Tuesday 21 January 2020

In Sewing News Today...

I woke up to a lovely article on my news feed about the new line of Canada Goose coats designed and created by Inuit designers.  This is actually 2.0, the second year that Canada Goose sponsored this initiative. 

Photo source

These original designs and wearable pieces of art will not be recreated. Instead these original designs will be traveling the globe and sold with the proceeds going back to help community through Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.  They are currently on display in New York and will also travel to France.  Will you be checking them out?

Also on my news feed was an article on fast-fashion. The opening sentence had me shaking my head. When are journalists going to complete their research and learn that fast-fashion does NOT make "shopping for clothes more affordable?"  Could this be a case of a youthful journalist who lived in a consumer environment post-1990s when fast-fashion took hold of a new generation of consumers who were denied Home Economics education?  

Fast-fashion in itself is designed to be extremely expensive with the economic costs are hidden from consumers with the use of trims, bling and that blinding point-of-sale sticker tag.  Fast-fashion is made with man-made fibres that are not produced to withstand wear and will pill and fall apart FASTER than clothing made with natural fibres.

Fast-fashion is extremely expensive because the sewing techniques used are not those used to make the item last.  As sewists we have learned that taking the time to construct a garment well from the inside with hand-sewing techniques can make all the difference in the look and construction of the garment.

Fast-fashion is all about producing something more expensively in that it needs to be replaced because of its useable lifespan has been shortened.  The environmental impact is that these man-made fibres don't last as natural fibre clothing from our (okay my) past and they don't bio-degrade as natural fibre fabrics.  And it's getting harder to find a clothing label that has a fibre content that isn't a man-made or blend fabric.

This is even happening in the local fabric store as I notice that fabrics in the current shelves at the store do not compare to the quality of the same fabric in my deep stash purchased years ago.  Yes, I am suggesting that we're living in an era of fast-fabrics. Take linen, today you'll often find it often blended with rayon in order to cut the costs of the producers and yet the cost of linen doesn't drop, hiding the increased cost to the consumers. Signs will display the item as linen even when it is the least amount of the fibre that makes up the fabric.  Remember when the price of bacon didn't go up but the amount of bacon inside the package decreased.  Similar marketing trick. Consumers need to be aware of how items are marketed and the subtle changes impact the life-span of not only food, RTW clothing but also the sewing supplies we're sold.

In other sewing news, if you're looking for some inspiration from the Dior exhibit and have missed their tour dates in the past years, there is one more opportunity in a few months.

Well, that's all in sewing news today.

Happy Sewing!




1 comment:

  1. Aren't those coats beautiful!! So nice to see quality in a garment.

    God bless.

    ReplyDelete

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