It's Not Fair

I had a reply on facebook "It isn't just the labour it is the fact that we are wasting fabric i.e. we grow cotton that needs water etc then throw it away". As well as "Who has the time to go shopping every week?"

And this was my reply: 

"Yes, that was a good point made in the article (difficult to address them all concisely). I think the issue of price is bound with the throw away / bulk buy attitude. If an item is too cheap, then it can be bought without commitment.

and I have no idea who goes shopping once a week (even once a month is a push). However, one can easily buy eight garments in primark once a month and meet this average".

So I have some further thoughts:

The appetite for new clothing will not cease overnight, and nor should it cease altogether. I think even my brother - who clings to clothing until they have disintegrated - accepts that occasionally you need to replace your old garments. So we need to be able to buy clothes without feeling (or being) aligned with the axis of evil. So we need to know where to buy this stuff.

I've heard people suggest etsy.com, folksy.com and other such handmade market places before. On the whole- great AND thanks to http://www.tineye.com/ you can weed out resellers more easily. Personal favourites are braintreehemp.co.uk, toms.co.uk (for shoes) and peopletree.co.uk (although sometimes I struggle with their impossibly small armholes). I've bought awesome shoes from ascensiononline.com too. Has anyone found a decent place to buy swimwear from?

(I recognise that the article also covered a "war on want" of sorts. At university I struggled (and still sometimes struggle) with the idea of generating more "things" in the world. My tutor said "You are making things that people treasure". Which I don't think it a bad thing. As long as that is what does happen)

Ode to Penguins

Here is a poem I wrote very quickly in a text

Oh Penguin

You once stood staple in my lunch box

now a diminutive mockery of treat-time

I laugh in your face and not at your jokes.

No, stay! no more poems I promise. I've been trying to improve the website (and include cardigans as there have been enquiries). Well, here are my new photo albums - there's a bit more there to look at than before so have a peruse. Also please note I accidentally deleted my images folder on my server, so I've been trying to replace that but some of it is lost. I'm repairing links as soon as I can, but if you find a glitch, sorry :-(.

Utterly charming unique jumpers from Where's me Jumper?

I read this article in the guardian today. Sweatshops and such like are no secret, so I'm not going to bang on about that incredibly worthy but well worn topic - although I'm still yet to find a really good list of fair trade companies or independent designers who make their stuff in britain*. Nor am I so happy with her liberal use of percentages and loose language when it came to statistics.

However, I find her breakdown of the (d)evolution of the shopper very interesting - especially the genius of the Zara tapping into fly-by-night objects of desire, keeping up the compulsion to return and not lose out on the next unmissable purchase. I also found her analysis of a national homogenised wardrobe familiar, perhaps it started when Trinny and Susannah told us (ok, mainly women) how to "dress for our shape", and duly, we invested in v necks, ankle boots and whatever else it said in that book.

I did notice a while ago the "clone dresses" - it was clear what had been on the catwalk because there were variants of it everywhere. It was so fast, you probably saw it on the high street before it was in Vogue. There are points to be made about the consumer lacking in originality, but do they care?


Night night


*happy to start making one