Be Kind, Thrift and Rewind

I found this great book, Cut- Up Couture about upcycling when I was in Portland last fall with my daughter. We were at Powell’s City of Books, which is a huge book store. I was so excited about the book I couldn’t leave the book store without it. Koko Yamase’s designs are innovative and fun. The book comes complete with instructions of how to make her designs out of men’s wear. The designs are primarily made out of t shirts, sweatshirts, men’s dress shirts or scarves. The various designs range from ultra simple to a bit complicated.

What I find so wonderful about the book aside from her designs is also the whole concept of upcycling a preused item of clothing. With all the waste being generated it is truly a conscious act to spend some time upcycling. Plus the joy of making something yourself is rewarding. With Koko Yamase’s designs and instructions it is easy for even a beginner at sewing to make an outfit.

Sahlil Sahni and Avid Boustani of Sloan School of Management did a study on Textile Remanufacturing and Energy savings. They came to the conclusion that by continuing to reuse a garment such as a blouse can save 68 percent of the energy required to manufacture a new one. This includes the energy involved in laundering the item 75 times. (1) (see Reference 2, page 7). So making a habit of upcycling really can add up to doing something that is helpful for our environment. We can rewind, reuse, recycle and reduce energy use in one shot! It’s a good feeling to be a part of the slow fashion movement and appreciate extending the life of a garment by recreating it into something you want.

Photo by Kevin Dooley from Flickr

My Patched Blouse

I have made three of the designs from this book so far. I am going to make more. I made the Poncho from Four Scarves for my daughter.  I did use new acrylic scarves since my daughter works as a barista. She needs something simple in terms of wash and wear. I made the Patched Blouse for myself although I ended up making it from a women’s size 14 blouse. I found the shirt at a garage sale and just liked the pattern on it. I am a size six so it was a bit smaller than a men’s small shirt. Total cost to make ran $4.00. I also made the Long Jumper from Layered Men’s Shirts. I discovered that you really need to trust your eye and the picture in the book if you are using a smaller shirt than she does in the books’ instructions. I for instance, cut my sleeve at the 11” from the neckline as she states for XL shirts and it was too short. My instinct told me if I cut there it might be too short but I tried it. So I had to re sew the sleeve back on where I had cut it, then cut lower down. So I have two cuts where I should have had one. My dress still looks very nice. Also one side of the layered shirt lines up perfectly with the shirt on top and not quite on the other side. It’s difficult to tell if they line up exactly in her book since you only see certain views of the model wearing it. She does state that you can use a larger shirt for the bottom and gather the arm pit of the lower shirt before layering and sewing. I am going to try that with another shirt since I like this dress and I think if I have two I will wear them both a lot in winter. I didn’t expect the dress to look perfect so I am fine with it being slightly off beat. Its upcycled!! I may as well have a sense of humor about it!! I used a lovely Wrangler denim shirt for the top of my dress and a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt for the bottom.   For a unique detail I added a antique green button on each side where the sides of the shirts join.  Total cost to make was about $10.00 since I bought two thrift store shirts; one was half price and I needed some elastic and thread. My next one will be chambray denim on top and I want a soft flannel for the bottom shirt.

Patched Blouse in the book

My Long Jumper

I really like the various designs in the book. The one’s from men’s shirts are my favorites and I also really like the ones from scarves.   I want to make the Two Way Poncho/Skirt. I think that’s an awesome idea that the poncho works as a skirt as well. There is the Arm-In-Arm Skirt in the book from two shirts which has a soft feminine classic look to it.  There is one knitwear design Blouse With Button Shoulders which can be worn as a blouse, sarouel pants or a skirt depending on how one buttons the buttons. For nights out on the town there is the Evening Coat with Sweatshirts, which looks as if it’d be quite versatile if it isn’t very cold out.

Aside from being a clothing designer Koko Yamase owns a vintage store. If you enjoy upcyling or are just getting started I recommend this book. I am thrilling enjoying the process of making some of these designs. It even inspired me to make my own design with a tank top and panels of fabric I had left from Liberty of London. I mixed in some fabrics that weren’t Liberty plus a couple of panels were from a men’s shirt. My dress came out really lovely! Total cost to make my own design, which was made out of predominately things I already had in my closet was $3.75. All I needed to buy was binding tape and some thread!

(1)Sloan School of Management; Textile Remanufacturing and Energy Savings; Sahil Sahni et al.; January 2010.

On Fourth of July a friend and I went to this Retro Event sponsored by Dances of Vice. This event was called a Rockabilly Night Market. It was held in Brooklyn, NY at SRB on Second Avenue in an area that is now a mixture of warehouses and residential homes. Dances of Vice is an entertainment group that celebrates times past using a mixture of fantasy, nostalgia and surrealism.    There were a few bands that played that night and also a couple of burlesque dancers performed. There was quite a lot of swing dancing going on in the small dance space. Several vendors had booths at the event selling vintage or vintage inspired items. It was fun to go to an event where most of the people there were dressed as if it was the 1940’s or 50’s. If I remember correctly the door fee was a mere $10 for this event.

There was an Enz’s booth which sold their lovely dresses and tops that are all vintage inspired. The quality and fabrics are really beautiful. The sales lady from their Park Slope shop was at the event and she looks great in their clothing. There was a booth run by a hairdresser who was doing retro hair styles. She was busy the entire time. Other vendors sold floral hair accessories, vintage clothing and jewelry. It was a really fun event although the room was a bit small considering how many people attended. A few people drove there in their antique cars and they parked outside.

The burlesque dancers put on a good show. I hadn’t seen burlesque live before and it was very entertaining. One of the dancers was a bit wilder and more risqué. She had a sultry and provocative way of dancing. The dancer Bettina May was dressed like a sailor part of the time and looked like a lovely pinup lady. She had a more of all American wholesome sweetheart look with a fun personality that came through in her dancing. I just now realized that Bettina May is the same woman who is the hair dresser. Apparently she teaches monthly pinup classes, complete with a makeover and pin up photo shoot.

My friend and I had a really enjoyable time. We are hoping to take a swing dance class intensive soon. It’s been awhile since I did swing dance classes so I am rusty. We are hoping to go to more of these events soon. If we do I will let you know how it went!

Recently I read Elizabeth Cline’s book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion.  She was driven to explore what is going on behind the scenes of all the mass production.  She traveled to China, Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Los Angeles, and the garment district in NY.  Elizabeth visited several foreign factories and “told them I owned a company called Fashion Forward Inc., which of course I don’t, and printed up light pink business cards from my home computer with my apartment address and phone number.  I put together a “line” of cheap fashion out of my own closet in order to ask the factories how much it would cost to produce my garments with each of them. I crossed my fingers that the language barrier would help me fudge the rest.”

She explores and encourages us to question where our clothing comes from, how it is made, and what choices we have about how we choose to shop.  She  writes about the fashion industry and how “Most mass market clothing is now so poorly made and ordinary that many consumers intuit that it’s not worth much money.”

When I was a child I remember how most of my clothing was made by my grandmothers or my mother.  Women sewed on a regular basis.  Back then it was often cheaper to make your own clothing, plus you could choose the quality of your clothing by sewing it.  I remember one of my grandmothers telling me when I was an adolescent that before I bought any article of clothing I should test the seams, “pull at them and make sure they are secure.” Many of today mass marketed clothing is so cheaply made that if you pull the seams they may start to unravel.  I know for myself this is one of the main reasons I choose to shop at thrift stores.  For the money I want to spend I can find better quality of clothing in a thrift store.  The person who owned the clothing before me could afford to buy the brands and quality that I like, so I may as well enjoy their castoffs.

It is easy enough to fall into consuming too much, more than we need in general. There may be times when we haven’t stopped to be more “conscious” about our choices.  This is what Elizabeth explores. Along the way she brings up various options available to us.  She writes about the current trend of fast fashion in the US.  “Fast fashion consumers, not surprisingly, shop more than other consumers.  A lot more.”  Many chain stores now are thriving from this fast fashion cycle.  Customers return numerous times throughout the year, far more than in the days of four season shopping cycles.  Designers are under tremendous pressure, which Elizabeth also explores in her book.  The entire fashion industry has gone though tremendous changes.  The United States has set a perilous precedent in its shopping habits.  Now China is picking up on our shopping frenetic energy and they are also in the throws of their own fast fashion cycle of buying, mass production for themselves and everything that follows.  It really is time to start thinking about how this cycle effects all of us, if you haven’t been thinking about it previously.

“In her book she states “Every year, Americans throw away 12.7 million tons, or 68 pounds of textiles per person, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which also estimates that 1.6 million tons of this waste could be recycled or reused.” (1)

I personally don’t buy that much but it’s a terrifying thought to realize that many people do.  All of this environmentally takes a toll on our planet.  She also explains how so much of the clothing that goes into thrift shops doesn’t necessarily stay there.  It is still a good idea to donate to thrift stores, however they eventually have to give the clothing to textiles recyclers down the line.  The recyclers can use much of the clothing but not necessarily all of it.  So if we consume too much we risk increasing waste.  Even the clothing that gets shipped to third world countries have changing fashion scenes.  The clothing being outsourced there may or may not be used as we think it will be.

The dyes used to produce clothing also present problems.  Elizabeth states “China, where 10 percent of the world’s textiles are now produced, is an environmental disaster.”  She describes   how she suffered a sinus infection that lasted for months after visiting in China’s Gaundong Province in 20011. The pollution was horrendous.   She also writes” China’s garment industry operates on an intimidating scale.  It’s several times bigger than any garment industry that’s happened anywhere in the world at any point in history.  They have more than 40,000 clothing manufacturer’s and 15 million garment industry jobs.  (2)  Compare that to the 1.45 million garment and industry jobs the United States had at peak employment some 40 years ago. “(3)

She goes on to describe how China’s economy is flourishing while the United States has been going through years of suffering.  Thousands of garment workers in the US have lost jobs.  Currently in China manufacturers   are encouraging their people to buy what is made in their own country.  This is driving the cost of production in China higher and making China’s economy stronger.  All of this is food for thought as we can be invited to further examine our own choices of our own spending habits.

We could choose to buy clothing made only in the United States.  We could choose to just consume less and be more mindful of where things are made. We could choose to sew all our clothing, or thrift, buy vintage, trade or choose a combination of these alternatives.

Elizabeth interviewed a woman in Los Angeles, CA who had worked in the garment industry for many years.  The woman told her “Most of the garment workers in LA she knows put in ten-hour days and work six days a week making countless garments just so they can drag their earnings up to minimum wage.”  Most of the workers “are paid per finished garment (known as piece work).”  So “Made in the USA “ also has its oxymorons.  One factory Elizabeth visited Alta Gracia, in the Dominican Republic produces basic clothing for colleges.  Their garment workers get paid “a living wage” so their workers have much better opportunities available to them.

Elizabeth goes on to write about the Slow Fashion movement.  A designer in Brooklyn, Sarah Kate Beaumont has been sewing all her clothing since the summer of 2008.  Beaumont teaches sewing lessons as well and has a blog called Very Sweet Life.  Beaumont states “Home sewn garments, similar to home cooked foods, are made with care and sustenance.  In a sense clothing can be nourishing.”    Elizabeth signed up for sewing lessons and became very excited about sewing.  In the long run she chose to use sewing mostly for repairing and altering her clothing.

The term “Slow Fashion” was coined in 2007 by Kate Fletcher in 2007.  Fletcher is a designer with the Centre of Sustainable Fashion in the UK.  Slow Fashion is not a seasonal trend that comes and goes like animal print, but a sustainable fashion movement that is gaining momentum.”  Slow Fashion encourages us to think about quality over quantity, to question where garments come from and to be conscious of our part in the impact of our choices on the environment.

I strongly recommend Elizabeth Cline’s Book “Overdressed- the High Cost of Cheap Fashion” to those who wish to learn more about mass production of garments.  It is well worth the time it takes to read.   It will open your perspective to various options and allow you to feel more comfortable about your choices down the road.  You might even be inclined to learn to sew!

Footnotes:

(1). Jana Hawley, “Sustainable Fashion: Why now? A Conversation Exploring Issues, Practices, and Possiblities,” Economic Impact of Textile and Clothing Recycling (New York: Fairchild Books, 2008):207-32.

(2). George Wehrfritz and Alexandra A. Seno, Succeeding at Sewing,” Newsweek, January 10, 2005.

(3). Standard & Poor/s January 2011 Industry Surveys, Apparel & Footwear: Retailers & Brands.