We know this is one Lucire team member talking to another, but considering the subject is Summer Rayne Oakes and her fantastic new book, Style, Naturally, it’s certainly worth it. Fashion editor Samantha Hannah speaks to Summer Rayne, filmed by Snap Star.

It’s been a wonderful few days chilling out with our ed.-at-large, Summer Rayne Oakes, in Lucire’s home country of New Zealand to promote her book, Style, Naturally.
   Summer Rayne was out this way to attend Greenfest in Brisbane, Queensland, and decided that she should venture to New Zealand to see us and to give Style, Naturally, which launched here earlier this year, a push.

Summer Rayne interviewed by National Radio’s Jim Mora, broadcast live on June 9.

With David Farrier for TV3’s Campbell Live, which aired June 11.

Checking out Trade Aid on Victoria Street, Wellington, with Carolyn Enting; and Summer’s subsequent interview at Mojo Coffee on Bond Street.

   Barbora Hromadova of Southern Publishers Group, which distributes Style, Naturally here, did an incredible job of arranging the Auckland media. While I cannot mention who has interviewed Summer until their pieces run, some of you will already have seen her story in The Dominion Post and Campbell Live, as well as on two radio stations, including Radio New Zealand National.
   I flew up on Sunday, a few hours ahead of Summer, to collect her from Auckland Airport. We’ve been seeing the journalists that Barbora arranged initially, and thanks to Mark Patterson at Volvo, had a very comfortable ride in the form of the XC60 diesel SUV.
   We had plenty of comedies of errors with the keys at the Cintra Lane Apartments, my regular haunt, which are too plentiful to list here.
   I introduced Summer to Bridget Saunders and Miss New Zealand Katie Taylor, both of whom have interests in sustainability, during the evenings, and spent quite a bit on food to boost the Auckland economy.
   Here in Wellington, I was adamant that I would at least show Summer Rayne a bit more of this part of the island than the central city, and got to drive her around our south coast.
   She mastered the use of the Kiwi superlative suffix (the use of as at the ends of adjectives) and the distinctively odd ‘Flag it’ (‘Ignore it’), and I admit I was more liberal with the former than I otherwise would be.
   But the highlight was probably dinner with fashion editor Samantha Hannah and some of our crew on Wednesday night. We invited Laurie Foon of Starfish, whose label was featured in Style, Naturally. Laurie had bought the book many months before without knowing Starfish was in it. She had it for two months before getting to the references’ section; and was further surprised when I called her to ask if she wanted to meet the author.
   Earlier today, Samantha filmed an interview with Summer Rayne for both Snapstar and Lucire TV.

After her final Style, Naturally interview on this leg, Summer Rayne relaxes with the Lucire crew in Wellington and at Te Papa Tongarewa.

Summer Rayne Oakes at the Bush City trail at Te Papa Tongarewa—before the joke that the water could be from the toilets.

   Afterwards, we hung out at Te Papa before I drove Summer to Wellington Airport as she left our shores, only to be dicked around by Air New Zealand over an error in her ticketing, which spoiled an otherwise enjoyable tour.
   The error seemed to emanate from the Brisbane end, when the booking was originally done, and some of the Air New Zealand staff here tried their best to remedy the situation.
   These five days in Auckland and Wellington were thoroughly enjoyable. We’re looking forward to seeing more of the press that Summer Rayne deservedly received during her time here; and needless to say, we recommend Style, Naturally wholeheartedly as the definitive guide to sustainable fashion and beauty.

Plug-in hybrids are getting a lot of news lately, and Volvo is the latest to make an announcement. Teaming up with Swedish energy company Vattenfall, the car maker plans a 2012 plug-in hybrid. Vattenfall itself plans to generate the electricity sustainably.
   The companies say that the plug-in hybrids would cost €3 per 100 km for families, and fuel consumption would drop to 2 l/100 km (118 mpg). The battery takes around five hours to charge, and it is also charged when the brakes are applied.

Azra Duliman is the new Miss Sweden 2009, crowned on May 15 at the Scandinavian Congress of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
   Duliman is a 23-year‐old law student from Stockholm, with experience from working with young immigrants and engaged in human rights. She has a multicultural background, and said she would take the opportunity to spread a message of self‐esteem and inner confidence. This made an impact on the jury. Duliman is a Muslim, which may make her the first Miss Sweden practising the Islamic faith at the time of her crowning.
   ‘The most important task for Miss Sweden is to be able to represent Sweden as a modern country, in many different situations. Looking good in a bathing suit is truly not enough,’ says Panos Papadopoulos, the head and owner of the Miss Sweden brand, and founder of the New Miss Sweden concept.
   Earlier this year, Lucire reported that there had been differences between Miss Universe and the Miss Sweden organization. Papadopoulos alleged that the Miss Universe Organization would not accept his changes in modernizing the pageant and unilaterally broke off their connection.

Azra Duliman receives her certificate and bouquet from pageant owner Panos Papadopoulos.

The Glam Show in association with Nicky Hambleton-Jones is pleased to announce that Breast Cancer Campaign will join the show as the 2009 beneficiary charity. The inaugural show taking place at Earl’s Court in London on October 31–November 1, will showcase the best in women’s fashion, beauty and lifestyle.
   Over the past 12 years, Breast Cancer Campaign has awarded 261 grants with a total value of over £26 million to universities, medical schools and research institutes across the UK. Campaign’s mission is to beat breast cancer by funding innovative world-class research to understand how breast cancer develops leading to improved diagnosis, treatment, prevention and cure.
   A donation of £150 from every Glam Show VIP Platinum ticket sold will be made to Breast Cancer Campaign and the Glam Show and Campaign will team up on spreading the word about the charity’s work in the lead up to the event. There will also be fun fund-raising activities during the show itself.

On April 28, Kræftens Bekæmpelse (the Danish Cancer Society) launched a campaign against skin cancer, opened by Crown Princess Mary. Danish designers have created a fashion range high in UV protection made with sustainable materials. The clothes have been tested for ultraviolet radiation with the UV-801 test at the Institute of Technology, Denmark. The video shows the collection and views from the campaign launch.

The organic industry has boomed over the last few years and it seems like a new organic product appears on store shelves daily. Personally I find it a tad overwhelming and I am continually weighing up whether or not certain organic foods and products are worth that extra penny. Finacial reasons aside, it really comes down to personal preference and whether or not you are concerned enough about what you are putting into your system. If you are passionate about respecting the environment and like to know that you are buying locally, it is common sense that you would buy organic.
   Commonsense Organics is a Wellington-based company founded in 1991, but it was back in 1975 when Jim Kebbell and Marion Wood, along with several other families, bought 12 acres of land in Te Horo, one hour’s drive north of Wellington. The market garden, which is named Common Property and is BioGro-certified, is where much of the produce for Commonsense Organics comes from.
   As well as selling fresh organic produce, Commonsense Organics also sells dried goods, meat and dairy, health products and environmentally friendly products. For store locations and more info visit www.commonsenseorganics.co.nz.

[Cross-posted] I’ve wanted to write this blog post since last year, after a reader came to me having read an entry I made about the prejudice against intersex people. It wasn’t that I wasn’t inspired to write it—but I felt I had to be in the right frame of mind to do the subject justice.
   Last year, I had visited the New Dowse in Lower Hutt where there was a photographic exhibition about intersexuality, transsexuality and transgender, which a friend had picked up on. She relayed an incident to me about how two intersex clients at a gym were mistreated, and it obviously struck a chord with my reader.
   The reader, based in Sydney, has a huge amount of experience in her field, yet once she was outed, her experience was that she could not get work again. Others in their professions have suffered similar fates in Australia.
   One of her friends, working for a multinational, has workmates who knew of her medical history and told others in related fields. When being interviewed, she was asked, ‘So what is this about you being transgender?’
   She was told that she would definitely not be considered for the job and the recruiter never called her again.
   While transgender and intersex are very different things, all it takes is this sort of prejudice to stop people who may be leaders in their field from getting a job.
   Not to mention all the medical experimentation that has literally gone on—because narrow-minded people in society demands genders are assigned.
   I was surprised to find that Australians and New Zealanders, known for being relatively open minded and quick to condemn others for, say, backwards laws over homosexuals, would still harbour such resentment and prejudice toward the intersex community. New Zealand has had a transgender MP, but now I wonder if an intersex candidate ran, would there be the same acceptance? I am not so sure.
   It disgusts me to know that people are being denied basic human rights. Last year I blogged about the prejudice against two intersex gym-goers here—and the Australian situations are equally shameful for our neighbours across the Tasman.
   To my Australian friends reading this, it isn’t about trans-Tasman rivalry and who is better than whom at treating different groups. Let’s face it: we both have a long way to go before we can even begin to consider ourselves enlightened or progressive.
   We aren’t far enough advanced as human beings to stop labelling one group as “freaks”.
   It’s about bringing to the surface the sort of crap we give people in both our nations.
   When you hear these incidents you just have to wonder what it does to the perceptions of our countries.
   Maybe it’s because I would never prejudge someone because of their gender or sexual orientation that I find it unfathomable that anyone would.
   In fact I would probably give someone who didn’t fit into some predefined category more props because they had to fight that much harder to get to where they are.
   I’m all for bringing shame to the companies who discriminate against the intersex community, and I’d bet that most readers of this title feel the same way.
   I encourage greater dialogue and if there are commenters who know of cases, I really would love to see some boycotts happening to hurt these brands at their bottom line.
   Audiences control brands these days, not corporations. And we hold the power in our hands over whom we purchase from. I certainly wouldn’t want to give my business to the multinational that my blog visitor mentioned above—and would dearly love to know who these ratbags are.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell proved to be a hit at Lakme Fashion Week. Mai Mumbai, the benefit for the victims of the Mumbai terrorist attacks last November previewed earlier in Lucire, featured numerous celebrities: Rahul Khanna, in Narendra Kumar, compered. Campbell started off the show wearing Vikram Phadnis, followed by hotelier Vikram Chatwal in a Arjun Khanna Jodhpur jacket.
   Other celebrities on the catwalk were Arjun and Meher Rampal, Gregory David Roberts, Princess Françoise, Rahul Bose, Farhan Akhtar, Kunal Kapoor, Milind Soman, Feroze Gurjal and Ujwala Raut.

This morning at our New Zealand bureau, we received a news advisory about the launch of the Tata Nano in Mumbai today.
   We expect to have coverage of the launch by this time tomorrow.
   The Nano, which we covered excitedly in Lucire in January 2008, represents a positive step for the Indian motor industry.
   Priced at Rs. 1 lakh, the Nano was conceived as a vehicle to safely transport Indian families, who may otherwise have opted for a motorcycle.
   The way India has grown in the last few years, there is a huge automotive culture—and the Nano will contribute to that. The car meets emissions’ and safety requirements, according to Tata. And if it means lives will be saved because families have the protection of a car shell rather than the exposed nature of a motorcycle, then we support it.
   But more importantly, we see potential for the Nano to go well beyond India. While export models to some countries would need more mod cons than the basic model—and Tata, from the beginning, stated its intentions to produce a deluxe model—it is a no-nonsense automobile that is being launched at a time when western models are getting heavier and, often, unnecessarily ostentatious.
   It reminds us of the times when Volkswagen entered a North American market sick of excess—a situation that repeated when the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic hit the same country in a land of oversized Buicks and Mercurys. It also reminds us of the mass mobilization that happened in Italy when the Fiat nuova 500—another “people’s car”—was launched in 1957 and the BMC Mini, which really took off in the 1960s. The latter was a classless car.
   With Germany having had a horsepower war in recent years, and a growing green movement on the other end, the Tata Nano could be more a sign of one’s support of common-sense value.
   While targeted at families who cannot afford a Maruti 800—considered till now one of India’s most affordable cars—Nano has a classless style to it that we believe could make a real statement in the west.
   While it is still powered by the internal combustion engine, it could get 62 mpg (Imperial) from a 33 hp engine. That’s better than any Toyota Prius could do, by some 10 mpg.
   With global fascination after the success of Slumdog Millionaire, this could well be India’s year. And Tata Nano could be the second phase of India’s 2009 rise, something which we observed as a trend that started over a decade ago. Incredible India indeed.