(Courtesy of the Andean Collection)

Anthropologie is known for gleaning its inspiration from handmade and artisan-made goods found in bazaars and flea markets around the world, but most of the time the products the retailer sells are replicas. Until now, when E.S. favorite the Andean Collection scored a big gig producing its fair-trade tagua bib necklace for Anthropologie shoppers.

The Andean Collection hires artisans in Ecuador to produce its line of jewelry, enabling them to earn a decent living without having to leave their families behind to find better job opportunities in the U.S. Most of the line’s jewelry incorporate nuts and seeds native to South America. Tagua, also known as “vegetable ivory,” was once the most commonly used material for buttons until plastic went mainstream in the 1920s.

For more about the Andean Collection’s mission, check out this essay written for us by the line’s founder and designer, Amanda Judge, and browse more fair-trade pieces in the company’s collection here.

“Perfect Skippers” Necklace, $68 at Anthropologie.com.

Swiss luxury jeweler Cartier has filed suit against members-only shopping website HauteLook.com for allegedly selling counterfeit, damaged, and secondhand jewelry bearing the Cartier name.

Cartier reportedly bought five watches from Hautelook to check them for quality, and the inspection resulted in the lawsuit. In it, Cartier says Hautelook never “partnered with Cartier and is not an authorized dealer of Cartier’s merchandise.”

According to Reuters:

HauteLook is “causing immediate and irreparable harm to the Cartier brand and trademark,” Cartier said in its 36-page complaint filed on Tuesday evening in Manhattan federal court.

Cartier claimed that HauteLook has sold used Cartier watches despite maintaining on its website that it “never” sells “secondhand merchandise, ever.”

It also said HauteLook has also sold Cartier goods that were damaged, were shipped in the wrong packaging, or carried defaced authenticity certificates, and sometimes included a Cartier warranty booklet though the warranty did not apply.

Cartier is rumored to be asking for more than $2-million in compensatory damages. At best, this is an “oops” of major proportions; at worst, it’s fraud.

It might take a certain body shape and degree of confidence to pull this one off, but we can’t help but admire The Glamourai’s take on the summery caftan using two vintage silk scarves, thrift-store jewelry, and minimal sewing skills.

She selected two scarves of similar size (31″ square) and pattern, stacked them, and stitched an oversize hourglass outline down the sides to match her proportions and allow the excess fabric to drape around her body. Then she attached four grommets and threaded through mismatched goldtone chains as straps.

That’s it! DIY in hardly any time at all, and no cutting required. We also love how she accessorized it with YSL sunglasses, luxe bracelets, and a woven belt — all vintage.

More detailed instructions and photos can be found here.

Recycled textiles are gaining on organics as the most popular material used by eco-designers, and for good reason. There is so much gorgeous fabric already existing in the world, whether forgotten in warehouses or stashed at the backs of closets.

In E.S. Issue 40, we tackle recycled fashion as the creative wave of the future.

• Recycled fashion gets designers’ creative juices flowing with startlingly original effects. We pay homage to the technological developments of making the best of what we’ve got.
• Kara Cook, our DIY Doyenne, has inherited a cherished leather laptop bag from our publisher, Trevor Martin. You should have seen her face light up: She was practically drunk with inspiration of how to put the supple, broken-in leather to good use. In fact, she had so many ideas, we’ve broken up the DIY projects into three parts. Volume 1 of The Leather Diaries appears here, and stay tuned for the next installment in the series, coming soon.
• As an element, gold is one of the easiest precious metals to recycle, and boy have jewelry designers picked up on that fact. Check out this slideshow of five amazing metalworkers and their glittering creations.
• Have a closet full of clothes that are almost right, but not quite? Or an eye for vintage, but no DIY hemming skills? Fear not. Our guide to tailoring will show you how much you can expect to pay to alter your beloved dresses, shirts, jackets, and pants.
• Finally, in the spirit of recycled content (it’s nice how that works out thematically), we bring to you Seam Ripper, our collection of five stories reprinted from the Behind the Seams blog. We hope to see you in the comments soon!

If there’s one type of recycling in fashion that makes a world of sense, it has to be gold.

As an element, pure gold — the 24-karat kind — can be melted down and refashioned an infinite number of times with no change to its strength, shine, or molecular structure. It’s even easy to reclaim alloys, which are used to make the metal harder and more durable. Most frequently alloys are created by combining pure gold with nickel or palladium (for white gold), silver (for yellow), or copper (for rose), all of which are easy enough to extract and recycle as well.

The environmental impact of mining gold is a well-documented travesty, responsible for water and air pollution and displacing not just tons of earth per ounce but also the indigenous communities who have the bad fortune to live near a lucky strike.

Yet even high-end designers have found that there are literally tons of reclaimed gold available for purchase, meaning that no waste is created in the production of high-quality fine jewelry.

We profile five of these designers in the below slideshow. Click on any image to launch.

Call it Twilight engagement fever. In the latest installment of the vampire franchise, the heroine receives an Edwardian-era (seriously!) engagement ring that bears little resemblance to the classic solitaire. And now for only $1,979, die-hard fans can seal their own commitments to their human life partners with a copy of the ring that Edward gives Bella.

However, if you’re hankering for something a little more authentic and less mass-produced, there are plenty of genuinely vintage baubles in the marketplace. Your first stop should be to your local estate-jewelry shop so you can acquaint yourself with the different styles throughout the years, but feast your eyes on the following slideshow for a little lesson in antique jewelry.

Sometimes the best ideas strike purely by happenstance. Take the colorful “Electric Love” rings by Grain, a Seattle-area jewelry company. Co-designer James Minola whipped this up from scrap electrical wire while waiting for his partner, Chelsea Green, to finish an art class. Ms. Green’s friends admired the ring so much that they’ve added it as a permanent addition to their jewelry line.

Made to order from upcycled electrical wire from a building-materials supplier on Bainbridge Island, the hand-knotted ring comes in a rainbow of bright colors. From an email the designers sent us:

“Electric Love gives a second life to something that was headed for a landfill,” says Minola, “It is a small gesture but one that we always consider in our design work.”

Also, Grain is a member of 1% for the Planet, an association of businesses around the globe pledging to donate at least 1% of their annual sales to environmental groups. Feel-good all around.

“Electric Love” Rings, $19 at GrainDesign.com.

London Jewellery Week just wrapped up on Sunday, and to commemorate the fabulous flash of this glittering event, the Guardian published its guide to buying feel-good baubles.

Among the newspaper’s picks for the event’s best designers, many of whom were new to us:

First up, April Doubleday. She gets her inspiration from the coastline of Devon, where she is based, and FS particularly likes her glass collection(pendants from £75). Avasarah, a rather fabulous online ethical jewellery shop, has its own range too, with some excellent prices. This sweet hummingbird disc is made from 100% recycled silver, and is manually produced (no heat or chemicals involved). You can add on charms, but we think it’s nice just as it is, and for a bargain £29 too. More natural inspiration – but with a rather fabulous twist – can be found at Leblas, where this recycled silver and spearmint enamel pendant (£160) is a great combination of wearable yet distinctive. Note: the spearmint is not edible. Alas.

Over at CRED (the host for the ethical section of the show, no less), we’re in love with this gorgeous pendant by Annabel Panes. Inspired by Nepali designs, it’s handmade from 100% recycled silver by the Harigni Cooperative in Nepal (£85 for silver, also comes in gold).

Call us squirrels, but we’re suckers for pretty, shiny things — especially when they come with an ethical stamp of approval.

URTH Ethical Spearmint & Silver Pendant, £175 at Leblas.com.

I can’t get that gorgeous Gemma Redux tangled chandelier necklace out of my head, but $400 just isn’t in the jewelry budget at the moment. Luckily, LoveMaegan.com has easy-as-pie directions on how to DIY your very own layered necklace.

All you’ll need is to scrounge up some vintage baubles from the thrift store or your grandmother’s dresser, a pair of needle-nose pliers, and some chain and jewelry wire to hold everything in place. (A mannequin to get the layers to sit right as you work wouldn’t hurt either.)

When collecting your necklaces, visualize your final product. Do you want something blingy? Seek out rhinestones. Ethnic? Then you want necklaces set with turquoise and other rough-hewn or semi-precious stones. Mixing metals? Look for bronze and rose gold chains in addition to the standard silver and gold. You can also use the same technique to create a matching bracelet, as modeled to the left.

For the full photo tutorial, click here.

If you’re the type who wants to be the first among your friends to pick up on a trend, you’ll want to scoop up one of the limited edition statement necklaces made by Gemma Redux in collaboration with Loyale.

Rachel Dooley, the designer behind Gemma Redux, tore apart an antique chandelier for the crystals and set the stones in a tangle of reclaimed gold.

There are only 10 necklaces available, and we know that someone at Cynthia Steffe has already laid claim to one of them, tweeting about it being “a little bit preppy, a little bit rock n roll” last week and the perfect complement to a crisp white shirt. Will you be the lucky one to snatch up one of the other 9?

Gemma Redux “Emily” Necklace, $398 at LoyaleClothing.com.