Hello all,
We just closed the last poll and as it turns out magazines matter. What’s this with all the magazines closing? “Death of print they say.” Hmmmm, not many of you said you look to the internet for fashion direction. Anyway, most of you say you get your fashion direction from magazine editorials. None of you said you were influenced by your kids.
Today I posted a new poll. It’s about product origination. Do you care where your products come from? I do more and more these days. I am predicting that in about two years everyone will care, people will be reading labels and China will be the new saturated fat. Quality will have resurgence and country of origin will be the new fiber. When people consider purchasing their apparel they will think about “What impact does this item have on the environment? Did a child laborer sew these beads on this sweater? How is it that I can buy a sweater for $20?” Perhaps I am blindly optimistic but I do think, like hybrid cars and organic produce, quality—real quality in apparel will start to mean something.
Pull out your sewing machines ladies because the new quality and style paradigm will be “make it yourself.” Jenny Broome, one of our dieters has been designing her own clothes and having her sister make them since on embarking on the diet. Now that’s a nice sister. Bottom line Jenny knows where her products are coming from.
I remember the day when my mother used to make all my clothes. It was in the 60s when that’s what people did. My grandmother added to our wardrobes with hand made crochet vests and extra long, multi-colored scarves. At the time I didn’t like wearing “home made,” it was as bad as bringing my sandwich, (on whole wheat bread) in a brown lunch sack and having my sandwich wrapped in wax paper while all the other kids had the expensive printed lunch bags and plastic cellophane wrapped wonder bread sandwiches.
What I would do now from some original creations from grandma Vida.
Tell me…do you care where your products are made? Do you think about it before you make a purchase?
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This is a very interesting post and I think absolutely on point. I am finding that publishing is heading in the personal direction and DIY is becoming oh so popular; I might have to think about digging out my sewing machine as well!
I absolutely care about where EVERYTHING I buy is made. For all the reasons you discussed and more. It’s about whose economy I’m supporting, the environment and how and where those products are produced, the living conditions/standards/pay/environment of the workers, and so on.
It does make shopping more difficult for sure, but it makes you so much more mindful of how your own simple choices every single day can have an impact in so many ways. I for one do not mind paying more for an item that I know was produced in a thoughtful and quality way by a company/country that treats its employees with care and respect and does the same for the environment. It takes some research to find out whether the claims some companies make are actually true or just ‘green washing’, but I feel the investment in time to find out that information is definitely worth it.
China is definitely the new trans fat as far as I’m concerned, the way in which they treat their workers, the way they rape the environment in order to produce items at such a low cost, all the different product poisoning incidents – dog food, baby food, lead in childrens’ toys, I could go on and on – and those are just the things that were caught and reported.
I would much rather have far fewer possessions that were produced for quality and made to last and pay more for them than the throw away society we seem to have built for ourselves.
You’ve hit on something that I am very passionate about. It’s about supply and demand, if more people demand quality products that don’t stop functioning in less than a year – and end up in a landfill leaching chemicals for 900 years (plastics) – then companies would start making things the way they used to.
It must be why I’m so attracted to vintage everything, because all those older things from cars to clothes to furniture and so on, were made with care and built/made to last.