Here you are.
- Bird Girl Bird
My latest designs for Adapt Apparel, the clothing etc. business Molly, her brother and I have begun out of the basement.
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The first printing was on a hemp tote bag:
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Here’s a song to dance to: “Disco 2000″ from Pulp’s ca 1995 “Different Class” (c/o Dj Anderz for my birthday party a couple weeks ago).
- Russell Weekes
Edutainment at its best, by Russell Weekes at Lie-ins and Tigers:
A tip of the hat to ffffound for this.
- “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.
- Bodily Art
Great, unsettling works by Eric Bostrom, Shawn Eisenach and others at cheese is sliced.
This one wins the “What is a carrot rope?” award:
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- Today was like…
…Terry Riley’s “The Pipes Of Medb Medb’s Blues,” and the works of Erik Natzke.
Natzke is “an interactive designer who is constantly trying to blur the lines between design and technology” (see his flickr page and his blog).
Today I lived in the blur between design and technology. From what I remember between riding to work, working, riding home in the rain, there were lots of colorful lines connecting things, and lots of circles flashing, all in 2D static. Then I watched Taxi Driver, which has an urban trudging madness like the attached Terry Riley piece. I can’t explain any further.
- Stina Persson’s Watercolors
Persson says her work is about about “finding the right balance between the edgy and the elegant the raw and the beautiful.”
via ffffound
- Logos for Adapt Apparel
Possibilities, works in progress.
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- Last Minute
Computer Love presents a t-shirt design contest, submissions due November 4th!
