegan sugar is a little larger, so it’s a bit more coarse than the regular formulation. It’s also a little darker in color due to the tan shade of the organic vegan sugar. If you have really sensitive skin, we recommend going with the original formulation which uses the refined sugar ( on purpose!) for its smaller crystal size and lower melting point which makes it a more gentle exfoliant.

Best of all, the scrub comes in five yummy flavors: almond, coconut, chocolate, raspberry, and rose (if foodie scents aren’t your thing). But don’t limit yourself to just one: In the sampler below, you get two scrubs, a facial exfoliant, and a foot treatment in addition to loofahs, microfiber facial cloths, a foot scrubber, and more. Would make a great Valentine’s Day present for sure!

Super Smooth Basket, $68 at SimpleSugars.com.

The U.K. Telegraph took issue with V Magazine‘s “Size Issue” this month, questioning whether the theme was merely “a publicity stunt”:

It includes a photo shoot with heavier, semi-clad models proud to flaunt their curves. The debate over plus-size models enflamed last year when Mark Fast, the fashion designer, decided to use size 14 models at London Fashion Week. At the same time, the popularity of Crystal Renn, the size 14 model, suggested that curvier models were becoming more acceptable.

Do you think the fashion world should use more plus-size models? Is it a welcome tangent to the size-zero debate? Or perhaps you think this photo shoot is just a publicity stunt? Which would you rather look at?

The headline and last question reveal a bit of journalistic bias on the part of the Telegraph, in our opinion. Curvier beauty ideals aren’t contrived — it’s simply not true that thinness has been universally prized throughout human evolution. Including plus-size models in magazines is about accurately representing the fact that plenty of women of size also want to dress fashionably and fashion rags are now beginning to respond in kind to that desire.

For more about the ethics regarding plus-size modeling, check out this post about Mark Fast and another about blogger backlash over Glamour‘s similarly minded plus-size fashion spread.