Peppermint - which is a cool Australian mag that marries a little indie DIY with sustainable fashion trends – launches it’s second issue this month with a beautifully-illustrated cover from a photo I did with Anouk Morgan. Kelly Sheenan, Peppermint founder and creative director, was integral in hooking me up with trip out to Australia – so I totally look forward to chilling with her and her Aussie tribe. I haven’t seen this issue yet, but Indie.com.au has a nice little round-up – and I’ll definitely post the article up in it’s entirety when I get it. Photos compliments of: Robert August. Article below:
Summer Rayne Oakes
Avante-garde activist and Discovery Planet Green’s hottest correspondent Summer Rayne Oakes gets real on the environment; overcoming obstacles; and reminds us why it’s just so damn cool to be conscious.
Her father was a truck driver. Her mother was a ballerina. Where then, may you ask did Summer Rayne Oakes get her activist roots? “You know my parents had to be cool,” she smirks, “especially when they named me what they named me. Plus, they didn’t mind when I brought bugs home or grew mold in the refrigerator,” she laughs.
Oakes grew up in the backcountry of Northeastern Pennsylvania, where at an early age she got involved in a number of community issues, including the monitoring of stream water quality and the reclaiming of land that was laid to waste by coal mining.
Summer Rayne’s parents separated when she was ten years of age, which prompted her to leave with her mother. For a time, they lived without a phone, refrigerator, or a TV — not because it was a “Look-At-Me-I’m-Green” statement, but because she and her mother simply couldn’t afford them. “We struggled,” she admits, “but I was loved, so I never once felt short-changed.”
When no jobs were available in her community, her mother decided to take a better paying offer in another state. “I remember her sitting down with me saying that we can’t afford to live on the paychecks she was getting, and she was already working two jobs 12-14 hours a day.”
When her mother asked her to move, she revolted. She told her mother it was okay to take the job, but she wished to stay behind in Pennsylvania where she could continue to work in her school and community. She had just turned 15.
“Most people are shocked I was living alone, but I was independent and able,” she says candidly. Undaunted by financial woes, she put herself through college at Cornell University, won the praise of professors–like Tom Eisner (founder of chemical ecology; author of For Love of Insects), garnered numerous academic accolades, and studied what most of us cringe at: sewage and bugs.
With a promising career in the field of ecology, Oakes did a total 180. She stayed in college, but took her precocious environmental activism and 5’10″ frame to the fashion industry to push sustainability mainstream, choosing to exclusively model for cause-driven companies and driving home issues like eco-fashion, fair trade, and the environment. “It wasn’t enough (to do research) she asserts. “I knew there was something more I could do and I was ravenous…No, no–I am ravenous. A whole generation of us is ravenous. We want more.”
“We want more,” she says was the statement that was echoed at Powershift in November ’07, the largest climate change summit and lobby day in the history of the United States that she helped organize with Energy Action. “Six thousand teens, tweens and twenty-somethings descended on the nation’s Capitol to voice their views on how climate change will affect us. We had representatives from 43 other nations too.” The best part about it she asserts was that it was driven entirely by young people who are hungry for change. And she adds, “it was built around direct action– we lobbied our Representatives, we learned how to create community action, we felt unconditional support from our peers — something you don’t see enough of at all these so-called green conferences. We need tools that can empower many, not just an elite few.”
The next Powershift – slated for February 27-March 2, 2009 in Washington, D.C., will prove to be even more successful, drawing in an estimated 10,000 young people. “The environmental youth movement has been like cicadas. We were slowly building and growing an underground movement, but we’ve gathered strength and are now emerging in great numbers,” she says making a metaphor for youth activism, but also a reference to her entomological roots.
Oakes, now 24, has her hands in everything–from climate change to rainforest conservation to sustainable development in Africa. She’s also shifting gears to work on a green jobs initiative, specifically designed to pump training programs into rural and inner-city areas — an idea she says that really hits home for her.
Even her agency is highly supportive of aligning all of her modeling work with her environmental activism, something she started over seven years ago when she first starting modeling. “It was a great way to reach out to a wider audience,” she mentions. “And I’ve always been upfront with my agencies. I let them know that modeling is a way for me to communicate to people– to bring the movement mainstream. I want to show people that you don’t have to compromise your values or your vision.”
“Summer Rayne is our secret weapon at NEXT,” says Faith Kates, owner of NEXT Model Management. “Her work unifies a spectrum of platforms: fashion, environment, entertainment, politics, business, and youth culture. Her passion and drive not only represent a new kind of model, but a new zeitgeist. Clients are really drawn in by that.”
This past year, the outspoken model-activist has casted an even wider net. She’s made her debut as the spokesperson and correspondent for Discovery Channel’s new Planet Green Channel. This month she’s coming out with her first book, Style, Naturally: The Savvy Shopping Guide to Sustainable Fashion & Beauty (with 1% of the proceeds going to Energy Action). She’s also signed up to be the spokesperson, sustainability strategist, and partner-in-design with Payless ShoeSource to launch the first affordable line of green shoes, Zoe & Zac, made out of organic cottons, hemps, linens, recycled rubber, water-based glue, eco-foam, and other cool eco-characteristics. Her agent says that a number of other campaigns are in the works though she did not disclose further.
“I’m excited,” Summer Rayne says. “I’m approaching everything through the idea of making the biggest change possible and empowering as many people as possible.”
“After all,” she points out. “We can’t just be changing light bulbs. We need to be changing lives.”