Kalso Earth Shoes

Get 20% off Kalso Earth Shoes this Earth Day! Just use code Earth20 at checkout

Find Kalso Earth Shoes at www.DownDogBoutique.com the best online source for Yoga lifestyle products.

It’s a story that goes back more than 40 years. Anne Kalsø, a Danish yoga master, made the insightful observation that the daily raising of the toes relative to the heels could actually help people attain a physical feeling of wellness like that experienced in the yoga position - ‘Mountain’ pose. Inspired by the thought that wellness, in its most organic form, could be part of an everyday experience, she set out to develop the very first Kalsø Earth^® Shoe.

From those passionate beginnings now thrives an expansive collection of casual wellness footwear. Each and every one true to its roots as ‘the original wellness shoe’.

Designed by nature.   Created by Kalsø.

See the collection here at DownDog Boutique

A little history courtesy of Wikipedia:

Earth shoes (also known as Kalso Earth Shoes) were an unconventional style of shoe invented in the 1970s in Scandinavia by Danish shoe designer Anna Kalsø. Unlike most other shoes, the soles were thick and the heels were thin (Negative Heel Technology), so wearing them one walked heel-downward.

The shoes were introduced in the United States in New York City on April 1, 1970. This was the first "Earth Day" and so the shoes became known as Kalso Earth Shoes.

The shoes surged in popularity and were prominently featured on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and TIME Magazine. Unable to keep up with demand, franchise owners pursued litigation against the United States distributor of Kalso Earth Shoes, and the brand discontinued being sold at retail by the late 1970s.

In 2001, Kalso Earth Shoes re-surfaced as the rights to the name, technology and branded properties was purchased by Meynard Designs, Inc.

Here are a couple of photo's of Ann Kalso in the 1970's with her shoes:

A little more detailed history courtesy of Earth Shoes:

It's a story that goes back more than 40 years...

Anne Kalsø was born in the Faroe Islands off Denmark in 1905. Her life was defined by a deep immersion in the study of yoga, and the fundamental belief that wellness principles needn't be reserved for just one aspect of an individual's life, but could be wholly integrated as part of an everyday existence.

Kalsø 's passion for yoga led her to study in Switzerland and eventually in Santos, Brazil. It was there, in 1957, that she observed the excellent posture of indigenous Brazilians, and the impressions left by their bare footprints as they walked through beach sand. She observed that the footprints laid were deeper in the heels than in the toes. This natural body position resonated with the thoughtful Kalsø . It echoed a formative yoga pose she knew well – Tadasana (the 'Mountain' pose).
As she herself emulated the pose of the native Brazilians, she noticed how her own posture improved, and how her breathing passages opened. She was inspired.

Returning to Denmark, Kalsø enlisted the help of a Portuguese shoe maker to begin what would become a 10-year process to design the original Kalsø Shoe. Although not a shoemaker by trade, Kalsø was deeply immersed in the process of shoe development -- even testing prototype models on long hikes that covered hundreds of miles. According to Kalsø , "it took numerous years of hard work before I reached the final form of my shoe that takes into consideration all the natural demands of the foot and body. It is only now that I know I have created something. It is no longer an idea in my mind, but is something that is thoroughly tested and proven."

Kalsø began selling her shoes from a modest storefront in Copenhagen. Those who discovered her shoes became passionate about their benefits. Many reported that the shoes helped ease chronic foot and body problems. Expectedly, people from around the world inquired about the shoes. But Kalsø insisted that they be experienced in-person prior to being worn.

Even with such interest and fervor, it was not until the mid-to-late 1960's that Kalsø entertained the idea of expansion – ultimately exploring retail beyond Denmark. And specifically in the United States.

April 1st, 1970 would mark the much-heralded opening of the first United States distribution point for Kalsø 's shoes. Coinciding with the first Earth Day, the name of the shoes - on the spot – was changed to "Kalsø Earth Shoes" and capitalized on the youthful movement and energy that defined the day. The trajectory of a wellness enterprise was underway. With much thanks and credit going to a Danish yoga instructor, a belief that wellness could be part of everyone's daily existence, and a simple shoe.

Kalsø Earth Shoes. Designed by Nature. Created by Kalsø.

1971The Kalsø Earth Shoe becomes the symbol of the 'casual revolution' started on college campuses around the country. Comfort and wellness inform the thinking of many progressive young people nationwide.

1975The Metropolitan Museum of Art places a Kalsø Earth Shoe in its permanent collection, securing its place as an icon that balances both form and function.

1990'sRestoring the name and its technologies, the Kalsø Earth Shoe is re-scoped and re-vitalized under a new company -- Earth, Inc.  New fashion-forward styling and an expanded assortment - all of which features the Kalsø Earth Shoe's signature "negative heel" – provide the underpinnings of the new enterprise.

2003Kalsø Earth Shoe distribution expands into markets including Canada, Japan, Italy and Australia.

2008Reputable industry trade publication, Footwear Plus, honors Earth, Inc. with an "Excellence in Design" award.

1970The first Kalsø Earth Shoe store opens on East 17th Street in New York City, coinciding with the world's first celebration of Earth Day.

1974TIME Magazine publishes an extensive story on the Kalsø Earth Shoe.  Demand soars.  A full-page ad appears in national publications stating, "Please Be Patient.  We're Making Our Shoes as Fast as We Can!"

1980'sUnable to keep up with demand, the Kalsø Earth Shoe in its first incarnation is no longer able to be sold at retail in the United States.  Regional networks of consumer loyalists develop – petitioning to bring back the Kalsø Earth Shoe in some form.

2001The Kalsø Earth Shoe is officially re-launched.  Noting its re-emergence, famed European shoe designer, Manolo Blahnik, remarks in a June TIME Magazine article "… the Kalsø Earth Shoe was the first shoe to ever make a social statement …"

2004Leading the sustainable footwear design evolution, Earth, Inc. becomes one of the first shoe manufacturers to introduce water-based adhesives throughout 100% of its line.

2010Leveraging the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, Kalsø Earth Shoes celebrate their 40th birthday.

Yoga Clothes

DownDog Boutique.com was founded in 2012 to provide an online outlet for smaller and unique Yoga Clothes manufacturers to offer an alternative to the mass produced Yoga Clothes of the giant corporations like Lululemon and Lucy.

At www.downdogboutique.com you can now find over 30 brands of Women's and Men's Yoga Clothes each with their own showcase. Many offer Organic Yoga Clothing and are often made in the USA by small workshops or individuals.

In addition to brand showcases our Yoga Clothes are grouped together to make certain types of Yoga clothing easier to find:

All Women's Yoga Tops

All Women's Yoga Pants

All Women's Yoga Dresses 

All Women's Yoga Hoodies and Jackets

All Men's Yoga Shirts

All Men's Yoga Pants

Here are direct links to some of our most popular Yoga brands:

Women’s Yoga Clothing

Green Apple  Activewear         Body Angel Activewear 
Earth Yoga Organics        Yoga Styles

Jonano Organics          Chakras by Didi 
Electric Yoga by Michelle Bohbot 

BelaBela by Bela Roogta       Hyde Yoga Clothing 
Synergy Organic Yoga Clothing

Jala Clothing      Awear Yoga Clothing   
Eagle Warrior YOGA     Anjali Clothing

Spacecat    Minawear Organic Hemp     Nayad Aqua Sportswear  Yogamat Clothing     Yogi Clothing

Men’s Yoga Clothing

Chakras by Didi Men’s       BelaBela by Bela Roogta Men’s  Champion Sports      Jala Clothing Men's  
Eagle Warrior Mens    Anjali Mens    Minawear Mens

We welcome any comments questions or feedback

Contact us

How to wrap an Anjali Silk Bracelet!

Hema was kind enough to create this guide to wrapping the Silk Bracelets. Follow the 6 easy steps below and enjoy!

See the whole collection of Silk Wraps here:

Anjali Silk Wraps

www.downdogboutique.com

Cocoon Jewelry by Suzanne Balestri

About the Artist

Suzanne Balestri was an interior designer when she first began her explorations with fused glass. After taking a fused glass workshop for fun in 2006, it didn’t take long for her passion for the glass medium to grow. She soon began taking more in-depth courses in fused glass as well as jewelry design and fabrication at UC San Diego. In 2008, Suzanne began selling her work and participating in art shows.

About the Art

These fused glass pieces of wearable art are handcrafted using a process originally developed by the Ancient Egyptians. Glass fusion requires carefully measuring, cutting and cleaning fusible glass before layering and assembling it into the desired conceptual design. The assembled unit is then placed into a kiln for several hours until it reaches 1475 degrees, the point at which the layered pieces melt into each other to become one piece.  The kiln is then cooled over several hours, which anneals the glass to give it strength and durability. A good portion of the pieces come out of the kiln requiring further work (called “cold-working”) which includes grinding, drilling, sawing or sandblasting, depending on the what the desired final outcome of the piece is.  After the piece is cold-worked, it requires another round through the kiln – at even slower heating and cooling rates – to “fire-polish” the piece.

Watch a video about Suzanne explaining the process:

Click here for Video

View the Cocoon Jewelry collection at DownDog Boutique here:

Cocoon by Suzanne Balestri

www.downdogboutique.com

DownDog Boutique says Hello Minawear!

Minawear was founded in 1998 by Mina Hegaard and her hemp activist brother Kenyon Gibson in Venice Beach California. Together they built the company to promote health, education, and the care of the planet. In 2007, the company was acquired by GeoMio, another Los Angeles based eco-fashion manufacturer.

Today Minawear is back in the hands of its namesake, and operating from Victoria Texas. In this stage of the Minawear re-launch, Mina is doing the productions in China, where the hemp is grown.

China is our choice because this is the only place in the world that has the capabilities to grow, process, knit, cut, sew, dye and package the hemp with the least amount of carbon footprint. All phases of the operation are closely monitored for the high quality and fair practices that Minawear has always been known for.

Kenyon resides in New York City, where he is a falcon artist, blogger and hemp activist.

See the collection here: Minawear

www.downdogboutique.com

DownDog Boutique says hello to Spacecat!

View the Spacecat line at www.downdogboutique.com or click here SPACECAT

About Spacecat:

Spacecat was created in New York City in 2000, when Yumi Miyanishi made a claymation short film called “Katzilla” (click to view movie)

As a four year old, my favorite thing was making clothes for my Barbie doll! Always interested in fashion and being different, after I started practicing Ashtanga Yoga, I noticed what women were wearing.  Seeing the same yoga/athletic-wear everywhere, I thought there must be other women who would like to dress differently to practice yoga or work out. Moving from New York to New Orleans and then to Miami Beach, the idea of my own  line gradually took shape.

With the encouragement and help of many friends, I decided to use my background in fashion design and create yoga/athletic-wear that I wanted to wear.

Spacecat Inc was launched in June 2010 in Miami Beach, Florida.

About Spacecat’s products:

We make garments that are fun to wear using technologically advanced textiles for Yoga, Running, Biking, Skateboarding, Rollerblading, Gym Exercise and Pole Dancing. Our Prints are wonderful for water activities like Swimming, Sailing and Boating. Or just wearing out as playful and colorful Street Wear!

All our Athletic wear collection uses four-way stretch fabrics, which is ideal for today’s active women.

All SPACECAT garments are happily made with sunshine and love in Miami, Florida, U.S.A by a mother and daughter and their friendly team.

SPACECAT Fabric care information

• Solid-color garments are made of Supplex and Lycra, with a soft cotton feel but moisture wicking and fast drying.
• Athletic top's lining is made of Coolmax fabric, specially developed to keep you cool by wicking moisture away from your body at an amazing speed to leaves you dry quickly!
• Our prints and holograms are made of nylon and spandex, which feels super lightweight and dries quickly.  It’s like not wearing anything—a performance enhancing plus!

How to care for all fabrics:

We recommend Machine Wash Cold Gentle Cycle with Like Colors. Hang Dry. Use Non-Chlorine Bleach only. Do not Iron. Do not Dry clean.

Hologram fabric must be Hand Wash Cold, Do not Ring, Hang Dry in Shade. Use Non-Chlorine Bleach only. Do not Iron. Do not Dry clean. (Hologram will come off in Machine wash and Dryer)

Bamboo Yoga Clothing: Green or Green washed?

Bamboo Yoga Clothing: Green or Green washed?

We have had quite a bit of feedback in recent weeks to our creation of an Organic Yoga Clothing category on our website www.DownDogBoutique.com

Some of the feedback addresses the questions about how environmentally friendly Organic Yoga clothing really is. We decided to carry out some research on the subject and put together a couple of blog posts with our findings.

Yoga Clothing can mainly be broken down in to four types of fabrics. Almost all require some form of stretchy material to be blended in such as Spandex or other synthetics. Spandex is made basically from petroleum as are nearly all stretchy clothing substances. There may be some Organic versions on the horizon in the near future but for now all stretchy Yoga clothes including Organic ones include some form of synthetics. Most Organic Yoga clothes limit the amount of synthetic materials to no more than 10% of the overall content.

So the four types are:

1. Non-Organic Cotton
2. Organic Cotton
3. Bamboo (All of which seems to be Organic in the Yoga market at least)
4. Synthetic

To make the subject more manageable and not to make the blog posts too long we will tackle each type in a different post. This first post will look at Bamboo as that is the one that is generally being accused of being “Green washed”.

Green washing for anyone not familiar with the term means that companies are taking a product that is not really environmentally friendly and claiming it is for the purposes of marketing that product as “Green”.

The case against bamboo clothing is pretty simple. No one really disputes that bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants on the planet, uses very little chemicals and fertilizers to make it grow and uses a fraction of the water compared to all forms of cotton.

This Wikipedia page summarizes the benefits of bamboo as a crop for fabric production very well: wikipedia 

The case against bamboo is based on the production of turning that Bamboo into fabric.

There are two ways to do this.  One is mechanical where they pulp and squeeze the bamboo with no chemicals.  This is fairly easy on the environment but produces quite rough fabric that people, and in particular people planning to exercise in the clothing, tend to find uncomfortable.

The second and more common method involves the use of Sodium Hydroxide also known as caustic soda to break down the pulp and help turn in it to the soft cashmere like fabric that is favored by most designers and wearers of bamboo clothing.

I have to say that having read many of the blogs and “news stories” that claim that bamboo production using this method is being green washed I really see little or no evidence for this view being produced. The claim is made that caustic soda is bad for the environment. This is clearly true, however what really matters is not what “could” happen to any chemical but what actually does happen. Let’s try and clear up some facts.

1. Bamboo fabric is pretty much all made in China. That is where most of the world’s bamboo is grown. It is used in the production of many products.
2.  There are few companies that convert bamboo to fabric and even fewer that then make the fabric into Yoga clothes.
3. Sodium Hydroxide (Caustic soda) is a nasty substance if left untreated. Besides clothing though, it is used in the production of paper in the food industry and in the home as a cleaner.  Treated properly it is relatively harmless.

It would seem therefore, that if the treatment of the waste products that are used to produce the bamboo fabric are handled properly then bamboo is probably the greenest of all the materials used to manufacture Yoga clothing.

I asked our partner (Organic) manufacturers that we represent in our boutique to comment on what kind of systems are in use for the production of the fabric and the handling of the chemicals.

Here is what Cristofer Smith the owner of Green Apple Organics had to say: “After 22 years of manufacturing textiles and garments for athletes, we own our own operation. We do our own knitting all the way through to what you receive. Then our patent process uses the Viscose method- an encapsulated method where nothing escapes from the drum except to be recycled or used again. Most evaporates so there is little left over if any.”

Bonnie Siefers, the owner of Jonano Organic Clothing, provided us with access to a statement by the Chinese manufacturer of Organic Bamboo fabric used mainly in their clothing. The fabric manufacturer, clearly responding to the Green wash criticism, issued a very detailed statement citing many third party verifications of its fabrics and processes. A lot of it is quite technical but here is the most relevant section to the core questions:

“One of the most important parts of the process is all recyclable. We process in a hermetic container where 100% of the chemicals that are used are trapped and contained - not released into our factory, environment or atmosphere. 73% of CS2’s are recycled, 26% are recycled into H2SO4. So those chemicals do not pollute any part of the environment.

Each step of the process is watched for many reasons: Company policy, brand commitment, and China's strict environmental ethical standards. We know many of these processing issues are extremely sensitive and we are committed to be a leader in the eco/green industry when it comes to bamboo fiber, but also for the safety of our team/staff.

We do not claim the entire process is “green”, but we do strive to be as eco-friendly as possible and are accountable for our process and recycling of these chemicals. Tanboocel bamboo fiber also has passed OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 which is another leader when it comes to testing for harmful substances. We have passed these OEKO TEX STANDARDS 3 years in a row. The bamboo we use and process is certified by (OCIA) Organic Crops Improvement Association International which is certifies our bamboo is organic bamboo under “wild crops” and certified organic under “organic farms”. Our vision and commitment has always been to be as eco-friendly as possible and has not changed in any part of our processing from start to finish.”

In conclusion, after having weighed up the issue we believe that at the very least the manufacturers offering Organic Bamboo clothing in our boutique (www.downdogboutique.com) do meet the criteria for labeling their products “green” or environmentally friendly. Clearly bamboo is a much better raw material and we believe that every effort is being made to process the bamboo into fabric in what are called “closed loop” systems where little or no harmful byproducts escape.

We will be examining what goes into the other three types of fabrics used in Yoga clothing manufacture and will devote a similar blog post to each type, however for now we believe that bamboo is the greenest of the options currently available.

We welcome feedback and opinions.  If anyone has any actual evidence that bamboo fabric production is causing harm to the environment rather than it “could” cause harm we would be happy to review it.

Namaste,

DownDog Boutique

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