Judges

Judges

BJ Averell - Umbrella Judge
Truth be told, BJ is more of a pants expert than anything else. As part of the Amazing Race 9's winning team, he tested both horizontal corduroys and women's sweats. But we think he's better suited to judge gear than couture. After all, not many of us can conjure memories of Moscow, Sao Paulo and Alaska when considering the relative merits of a reinvented rain shield.

Scott Hahn - Fashion Judge
Scott is Co-founding Partner of Loomstate, the pioneering label offering jeans that people buy because they're sexy, not because they're organic.












Graham Hill - Umbrella Judge
Graham hails from the small town of Sutton, Quebec, Canada. He has a Bachelor of Architecture with distinction from Carleton University in Ottawa and did advanced studies in Industrial Design at E.C.I.A.D, Vancouver. Past businesses include forays into fashion, web-development, viral email and plant-based air filters. In 1995, with his cousin, he started and grew the web-developer, Sitewerks, to 60 people doing work for large companies such as Microsoft. He currently focuses on building TreeHugger, managing his ceramic greek cup business and developing sustainable prototypes. Graham loves to travel and is working on his 40th country this year. He speaks English, French, German and Spanish. He loves squash, swimming, snowboarding, kite-surfing, mountain-biking and most other sports. His goal is to help push sustainability into the mainstream.

Julie Lasky
Julie Lasky is editor-in-chief of I.D. Magazine, the award-winning magazine of international design. Prior to that, she was editor-in-chief of Interiors magazine, which she led to several national honours. A widely published writer and critic, she has contributed to The New York Times, Metropolis, Dwell, Architecture, Slate, Surface, The National Scholar, and NPR, and she is the author of two books: Borrowed Design: Use and Abuse of Historical Form (written with Steven Heller) and Some People Can't Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry. In 1995-96, she was a National Arts Journalism Program Fellow at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. The fellowship culminated in Lasky spending a month in Sarajevo investigating the effect of the Bosnian war on the city’s artistic culture. An essay based on that experience appeared in the Spring, 1997 issue of The American Scholar. The same year, she won the Richard J. Margolis Award for nonfiction writing that demonstrates warmth, humour, and a concern for social issues. Lasky has lectured on design from Salt Lake City to Sarajevo. Since 2001, she has been an adjunct faculty member of the MFA Design program at the School of Visual Arts, where she teaches a magazine workshop.


Deborah Lindquist - Fashion Judge
She's dressed A-listers such as Charlize Theron, Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera. Her fashion forward apparel is showing up in everything from the television shows Charmed and Growing Up Gotti to the Madonna Re-Invention Tour VIP gift bags. Stylemakers such as Cameron Diaz, Paris Hilton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Christina Applegate, and Lucy Liu own her feminine confections. Even Hollywood's sexy burlesque darlings, the Pussycat Dolls, have strutted their stuff in her handiwork. Parsons School of Design-trained Deborah's cutting-edge designs have been featured in publications including InStyle, Lucky, Seventeen, People, Honey, Essence, YM, Vodka Magazine, Luxury Living, Self, Interview, Spin, Maxim, Playboy and Rolling Stone.

Deborah's collections fuse her passion for design with her desire to do something good for the planet. Using recycled materials and vintage fabrics, she creates stand-out separates that are as environmentally-friendly as they are stunning. And with her flair for figure-flattering silhouettes and an eye for unusual details and embellishments, it's no surprise that she is turning the heads of fashionistas from Manhattan to Malibu.


Rebecca Luke - Fashion Judge
Rebecca is the Sustainable Style Foundation Senior Stylist and Co-founder/President of Seattle-based Les Egoistes. She has more than 15 years experience in fashion and event production, and her skills run the gamut from production, public relations and marketing services to art direction, styling, costume design, choreography and visual display. Her expertise has been honed by working with clients both locally and nationally in non-profit, retail, clothing manufacturing, TV/film, theater and the arts industries.






William McDonough - Umbrella Judge
William McDonough is a world-renowned architect and designer and winner of three U.S. presidential awards: the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development (1996), the National Design Award (2004); and the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2003). Time magazine recognized him as a “Hero for the Planet” in 1999, stating that “his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that – in demonstrable and practical ways – is changing the design of the world.”

Mr. McDonough has been a leader in the sustainable development movement since its inception. He designed and built the first solar-heated house in Ireland in 1977 while still a student at Yale University and designed the first "green office" in the U.S. for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1985. Mr. McDonough was commissioned in 1991 by the City of Hannover to write The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability, the official design guidelines for the 2000 World's Fair which the City presented to the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit in Brazil. He and German chemist Dr. Michael Braungart co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (North Point Press, 2002), which has now been published in German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean translations.

Mr McDonough is founder and principal of two design firms. William McDonough + Partners, Architecture and Community Design, has created numerous landmarks of the sustainability movement since 1981, designing homes, offices, corporate campuses, academic buildings, communities, and cities. McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry employs a comprehensive Cradle to Cradle design protocol to chemical benchmarking, supply-chain integration, energy and materials assessment, clean-production qualification, and sustainability issue management and optimization. Mr. McDonough and his firms have received numerous national and international architectural, environmental, industrial and design awards for their work.

Noah Robischon - Umbrella Judge
Noah Robischon has been writing about technology, entertainment and pop culture for the past decade. After co-founding and editing Time Inc.’s first daily news website in 1995, Mr. Robischon became a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. While there he penned features on everything from Ken Burns’ acclaimed Jazz documentary to the gross-out antics of comedian Tom Green. He also spearheaded the magazine’s video game and technology coverage. His articles about digital music, movies, gaming and gadgetry have appeared in GQ, Business 2.0, Popular Science, I.D. and The New York Times.

Mr. Robischon was the story editor for the VH1 series “When Star Wars Ruled The World,” and an associate producer for Michael Moore’s Emmy award-winning series TV Nation. He writes and produces a weekly Digital Living segment that appears on NY1 News and is syndicated in five markets across the country, and has appeared on CNN, MTV, Discovery, E! and Extra. In addition, Mr. Robischon is a standing judge for both SpikeTV’s Video Game Awards and the annual E3 Game Critics Awards. Mr. Robischon is currently the editor-at-large of the gadgets weblog Gizmodo.


Scott Windsor of Umbrellas - Fashion Judge
In answer to the question posed when they were featured as the Spin Band of the Day on August 10: Yes, we would love to spend many rainy days under the melodic spell of these Umbrellas. You may have heard them on ABC hit shows Grey’s Anatomy and Alias last year, when the shows featured the popular song "The City Lights" from Umbrellas' debut album. The Boston Hearald calls Umbrellas' music "likable pop tunes that’ll lodge in the back of your mind." Find out for yourself! Download "Crooked" here.

Where'd the band's name come from?

If you want a grandiose story of what it all means, here you go. Recording an album [the first album] in an old creaking hotel that used to be a mortuary has its ups and downs. There was so much history you could literally feel. We'd record downstairs in the daytime and then at night we slept upstairs. All those empty rooms, the draft, the never-ending treacherous staircase that I constantly dared myself to travel, and the spiders. I felt as if I was always being followed by spiders that looked like broken umbrellas. They seemed to map themselves across our minds in the process of creating the album. And there you have it, your little story. So tell everyone that's where the name came from.

And, tell everyone where to find the perfect soundtrack for perusing repurposed umbrella couture.