Bittersweet eco-fashion show on Sundance tomorrow

The Sundance channel will be featuring eco-fashions on its show "Big Ideas for a Small Planet" tomorrow night, but eco-fashionistas will likely find the program rather bitter sweet. Why? Unless Sundance makes a last-minute major edit to the episode, Nau -- the now-out-of-business sustainable fashion company -- will be one of the three eco-companies featured.

Watching the Nau employees talk enthusiastically about the do-gooder green business model is very bittersweet, knowing that between the taping and the air date, the company became no more. But what's even sadder one Nau exec's comment in the episode about how many Nau employees joined the company by leaving their former jobs of 15 to 25 years, AND taking a 50 percent pay cut. The Nau team "walked over the edge together," the exec says. Indeed they did.

The "Fashion" episode isn't all sad though. Del Forte Denim -- maker of stylish, U.S.-grown, U.S.-milled, and U.S.-made organic cotton jeans -- is also featured and still doing quite well as a company; you can find Del Forte jeans at Avita Co-op, Vie, GreenROHINI, and other local eco-boutiques. An eco-friendly dry cleaning company in Colorado seems to be doing quite well too; CO2 cleaning apparently is quite effective at taking the "blood" out of the costumes from a Macbeth theater production! Watch the episode, then check out eco-friendly dry cleaning services in L.A.

The show airs tomorrow, May 6, at 9 pm on the Sundance channel. If you missed previous "Big Ideas" episodes, you can catch up via iTunes. I especially liked the feature on biodynamic farming in the "Food" episode last week. Thanks to the Benziger Family Winery in Glen Ellen, Calif., I now understand how biodynamic farming differs from organic farming -- sort of.