Shayla 2

More Shayla design magic!
Patching onto an old zip front cardigan; recreates with the fun stuff while the tedious sewing is readyMade.
Pictures taken at the Sanctuary Art Center.

Letter to FashionWeek

"Hi G,
i received your email as was part of the old fashion group though never made it to a meeting as didn't fit my schedule and they weren't very enthusiastic about nufashion (working term that includes all eco, sustainable and transitional -recyCouture, reFashion etc)

I am the designer/writer/etc of the fashionRIP Project and have 'done my homework" and it is way past time to pick up the pace, knock fast fashion off its sweaty plastic pedastal and work on the economic, ethical, aesthetic change of fashion and style.

The Manifesto of the Fashioning the Future Summit 2008 that i was invited to and attended last October, will be out next month. This international event was sponsored by the first Sustainable Fashion Centre at the London College of Fashion and it is painful to see the US so far behind and frankly m'dears so boorishly bourgeois and dead headed.

"We can and we must do better than this" was the eco inspired legacy statement of Dr. Suess.

i am trying to see outside the parameters of the what is and if the 'creatives" do not take on this challenge ..then who will?

thank you,

deborah barnes

Frank

hand stitched stuffed felt toy

Made by Shayla Thomas
a free form pattern child's toy that's a weird combination of a frog and a mudskipper (Frank or Fripper?)
Shayle was asked to do it for a friend's niece and the Sanctuary has the materials and supplies to help it happen, most of them donated.
Shayla also makes fun, unique skirts...she has her own aesthetic and is very articulate in fabric (and words!).

the bones beneath

recyCouture work by Clare one of my current students

This shirt's sleeve was patched in the recyCouture class, with scraps left over from an earlier patch job on this Ralph Lauren shirt. Clare liked the idea of the skeletons -a bit of our inside structure peeping through; she says it amuses her (me too!)

they don't get it

Todays email ad from NM.
I worked in the sunglasses department at the St. Louis Neiman's. I was told to send thank you notes to customers.....dudes came back into the store thinking i was making advances; just great.. so i refuzed (z is intentional!).
It appears to be another round of being at odds....reinventng for fast fashion is like biodiesal...the results are not greater than the resources and energy used to create it.

Recycouture

will break the spell of fast fashion.

Manifesto

of the Fashioning the Future Summit 2008 from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion will be out April '09.
Armed with a Manifesto i will be much bolder, for it's proof that i am in good company and not just an irritating nag.

NuFashion

is relevant, unique or limited in production to meet real demands not inflated desires of excess.....NuFashion is sustainable and ethical It can be refashion, recyCouture, made from eco friendly fibers, woven and processed in LEEDs certified buildings (okay soon!) or by communities reflecting their cultural traditions and/or other means of production with a plus or benefit greater than the costs and toxicity of production, transportation and other energy usage - the negative offsets. (how to decide? we will learn as we go...but with awareness this round!)

NuFashion is street up and legit.
NuFashion is branded by the creators and not the distillers of fashionable society. (to distill is to ferment as fashion is to style)
NuFashion stomps the mere fashionable!
NuFashion is now and next.

fashionable

is stylish ie conforms to current style or is in association with persons of fashion ie a chic boutique or when used as a noun, fashionable means a stylish person.

SYNONYMS ( http://www.answers.com/topic/fashionable) are fashionable, chic, dashing, in, modish, posh, sharp, smart, stylish, swank, trendy.

So what is this? as when one is fashionable one isn't truly stylish for a person of style is known for their own style. Having a style of ones own should be fashionable but if it is a current style it is already passe as many designers steal from street creatives then brand the looks for wholesale reproduction and profit which kills the beauty of the original genius. It does force new ideas (good) but reproduces them to excess because of the economic system we were taught to buy into (very bad -for resources, humans and goodness oh my!)

cause and effect

the focus on economic gain and the material world looked good to the common people when products were limited and only a few nobles controlled the wealth.
So capitalism had its day and now drowning in products and floundering with its "wealth' it has proven to be a lot like cancer. Devouring resources and delivering toxins it is fast killing its "host."

We know the cure, we want it, we need it - yet the old ways are so ingrained we fear the changes that will kill them, even though they'll save us!
Weird - like the abused wife that won't leave her husband.

Clever Monkeys

a great program on PBS Nature series. Some monkeys maintain territorial hierarchy- the upper class get the upper branches, some farm, some communicate between species and one group dies more from its own kind than anything else- via murder and war.

Could it be that as a species we are still just following the monkey king and are afraid to really listen to "ourselves" to go "inside for the answers"?
Is it because the intuitive mind, the inner "knowing" has been enslaved by the logical mind and the material world, with it's man made constructs and all that noise keeps us from believing our own power (inner and/or higher, as descriptions vary but not the "gift") is that all there is to it? Dang! Is that why denial is huge and justification keeps the boats from rocking? Is that why labels validate us and "truth" changes?

All this monkeying around, with 2012 so close. Its wakey shakey time! paradigm shift or devolution days; it isn't too difficult to believe in the truth we were born with -or is it?

Feels like

we've arrived.