Slate.com’s article on the decay of plastic and its effect on arts preservation.
A topic I find most interesting as there is a side of me that finds the obsession with preserving art to be perversely morbid.
Cintra Wilson’s review of Solange Azagury-Partridge for the NYTimes Critical Shopper column.
After I read this I went directly to the jewelers website and immediately lusted after the diamond beads. Absent of their usual tacky high-shine, the beads have a mysterious, unrecognizable murkiness. I would love to wear this ring and have no one know that it was actually a diamond.
Milky Moon. Price unknown, although probably unforgivable.
Also in the Times:
Chandler Burr’s review of Menthe Fraîche (perfume) by Heeley
I love Burr’s perfume reviews. His rare ability to translate scent into text always makes me want to run out to the perfume counter. Recently, Mr. Burr unwittingly pointed me to Guaiac by Red Flower, thus perhaps ending my many years search for the perfect citrus scent. I confess to paying $17.95 to order the teeniest, tiniest little sample vial on the internet. I love it. If I had the $186 to buy the full whopping 15ml bottle, I would.
These reviews give me a sad case of Veuve Clicquot tastes on an Eau de Municipal budget.
Alice and Kev
This is an amazing Sims social experiment. In sum, UK game design student, Robin Burkinshaw created two homeless Sims and it is uncanny how their circumstances reflect real-life homelessness and abusive co-dependent relationships.
One Piece Flow vs. Mass Production
This is a great video that examines the efficacy of these two modes of production in manufacturing. Useful for anyone who needs to make or assemble a lot of one thing.
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.
OK, I just was about to go to bed but unfortunately ran into a project on the interwebs and felt compelled to blog. But after that to bed for real. I am very tired.
SO! Drop everything and go HERE
I love it because it basically just shows how in actuality, we are very boring. One of fashion’s myths that drives me crazy is the idea that you can wear different clothes and set yourself apart. But unless you have gobs of cash and are Bjork, you are not setting yourself apart at all!
When I was young and full of myself (i.e. in high school) I had convinced myself that I was so unique because I wore “crazy” outfits and had “weird” make-up. Then I went to a hippie college and I, and likely most of my entering class, had a mild identity crisis, whereby we realized that we weren’t particularly special. Oh well.
Fashion, daily dress for the most part is just a nice shorthand way to quickly figure out what bands a person is into without having to go through the trouble of actually talking to them. It’s very convenient. However, it would be nice to get on with the future already and invent those matching spandex outfits so we can all stop worrying about this nonsense.
Guys! Guys! Guys! How freaking sweet is this robot, Tron-esque sweater and dress by fashion designer Louise Goldin!?! I totally want the grey sweater!
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.
