Fashion hurts. (via Designboom)
PLUS Model Magazine, a publication celebrating the plus-size fashion industry, recently printed some revealing statistics about the models that exhibit our clothes, sell our products, and generally define female beauty. The highlights:
- Twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8% less than the average woman; today, she weighs 23% less.
- Most models meet the Body Mass Index physical criteria for anorexia.
- When the plus-size modeling industry began, the models ranged in size from 14 to 20; today, they average between a size 6 and 14.
- Half of American women wear a size 14 or larger, but most standard clothing outlets cater to sizes 14 or smaller.
Wouldn’t you be offended if your cultural heritage was immortalized in underwear? This fall, the Navajo Nation sent retailer Urban Outfitters a cease and desist letter, forcing them to rename more than 20 products the tribe found objectionable, including the “Navajo Hipster Panty” and “Navajo Print Fabric Wrapped Flask,” reports Lisa Hix in Collectors Weekly.
The Navajo Nation holds trademarks for the name “Navajo,” preventing it being used to sell things like mass-produced hoodies and knee socks. And, the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 makes it illegal to falsely market a product as Native American–made. Even so, more and more Native American–inspired fashions are gracing metropolitan runways and glossy magazine pages. From hipster cardigans to luxe handbags to leather bracelets, designs cribbed from America’s indigenous people are making the rounds.
New York Fashion Week, where celebrities and the industry elite flank runways to catch the first glimpses of new lines from high-end designers like Marchesa and Alexander McQueen, is over. The cycle of life (and the Tumblr Radar) has returned to normal. For the average U.S. consumer, though, fast fashion—cheap clothing produced quick and dirty—hangs in the closet.
Fast fashion’s formula, known as the “quick-response method,” keeps up with ever-changing trends promoted at events like Fashion Week by speeding up every aspect of the clothing-production process: design, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing. In order to keep the pace lively, workers’ conditions and the environment suffer.
Responsible clothing options in the states and elsewhere are increasingly easy to find, tracked by blogs like Eco-Chick and Eco Fashion World and spearheaded by green designers such as 2010 Utne Visionary Natalia Allen. And, Cohen says, some in the high-fashion industry are recommitting to artisan craftsmanship, with houses like Hermès beginning to emphasize “slow fashion.”
The Crockpot: A Weekly Link-Digest from Utne
For those who strive for inner peace but don’t take themselves too seriously: A list of 20 thoughts to think while pretending to meditate. - What does a real life superhero look like? Photographer Peter Tangen will show you.
- Is the story of finding Osama bin Laden a cover for the real story?
- Before the EPA was a “Job-Killer,” Michele Bachmann thought it could bring “long-term benefits to…the economy.”
- A smart young woman launches an activist website to help her parents’ native country, Yemen, in its grassroots battle to oust 33-year-dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh.
- A 417 million-year-old oil deposit is drawing the oil industry to North Dakota, “the only state in the country that had more residents in 1930 than it does today,” Governing reports.
- How fast fashion takes a toll on the earth.
- High school girls earn ‘A’s for asexuality.
- It’s no surprise that Kanye West and Jay-Z would make a collaborative album about how awesome they are. But, Grantland asks, is it any good?
- Not to harsh your buzz, but Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is no longer the authoritative work of art on Ken Kesey’s psychedelic school bus ride.
- From banjo to violin to blues guitar, street performers offer a primer on the art of busking.
- Forget the book of love. Meet the kindly author who wrote the Book of Raunch.
- With lots of enticing buttons, flashy animations, pop-ups, and hyperlinks, the Internet can be a pretty distracting place. How is anyone supposed to get any writing done? Answer: Head to QuietWrite, the web’s private writer’s nook.
Would you wear a swamp rat around your shoulders? Michael Massimi, the invasive-species coordinator at the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTNEP) in southeast Louisiana, hopes swamp rats—properly known as nutrias—will become part of your wardrobe. Read more …
"The global apparel industry is a global sweatshop, and that has to do with cutthroat competition."
— Robert J.S. Ross, a professor of sociology at Clark University and author of “Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops,” says poor conditions still exist for garment workers around the globe. From an interview by @GlobeMuther, The Boston Globe. (via boston)
(via boston)
More than 8,000 chemicals were used to make the clothes in your closet. Approximately 1,800 gallons of fresh water were used to manufacture the jeans you’re wearing right now. All-too-commonplace numbers like these make it clear that the fashion industry needs an eco-makeover. Natalia Allen is up for the challenge.
But … “A handful of DIY designers, craft-enthusiasts and fashionistas are trying to literally makeover the appearance of girls in the landscape of technology—by outfitting them with chic, wired clothing and accessories,” Bitch’s Tammy Oler writes, “‘tech crafting’ may just be the key to getting more women and girls involved in technology.”
