Category Archives: Upcycle

Lunamano

Carolina Gomez-Aubert is the Creative Director behind Lunamano : material rescue and re-design.

Presenting both her company and academic research at the FEI conference earlier this month, Carolina passionately described the desperate situation of the women she works with in El Salvador: one woman had been turned away from working at the Maquila for getting pregnant; another was left without income when her husband, away at work in America, suddenly stopped sending money when he found someone else. Lunamano offers these women an opportunity for empowerment and the chance at financial security through socially, culturally, economically and environmentally sensitive, fair labour practices.

Partnering with local suppliers in El Salvador, the resources used to create each design have been taken from reclaimed materials such as discarded foam and the old tubing from air-conditioning units, for example.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Carolina for a long chat last week and learned so much more about the project. Now living in London, and inspired by both her El Salvadorian culture and the birth or her daughter, Carolina describes her work as the “vessel that keeps her heritage alive in a foreign land”.

To place an order, or to learn more about this exciting project, contact Carolina, here.

Social Alterations @ FEI

So here we are in London for the Fashioning an Ethical Industry Conference: Fast Forward. Today, Nadira and I will both be presenting at the conference, and with Katrine in attendance, this will mark the first time the SA team is all together in the same place at the same time!

We will be doing lots of blogging and twitter (ing?) from the event, and will have our presentations uploaded later tonight for you to check out, so be sure to tune in.

Follow on twitter via @maryhanlon for that feed.

Wish us luck!

Tracing Trash

Trash of Your Society (T.O.Y.S.), an art project of theSYNdicate, is on tour investigating the after-life-cycle of products, or artefacts (a.k.a. trash). Do you know what happens to your products once you’ve tossed them?

Here is part of ‘The Concept’:

The footsteps or traces that refuse leaves internationally, are the subject of the art project of theSYNdicate: how countries deal with refuse in different parts of the world; the global cycle of refuse; the dimensions of European refuse in Africa.

Transport routes of primary products as well as of finished consumer goods cover long distances, in this globalised world, with many stages, and with goods passing through many hands: sometimes transported goods describe a cycle, other times goods travel in a more one-dimensional perspective.

At the end of a cycle, for example, a number of high quality goods from the southern parts of the world land in Europe, to be sold at high prices, with a hefty profit margin – which drives turnover and stock exchange assets. African countries (and other continents and countries with similar social and economic conditions) are the destination, the recipients, of refuse: the results of agrarian over-production, electronic junk, garments (often second hand clothes), and many similar goods. In this cycle, the places that are the countries of origin (right at the start of the cycle), are left mainly with refuse and package material. Africa – the First World‘s testing ground or laboratory, and self-service shop.

You can buy stock in the project for 35Euro, and receive a piece of upcycled art.

Follow along their journey through the TOYS Blog. The images and stories may surprise you!

Source: psfk

Images via the TOYSTOUR

Ethical Sourcing Forum North America 2010

The Ethical Sourcing Forum is a unique industry event that brings together members of the global sustainability community in order to address emerging sustainability and ethical supply chain challenges.

Here is the Agenda (subject to change):

Day 1: Thursday, March 18^th, 2010.

7:45 AM – 8:30 AM: Registration & Breakfast

8:30 AM – 9:15 AM: Welcome Note and ESF Community Poll Findings

What are YOUR top sustainability issues and management challenges? (Kathrin Bohr, Director, ISS Advisory Services)

9:15 AM – 10:30 AM: ‘VISUALIZE’ Panel Discussion

The Arc of Sustainability Progress: What have we achieved, where are we going and where do we need to be?

David Schilling, Program Director for Human Rights at Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (Moderator)
Matt Kistler, SVP Sustainability, Walmart
Linda Yanz, Director, Maquila Solidarity Network
Stephen Howard, CEO, Business in The Community
Amy Hall, Director of Social Consciousness, Eileen Fisher
International Labor Affairs Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor

10:30 AM – 10:45 AM: Spotlight on Innovation: Walmart’s Sustainability Index

Matt Kistler, SVP Sustainability, Walmart

10:45 AM – 11:00 AM: Coffee Break/ Networking

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM: RE-THINK LABS

Mini-Lab 1: Social Networking for Effective Stakeholder Engagement
(Kevin Long, Co-Founder, JustMeans & Brian Walsh, Head of Global Social Engagement, Liquidnet for Good)

Mini Lab 2: Collaboration: Potential and Pitfalls
(Scot Sharland, Executive Director, Automotive Industry Action Group & Monique Oxender, Global Manager, Supply Chain Sustainability, Ford Motor Company)

Mini Lab 3: Role of investment in driving CSR progress
(Garry Bell, VP Global Marketing for Gildan Activewear & Curtis Ravenel, Analyst at Bloomberg)

Mini Lab 4: Measuring and Reporting Environmental & Social Impacts
(TBC)

1:00 PM – 2:15 PM: Lunch

Joe Sibilia, Chief Visionary Officer of CSRWire and David Mager, President, Major Environmental Solutions and Co-organizer of Earth Day preview their new book: Street Smart Sustainability – The Entrepreneurs Guide to Profitably Greening Your Organization’s DNA

2:15 PM – 4:15 PM: RE-THINK LABS

Mini-Lab 5: New Models for Sustainable Purchasing and Factory Compliance (Amy Hall, Director of Social Consciousness, Eileen Fisher & Julie Yan, Manager, Hudson Bay Company)

Mini Lab 6: New Approaches to Factory Compliance
(Marie David, Director, Corporate Strategy & Sustainability, Walmart)

Mini Lab 7: Transparency in Supply Chain (Chuck Goncalves, Director of Global Responsibility for the America’s Region, Gap)

Mini Lab 8: Managing Supply Chain Environmental Risk: ” Both Win” Tools and Approaches (Jia Liu, Intertek Sustainability Solutions with Supplier (TBC), moderated by The Home Depot)

4:15 PM – 4:30 PM: Coffee Break/ Networking

4:30 PM – 5:30 PM: Panel Disussion: What Combination of Strategy and Tactics Really Drives CSR Progress?

Moderator: NY Bureau Chief, major international magazine (To be confirmed)
Genevieve Taft, Global Workplace Rights, The Coca-Cola Company
Sherlyn Broderson, Ethical Sourcing and Sustainability Manager, Cadbury
Frank Rexach, VP and General Manager, Haworth
Judi Kovacs, VP EHS Programs, NBC Universal

5:30 PM – 7:00 PM Cocktail Reception

Day 2: Friday, March 19^th, 2010

8:00 AM – 8:30 AM: Breakfast

8:30 AM – 9:00 AM: Keynote Presentation
TBC

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM: Presentation: Child/Forced Labor Preview of New Anti-Child/Forced Labor Supply Chain Management Criteria

CREA (Center for Reflection, Education and Action) will preview its work on developing ethical supply chain management criteria (contracted by the U.S. Dept. of Labor)

10:00 AM – 10:15 AM: Coffee Break/ Networking

10:15 AM – 12:15 PM: SOLUTION LAB – Backcasting: Developing Your Sustainable Roadmap

A hands-on collaborative sustainability decision-making / solution session involving the technique of reframing – a model for examining challenges from multiple stakeholder vantage points in order to uncover previously unseen perspectives and decision paths.

12:15 PM – 1:45 PM: Lunch/ Closing Remarks

Source: Ethical Sourcing Forum Agenda

Title: Ethical Sourcing Forum North America 2010
Location: New York
Link out: Click here

Start Date: 2010-03-18
End Date: 2010-03-19

Green Carpet Challenge

“We can’t celebrate good intentions, we have to celebrate beauty” (Dilys Williams, London College of Fashion)

We’ve really been enjoying watching Mr. Darcy actor Colin Firth’s wife Livia Firth challenge herself to take on ethical fashion this award season. Livia is no stranger to ethical style, however, considering she’s the owner of ethical shop Eco Age in London.

She’s been blogging about the Green Carpet Challenge over at Vogue UK, so that we can follow along with her on this incredible journey. Along the way, she’s been interviewing ethical fashion gurus like London College of Fashion Dilys Williams and ethical designer Christopher Raeburn.

Be sure to follow her as she takes on this challenge!

Vanished Bodies and Eternal Presence, Monumenta 2010

If you find yourself in Paris sometime before February 21^st, make sure to check out Monumenta 2010: Christian Boltanski’s Personnes at the Grand Palais.

In Personnes, Boltanski asserts that relics have become “vestiges of anonymous people, traces of strangers, with which it seems to be a question of communicating.” He cites Rolland Barthes, in the context of photography to support this question: ““A photo is literally an emanation from the referent. From a real body which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.” What “happens” therefore escapes any rational reduction: it is a matter of structuring the vanished body and eternal presence around a certain idea of the exhibition, a way of making manifest which opens the door to emotion.”

I stumbled upon this exhibit via Style Bubble. Here is what fashion blogger Susie Bubble had to say: “I’m simultaneously bemused and slightly saddened though that the next time I’m in the Grand Palais in March, all of this will be gone and in its place will be whatever runway setup Chanel decides upon for their A/W 10-11 show…”

Allan Chochinov at Core77 is often quoted for this statement: “Designers think they are in the artifact business, but they’re not; they’re in the consequence business.” (You can read more on responsible design in Chochinov’s Manifesto, found in the SA Reading section.) Although for me, obviously subjective in the SA context, Personnes reminds me of both artifact and consequence. It has me asking “What is the relationship between artifact and consequence in Boltanski’s work?” Seen through the lens of social, cultural and environmental responsibility, the exhibit is perhaps even more striking—more appalling (again, subjectively speaking). So I’m interested readers, what are your thoughts?

Image Source: Flickr via Style Bubble

Community News

Urgent Appeal: Haiti Earthquake

Red Cross: Canada, United States, United Kingdom

The United Nations: United Nations Foundation, UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, World Food Programme (WFP), UNICEF

If you a business, please visit the United Nations-Business website, Partnering for a Better World, and learn more about what your organization can do to offer much needed humanitarian relief and assistance both in Haiti and elsewhere.

Both Gildan and Hanesbrands were quick to pacify their shareholders this week, announcing how they would handle the situation. How will the earthquake impact workers? Here is what Michael Flanagan at Clothesource had to say:

“It’s impossible to know with any certainty how much devastation the recent earthquake has caused in Haiti. But, just a day after the quake hit, two unspoken tragedies are revealing themselves.

The first lies in our industry’s response. Clients of the country’s 25 garment factories have first to reassure the market that the earthquake is not going to damage buyers’ own commercial viability. Issuing statements about moving production to Asia or the Dominican Republic sounds harsh and unfeeling: but companies making these statements have no real alternative: US stock market rules require them to inform shareholders of important events that affect them – and if it’s known you’ve got or use a factory in Haiti, you really have to tell the market what you’re doing about the fact that goods can’t move in or out.

The tragedy isn’t that Hanesbrands and Gildan have announced they’re moving production so quickly: it’s what’s going to happen to the workers.” (Michael Flanagan, Clothesource)

Click here to read the full article, “Haiti’s unspoken tragedies”.

Now, here is a small roundup of some of the stories, headlines, and updates you may be interested in from in and around the community of socially responsible fashion design.

Articles of interest:

Now deluding a new group. This decades new Shangri-La myth

Colin Firth’s wife Livia’s green carpet challenge

Which is better for the environment, fake fur or real fur?

Green Q&A: How eco-friendly is the fashion industry?

Why We Need a Cultural Revolution in Consumption

H and M Says It Will No Longer Destroy Unworn Garments

Core 77

Absence makes for appreciation: A theatre director reflects on design

“Design Thinking” Today

Ecouterre

Does the Art of Craft and Handmade Matter in Fashion?

16 Eco-Fashion Predictions for 2010

Treehugger

Fashion New York 2020 to Bolster Disposable Buying Cycle?

Where New York’s Unsold Clothing Is Suppose To Go

Centre for Sustainable Fashion

4 Minute Wonder

The Centre for Sustainable Fashion’s Nina Stevenson, in response to the video below: “Seriously, how can we not be asking questions about the production conditions of a £4 pair of badly fitting jeans?” She recommends that DIY’ers everywhere use this video as a prompt to alter garments they already have, and not to purchase new ones.

In SA news, we have (at last) jumped on the Facebook bandwagon. Click here to become a fan!

Ethical Fashion Symposium, Scotland

Title: Ethical Fashion Symposium, Scotland
Location: Scotland
Link out: Click here

Edinburgh College of Art, in collaboration with Fashioning an Ethical Industry and the Scottish Academy, are hosting a two day symposium for students and tutors on fashion related courses in Scotland on ethics in fashion.

Day 1
The fashion cycle: Interactive introduction to the symposium and to the social and environmental issues in the fashion industry
Liz Parker, Fashioning an Ethical Industry

Communicating sustainability
Helen Spoor from sustainability communications company Futerra.

Sustainable Design
Jessica Hemmings, Associate Director, Centre for Visual & Cultural Studies

Bringing responsiblity into fashion business
Speaker to be confirmed

Fashion Future: What can you do at university, as consumers and once in business?
Liz Parker, Fashioning an Ethical IndustrySpeakers include

Day 2 – putting ideas into practice
Students and tutors will work together in multi-disciplinary, multi-university teams on the brief: ‘Universities and colleges in Scotland are working together to promote ethics and sustainability in fashion. In teams, develop a product, idea or strategy for engaging students with fashion ethics and sustainability’.

Students will present their work in a format of their choice, for example, a poster, visualisation board, campaign idea, presentation or garment design.

The event will take place on Monday 18th January and Tuesday 19th January 2010 from 10.00am – 4.00 in Lecture Theatre E22 at Edinburgh College of Art.

18th and 19th January 2010: 10.00am – 4.00pm

For more information and to register please click here.
Start Date: 2010-01-18
End Date: 2010-01-19

Fast Forward: Fashioning an Ethical Industry International Conference

Title: Fast Forward: Fashioning an Ethical Industry International Conference
Location: London
Link out: Click here

“In a time when we are increasingly concerned with the impact of the fashion industry on people and the planet students need to be equipped to design the way we make and consume fashion differently.

This two day international conference will bring together educators, industry experts, academics and selected students to explore how fashion can be taught to inspire responsibility for the rights of workers making our clothes.” (FEI)

SPEAKERS confirmed include:
Otto Von Busch – Haute-Couture Heretic
Alex Mcintosh – Centre for Sustainable Fashion
Nieves Ruiz Ramos – Bibico
Sophie Koers – Fair Wear Foundation
Academics and students will present papers peer reviewed by a panel
chaired by Doug Miller Professor in Ethical
Fashion at Northumbria University

SPECIAL EXHIBITION
Local Wisdom by Kate Fletcher, Reader in Sustainable Fashion at London
College of Fashion

This event is by invitation only. Invites have now been sent out by
post. If you have received at invite please RSVP by 13th January. If you have not received an invitation but would like to join us at this event please register your interest online.
Start Date: 2010-03-02
End Date: 2010-03-03

Roundup II //Holiday Gift Guide

“It is entirely possible to be well dressed without compromising your morals, or spending beyond your means. All it takes is a little research.” (Commerce with a Conscious)

Commerce with a Conscious: Ethical fashion for the fastidious gentleman has developed beautiful guides to Good Giving:

On Their Person// Belts and Ties// Wallets and Cases// Hats, Scarves and Gloves

CwaC has even selected some Editor’s Picks, just in time for you to add them to your holiday wish list.

At Social Alterations, our favourite pick this season for wo/men is Vancouver based Red Flag Design. Here is a snapshot of the company’s design ethos, in the context of Abandoned Materials:

“Textile innovation in the industrial world has created fabrics that surpass our expectations of performance. The desire to be stronger, lighter, faster, etc. drives a continual reinvention of materials. This constant growth leaves a trail of obsolescence; as each new material is introduced, an old one is left behind. Red Flag Design has created the ALTERNATE USE MATERIAL (AUM) line to take advantage of the abandoned materials generated through this process of evolution. Through the AUM concept, Red Flag has taken upon itself the exploration of the vast potential laying dormant in the unconsidered applications of recycled materials. The first AUM product line is made from recycled sailcloth.” (Red Flag Design, About)

Their last minute holiday sale ends today @7pm. BUT, according to their website, they are open to personal sale extensions based on your busy holiday schedule! So if you can’t make it down today, give them a call.

Also, check out Ethical Style’s blog post Green Gift Guides Galore, were they break down their favourite holiday gift guides. Their holiday issue is out tomorrow (Thursday), so be sure to follow them! AND they have just launched a holiday giveaway in partnership with Brilliant Earth! Beautiful!