Wake up and smell your tee-shirt. Does it stink? It might be a fast-fashion tee-shirt. Those tee-shirts really stink. People have died making fast-fashion. That stinks and makes you think about that $5.00 tee-shirt that is so cheap that you're tempting to pick one up in every colour.
Now stop and think. Someone died making tee-shirts. It sounds ridiculous doesn't it? But sadly, it is not. As a matter of fact,
over a thousand people died in one day less than six months ago. And hundreds more have died since that time making fast-fashions for western consumers.
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Rescue operations at the Rana Plaza building. Photograph: Rehman Asad/Rehman Asad/Demotix/Corbis |
Tee-shirts from bargain retailers are not the only items that are made in far away lands by exploited workers. It is all sorts of garments from a wide range of retailers.
Armani, Tommy and Michael Kors are just a few designer brands that have had items produced in the same places as fast-fashion tee-shirts.
The flashy marketing campaigns are a facade for what is behind the product. Workers are paid less than a dollar a day working long hours in unsafe conditions. Many are beaten and threatened. It is not fiction, it is a horror story. A true life horror story.
This shouldn't be anything new unless you have been living under a rock for decades. Naomi Klein's book
No Logo published in 1999 examined the road we were travelling where corporations cared more about the marketing of a product than the actual manufacturing of said product. We've been on the slippery slope for quite some time.
Last year, Elizabeth's Cline's
Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion took a look at fast fashion, the race to the bottom and the tricks that retailers do to make consumers think they are getting a real bargain. But we're not. Instead when we purchase fast-fashion we're part of the problem. This post is not meant to lecture. I really hope that it is not coming across as such.
Really, this is a rant. Oh goodness, my wardrobe has ready-to-wear items that I don't know where they were made or under what conditions. I'm trying to change. I'm trying to educate myself. I trying to pay attention to the stories in the news that are warning me that children, women and men are being exploited.
Awareness is a first step.
CBC's Fifth Estate did
a story on fast-fashion that aired this weekend. Check it out. You might want to make sure you have a box of kleenex beside you. And the Globe and Mail ran "
Spinning Tragedy: The True Cost of a T-Shirt" this weekend, an investigative piece into the fast-fashion industry like so many other papers have focused their lens. There are so many examples and with the internet it is at the tip of our fingertips.
For my part, I vow to stop buying ready-to-wear and sew my own clothing and to buy fair trade fabric whenever possible.
What about you
what will you do to mark today?
Of course, I was intrigued by a new Marcy Tilton pattern, Vogue 8966. It was the only pattern out of the bunch that made me want to take notice. I think this hat is super cute and totally my style. And I like this scarf which is totally not warm enough for a Winnipeg winter but too darn cute none-the-less. 
Fabric Used: 1 metre of dark denim
The fabric has been in my stash for at least a decade and the leather trim longer than that coming all the way from Toronto when I actually lived there. I think the trim can actually be considered vintage at this point. 
The invisible zipper, next to the leather trim is my favourite part of this skirt. I tell ya, if it weren't for basting tape that invisible zipper wouldn't look this good.
Fabric Used: 2.3 metres
The fabric is from Fabricland and it is listed as a 50% cotton and 50% polyester blend. It frays like crazy! And that makes me wonder if the polyester content might even be higher? Hmmm. 
The pattern is also a 2013 addition to the pattern collection. I picked it up because the blouse has cuff variations including french cuffs. Now you might be wondering how it ended up being a short sleeve shirt. I was working on the placket when I realized that I made a rookie mistake. While shortening the sleeve length I totally neglected the length of the sleeve placket. Well, when I realized that the placket opening would be higher than my elbow I thought it would be best to abandon that idea. Out came the scissors to recreate this as a short sleeve top. 
My first thought was that this would make a cozy wrap coat. 
I finished a second round of anti-biotics on Thursday. Oh my goodness does it ever feel great to breath again without your head feeling like it is going to explode. I am giddy with excitement for the first snow fall to hurry up and get here. The weather forecast has been calling for flurries this weekend. [It will officially mark the end of outdoor mould allergies.] But I digress...
Tim Gunn defines the classic white shirt as an essential piece.
I'm sure I have one of those in my stash but don't ask me where. Sew, I did the next best thing. I made the belt loops wider. Instead of sewing them according to the pattern instructions, with a narrow seam allowance and turning them I just serged the edge. I then folded the finished edges over and top-stitched in place. 
