Here you are.
- “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)…
- Mankiw’s Economics: Translated, and Animated
Yoram Bauman, one of my economics professors at BGI last year, is the world’s first and only stand-up economist. Watch him talk about Greg Mankiw’s “Principles of Economics: Translated”:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4[/youtube]
Relatedly, I’ve been watching Mankiw’s blog, and came across this, by a group of Harvard students, called “Principles of Economics: Animated”:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSaFAEJHJKw[/youtube]
- 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.
- Locavores, devour Puget Sound Community Change
I work for a small nonprofit here in Seattle called the Interra Project. Interra is a grassroots economics organization working on radically practical tools and solutions to big problems. We’re launching “community loyalty programs” in several cities around the country to support “locally-focused and sustainable” businesses, nonprofits and schools. We launched our first program last November in Boston. Now we’re in the Puget Sound.
Thanks to Brad, as well as the wonderful, worker-owned Web Collective, Puget Sound Community Change is live. I’m told it was with blessings and song that the site was born into the world late Sunday night.
If you’re in the area, explore the directory, get a community card, “shop locally and share locally.” Brittany and I will be celebrating this Friday at M.I.A. (It’s in honor of all of this, and because it references the Pixies, that I’m including M.I.A.’s “$20″ in this post)
And for what it’s worth, “Locavore” is now in the Oxford American Dictionary.
- “A club with continuing benefits”
Radiohead caused a stir recently by self-releasing their new album “In Rainbows” online, and charging whatever the buyer was willing to pay. Links and clippings on What Radiohead Did:
• Seth Godin on The truth about Radiohead
1.2 million albums sold, $8 each, no middleman, one week: Radiohead Kicks the Middleman to the Curb.
The thing to keep in mind is this: the value of the permission. The fact that the group now has more than a million people they can go make music for is worth many times over what these people already paid. If they’re smart, they’ll continue to change the way they work. Paying for their mp3s should get you into a club, a club with continuing benefits.
• Radiohead’s Warm Glow in the New York Times
I didn’t pay anything to download Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” last Wednesday. When the checkout page on the band’s Web site allowed me to type in whatever price I wanted, I put 0.00, the lowest I could go. My economist friends say this makes me a rational being… One could argue that rationality isn’t everything.
• NPR’s For What It’s Worth, with Tyler Cowen
It’s about signaling. It’s about proving to yourself that you’re really a fan. It’s as if you would sleep on the pavement to line up for tickets in advance. It’s about conspicuous consumption. So it’s a way of identifying yourself with Radiohead, a cool band, more than ever before.
So if someone this time around is paying 40 dollars for the new Radiohead, if Radiohead were to try the same business model next time, the same person might feel they had already signaled and not pay anything at all or pay a very small amount.
And if consumers felt that every time they wanted music they were asked, how much are you donating?, how much are you donating?, this would get on their nerves. It would be a kind of overload. And what people then tend to do is just shut the whole thing out and they do what they want, and they don’t tend to give very much at all.
To some extent, Cowen is right, consumers will act differently the next time around—they will pay less. But I’d bet they will still pay, even after the novelty wears off.
Radiohead is taking advantage of the Wealth of Networks, which is, to appropriate Godin’s words, already “a club with continuing benefits.” It’s just that members declare themselves unofficially and receive their “warm glow” benefits as they please.
“If they’re smart, [Radiohead] will continue to change the way they work,” says Godin. Giving away your album is the first step. How about giving away some of the profit you made from those who did pay? Would people be more likely to pay for the album (or pay more) if part of the profit went back to a nonprofit or school of their choice? I could pay $0, or I could pay $10 for “In Rainbows”. If I was willing to pay $10 in the first place, I bet I’d be happy to pay $12 if 10% was going to end poverty here in Seattle. Local benefits, distributed philanthropy, and artists get paid for making it happen. A jigsaw falling into place.
[update: stats on What Radiohead Did]
- Earth: A Hint Book
A review I wrote of the Worldchanging book has been published on Campus Progress.
Bloggers for a brighter future put ideas down on paper.
By Nathan Rosquist, Bainbridge Graduate Institute
Tuesday October 31, 2006Three weeks ago on Friday the 13th, Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his organization, the Grameen Bank, won the Nobel Peace Prize for devising microcredit, a system for giving tiny loans to people in poverty—usually women—to help them start small businesses and build assets. The idea is to help eradicate extreme poverty, educate the poor, and empower women.
Imagine hundreds of Muhammad Yunuses, collected together in one place… a Nobel Prize-themed party? Hundreds of people with ideas to change the world—including Muhammad Yunus—have now come together in a big, colorful brick of a book: Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century. (You can buy it on Amazon in a coordinated effort to make it a best-seller at 11:11 a.m. Pacific time on Nov. 1. Get it: 11/1 at 11:11.)
Worldchanging comes from a group of about 60 journalists and policy experts at Worldchanging.com, an innovative blogging community. Since the end of 2003, Worldchanging’s contributors have written more than 5,000 news and opinion articles for the site. (more…)
