ECO CHIC is chic - from Jerusalem

Eating Well / 5. The world of eco chic
By Rachel Talshir


The movement for healthy food, which formerly suffered from a wrinkled, pathological, pathetic and dreary image, has gradually become hot, talked-about and fashionable. Healthy food, which is marketed by word of mouth in off-the-beaten-track places, has been getting preferential treatment of late. All kinds of new lingo, including neologisms that may not seem suitable to such fare, are attaching themselves to it and "hitching a ride" on the next trend. That trend is known as "eco chic." It involves everything that has to do with a healthful orientation - such as concern for the health of the planet and for the creatures, human beings included, that live on it. The advocates of healthy food, who once walked about downcast and shamefaced, can now hold their heads high and give themselves credit for the fashionableness of eco chic. In the most "in" section, in the most modern building, in the most luxurious shopping center in Manhattan, there is a store that sells healthy food and takes up an entire floor. It has become a place of "pilgrimage" for many people who, until a few months ago, despised health food and venerated everything with a French aura, like gourmet food. Pour on the cholesterol, the more fat the merrier, the more Dean & DeLuca the better, they used to insist.

Visitors are greeted by Boaz Vaadia's controversial sculpture of two figures, one standing, one sitting, on a boulder, and composed of layers of gray-blue stone. Every day tens of thousands of people pass through here on their way to the luxury shops, the offices of Time Warner, the hotel or home to what are just about the fanciest residential towers in town. Prestigious and pricey indeed: The penthouse went for $45 million. Everyone, including those who come to eat at the local Japanese temple, in which an average meal will drain you of nearly $1,000, is now doing their marketing in the healthy supermarket. Eco chic has infiltrated places that had formerly seemed impenetrable, even grabbing a spot on "Sex and the City." Suddenly every female megastar has become a priestess of health and every model is telling the media about the wonderful lettuce she is growing in her garden - and eating it, too. The upheaval that has been wrought in the sphere of health food thanks to eco chic is a resounding slap on the sated and complacent cheek of most marketing theories, which are based on the concept that it is far easier to invent a completely new image than to change an old one that has become unappealing. The question that arises is: What is it about healthy food that has enabled it to lift off from the dark basements in which it resided and reach the lofty heights of prestigious centers, such as Time Life? According to these same terms, the launch of health food on the wings of eco chic is an example of perfect timing, in which a sector flourishes thanks to the story that exists behind the products and thanks to the experience they are capable of generating. The story of health food and the experience it provides are both appropriate to eco chic and also serve it. Anyone who is skeptical about the prospect that health food will catch on in Israel is basically saying that the local public is fixated, self-confident, traditional and immutable, and thus that a product or an image that has acquired a tired or moldy reputation is doomed to extinction here. But the Israeli public has already proved that in exceptional cases, in which the label tells a story, it has the potential to be transformed from old and shoddy to young, fresh and kicking. Ariel Sharon is an example of an image that was transformed from loathed to loved. In the meantime, the buds of eco chic can be seen on the Tel Aviv beach, which is crowded because of the flocks of walkers there these days. The relaxed strolls of the athletic elderly ladies wearing Ata bathing suits are being interrupted by the invasion of eco chic aliens - models, hair stylists, all kinds of celebs. A celeb is someone who knows that what he is doing is the coming trend. Once we used to go to the beach in faded sweatsuits; now, because of the celebs, we come attired in clothes we have bought especially to see and be seen.

Eco chic oblige, you know.