Alabama Chanin

I stopped tracking sustainable style sources months ago because there were getting to be just too many of them. But I discovered Alabama Chanin today and just had to share. I'd had visions of reverse-appliqué T-shirts for the last month or so, and here they are -- to be purchased or made, using their generously-provided instructions and tips.

T-shirt laptop sleeve

Following on the success of my T-shirt messenger bag, I used two more shirts to make a padded sleeve for my son's laptop. Each side is a sandwich of T-shirt fabric, fusible fleece interfacing (it's a bit thicker than the usual type) and a cotton-twill lining. He didn't want a zipper, so I didn't use one, but it would not have been too hard to insert one before the side panels were joined. Skills needed: careful measuring and cutting, iron-on interfacing, machine sewing. Total time: about half an hour.

The good life: refashioning and mending party

The NWL household was a-buzz Saturday afternoon with the sound of sewing machines. My daughter and I each had a stack of projects, and since I currently have two sewing machines and she has none, we scheduling a "sewing party" (to quote my 7-year-old granddaughter). Between 11 AM and 7 PM, we did the following between us:

finished the T-shirt messenger bag
made a laptop sleeve out of two more T-shirts (description coming as soon as I can get it back!)
made a cloth and vinyl photo wallet for K to take to Girl Scout camp
inserted elastic into my son-in-law's too roomy swimming trunks (actually he did 95% of the work on that one)
mended a wonderful vintage apron (late 40s, early 50s)
mended K's night gown
mended K's ruffly tie-dye skirt
turned a floaty triangular remnant into a tulip skirt for a little girl's make-believe
started a terry cloth head wrap made of old towels

Somewhere along the way, stories were told, dinner was served, the dog was walked and origami ornaments were produced.

Total cost of supplies: under $10.
Amount of stuff diverted from the trash: a pile about 3 feet high
"new" items produced: 9

Value of time spent together as a family: priceless.

Who says sustainable living means sacrificing "the good life"?

T-shirt messenger bag

My Wardrobe Refashion project for this week was challenging, but immense fun. My college-student son asked if it would be possible to make a messenger bag for him out of a few of his favorite T-shirts. With his permission, I sacrificed the old bag to make a pattern (and scavenge the shoulder strap). I used fusible interfacing to stiffen it and lined it with canvas to add stability. Eight hours later, he has a new, one-of-a kind bag and is thrilled with the results. So am I!

The actual design was pretty simple; what made it hard was the stretchiness of the T-shirts and sewing the seam binding around the edges, especially when it got thick.



The finished messenger bag, front.

To see more pictures, follow the link to my Flickr photos.

T-shirt salvage project

I started the Wardrobe Refashion challenge with a salvaging project. My college-age son bought a very cheap T-shirt which shrank in odd ways after the first washing, turning it into a hip-length trapeze top with more fullness in the back than the front. Normally, this would have spelled " dust cloth", but he really liked the design and asked if it could be fixed. The solution was to open up the side seams from waist to arm hole and take it in unevenly (more in the back than the front). The best part of this project was trying out my newly-acquired Singer 6268 (ca. 1984) which has an overlock stitch (my mid-1970s Kenmore doesn't). It worked beautifully and my son was so thrilled he's been wearing it a couple of times a week. (Gotta love 'em, right?

Improving the lifespan of cotton knit tops

I estimate that about 20% of my wardrobe is knit cotton tops (T-shirts, tanks, turtlenecks), so it is a category that cries for attention from the green consumer. Because I wear (and wash) them frequently, cotton knits need to be replaced more often than my wool blazer and dressy black trousers. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the tendency of cotton knits to shrink, lose fibers and fade in the laundry cuts their lifetime for work and dressy occasions. For this post, I'll put my PhD-in-textiles hat on and offer a few suggestions for buying and maintaining these wardrobe staples.

1) Don't be a purist; a little spandex goes a long way. Adding a touch of spandex (often listed as the brand name "Lycra") adds stability, stretch recovery and can reduce shrinkage. If you air-dry your clothes (and you should, see below), you'll find the shorter drying time a plus, as well. Yes, you can find organic cotton T-shirts with Lycra online and at your local REI store, if you have one.

2) Wash each garment less frequently. I know, I know, some of you are thinking "ew"! But just as some folks have gone overboard with the disinfectant wipes and sprays, some people are too quick to toss their washables in the hamper. Here's a baby step: if the T-shirt you are wearing during the day is still unstained at bedtime, wear it to bed. By doing this, you are halving the environmental load of maintaining that shirt. (Bonus: you won't need to buy pajama tops.)

3) Wash your cotton knits in cold water on a gentle cycle. Unless your clothing is heavily soiled (say, after a day of gardening). It doesn't need any more, and the agitator gives clothes a real beating -- that's why you're not supposed to stick your hand in the machine when it's washing.

3) Air dry your shirts, instead of tumble drying. While cotton can withstand high heat, the tumbling -- like agitation when washing -- results in loss of fibers over time, which is why your T's seem to get thinner and thinner. Line-drying your shirts not only saves energy, it helps improve your T-shirt's "wearage". If you want to avoid the wrinkles and stiff hand that can plague air-dried fabrics, go ahead and give them a quick (5-minute) tumble in the dryer on medium heat.

T-Shirts, continued

Given the popularity and ubiquity of T-shirts, over the last 35 years, it's possible that some of us have several years' supply in our closets and drawers. The best way to reduce our fashion footprint is to increase the milage (wearage? I am liking that word) of the things we already own, so thinking of ways to extend the useful life of T-shirts and other lightweight cotton and cotton-blend knits could be an excellent start.

I offer few ideas that have popped up here and there.

1) T-shirt cutting, which is repurposing shirts by slashing, decorating and generally getting creative with them. If you are feeling creative (and you are over 18), you can enter Greenloop's T-Shirt Cutting contest.

2) layering them under sheer or lacy tops. This is working well for my two-year old shirts which are still wearable but have aged enough to make them less appropriate for work and dressy occasions. I wore an old turquoise tank under a salmon-colored thread lace sweater the other evening and got lots of complements. Last night I noticed a friend sporting a solid color T-shirt under a long-sleeved white shirt in a burnout patterned fabric.

3) Transforming children's beloved but outgrown T's into decorative items such as pillows and quilts.

4) Framing your favorite rock concert or protest event T so you can enjoy the memory on your wall, where it will last longer than on your body.

Send us your old stuff, so we can make more green stuff

Now, there's two ways to read that sentence. It could be a plea for recyclables (good thing) or to could be a green-tinged ploy to make a lot of cash with free raw materials (maybe not so good). Take a look at Loomstate and Barneys' latest foray into eco-fashion. Your call:

Is it

a) a way to keep T-shirts out of the landfill

b) a way to turn donated freebies into pricey items for the Barneys holiday 2008 collection

c) a way to get eco-fashionistas into Barneys (note the helpful link)

It's nice that part of the proceeds from the recycled shirts will be channeled through 1% for the Planet (a network of business that contribute to environmental causes), because at the usual Barneys' prices, it's unlikely that the shirt donors will have anything to show for their own generosity. I think I'll hang on to my old T-shirts, restyle myself and save the carfare to ship them to Loomstate.

Thread debuts: online ethical fashion magazine

The BBC announced Thursday the launch of a new online magazine, Thread, dedicated to ethical fashion and catering to the large and growing portion of the 16-30 age groups who claim an interest in sustainable style. (Not to be confused with Threads, for about the last twenty years the periodical for people who care about slow, hand-made fashion that -- gasp -- doesn't look "homemade".)

The premiere issue of Thread has a great mix of informative articles (here's one on the hidden cost of cheap clothes) and style layouts (mostly for skinny young things, but, hey, it's their turn). All I want to know is when BBC America or some other US channel is going to air the BBC four-part series "Blood, Sweat and T-shirts":

Six young fashion addicts experience life as factory workers in India,
making clothes for the British high street. In this four-part series,
the six work in the mills of India’s cotton belt and stitch clothes in
cramped back rooms, sleeping next to their sewing machine. See how it
changes their attitudes to cut-price clothing.

Dear G Living: There's no such thing as five "must-buy" jeans for spring.

As part of my effort to keep up with eco-fashion news (or, as it seems recently, eco-fashion "news"), I subscribe to a soul-crushing number of (supposedly) green blogs. Some are better than others, most most are breathless, greenwashing fashionista sites who want to replace Paris Hilton's accessory dogs with $50 organic cotton T-shirts. But I digress.

Today's G Living post leaves no doubt in my mind about their environmental purity: it's a paean to the Alternative Consumer's list of the top five organic denim jeans. The Alternative Consumer's Victoria Everman offers a spare listing -- five pics and links -- and no explanation of what makes them so fabulous, other than they're being "from some of the most eco fashion forward brands". (Translation: so tight in the butt you need a thong and ranging in price from $108 to $238.) G Living confirms the NWL's suspicion that they really don't give a rat's patootie about climate change in a few quivering lines:

"From skinnies to high waisted, straight leg to boot cut, a cool pair of
jeans (or thirty), are essential capsule wardrobe components for any
serious fashionista."

"now that there are so many fabulous organic varieties on offer, we don’t have to feel guilty about new purchases"

I've never claimed to be a fashionista, and the proof is probably that I haven't owned 30 pairs of jeans in my entire adult life. In fact, I now own 4 pairs all at once, which is a record; they range in age from two to eight years. Moreover, I'm going to pass on this year's skinny jeans as long as I am still sporting this decade's rear end.

Now if (IF!) I were in a mood to replace these jeans right now, here's the NWL pick for "might buy" denim for Spring 2008:

Levi's eco Mid Rise Boot 553 Jeans ($58 until 4/27)
Loomstate "Ethos" straight leg jeans ($89 on sale at Bluefly.com)
Loomstate Cotton Maiden jeans ($98)

In search of the perfect T-shirt

It's a been a travel-and presentation-intensive month for the NWL, with a mountain of makeup work waiting when it was all over. Along the way, I did my biannual wardrobe shift, packing up the fall/winter duds and pulling out the spring/summer clothing. I realized while doing this that I am short on tops; many of the T-shirts I bought three years ago are looking really worn and faded. In my world, that means fine for home and bed, but not for work. T-shirts have been part of my slow fashion strategy since the 70s, when I first started including solid T's as a wardrobe staple -- always one white, one red and one black, which coordinate best with my professional wardrobe -- and a couple "fresh" colors to keep things interesting. This year, only the black on and one other was looking presentable enough for work, meetings and other "dressy" (for me) occasions.

So I started looking for replacements, hoping to apply some of the newer eco-fashion principles to the search. I shopped Greenloop but gagged at the outrageous prices (can I harvest my own bamboo and send it to them for fabrication?) and the proliferation of tops designed but the young and slim. (No cap sleeves, please!). The usual catalogs have arrived, full of T's in a lovely assortment of colors, but none of them in organic cotton or made in the U.S. I visited American Apparel downtown and liked some of what I saw, but their "fine jersey" strikes this over-educated consumer as lovely to look at and wear, but less durable than the heftier cotton I usually buy.

An aside -- this is the problem with cotton jersey T-shirts. Cotton IS absorbent and it holds up well to repeated washing. But T-shirt wearers have probably noticed how their favorite shirts (and jeans, for that mattter) get thinner, more faded and softer over time. That's why we love them so much and also why they need to be replaced more often than some other items in our wardrobe. Unless the fiber used is fairly long (for cotton, that means 2-2.5 inches), fibers tend to wash away over time. Flat jersey knits are also less durable than pique or rib knits. So the perfect T for durability would be made of long-staple fiber (Pima, Supima, Egyptian)  in a slightly heavier, textured knit fabric. I have noticed that my T's with a touch of Spandex seem to be holding their shape a color well, also.

So far I've made one purchase --  a stripe (heather blue and white) Liz Claiborne shirt in a medium-weight, tiny rib. Value Village, $1.95. They had scads of cotton T's, but they all looked like the ones I'll be sleeping in this summer.

Where are we now?

And so, back to business. I needn't feel so bad for neglecting NWL over the holidays; most of my regular blogs also slowed down or went on hiatus around Christmas and New Year's, which I suppose is a reminder that bloggers aren't yet "real" journalists, but the modern version of 18th century pamphleteers, as Dan Bricklin discusses in his blog. So here's today's pamphlet.


I've been asked in several recent interviews to predict where "green" fashion is heading; my pat answer is that I'm a historian, not a forecaster. It's easier for me to explain where we've been and draw parallels to other trends than to prognosticate about next year. The best I can do is describe where we are now:

• It's not just about eco-friendly fashion. More and more consumers care about ethical, meaningful consumption. I don't have numbers, but I can see the evidence in the increasing numbers of articles, books, blogs and publications that offer alternative visions of the Good Life, as defined as more stuff. Just as people want food that is safe, tasty AND nourishing, and clothing that is flattering, well-made AND comfortable, they want the products they buy to be safe for the environment and the user, ethically produced AND designed to last. That's why in order to keep up with trends in this area I have news alerts for "ethical fashion", "slow fashion", and "green fashion", along with half a dozen other phrases.
  
• It's not just about bamboo socks and organic cotton. Some journalists have wanted to focus on fibers, which are only a part of the big fashion picture. The fashion industry is huge and complex, and the production aspect alone comprises fibers  (animal, vegetable and mineral!), dyes, finishes, spinning,and fabrication (weaving/knitting/felting), before it even reaches the garment stage. (See The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli, covered in this excellent NPR series), for more. Then there's producing, transporting, storing and merchandising the garments, which have both environmental and ethical dimensions. Finally, there is the design and communication aspect of the industry, adding more complexity by producing glossy magazines, high-energy fashion shows and events and -- even more subtly but probably most significant -- the constant rapid cycle of innovation, adoption and obsolescence that fills landfills and thrift stores.
• If you want to see the future, look at food and housing. When nutritionist Adelle Davis first published her books on natural, whole foods in the 1940s and 50s, she was considered a kook. Even when she was rediscovered by young Baby Boomers in the 1970s, organic food was hard to find and people who grew it or ate it were certainly beyond the mainstream. Today, there is a thriving "eat local" movement, restaurants are cashing in on seasonal, local menus and my local  supermarket has a store-brand line of organic products. Forty years ago, environmentally friendly housing meant earth-sheltered homes, solar heating systems and turning off the lights when you left the room. Today, we have decks of recycled materials, sustainable architecture programs in universities and a multitude of products designed to use less energy, less water or both. Why does this matter? Two reasons. First, people are not completely inconsistent. A person who eats organic, local food, worries about pesticides on her lawn, drives an energy-efficient car and recycles at home and work will also find the idea of ethical, sustainable fashion appealing. Second, the fashion industry -- teeming with creative, smart and competitive people -- has figured this out. Gold Toe and Calvin Klein are selling bamboo socks, and "slow fashion" is the new 7th Avenue buzzword.

So there's my take on the big picture: it's not just about climate change, it's not just about bamboo underwear and it's growing, not fading.

Leaving Eddie

I'm divorcing Eddie Bauer. After close to three decades of being a faithful customer, I've done my research and Eddie hasn't measured up. You'd think that a company that relied on a customer base that spends a lot of time outdoors and enjoying nature would care more about the environment. But a search on "organic" in their online catalog turned up 0 hits; ditto a search on "recycled".  As for "imported" -- 808 hits ! (Compared with 47 for "USA") I've been a fan of Eddie Bauer for so long because they seemed to like us tall girls.   I can get sweaters, shirts, and pants that go all the way down my wrists and all the way down my ankles. I've never liked the number of catalogues they send; they're in my mailbox as often as Value-Pak. But I notified them that I don't want any more catalogues. Let me know when you want me back back, Eddie; I'll be waiting.

Organic T-shirt? Check the label!

I was perusing the sale racks at my local outdoor outfitter, and happened on some very good prices on organic cotton T-shirts. The catch -- most were dark green, brown or black, and while the label proudly proclaimed them to be "100% organic cotton", they were silent on the subject of dyes and finishing. Remember the embarrassing case of the bamboo and cotton T-shirts proclaiming that "green is the new black" that turned out to be "semi-environmentally friendly"? So I passed on the shirts.

Needless to say, Tshirt d'Art won't be getting any of my business anytime soon for their new line of T-shirts, buttons and caps. (The thong IS tempting, though!) The "green is the new black" slogan may sound green, but these T's are the same old product in an environmental wrapper. I wonder if they have plans for disposable foam hot cups with the "green" logo? And even though they'll donate 10% of the price to the World Wildlife Fund, Chaser's GITNB T-shirt isn't on my wishlist -- at least, not until they tell me the fiber content!

It's not impossible to find T-shirts is made from environmentally friendly dyes as well as fibers; check out this one from Green Home. To be a smart green shopper, ya gotta read the label -- including what they DON'T say.

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Sustainable Style Challenge

My current project: a stylish, environmentally-friendly dressy outfit for my 25-year-old daughter.

She's a recently-married college student; she composts her kitchen trash, uses a push mower and buys local produce. Her like-minded husband is a newly-minted government attorney. They had a pared-down wedding and as green a reception as we could manage. She realizes that her student wardrobe (t-shirts, jeans and hoodies) won't cut it for the upcoming holiday events, but she's not about to head to the mall to get a trendy "seasonal" outfit. I offered to pay for -- and help her put it together -- and experiment in sustainable style. Her requirements:

recycled/reused/repurposed is preferred to new
multiple use is preferred to single use
locally made/fair trade/union made is preferred to unknown working conditions
renewable fibers preferred to those from petroleum
comfortable and flattering!

So here's my challenge to my readers:

Assemble a dressy outfit (men's or women's) and either post it here as a comment or email it to jo at nicewhitelady.net and we'll have an online fashion show! Include the source and cost of each item; I'll reward the top three with $25, $15 and $10 gift certificates to the online vender of your choice!

Green is the New Black

Today's Toronto Star has a nifty commentary today about an "environmentally friendly" clothing line introduced by CTV's eTalk and manufactured by Canadian manufacturer Brüzer. The olive-colored tees feature the catchy slogan "green is the new black" and, according to eTalk's website,

"are made from bamboo and organic cotton, material that is highly sustainable and grows quickly without use of pesticides or fertilizers. Naturally fresh with anti-bacterial properties, eShirts feature naturally charged negative ions, which have a positive effect on mind and body, and contain natural micro gaps that siphon away body moisture."

The catch? The fabric might be green, but the dyes...not so much. Now, having a PhD in textiles usually isn't particularly useful or marketable, but it does equip me to be able to say that being an environmentally-conscientious fashionista is not easy. Cotton is an agricultural product, and even organic cotton uses resources that could be used for food crops, which can be a problem. (See also the problems now stemming from diverting corn from the food chain to your fuel tank.) Synthetic fibers -- nylon, acrylic, polyester -- are petrochemicals, aka fossil fibers. Rayon is recycled, but its manufacture involves the use of carbon disulfide, implicated in hearing loss in textile workers. Wool, silk, linen, lycra, hemp, bamboo: no fiber is completely green, and that's not even getting into the additional complications of dyes, finishes and laundering/dry cleaning.

Assuming naturism is not an option, what does a Nice White Lady do? Americans hate to hear this, but the problem is not so much WHAT we consume but the bottomless pit of our desire. Forty tee shirts? Twelve pairs of organic cotton jeans? A different pair of shoes for each day of the month? Why, why, why? Consider this: when Hurricane Andrew, (after Katrina the second most destructive storm in our history) hit Florida in 1992, the Red Cross issued an anti-plea: no used clothing. Even in the midst of 26.5 billion dollars' worth of destruction, there was enough second-hand clothing in Florida to clothe the naked many times over. If the clothing factories all shut down tomorrow, it would be a while before most of us literally had nothing to wear.

Here's what's in my closet: 5 linear feet of clothes, including two pairs of jeans (the old ones and the new ones). Mostly "classic" garments. No fad items.  Some of my favorite items are thrift-store finds, like my $3 Benetton sweater. When I buy something new, I discard or donate something old.