When I was involved with the Live Earth project, I sampled some of the sustainable clothing — the hemp, bamboo and hybrid shoes and garments from prospective promotional partners that periodically floated through the production office. Live Earth’s chief of staff, Tom Feegel, called this stuff “smokable clothing.” It was mostly a big what-ev. I wasn’t feeling it.

Flash forward to last week. Our friend Shannon Porter shows me around Nau, the sustainable clothing store (men’s and women’s) in Chicago where she is one of the managers. (Nau is based in Portland.) The store where Shannon works is at 2118 North Halsted Avenue, smack in the heart of a great part of a great city. Shannon has a Wharton School degree and impeccable taste in music and friends and just about everything else, and so I want to think Nau is going to be cool before I ever set foot in it. But there is a shadow of a doubt in my mind. I mean, I’d had the unsatisfactory experience with the smokable clothes, and she did say a lot of their stuff is made from recycled polyester and, well, you know, the original polyester ain’t so great to begin with, so how could recycled — ??? (more…)