Passing through the doors of the shop, a few friends and I gradually dispersed throughout the whole store; both sides of it (Orchid Lane has two store spaces divided by a wall). I quickly snatched up the breezy spaghetti dresses that looked like they had just come from India, complete with sparkly stitching and ornamentation. A few friends sidled up to the display of $9 scarves. In the end, we all agreed that we must purchase something … later, because, as typical students, we didn’t have enough cash on hand.

I came back on my own one hot day for an interview with the store’s manager, Nancy Elias. She was quite the eccentric, affable lady. With her short-cut hairdo and petite size, Nancy was more than eager to give me an impromptu, brief (because she still had to sort out new inventory from Nepal) history of the store and its philosophy.

It turns out that Orchid Lane is a strong promoter of fair trade. At the labels on most Starbucks coffee grinds explain, fair trade ensures that the people a manufacturer is buying wares from are getting paid a fair price for their goods. As a bonus, Orchid Lane is also an environmentally friendly store. (I even found these gorgeous structured bags sewn with empty juice bags!) Although most of Orchid Lane’s merchandise is produced by villagers in Nepal, India, Indonesia, and other such Central Asian areas, the store does sell merchandise from American and European retailers as well.

“If you care about the people of the Earth, then, you must also care about the Earth itself,” proclaimed Elias when I asked her why she does what she does, which is to participate in fair trade and sell ‘green’ items.

And this makes sense, at least to me. In fact Elias plans to nurture a sort of cycle of belief in traditions. She said that by asking people of farming villages to produce products for Orchid Lane, she is not only pleasing eager customers in America, but also introducing a sense of belief in the traditions of those villages. As more and more youth leave their villages for urban cities, they are losing a sense of traditional culture. Elias believes that by “telling the people that their goods are wanted in America, we are also promoting their communities.” Now that’s a real win-win situation.

As I remarked at a skirt featuring large hand printings, Nancy told me of yet another feature of Orchid Lane merchandise. She readily uses the skill of “textile reclamation” to make her clothing. The principle behind this technique is that something that one village produces may be used to supplement the creation of yet another group of people. In the example of the skirt, the cloth skirt was fashioned by a different culture of people than the villagers who lent their hand stamp to create the fantastic print on the skirt. It is in ways like these that Elias, and Orchid Lane, are making the retail world more friendly toward all peoples in the world. Based on an online review of the store, it looks like there are people who would likely say the same.

As I bid goodbye to Nancy and the miscellaneous bohemian wonders to be found in Orchid Lane, I couldn’t help but become wrapped up in what I had learned.

In fact, I’d never really thought past the concept of fair trade as anything more than that little orange Starbucks label. I'd certainly never considered that it could involve using ethnic hand stamps to print a skirt.

It was like one of those stories where the heroine discovers a trendy hipster store among the throng of shops in New York. Except I hadn’t discovered Orchid Lane; I experienced it.

Jing Chai is an AnnArbor.com contributor who writes about shopping.