By Sandra Barrera
LA.com

Never mind the crunchy, burlap sack looks of yesterday.

The earth mama of today has her pick when it comes to the latest fabrics and styles … from silky soy jersey tops and stiff bamboo skinny jeans, to linenlike sasawashi and organic wool-blend coats like the one eco-fashion designer Linda Loudermilk will be debuting for fall.

Loudermilk's latest creation is a generation or so removed from the sasawashi coat she loaned to her PR agent at the Sundance Film Festival a few years back.

The woman wore the coat to a party where she was assigned to work the door.

"You would think she would be freezing her butt off, right? But she swears to me that she was warm," says the L.A.-based Loudermilk.

Sasawashi is one of Loudermilk's favorite eco fabrics, and not just for its ability to regulate body temperature. The fast-growing cousin of bamboo also boasts anti-bacterial properties, so it won't give off odor.

So why isn't it used more?

As Loudermilk puts it, "People don't do the research.

"I found it through a Japanese company, and they were, like, 'You want it?' I had to really work with it in its initial stage to make that coat ... because it wasn't a perfectly attractive fabric," she says.

"But in women's fashion you can work with fabrics and make them look all right, and this was really the most exciting thing I had to work with at the time other than organic cotton and hemp."

Another one of her favorites is Seacell, a fiber made of seaweed joined with wood pulp on the molecular level and said to have healing qualities.

"It actually feeds your skin nutrients as you wear it ... just like a face cream does that has seaweed in it," Loudermilk says.

"I mean, I just can't wait to tell people about it because this is where the fashion world is going: back to the simplicity of nature with the help of scientific advancements."

Q: In the six years you've been experimenting with green fabrics, have you ever felt confined?

A: Creatively, in the beginning it was very confining, but now it's not. There are so many fabrics in the market, and to be able to have a focus and weave through them all and say, "I only want the ones that are good for the Earth and good for the people," is great.

Q: You also do a men's line.

A: Yeah, Robert Downey Jr. is my muse for the men's line. But it wasn't until a year ago that the fabrics were refined enough where I could make a men's line because men's (wear) is all about cut and fabric. So, we've been working for four years to get the fabric to that level and finally we have it, and there's a lot of interest in it. Adrian Grenier (of the HBO series "Entourage") wore it to the SAG Awards.

Q: So, is the design driven by the fabric?

A: Well, the thing is, sometimes I have to compromise what I want to design because I can't find the fabric for it. But I'm getting less and less hindered by that. Sometimes there's a piece we can't do yet because the fabric doesn't yet exist, but, you know, I always say that we're 80 percent perfect in our sustainability.

If we have to use one fabric as a trim or as a little collar that's not organic or sustainable, we do it. We have to be competitive.

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Photos at top, upper right and bottom are of Linda Loudermilk fashions. Photo at middle left is Linda Loudermilk at last year's Smashbox event by Katy Winn/Getty Images.

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More info: http://www.lindaloudermilk.com/

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Also on LA.com: The greenROHINI boutique in Sherman Oaks