Tee Tales

I have been in stripey tees for a long time. This is a recyCouture update on the theme below.
(Thanks mom for keeping a lot of photos)

Simple Support

the future is ours and yours

Nudges today - please go to Greenwala and vote for the fashionRIP Project.

It's a harmless, no register (you can bookmark and do it daily even!) way to help support the second phase of the Project. Phase 2 of the RIP is to develop a small business that supports local artisans and sustainable development in an experimental concept of how culture can be recreated. It is the many people who have helped this Project that inspire this leap. We can and will evolve into our best natures.

Please go to the fashion ethos blog for the weave.

fashionRIP Project

detail of the bottom of a recyCouture dress for "Species on the Verge"

in Greenwala contest. Please vote as you do not need to register and it will only take seconds. In fact you can vote daily and they all count.

Though the fashionRIP Project is an all volunteer sustainable art piece intended as an alt communication, it is also a model for the bones of a business.

Sustainable economics need to experiment with ideas and the RIP is on a road of discovery that will lead to applicable solutions. I am working on it as the product is more than a commodity and a service, it is about process and workshops...it is about the real lives of people who are stakeholders - long and short term. It is also about changes that dynamic concerns utilize to become sustainable entities that evolve as nature intended!

What a mouthful!

Social Justice/fair trade

BluMeadows on the music

Fair Trade is a Social Justice issue; for commerce and humans are tied despite the attempt to disconnect the humane from the statistics.
We humans are the consumer, the market, the labor, the management, the security, the talent, the masses and the elite. We are human resources-a commodity to be used, often defined by the education that fills us with the data deemed necessary to function within a small area of the cult (root of culture no?)...lotsa titles and roles, oh my!

The myths of our culture are being written daily.

The sad part is that so few recognize the fact that it is only as true as the energy we give it to maintain itself. Yikes!

So my next chapter explores social justice here in Seattle and the school and fort takeovers of the 70s (just) and 80s (not so very fair). Collective energy is powerful!

Stay tuned, it is bound to be a bumpy ride through local history with some great recycouture garb to pretty it up.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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!

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".

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.

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!