Courtney: Hey there Courtney here I’m with Melissa from Mountains of the Moon. She’s a designer and founder of this wonderful company. Hi Melissa

Melissa: Hi

Courtney: So tell us a little bit about Mountains of the Moon and what is your whole idea of why you make clothes and how are they eco-friendly, stuff like that.

Melissa: Okay. I started the business because I felt like there was, kind of a missing piece in the eco fashion business. There was a lot of maybe traditional maybe outdoorsy type stuff but there wasn’t any fashionable eco-friendly clothing. So that was kind of the premise behind it. We use organic cotton, hemp and tencel. Those are the fabrics that we use. They’re all eco-friendly. We just try to show people that you can be fashionable and wear nice designer stuff that’s still affordable and be eco-friendly.

Courtney: That’s great. Tell me a little bit about this awesome dress here, Charleston Chew inspired.

Melissa: Fourteen Chicago fashion designers were chosen to make dresses, mostly dresses, but really any kind of outfit last fall. It was part of Chicago’s fashion week called Fashion Focus. Tootsie Roll put it on so Charleston Chew is what I got. There were wrappers that were a little bit misprinted that would have ended up in a landfill. This is vintage silk and this is also considered eco friendly because it was just sitting around and it would have been thrown away. It’s kind of just to show people how things that normal people consider garbage that you just toss away you can make into other things and reuse and make them unique and still beautiful.

Courtney: Reduce, reuse, recycle. So, is this for sale or is this just for show?

Melissa: We had it on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Now we’re just bringing it to different events so that we can show people what I was talking about, how you can make cool stuff out of garbage.

Courtney: That’s great. Thank you for talking with us. Can you just say a little peace, love and green into the camera?

Melissa: Peace, love and green.