Five years ago, couture designer Linda Loudermilk seemed to have it all. After interning for Richard Tyler in Los Angeles, she’d been discovered by Autonde, the Italian-based original backer of Belgian designer Olivier Theyskens, now artistic director at Nina Ricci. In 2002, Autonde financed her first collection, and her runway show in Paris was met with wide acclaim.

But after her debut, Loudermilk went back to her hotel room in the Marais district and wept for hours. “My clarity and my joy comes through nature and when I lose track of that, I’m not as grounded,” she explains of her postshow misery. “When people need a break, they go to the beach; they go to the mountains. It became my mission to show people in our daily living how to show respect and integration with nature.”

Today, Loudermilk is considered the founder of the eco-couture movement. But these are no shapeless hemp dresses. She pioneered the use of 100 percent biodegradable fabrics, like vegan silks and organic lace. She sells $350 sweaters made from cashmere and spun milk (yes, milk) and dresses created from seaweed. Her designs have been seen on models Kirsty Hume and Shalom Harlow and actresses Jane Fonda, Daryl Hannah, and Debra Messing. In October, Lexus and cosmetics-and-skin-care company Origins sponsored her spring 2008 runway show in Los Angeles.

It wasn’t long ago that most products—especially clothes—labeled “green,” were considered a form of deprivation—clearly showing their recycled roots; limited to color palettes of oatmeal and brown; and in some cases, simply ugly (bottle-cap earrings, anyone?). Now, the finer things in life are increasingly becoming environmentally virtuous—or at least, that’s how they’re being marketed.

This year alone saw the launch of the first carbon-neutral airline, Silverjet, which also happens to have only business-class seats. There’s 360, a top-shelf vodka that touts its recycled glass bottle with water-based ink on the label. Ingle & Rhode, a U.K.-based jewelrymaker, offers buyers an alternative to baubles made of metals produced with mercury or gems from superpolluting mines. La Petite Pearle in Somerville, Massachusetts sells “sustainable caviar” from farmed sturgeon, which purportedly takes the pressure off the overfished Caspian, Aral, and Black seas.

“Green is chic,” says Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute in Hudson Valley, New York. “If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be funny how long it’s taken for green to catch on.”

Not only have new companies created product lines to cater to the environmentally conscious market, but more and more existing companies are also developing eco-friendly programs and figuring out ways in which they can be considered green. Tiffany & Co.’s website boasts that the company obtains its materials for jewelry in environmentally sensitive ways. The Monaco Yacht Show even jumped on the eco-bandwagon this year by buying carbon offsets that paid for wind turbines in New Zealand and funded other energy-saving and conservation projects in Europe.