Get your sneakers on in time for London Fashion Week

London Fashion Week is kicking off this Friday and the fashionable crowds will be making their way to Somerset House. As excitement for fashion’s ‘next best thing’ rises, we’re still a bit hooked on the hot Spring and Summer collections hitting the shelves now. Eleni Sardi writes about Veja’s SS2010 collection.

As chiffon craze and lingerie galore are taking up fashion by storm, we decided to focus on a more wearable trend that appeared on the SS2010 catwalks by Alexander Wang and Hermes: sportswear. We’ve found the perfect sneaker collection to update your style and still keep it green.

Veja Taua’s collection for Spring-Summer 2010 is bringing lighter shades and brighter tones into the classic, streamlined design. With different shades of white, grey and blue in the colour palette, the sneakers come in 8 different colour combinations but the ones we particularly love are ice and grey ocean.

The sneakers are made with organic cotton, wild Amazonian rubber and vegetable tanned leather under fair conditions for every single step of the production chain. The company manufactures in Brazil, buying organic cotton from 320 families in the state of Ceará and working with Amopreab, an association of rubber tappers to source rubber directly from Amazonian rubber trees growing in the wild.

The Amazonian rubber tappers live in the forest and harvest from the trees using a new technology developed in the University of Brasilia. This technology allows the rubber tappers to transform latex into rubber sheets, without any industrial intermediary processes, permitting them to sell semi-finished products and receive a higher income.  Veja also uses an environmentally friendly tanning procedure, approved by Ecolabel that is not based on chromium and doesn’t pollute the water surrounding the tannery plant.

With an environmentally friendly and socially aware strategy, Veja has a no-advertising policy using the resources saved in the production chain but still keeping the sneakers at prices equal to its competitors.

Available April 2010 at Selfridges (London) and The Three Threads (Shoreditch).