T-Shirt Dress

If, like me, the eco labels are somewhat out of your price range, I recommend re-vamping what you've got or adjusting and tweaking good buys from charity shops.

I was recommended Instructables.com, an online compilation of people's 'how-to's. One of the video tutorials had no narrative or instructions, yet was easy to follow and pause to catch up with. The video by Giannyl converts an old t-shirt into a summer dress. (Ignore the flouncing at the end!)

I saw it as a good way to reuse old clothes, and learn a bit more sewing know-how.

• First, cut off the sleeves at the seam and across the neckline.
  
• Cut further along the seam, below where the arms joined, towards the bottom of the t-shirt.
  
• Fold over the edges and sew inside out to create a hem.
• Cut across the sleeves to create triangles.

• Turn the triangles inside out and sew along the two edges, leaving a small gap to turn them back out again.
• Stitch up the remaining gap.
• Iron to create full triangle shape.

• Sew the triangles in place on the body, keeping the seam on the reverse.

• Cut the neckband from the collar to create the correct length halter-neck.
• Sew into place on the tops of the triangles.
• Try on the dress and adjust accordingly (I rouched the triangles and cinched in the hips with a further seam to give better shape). 

People Tree

One of the most established and well known Sustainable and Fair Trade Fashion brands. 

People Tree have won several awards, including being selected as one of the world's most "Outstanding Social Entrepreneurs" in 2004, by the Schwab Foundation.

Fair Trade Policy

• To work with disadvantaged producers in the developing world
• To pay producers fair prices
• To make advance payments when needed
• To promote traditional skills
• To promote rural development
• To operate with transparency

Eco Policy

• To promote natural and organic cotton farming
• To use natural, recycled and biodegradable substances where possible
• To recycle where possible
• To protect water supplies and forests
• To avoid using damaging chemicals.

The Summer 2009 catalogue includes information on the processes used to create the garments, such as the batik and block printing methods traditional in Gujarat, India. 

 

We love ecologists - 'Bellamy & Attenborough & Nutkins & Oddie

printed in black on light grey. Made in India

£25

100% organic Fairtrade cotton

Olwen Frill Neck Dress

£75

Organic Fairtrade certified cotton

The range includes beautiful bold colours, good for staple pieces in a wardrobe that will stand the test of time and fashion. Online they also have Fair Trade Goodie Bags for £25 worth £75, you select your size and receive a selection of clothing and accessories. Tempting!

Buy Less But Better

The dilemma of ethical clothing at Primark

June 17, 2008

Times Online

This is another, comprehensive article looking at several of the impacts surrounding high street fashion. Particularly focused on labour rights, there are examples of ethical stores and quotes from 'scrupulous' high street retailers. It's an interesting read, with plenty of food for thought, however the section which relates best to this blog can be found in the Anna Shepherd segment (see How Green Are My Wellies).

'Aim for a slim, manageable wardrobe containing good quality items that will last, rather than an overflowing dressing up box of poor-quality clothes. By doing this, you will reduce your contribution to the 900,000 tonnes of textile waste that we create in the UK every year, and limit your role in the energy needed to make textiles.' 

This 'Buy less but better' idea is also seen in Gok Wan's new Channel 4 series, Gok's Fashion Fix.

 'You lot spend on average £1,000 a year just on clothes 

and yet you only wear a third of them.' 

'I've got a brand new mantra - shop less but wear more.' 

Adili

This post is focused primarily around Adili.com but also to compile a list of other retailers and links which may be useful/interesting.

Adili is an online department store, where the homepage is designed to be like a shop window - updated each week. The store stocks 80 'of the best sustainable and fair brands from around the world.'

There is also the Adili Own-Label where the company went back to the beginning, 'sourcing supply chains from scratch, managing cultural communication, investing a great deal of time, boundless energy and of course, money.' 

Often with 'eco' retailers, the expectation is of dowdy clothes in muted tones, but Adili is packed with modern, stylish designs to suit a variety of tastes. This is perhaps due to their working with young designers, 'we're nurturing and commercially supporting the very best young design talent. Together, with these young designers we hope to pioneer the new era of fashion - develop the next generation of the fashion industry to become more sustainable and ethically established.'

Stripe Party Dress

Annie Greenabelle

£65

The website is well crafted for accessibility and viewing, and you can shop by brand or garment and within that, by ethic. 

 Lenn Jacket

Kuyichi

NOW £86.25

Currently, there is also a comprehensive SALE section, well worth a look!

Refashionable.com

 'Refashionable is the home of recycled fashion. We trade exclusively in pre owned fashion or new items that have been made from recycled materials. We provide you with a great way to raise funds for and donate to the charities you love. Here you will find everything you need to unleash the cash in your closet, refashion your wardrobe and reduce your style miles!'

The website works in one of two ways, you can donate your good-quality unwanted clothes, and Refashionable photograph and list them for sale and 50% of the sale proceeds go to your chosen charity. Or you can shop - by Womens, Mens, Kids or by Designer. 

ASOS box pleat skirt

black

size: 12

£5.00 + £1.50 postage

'This item would have travelled approximately 5070 miles from China

 and 4160 miles from India if bought new. 

By buying locally you have helped reduce

 the environmental impact of the fashion industry

 and reduced your style miles.'

The website also has several video tutorials on sewing, mending, and adjusting your clothes. Over the course of this project I've learnt some sewing techniques, and added darts to a top from a charity shop to make it fit better. Knowing the basics of how to sew is a great life skill and good for adjusting second-hand clothes or creating new ones!

Labour Behind the Label

This site is mainly concerned with labour rights and looks at the affect of cheap clothes to the factory workers. The link is to the resources page - there are a selection of interesting articles. 

The Perfect T-Shirt

Better Thinking is an ethical branding consultancy, which has decided to try and create the Perfect T-Shirt. The idea is collaborative and readers are encouraged to send in the name of eco-fabrics or names of good, ethical factories. 'we're going to consider every impact the t-shirt could have, so we can justify every decision we made, showing how it results in the lowest overall impact.'

The idea of deconstructing every stage of a t-shirt's manufacturing right back to the materials used is a clever one. The T-shirt has its own manifesto and is being supported by Kate Fletcher, howies and Katharine Hamnett. Again, there is lots of information, so its well worth having a look for yourself. 

Bag For Life

Plastic 

We use a lot of plastic - 100 million tonnes is the current world annual consumption, that's 20 times more than 50 years ago.

Nearly 3 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated in the UK, each year. Of which, it is estimated only 7% is recycled.

Plastic production requires significant amounts of fossil fuels, as a raw material and energy for the manufacturing process. It is estimated that 4% of the world's annual oil production is used for plastics production and a further 3-4% during manufacture. *

'Bag for life' bags have been popular for some time, with various retailers offering their own version. Supermarkets offer stronger plastic bags and Marks & Spencer have their own canvas monochromatic Twiggy totes. 

Considering a plastic bag can take 100 years to decompose in a landfill** it makes sense to recycle and make use of current plastic bags and promote bag for life usage. 

I found this Etsy tutorial 'How-To: Fuse Plastic Bags'

And decided to use up all the spare plastic bags in my student halls kitchen, to make a bag for life. I started by trying different bags and heat settings until the plastic fused well into a strong material and collected a patchwork of material.

I then worked out a size from an existing canvas bag and made a pattern from old newspaper to cut the fused plastic to.

Once sellotaped together (I used Magic Tape) in the desired patchwork I tried sewing some offcuts of badly fused plastic to get the correct tension. I found zig-zag stitching the most affective. Stitch together the patchwork panels and then the sides inside out. Use talcum powder if the sewing machine doesn't want to hold the material.

Fuse narrow pieces to create handles and fix with tape in the correct place before zig-zag stitching in two place. 

And use!

* Waste Online - lots of useful information regarding plastic and recycling

** Guardian article - M&S to charge for plastic bags

Katharine Hamnett

To best understand Katharine, I recommend reading her online biography. She has had a significant impact on international fashion, from inventing stonewashing, distressed and stretch denim, to launching the first protest t-shirts in 1983 - designed to be copied and raise awareness whilst a percentage went to charity. 

In 1989 Katharine became aware of the impact of conventional cotton agriculture and it's causing 1,000,000 deaths per year through long-term acute pesticide poisonings amongst other by-products. She campaigns from then on, particularly focused on the issue of cotton, and in 2003, having been invited to visit cotton farmers in Mali with Oxfam, decides she must be the demand for organic cotton. In 2004 Katharine launches a new, online store KATHARINE E HAMNETT - E for being manufactured Ethically and as Environmentally as possible. In 2005 she designs and sources the manufacturing of organic cotton for the 'Make Poverty History' campaign. And in 2006 she signs a contract with Tesco for an ethical and environmental organic cotton clothing collection. 

Katharine Hamnett wears

 '58% DON'T WANT PERSHING' T-shirt 

to meet Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street.

The Katharine Hamnett website sells organic and ethical clothes, as well as being the platform for several campaigns. There is a plethora of information, well compiled and explained. It is particularly interesting in terms of cotton agriculture. For example, 

'Conventional cotton represents 10% of world agriculture and uses 25% of the world's pesticides.' 

'20,000 people die every year from accidental pesticide poisoning in conventional cotton agriculture (World Health Organisation). Death by starvation is alarmingly prevalent and 200,000 cotton farmers commit suicide annually due to spiralling debts incurred from buying pesticides. A further 1,000,000 people a year suffer from long-term pesticide poisoning (Pesticide Action Network).'

'By growing organically, farmers get a 50% increase in their income - due to a 40% reduction in costs - and the 20 % premium for producing organic cotton allows them to feed, clothe, educate and provide healthcare for their children.' 

Well worth a read and consideration.

Howies

When you Google 'howies' the tag line is: 'howies is an active clothing company that believes in making higher quality, lower impact products for our sports and day-to-day lives.'

This pretty much sums up howies, but there is much more to them. I say they, because there is very much a family of people who make and sell the clothing based in Cardigan, Wales. I was first introduced to the company during Art Foundation for their inspiring catalogues, which not only sell their products (really well too!) but also give space for articles on things they believe in. 

In the most recent magazine, one article, 'Clean yourself up' looks at the process of dyeing fabrics. The factory howies use in Portugal has this season moved from traditional batch dyeing to 'jet dyeing'. 'Now, instead of the fabric being dipped, it is sprayed with dye by high-powered jets. This uses a lot less water - just 3 litres per kilo of fabric.'

Another article looks at their products and subsequent carbon footprint, in a practical and honest way, in 'howies Carbon Homework'. The article is a double page graph of paint footprints comparing two seasons of clothes - A/W 08 with S/S 09. 

The clothes are made of organic cotton, and denim where applicable, and every product listing states the materials and where it was made. Coming out in the summer is the Hemp Jean.

'These jeans are made by mixing organic hemp with organic cotton.

Hemp is twice as strong as cotton.

Hemp does not require conventional pesticides or herbicides like cotton does.

Hemp does not deplete the nutrients in soil.

Hemp is less thirsty than cotton.

It uses less water (around 2300 litres).

That would be enough to fill 8 baths of water.

The hemp jean will be out this summer - £225'

We are used to fashion on the highstreet being far cheaper than this, but the quality is significantly less, therefore dubbed 'throw-away fashion', and the impact on the environment significantly worse. We need to re-evaluate the true cost of the clothes we buy, how much is it costing me? how much did it cost to make? how long will it last? what impact has this garment had?

howies have also recently introduced a line called Hand-Me-Down -' These products have been made to last. So that one day you can hand them down to someone else. And they can carry on their little journeys.' 

The range currently consists of a male and female version of a jacket at £400 and 3 types of bags, with a 10 year guarantee. The jacket is described as being 'designed to look timeless. So it doesn't either come in or go out of fashion. So not only will the jacket last the test of time but so will its design.'  

I think this is a great idea, and another, cheaper way to continue a garment's life span is to buy from a charity shop and learn to mend and adjust your clothes. However, the product itself needs to be reasonably well made, and I think howies are spot-on with the lengths gone to craft durable and long-lasting clothing. 

Knitting

When beginning this project I was pointed in the direction of Kate Fletcher, eco fashion and textile extraordinaire. On the 'PLAY' section of her website she promotes knitting.

Knitting is not just the preserve of 

our grannies!

It's cool, creative, empowering and so promotes values shared by sustainability. It can also be done with minimum of stuff, on the hoof or with your mates in the pub.

Send me pictures of your wooly creations or you and y

our friends knitting and purling!

(here)

So, I thought, why not? Having never knitted before, I saw it as a good opportunity to learn. I spoke to a couple of people before deciding to head to a local shop with a good reputation. The Wool Shop, in Armley has been running 58 years and recently taken over in June 2008 by a husband and wife duo. 

I walked from the bottom of Cardigan Road, Hyde Park to the shop, which took half an hour. Upon arriving I was met by the friendly owners and I explained I knew nothing about knitting. I was talked through what I was after and how to go about it. The shop can order in organic wool, or alternatively, stocked 'Chevy' Aran wool. The colour is dependent on the breed of sheep and when it was shorn, as the wool is not treated. I bought 3 x 50g balls at £1.50 each, some 5mm needles (I hadn't thought to recycle by getting them from a charity shop) and given a how-to knit card.

Off I went, excited to get knitting. However, I struggled trying to understand the card and resorted to a youtube tutorial from cyberseams. This video contained everything I needed:

• Casting On
• The basic knit (garter stitch)
• Binding Off

My first piece of knitting was interesting. I recommend counting how many stitches you cast on, and keep checking you have the same amount and that you haven't slipped a stitch, or in my case, split the yarn into two every now and then, and added stitches.

Here's the results of my first attempt.

But, practice makes perfect! I took my knitting back to the shop and was encouraged that apparently I had neat stitches, and bought 2 more balls of the same colour wool having decided to knit a skinny boy scarf.

Here are the results.

(garter stitch throughout, approximately 113g of wool, roughly £3.35)

From the hours spent knitting, I've gained a new skill and discovered lots of people are keen knitters which has led to evenings spent knitting together. So, it really is sociable!

Knitting a garment is quite laborious and this in itself has made me appreciate the work that goes in to making clothes. It made me think more about how and who by my clothes are made and of what materials. I definitely recommend knitting to anyone who can not yet, or who hasn't picked up the needles in a while.

Link to map for The Wool Shop.