dress for success

3-27-10

About 15 years ago a friend asked me if i was trying to be like a Joan of Arc. i have been questioning our collective social/cultural blinders a long time and she like others before and after, have tried to get me to play along and not rock the little boats of denial.

ok; so that is a guess- but what else could it be?

In doing the Alice in Wonderland entry for fashionRIP i used extra paint to cover a small re-used canvas and came up with the portrait above.

When attempting to remain heroic in spirit, it is good to add a nice visual .

Cross Ref

Live quilts at Pacific Fabrics -

the Jeremy G Quilt (above) will be at the Northgate store.

Ideas are the source of all creation (sounds good & i am not going to overthink it)
Check out the Quilting Arts website for fabric surface design ideas and more

I posted to their forum and hope to cross reference people working in fiberarts and sustainable fashion so we can communicate better across these channels that so connect!

All this because someone at Pacific Fabrics in Northgate told my mother that i should write to the magazine about the quilt that will be hanging in their store April 2 through the 30th-
AKA just following the universe.

Food Fouled

Yikes. Please read Death by Supermarket. This book by Nancy Deville appears extreme. I borrowed it to use as a reference for a class project on obesity. However when i returned to Seattle after a fashion week in London i noticed a few things. My skin felt dry, i had more gastric distress, my taste buds were deadened and i just didn't feel as well. I considered the fluoride added to our tap water (bad science practice) as i ate similar food. (then remembered Europe has more restraints on poisoning the public for profit, so it probably was different)

This book tells me it is not just my over sensitive self nor is it coincidental. It answers many other questions i had about food, nutrition and modern diseases; questions that i had shelved in the mental warehouse where the "denial' sign hangs. The synchronism was not to be dissed, i have learned to pay attention, so i started reading for full content.

Now for extra pizzaz, several current programs on PBS feature doctors that are pitching diets to improve various ills. They have really created a big problem. That problem is because i am a woman who doesn't want a heart attack and wants a healthy brain; I have to choose just one corrective diet because the diets contradict each other! I am not willing to kill my heart to save my brain or my hormones.

Excuse me, but isn't that when the red flag raises and you have to say there is a bigger issue here. There is something making us prone to these ills and perhaps it is the dead, gmo, processed foods full of chemicals that preserve shelf life, fire up appetities and have us seeking pharma foods with patents because our dead soils grow depraved crops and we are in a USA economic sponsored decline.

Thsi is twisted sick.

Great Great! Aunt Carrie

This old photo from my grandmother's stash of family history tells me a lot. I first noticed the Arts and Crafts wallpaper, then the clock and the simple clean lines of the chair...what a stylish abode. That she chose to be photographed reading the newspaper is so stand up for the era. The early 1900s in the USA were not that progressive but i think she was. Thank you dble Great Aunt Carrie wife of Uncle Archie on the Wilcox side of the family. I thought it was the Beers who rocked what with Uncle Ferris who invented the ferris wheel ....

Co-op and Techno

Cleveland Rocks with Green Co-ops

now people lets see if Seattle has the guts to strike a stand for green, street up economics.

In the meantime part of the process towards independence involves chapter 2 of the fashionRIP Project; Techno Save. I will be getting a grant soon (positive self talk as application is due this week!) Techno Save will be a steampunk masterpiece as more production bennies under an improved budget warrants high expectations!

Tee Skirting

anime print tee married to Laibach Anthems Tour tee

rock in Yugoslavia during the Cold War
(courtesy of Frye Museum)
like the war before the terrorists you know
after the SE Asian war ......
conflict economics 2012

Great City

cuffs, boutonnieres/corsages, scarves and a tutu off stage
from remnants and donated tulle

Fête du Flâneur

was "An Urban(e) Party hosted by Great City" last Thursday. Sorry for the belated post but as was in on the collaborative costuming event at Habitat Mart i will add after party photos and the like when i get them.

What i can do is tell you that they appear to be a creative, enterprising and fun group with some great DIY spirit. I enjoyed designing on the fly with Rowena of Habitmart; pulling ideas from "they to be costumed" and from Rowena's clothing contributions. I finished sewing up accessory requests the next day.

I am thinking this would be a great workshop idea for any group!!

from life

The Crow Skirt really was a nigh readymade assemble. The skirt was left over from the vintage sell off i had last summer. A friend of mine took the photo with his phone and emailed it to me.
I pulled it into photoshop to blow up the image, pull it off the background and then extract the inside to leave a printable outline that i scanned and blew up into the size i wanted for the skirt.
Tech is great when we control it and not vicey versey!

Copy & Paste

How can i tell if an item is from a fair trade company or what the environmental consequences are in a product's lifecycle (the entire production to landfill chain)?

I just sent this to Neiman Marcus after going through the March e-catalog.

Please copy as proactive consumer actions are always in vogue.

The more we ask companies to explore the ethical consequences the more reason they will have to do so.

Local Talent

Kay's Custom Knitted Creations

studies

in sustainability.....the study of connections, the study of everything? Wow

Well that isn't offered at Evergreen State College (Tacoma) so I am going for a bachelor's degree in Environmental Science and Communications.

To be an acceptable instigator in a field that does not as yet exist in the US never the less needs to be sanctified by reassuring papers that announce one's ability to reform a part of "the system." The fact that the papers are earned via the very education model that enabled all that dysfunction in the systems appears moot.

The bane of humanity is to become part of, to enable and to find succor within the very system that must then be set aside in order to allow newer truths to emerge. That is the rub, for becoming an insider makes it hard to become the disruptor because that messes with survival.

It's the classic "bite the hand that feeds, " encoded to confuse, encoded to keep constructs alive. The system, organization, corporation, nation -all are mere concepts, things that humans made up. However as they now outlive the individuals they were built to serve, we accredit them with more power than given to mere mortals who will die and therefore must be replaceable, cogs in the machine, a number in the human resources. We appear to be dehumanizing ourselves in order to fit into the machine we made up.

This is weird crap!

recycouture skirts for the Montana chapter of fashionRIP

Tokyo Fashion

vintage kimono print

The re-sell of kimonos was hot 400 years ago and today street wear is all over vintage and reclaimed "American" clothing.

The Spank girls are liking pink hair, 80's disco and punk splashed with cute.

Fashion is about self expression and Tokyo style that's pulled from the used markets is vibrant with personality, current and chic....making fashion as usual vapid and declasse.