Despite having not liked my uniforms in school, I’ve always wished I had one as an adult. I think it is incredibly powerful for someone to wear the same thing all the time. It really welds to their identity and makes them seem more centered and confident.
Many artists have done uniform projects, notably Andrea Zittel’s “A-Z Six Month Seasonal Uniforms”. I am really enjoying following Sheena Matheiken’s Uniform Project as well. Her uniform is actually pretty great. Not only is it cute and flattering, Matheiken really uses the dress as a canvas to her creative accessorizing.
so many ways! –Matheiken’s Uniform Project
I myself am currently undergoing a huge closet weeding. I would say I’ve given away, or consigned about 50-60% of my clothes since January and am still working on it. The ultimate goal is to have continuity and modularity in my wardrobe. In addition, I am trying to focus on quality over quantity. For example, one truly warm cashmere sweater that matches everything over 5 sort-of warm sweaters I bought on sale that I don’t even like that much because the colors are too difficult. Colors are so problematic that I don’t really feel like dealing with it anymore. I am trying to stick to whites, grays and blacks in my slacks, dresses and tops with maybe one or two punchy tops to break it up. My accessories are still fun. I pride myself on a great sock and brooch collection and a fondness for orange.
One of my most popular entries is my “Critique on the Handmade Movement” post. I posted that entry over a year ago and I still get comments on it. Naturally I read them. I read all of the internet’s blog comments.
A recent article on Slate.com by Sara Mosle brings up some other points that I had neglected in my original post. Bizarre feminist vitriol aside, (I find accusing women of being “bad feminists” to be sort of unproductive. Bad feminists exist but much like invoking Godwin’s law, it just weakens your stance overall to use it.) she made some excellent points. Namely that the pricing structure really ruins everything:
If anything, Etsy exerts a downward pressure on prices. At the local craft fair, an artist could charge a premium for homemade goods, because the buyer had few options. But Etsy puts the artist in Brooklyn in direct competition with the artist in Dubuque, or London. This forces each one to offer ever more attractive deals. Most artists can’t drastically increase volume (the usual answer to slim margins), because the items are supposed to be one-of-a-kind, not mass-produced, in keeping with the site’s whole ethos.
One of the secret reasons I love Etsy is that I know I am sometimes getting an absolute steal for a really lovely handmade item. Like seriously criminal. Its also one of the reasons I decided not to have a shop of my own. There was no way I could get away with charging what I thought my time and expertise was truly worth. Etsy’s pricing essentially competes with manufacturing pricing. That’s insane! Its basically telling artists that your 10 hours of work is worth maybe the 5 minutes it took to manufacture this t-shirt and sell it at the GAP.
Well the actual truth is that if you were smart, your handmade item would just be a sample or a prototype, and you’d get that shirt manufactured so you don’t have to make 20 billion owl t-shirts. As this NYTimes article mentions, there is such thing as handmade burnout. And suddenly when you realize that YOU are the machine, hey actual machines don’t sound so bad.
About 7 years ago I began trawling the web looking for people who who made and sold handmade clothes. It was then that I knew I was witnessing the first glimmers of what is now the enormously popular craft “revolution”. And up until recently I was pretty convinced that it was indeed revolutionary. People making their own soaps and hand-towels! The spirit of Che had descended on the US at last! When I discovered Etsy.com a couple years ago it was love at first click. I bought a felt brooch that looked like a fried egg.
But lately the whole thing is beginning to wear thin on me. Every time I see a “buy handmade” sticker or button I feel a little irritable. What really irritates me is that the movement has essentially just spawned more crap for us to buy. Its still at its heart, an exercise in consumerism. And like anything that starts out cool and unique, it becomes quickly gobbled up by the mainstream (or just urban outfitters) and re-packaged back to us with faux hand-stitching. Go on Etsy now and its just all this STUFF. A lot of it is pretty terrible too–but that’s to be expected in a creative field. Deep down inside we still love shopping, and we like to feel cooler than our peers. For the moment, buying handmade satisfies these desires extremely well.
Beyond the stuff aspect, I also dislike that there is a sort disingenuous idea that it is somehow a moral better to buy handmade. Especially when you take into account the enormous amount of waste that goes into handmade. When something is ethically manufactured (ie lean–for a great blog on lean manufacturing in clothing please go here), the whole process has been studied and analyzed down to the number of stitches that go into a hem. This actually greatly reduces material waste. As someone who does do handmade–I can honestly say it is extremely wasteful in terms of materials and labor. I make too many mistakes. I have more scraps than I know what to do with. I waste thread and time because I am probably unknowingly doing it the “hard way”. Also of note is the fact that almost all the materials used to make homemade things are coming from places like China. There are very few textile mills in the US now. There are some in Europe but they mainly cater to the couture set. Things like buttons and zippers are manufactured in Asia. Not to mention that many of these shops do not buy their materials wholesale–which adds to costs. A homemade commodity does not get to neatly escape these problematic manufacturing issues.
That said I love the homemade stuff. I am a slave to Etsy. I love the personal feeling customer service and the creativity and Shops like anti-factory, use second-hand scraps which greatly cuts down on material costs and waste. But I take issue that buying homemade is better. Its just another form of consumerism.
Its been boingboinged already but I too must spread the robot word. Mr. Woo of China makes thoroughly lovely and charming robots from spare parts and ingenuity. It is projects like these that warm the cockles of my heart and gently push me back into the studio, humbled but hopeful.
A few blogs have written on this already but I absolutely had to join in. Wired Magazine featured a project called the 100 mile suit and for reasons I will elaborate further, infuriates me. (see wired story) In brief the 100 mile suit is a project undertaken by educator Kelly Cobb and her class to create a suit only using materials (including the sheep from which wool was used) within a 100 mile radius. Unfortunately it yielded the ugliest hippy looking thing imaginable. See the link above for pics. It makes me suddenly want to own a hummer and not recycle.
What is even more crazy in my mind is that it took Cobb’s group and entire freaking year to make this. I don’t get it. Cobb couldn’t find someone who knew how to sew or knit or weave decently? I am also disturbed by the fit. The jacket barely fits the guy. I could overlook the aesthetics if the fit was decent and the outfit didn’t look like it was thrown together. My grandmother has a woman who lives in her neighborhood who is a superb weaver and seamstress and makes her own swanky jackets–so while dwindling in number, there are people who do have serious skills and craftsmanship. Why didn’t Cobb enlist skilled people?
It disturbes me that this amatuerish project is garnering so much attention. Especially considering that there are people all over the place doing this exact thing and doing it better. Case in point I present you my beautiful pleated skirt that was hand-made by the Otavalo Indians of Ecuador.
They do all of their work from raising sheep, to weaving to designing to sewing within a 100 mile radius. And they sure as hell don’t take an entire year to fabricate one garment. Where is their big presentation at the ICA? We should not be getting our ideas about sustainability from silly experiments like Cobb’s or the 100 mile diet. The people to learn from are generally from poorer countries that have actually had sucess in maintaining their own sustainability.
