fashionRIP

fashionRIP is a multidiscipline, transmedia installation of chapters, an exploration of perceptions and beliefs. It’s a platform that explores ecosystems health, generative economics, social justice, cultural and creative diversity. Starting with recycouture garments, the story became the Project. It is now an evolving experiment, designed to explore meaningful relationship based constructs that put human potential and whole systems health over the abstract ideas of faux "the real world."

Monday, August 31, 2009

Hmmmm

London near Truman Alley

I am not sure if i want to laugh or get all pc and be offended. I like the trailer and the snarky attitude.
Not reFashion, not eco but .....something right in the windows and the gap-lessness.
It makes me think of the blog "stuff white people like" ....poking fun at the pale.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Its the Context

Truman Alley

Fashion in context is the relevant issue.

Why is this so hard to grasp?

Metal button laws in GB. Silk button laws in France. Coal tar based dyes for fabric (annaline) started by an upper class kid in UK (1856) boomed in Germany as a chemical explosion (they had a system of public education ...more brain power at work!)
Class rigid clothing rules were almost universal. Cut and color laws were enforced.
Techno fibers pushed by designers as industries pushed patents.
South American bird species lost in the great Victorian stuffed bird and feather hat fads.
Lacey Act 1900
Mercury poisoning caused real mad hatters.
Dior full skirts after WWII, good for fabric mills and for getting women back into the home and old fem rigidity.
Fashion and King Cotton (cotton for one organic tee takes 25 bathtubs worth of water)
Cotton uses 10% of all pesticides and 25% of all insecticides.
Sheep dip is a toxic bath that pollutes the environment ...how much is absorbed by the fibers?
Old Egypt style was bald (easier to clean a shaved head)
Do veils denote domination (ownership) and control or merely modesty?
Super high stilettos and breast implants, fashions fault or a sexist societies?
Nettles for fiber in Norway.
Hemp and bamboo grow like weeds and make great fabrics.
The Garment Workers Union was first to stand up against free trade aka job loss.
The garment industry was the first to outsource in a major way, opening the gates for others.
More later!

is it fashion or is it more?

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Beautiful Soul

has a gorgeous new website with catwalk video, portfolio, shop....words cannot do it justice so go see for yourself.

PS the flip cards on the shop page are great. Click on the photo and it will turn over to reveal a description of the garment. Congrats Nicola and all......delightful Small Print collection in a delightful setting.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Twit talk

Really had an attitude about Twitter. I met it for the first time last winter at a fake start up gathering. It was weird, as people started imaginary enterprises and worked to get them "going" for 2 days and it was all make believe, for adults, who paid $40 dollars for the fun of not doing anything real in a very serious way!

Maybe i am peeved because if i had collected the door for that big nothing the Fair Trade chapter artists and crew would be paid for this next round. Supporting the arts at the artists level is the sustainable economic model i am trying to establish. Do i have to make it a game first?

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Species on the Verge .....to Youtube

"Species on the Verge" video still

as is and up she goes.

I am cutting the cord and setting chapter one free.

The Fair Trade op is open - Blumeadows cd, as well as the event for Women's Equality Day at the NW African American Museum the 27th of this month, the London connection-appear to be a path. The synchronistic collage is available and i am not one to dis opportunity that arrives via the known unknowable.

If you attend the show at the Museum, you have a chance to see the quilts they are showing and connect with local women who are uniting to make changes for a better balance. See you there!

Friday, August 14, 2009

moving on to Fair Trade

Beautiful Soul website - a new look is on the way

Blumeadows is about to finish a cd and since he is interested in doing the soundtrack for the Fair Trade chapter -the "Water Rip" is on hold. Collaboration works best with flexible plans and a double "release" can optimize both of our projects.

I became better acquainted with the Fair vs Free (to exploit) Trade issues while i was in London. Check out the Ethical Fashion Forum for more on this topic.

I met 2 women in London that had gone to Africa on grants to help create small business works. Both stories were plus and minus. Both started out with a clothing model and both ended up walking into a situation that had either lost it's machines or it's lease. The solution became jewelry from local sources that one of the women had to scout out herself. The other woman ended up with jewelry also, however she made an antique kimono source connection that is behind her newest collection that will be going into London Fashion Week shows September 19th -26th. Yay for sustainable spirit! and watch for "Beautiful Soul".

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Finally....almost

Her future is up to all of us! (video still)

Just a tweak or two left to do and the video for this first chapter of fashionRIP will go to YouTube.

Okay, there is a sheer overlay effect i want to add but if that can't be done this next week than i can use the idea in another chapter.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Fashion Out of Context

Catwalk fashion is an art unto itself. The staging of clothing has possibly created the precedent for home staging and makes me wonder about window dressing? When did the artful window crowd out the "show it all" mish mash stack up display?

This is the kind of creative history that pushes commerce and art together tangling design impact into a desire for the displayed. Though the whole of the work is an art are the individual elements "artful" on their own?

In the illusion built to sell, the pleasure dies soon after an element is extracted and moved into a lesser designed habitat, thrown onto a moving body or into the kitchen sink. The illusion fades as the product becomes lost in the everyday ephemera.

Brought to you by shop less, live more!

Why it Matters

What's the matter with more and more fashion choices?

It sounds good; we love to be able to pick the perfect outfit. You wear it once or twice and then ....what was the real cost here?

Your time to shop and the money spent, not so much ....go a little deeper and consider the fiber source, the dyes and chemicals used, the health toll on the workers, the energy to run the machines, the transporting carbons...and now it just takes up closet space. But so what? It's been going on for-almost-ever and you didn't make the rules.

In fact we are told this is what a "healthy" economy looks like.

You will recycle it after all, give it to charity or your sister. This is more transportation and more release of those greenhouse gases. We are using a lot of our personal energy and the resources of this planet to make, use and dump "trash" Some rags, remnants and tawdry bits will molder for eons in landfills, as nature's microbial actions are hampered by our normalized, everyday toxic lifestyles.

This goes beyond dumps as the breakdown cycle that nourishes the life of this planet has been sorely challenged by GMO crops, fertilizers, pesticides, antimicrobials..RIGHT!!. All the "living better through chemistry" propaganda after WWI and II- AKA how to sell your "garbage," is our legacy. Well no more, not on my (our) watch, we are seeing things quite differently.

As we now carry 298 toxins in our bods that weren't there in the 1930s the toxic residues of normal are haunting us more and more. Ironic, no? Advanced is merely a word.

Go to the So Whats the Point blog in February for the numbers.

fashionRIP posts are copr at time of posting thank you

Extinctions ...So What?

Life evolves, some species survive some don't. We like to allude to Darwin's "natural selection" or Herbert Spencer's "survival of the fittest" because we are so good at reproducing and taking over this planet and justifying that side of our natures. The fact that we are wiping out the food chain by destroying habitat, fouling air and water and generally behaving like arrogant, tinkering idiots, is called business as usual. .....Well I and others are no longer buying that "sell."

We are wising up to the idea that we too, are dependent on these resources. We too, are physically an organic species and we really don't know what little extinction will be the start of the chain reaction that collapses the structure that we too, are dependent on.

Is this the price we are willing to pay for a pair of plastic shoes?

I say no, that despite the focus on the physical, we are more. We are heart and soul, mind, body, spirit. We are born of stars and we can and will leap over this world view based in old, untrue beliefs led by a science of isolation and religions of patriarchal, hierarchical constructs (your basic dominating Dad- with self reflective rights to rule). It is time to come together and heal. To transition into our fuller expectations and open the new possibilities. We are born with genius...let us help each other get to where we all can shine.