it's been a long time since i last posted about ecoluxury. i'm still in the process of organizing the content of this blog, now that so many things have changed and i've spent so much time away from it. this post is rambling, personal, and impersonal (just so you know:). i'm working on spreading that balance out in the blog, making it interesting, beautiful, helpful, and personal, as much as possible. in grad school i worked on a thesis about the need for transparency in apparel manufacturing. i wanted to research the heck out of the possibilities allowing for american companies to revolutionize their methods of production as well as their relationship to their customers. i also wanted to lay out a plan, however small, for start-ups who wanted transparency to be not only available to their consumers but who wanted to use it as a serious marketing tool. i had a lot of clothing and i was concerned about that. transparency was a simple concept but not utilized and i was concerned about that too. i love design, i love innovation, and i'm very interested in changing everything about the way we consume what we do.
back in my last life, my ex husband and i converted our second bedroom to a closet to hold all our clothing. maybe that's not so weird for many people, but it was for me. i grew up wearing the same shirt for ten years and suddenly i had a hundred shirts and the power to buy just about any shirt i wanted at any time. i had a tee shirt from everyone. i was always involved in considered purchases of sustainable brands but i veered this way and that at times, depending on my emotional climate and on the design. personal stuff warning ****i'm in a strange position at this time because i have built such a strong skill set of fashion knowledge, sustainability knowledge, writing skills, customer service skills, and on and on, yet i don't have the kind of experience that can be easily read on a resume or on a linkedin profile. each day i keep taking actions to pursue working with some amazing people where i can both be learning and contributing. i don't know how to do this other than to keep trying and to not give up. to locate amazing start-ups and ask if i can help. one of the ways i won't give up is by continuing to speak on how we can better live with the necessary items in our lives, feeling that our lives are lives of luxury, even if our bank statements do not put us in the 1% with 40%. beautiful design, plus gratitude, plus active optimism, plus health, plus love. easy, huh?****ok you're safe again!
this practice of transparency is something very dear to me and i see it as the way to change a broken manufacturing system into a new and excellent paradigm of true costs to benefits. it can be so easy to not look at something we'd rather not see, so what will make us look? what will create the awareness within us that we need total no bs manufacturing transparency? it is here and is very real. it is called excellent design. excellent design is the trump card for attention getting and when it's evident, eyes and wallets will follow. imagine if you gathered ten tee shirts to try on, not knowing the brand or the cost, wore them about a bit, and then picked your favorite. it's very likely to be everlane.
so there i was with all these tees, for all these years, and i'd seen everything. every cut, every fabric. the differences in quality were huge and it did not, of course, range logically in quality based on price. not at all. i had tees from lna, alex wang, the row, vince, velvet, ella moss, james perse, three dots, kain label, free people, marc by marc, american apparel, splendid, rogan, loomstate, edun, c&c california, joie, ann demeulemeester, and on and on. i first heard of everlane a few months before their ecommerce site launched in november 2011. a year or so later i found myself in the position to purchase some replacements for the things i had purged after my divorce, which was everything. i ordered a few tees, tried them on, and that was that. i've been washing those tees for the last year and they have held up beautifully. a new line of cashmere sweaters has just been released, all $120. i have experience with quality cashmere (my ancient pringle of scotland cardigan can attest to this!), and normally i buy cashmere from inhabit or vince so needless to say i buy only one a year or so. with everlane, i think i'll get two, and i know the quality alone will make it more than worth the cost, which thanks to transparency is a true cost and not an overinflated retail mark up.
everlane did not sponsor this post as i have no sponsors, this is just a well researched opinion. check out what they have to say on radical transparency in the retail apparel marketplace here and then order a ryan tee or a silk blouse and see for yourself what a little start-up can do with a new set of rules and brilliant design.
so there i was with all these tees, for all these years, and i'd seen everything. every cut, every fabric. the differences in quality were huge and it did not, of course, range logically in quality based on price. not at all. i had tees from lna, alex wang, the row, vince, velvet, ella moss, james perse, three dots, kain label, free people, marc by marc, american apparel, splendid, rogan, loomstate, edun, c&c california, joie, ann demeulemeester, and on and on. i first heard of everlane a few months before their ecommerce site launched in november 2011. a year or so later i found myself in the position to purchase some replacements for the things i had purged after my divorce, which was everything. i ordered a few tees, tried them on, and that was that. i've been washing those tees for the last year and they have held up beautifully. a new line of cashmere sweaters has just been released, all $120. i have experience with quality cashmere (my ancient pringle of scotland cardigan can attest to this!), and normally i buy cashmere from inhabit or vince so needless to say i buy only one a year or so. with everlane, i think i'll get two, and i know the quality alone will make it more than worth the cost, which thanks to transparency is a true cost and not an overinflated retail mark up.
everlane did not sponsor this post as i have no sponsors, this is just a well researched opinion. check out what they have to say on radical transparency in the retail apparel marketplace here and then order a ryan tee or a silk blouse and see for yourself what a little start-up can do with a new set of rules and brilliant design.
