Livin’ the Ultra Life

The recent years have seen environmental awareness being received as a media packaged it is meant to be: a growing trend. It’s as stylish to tote around a ‘Not A Plastic Bag’ bag, as it is to wear Kaballah bracelets as sported by the front woman of the ‘school of thoughts’, Madonna. Everyone is a sucker for trends – things that are innovated to be aesthetically gratifying.
Read more after the jump
But if you so much as mention ‘organic’, for some, you as well be referring to tree hugging aliens who smoke pot, draw peace signs on their foreheads and proudly bare unshaven body parts. Calm your shudders.
Enter Tengku Chanela Jamidah, who – along with her partner, Anita – makes up We Are ULTRA, dedicated to bringing products that are hard on style and soft on the environment. Through their blog (www.weareultra.com), events and word of mouth, We Are ULTRA is slowly educating KL’s hip urbanites what celebrities like Stella McCartney, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz have imposed on their followers: that it’s cool to care. And you should definitely shave your legs, if you were to be photographed hugging a tree.
Jamidah and I only officially met at the time of this interview, despite moving around in similar social groups. I’ll admit to having ‘Facebook stalked’ her – as subject reference, FYI – prior to the meeting. What intrigued me was that the young woman I was about to be acquainted with was beautiful as she was stylish, educated as she was and still is, on occasions, a party girl, and she cared as much about the world’s direction as she does her young daughter’s.
Bright and early on the morning of our meet-up, my Blackberry signaled a new message. My subject was running a little late. Fortunately, so was I, no thanks to the KL traffic. Not long after I had ordered my morning coffee and proceeded to scroll through the latest Twitter updates, Jamidah arrived, looking like the yummy mummy she is.
I gave her outfit a quick once over this warm morning; a simple black tank paired with a long skirt dressed up with chunky rings and bangles. Her hair was tied up in a casual ponytail to reveal soft features framed by bangs and a black Ray Ban Wayfarer for an extra edge. She looks like someone who could have walked right out photographer Scott Schumann’s blog. Not the type of person whom I thought would be pushing for an organic, ‘greener’ society at all. Yes, I’m guilty of stereotyping, but aren’t we all?
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Read the rest of this article in this month of June’s online publication in the Cool Companies section.








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