fashionRIP: Its the Context

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?

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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.