Here you are.
- Events this Weekend in Seattle
- Punk Rock Flea Market — $1 admission, “Proceeds above expenses benefit the Low Income Housing Institute”
- Urban Craft Uprising— “growing the crafting community and showcasing the best indie crafts out there.”
- Cuz the Power of the People Don’t Stop! — “Commemorate the 8th Anniversary of the 1999 WTO Protests”
Today’s postsong is Billy Bragg’s “A New England”, and comes via Andres.
- Turning producers into sellers, and connecting them to buyers, and turning buyers into producers
Before the internet, efficiency meant globalization. With the internet, efficiency means localizing globally.
Etsy.com, for example, allows us to efficiently find buyers for our goods, and sellers of what we want to buy in our neighborhoods. It serves as a practical response to Ryan Avent’s article in Grist on why we need to be cautious about buying locally (see my previous post on the subject). Treehugger recently posted an interview from Wallstrip with Etsy’s founder Robert Kalin.
For those who don’t know, Etsy’s incredible on-line interface allows anyone to shop or sell handmade crafts. The site features multiple ways to shop, my favorite is to look at what people are making and selling in my own neighborhood. If Locavore is the word of the year for 2007, is losumer word of the year for 2008? I certainly hope to get crafty this holiday season, and Etsy makes this a lot easier than knitting those socks myself.
Check out the geolocater. It’s a little functionally awkward right now (you should be able to search for “shirts” in “seattle” made from “Lyocel”), but the idea is fantastic. Many of my friends are using Etsy to hawk their handmade wares (Deviant Design), and I’m sure Adapt Apparel will as well.
See also:
- Sock Puppets
Probably the greatest and worst thing about the U.S. sock industry is that it is open to anybody. You don’t need a high school degree or any work experience to get a sock job.
A last gasp for U.S. apparel manufacturing? Obviously, doing anything involving tariffs (imposing them, removing them or reimposing them) is bound to affect someone somewhere (From NPR via Mankiw). The same story repeats again and again: jobs move back and forth, workers shuffle around, and employment fluctuates.
…[T]he White House gave itself a self-imposed deadline of Dec.19, 2007, to put back tariffs on sock exports from Honduras…
…[M]ost of 4,000 recently laid-off sock workers quickly found new jobs. It’s an irony that reversing this tariff — fought for so hard by some in Fort Payne — will likely have its biggest impact thousands of miles away in Honduras…
- The Problem with the “100-mile Diet”…
…is that it has been framed as a dedicated lifestyle.
You either do it or you don’t. It’s puritanical, and is doomed to be an absurd farse of the 00’s unless it can be more widely embraced. “Carbon neutral” may be an even harder for the average person to reach, but it doesn’t sound like something your vegan brother in Seattle tries for a year before anemia consumes him. “Carbon neutral” is framed as a goal, not an ideology.
(photo: cookthinker)
It would be more useful if the “100-mile” label was seen as a way to be conscious of how far your food has traveled, or even better, how close the producers of your food are to you, and what little excuse you have for not knowing any of them personally. And maybe rather than calling it a diet (remember what happened to Atkins on his own diet?) we should use it to label our our products. 100-mile coffee is improbable where I live. Yet it should be hard to not buy a 100-mile apple. If we know what can be grown locally, we can seek it out.
Same goes for the 100-mile wardrobe. I may never wear 100-mile cotton in Seattle, but how ’bout 100-mile bamboo? 100-mile hemp can’t be that far off either.
(photo: franciscoantunes)
If we are educated about the things we buy, we will want better things. All of this gets more of us asking important questions. How many 100’s of miles did your clothing travel to be woven? How far then to be dyed? How far then to be sewn? How far then to reach the fantastic machine that makes you jeans look old and worn? How far then to the store where you bought it? How far then to store where you will sell it? How far then to the recycling station, where I will get it for free and turn it into something beautiful? How much money changed hands at each of these steps anyway?
I don’t know anyone who made any of the clothes I wear. I know people that printed some of it (6 or 7 items). I know someone who knows someone who made one piece. Is connecting to the sources of your food, clothing and housing just a kitschy dream?
- Green Cotton
Shana at Green Cotton (an excellent resource on sustainable apparel, source-materials and processes) informs me that I’ve won her bamboo quiz.
- “Navigating the Falling Dollar”
From 2004:
[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2984480718427930625[/googlevideo]
- Paul Hawken on Re-imagining Civilization
Full video, well worth a watch, here. I used audio hijack to strip the audio of just the plenary (w/ intro), in case you wanna download it.
- Connecting Buyers and Sellers Locally = Protectionism?
David Hsu at Complexcities recently pointed me to a dialog happening over on Grist on the whole “local” thing. It (along with its long trail of attendant comments) deserves some attention.
Doing this would leave America and the world desperately poor.
I’m not going to go too deep into analyzing Avent’s arguments, which are fairly well-reasoned but seem to miss the point.
First, few people are saying we must produce absolutely everything locally.
Second, there is a world of difference between putting barriers on trade and catering to consumer demand for locally produced goods while reaping the benefits of local production. While Avent admits the issues are “complex”, he conflates the very idea of “free trade” (which in our already very-planned economy means as few as barriers to trade as possible, but enough as necessary) with a style of production that is an intentionally myopic, globalized race-to-the-bottom. He implies we can’t have one without the other. . . If we’re “buying locally”, then we’re supporting “a world of regional trade blocs,” he implies, and giving up specialization of labor entirely.
Here: If consumers demand local stuff, so be it. Producers will then produce locally. But consumers can’t afford to buy local stuff if no one is working on ways of producing local stuff cheaply. But producers won’t work on ways of producing locally cheaply if consumers don’t demand it.
Demand = willingness + ability to pay. Businesses should say to their customers, “You work on the ability to pay part, I will try to make something you’re willing to pay for. I will devote myself to this place and time and do my damnedest to make something of lasting value.”
PSFK.com’s Guy Brighton puts it reasonably from a consumer’s perspective:
Maybe what we need to do is apply a level of common sense: ensure that we import enough to maintain a decent diet, avoid foods that would be out of season locally and choose local when offered the choice. ::link
The question is, then, is there inherent value in local production and local buying/selling. In other words, does it help your business do what it set out to do in the world to make, sell and buy locally? If your
business exist to serve a place and its people (financially and otherwise), then yes. You will have a deeper connection to your customers, grow their trust and loyalty, know their wants, and be able to respond more agilely to market changes (before your distant competition can bring something to market). You will know the cities and the lands around them, what is good or bad for them, and how it affects the people.
You will be the first company in your industry to go carbon neutral, and it will be cheaper because you don’t have to buy offsets for shipping. You will take advantage of the urban landscape, you will commute less, your designers, engineers, and manufacturers will know each other and communicate better, face-to-face. You will know where your materials come from, where they are taken and who assembles them into value-added goods. You will never accidentally have a sweatshop in your value-stream.Businesses serve their workers and their communities by serving their customers. They do a better job if all their workers and all their customers are in their communities.
Which leads me an open-ended question, posed by Avent:
If the world would be better off, if production would be more efficient, with more localized industry, then why aren’t companies already doing it?
American Apparel almost fits the bill, but they just have half the equation (in that they manufacture in the U.S. but ship worldwide). I’m going hunting for other success stories.
In summary: I’m definitely not saying we shouldn’t buy things from other countries. We will. And if we can make money making it better here, we will do that too.
(painting: Soutine)
- “Vanity + Sanity”: Tracking the Locally-Grown Clothing Movement
A couple days ago, I asked the question, “In what ways could we ‘grow clothing locally’?… What does a ‘100-mile closet’ look like?”
Sarah Rich at Worldchanging was asking the same question a year ago:
All of this ranting has led me to the question: What would a “100-mile wardrobe” look like? Most likely the fashion analogue wouldn’t actually be confined to a 100-mile radius, but how small a circle could we draw and still get the goods that make us feel good? It might not be a circle, since an apple is wonderful due to proximity and freshness while a sweater is wonderful due to the vision and inspiration of the designer. But even if the equivalent system is a more globally-distributed one, how can it decrease impact in a more whole-systems sense?
This echos some good feedback I got from Graham over at Transpacifica on my first 100milecloset post:
Now that doesn’t mean it’s ideal or ecological for us to ship in all our clothes from thousands of miles a way, but just like a 100-mile food radius, this works better in bountiful agricultural zones—say, California.
If we were to imagine widespread adoption of the locally-grown clothing concept, there would need to be some changes in the global economy. For one thing, subsidies and/or consumer choice would have to make it cost-effective to pay locals to work in textile factories. Textile industries that are key to the employment of large numbers of people in a variety of Asian countries would need to be replaced by other business.
Looking at ways to make clothing more environmentally friendly is a valuable pursuit. Since we can pretty much guarantee no huge number of U.S. consumers is going to jump on the train right away, this effort will likely help raise awareness and serve as a model that could pressure other clothing manufacturers to reduce shipping-based emissions. All the same, if this is too successful, it could have vexing (and fascinating) global repercussions. ::link
In my googlings on “100-mile wardrobe” I came across another instance of fashion following food: “slow fashion” (paralleling the “slow food” movement):
Slow Fashion is to clothing and design what slow food is to cuisine – natural, organic, ethical, local (where possible) and one-off designs with an emphasis on quality, and of course – taste. Slow Fashion means you can look fantastic and feel 100% guilt free. ::link
Vanessa Richmond at the Tyee’s got some good stuff on local clothes:
While reading the 100-mile diet series, I got to thinking about my other material indulgences. If food typically travels between 2,500 and 4,000 miles before it ends up on our plate, clothes are even farther wanderers. Hong Kong, where many of BC’s clothes are made, is 6378 miles (10,265 km) from Vancouver, and that’s not even counting
the distance the fabric travels to get from the mill to the factory, or the distance the fibers travel from their source to the mill.
Richmond points us to Angela Murrills, who coined “Slow Clothes” in 2004 in this article:
Take the freshness issue. There’s no question that when you buy Vancouver-grown, you’re getting concepts and ideas hot off the drawing board, designed last night and stitched up this morning. The new crop of designers just emerging from the schools is not just in lockstep with what’s happening, it’s ahead. This is design still with the dew on it, and, as with those Okanagan peaches, you know where it comes from. Buying mass-produced labels means you have no way of being sure that that T-shirt or pair of jeans wasn’t made by preschoolers in a Third World country. I’m not saying that there isn’t sweatshop labour in Canada–there is–but seeking out locally produced fashion does up the odds that the person who stitched that lapel or pocket (often the designers themselves) wasn’t working for peanuts.
Lastly, it turns out that Fashion High, part of the B.C. chapter of BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) just hosted a “dress local” event, and has come up with the “dress local report card”:
Participating stores have to answer positively to three of the following questions to qualify for the Dress Local Campaign.
- Is your business locally owned?
- Where is the local content manufactured (B.C., Canada, China, etc.)?
- Are at least 50% of your store’s products designed locally?
- Are at least 50% of your store’s products made in Canada?
- Are the products created from sustainable or organic fabrics?
The Stranger’s Line Out reminds us that Vancouver, Seattle and Portland (a.k.a. “the realm of the three kingdoms”) should “be experienced as one urban realm”…
…but I may have to host a “dress local” event here in Seattle (with BALLE Seattle, of course)…
- carrot/rope
“Finally, fresh, organic and locally grown clothes!” says Alex Lau (sarcastically?).
Consumers demanded fresh food before they understood what organic food was. Then we wanted local and fair trade food, or better yet, direct trade. Now we’re starting to see that clothing can be organic. But “locally grown” clothing? Even when the Economist tackles the question of whether ’tis nobler to shop locally, it’s just talking about food.
If what we eat is good for us and also our community, shouldn’t what we wear also be?
Just because most of what we wear is grown and manufactured overseas doesn’t mean it has to be that way. American Apparel has branded itself as “brand-free, sweatshop-free,” “made in downtown L.A.” and “vertically integrated manufacturing,” and at least some of their organic cotton comes from California. As the largest textile manufacturer in the U.S., the impact would be huge if they supported California agriculture by sourcing local (think of all the green-collar jobs). But if they’re going public, will that be an option?University of Vermont associate professor of environmental studies Stephanie Kaza, in describing a project by then-student Stevia Morton, says:
“‘Buying local’ is now a common phrase among those concerned about sustainability, but usually we think of it as applied to food,” explains Morton’s advisor, Stephanie Kaza, associate professor of environmental studies. “Stevia’s project raises the possibility of buying local in clothing — something almost impossible in the United States. Her work is on the forefront of what I hope will be an emerging values movement in support of locally grown clothing. Offering this alternative is one way to voice concern for sweatshop labor, corporate control of production and fashion homogenization.” ::link
Playing on the “100-mile diet” (the idea of only eating foods grown within a hundred miles of your table), Obviously.ca gets credit for coining the phrase “100-mile closet.” And just as the 100-mile diet is an impossibility for most of us on the planet, but serves as a standard to measure against, the 100-mile closet (the idea of a wardrobe packed with locally sourced and manufactured clothes) gives us the mental framework on which to “hang up” all the clothes we’ve ever owned. It gives us something to look for when we shop that we’ve never looked for before.
I’d love to find out who is actually working on making it happen.
Over the next months, as part of marketing and entrepreneurship classes at BGI, I’ll be exploring these ideas. I’m going to use this blog (the 100milecloset category, to be specific) as a space to explore what it means to start a company focused on “fresh, organic and locally grown clothes.” Between the food system and the clothing system, between textiles and consumables, the line is blurrier than we should think.
Also, I bought 100milecloset.org… now what can I put there?
100-mile music: “By Night into Paradise” by Victoria B.C. band Chet.
