fashionRIP: fashionRIP speaks up

Friday, October 2, 2009

fashionRIP speaks up

Louise at the Eco Design Fair surrounded by the pillows she makes.
The covers are all from second use materials.

October is here. The 28th is the day and noon is the time.

i booked this lecture date with SCCC months ago, proposing a basic sustainable fashion talk about eco fibers, production issues and a general round up of who, what, how and why designers were navigating this new turf.

This was to be my first real public speaking event, but London called (via Louise in the photo above) and i answered.

It is a good thing as the basic format fell away. i was asked to direct sustainable fashion toward the class theme of body and spirit.

Since then my path has changed dramatically. The direction is the same but the view has widened in unexpected ways. i faced some personal cobras in order to shake out my own fashion myth. I uncovered why and how i chose this field and how my view of the world was distorted by grade school pains and rewards. These early feelings created ideas that formed the foundations that supported my vision of the world.

The shakedown brought in a clarity. i feel foolish and bright at the same time! In that spirit
i am clearing up some after effects of my distorted lens and happy to say that so far so good.

The show will go on as unpredicted!

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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.