Excuse the lack of blogging over the past week, I left London for a short break in France and have come back bursting with new ideas for blog articles. To kick off, I should bring your attention to a local event, almost a stone’s throw from Zeus House, called Fashion Made Fair. I quote:
This flagship event brings you much more than just clothes!
An organic cafe & bar, workshops, talks & films, plus activities for kids and an on-site massage area all under one roof! Prize draw on Sunday.
Katherine Hamnett doing special signings, Howies, PeopleTree, Kuyichi plus many more ethical fashion brands!
15th - 18th May 2008
Boilerhouse,
The Old Truman Brewery,
152 Brick Lane,
London, E1 6RU
PDF Flyer
Our favourite French t-shirt store, LaFraise, is selling eco-friendly, organic cotton apparel for the first time. Also, free shipping with promo code: ORGANIC.
In case you didn’t already know, Indigo Clothing offer a wide range of organic and ethical clothing which can be customsied with your logo.
As t-shirt lovers, we were excited to see a trailer for a new BBC programme on the subject, airing on 22nd April 2008!
A new four episode series is starting on BBC THREE where six young fashion lovers swap shopping for the factories and backstreet workshops of India to make clothes for the British High Street. From the press release:
The six start at the top, working for Shahi Enterprises in New Dehli, a multi-million pound factory that makes clothes for some of the biggest names on the UK High Street. They learn to sew before joining the production lines where every worker has targets to meet: for example, collars have to be sewn on to shirts at the rate of one a minute.
As unskilled workers they’re paid around £1.50 a day, a basic living wage in India. The group finds that it doesn’t stretch far – when they go to buy deodorant, it costs a day’s wages.
An accompanying online fashion magazine – Thread (bbc.co.uk/thread) – will offer tips on how to achieve an eco-glam look through a mix of shopping for new or vintage clothes, to swapping clothes with friends and customising existing clothes. The website will launch closer to the date of the first episode.
Tuesday 22 April 2008
9.00-10.00pm BBC THREE
BBC Press Release in full
There is a group of people out there who share the collective aim of developing the ‘perfect t-shirt‘. They have now developed a great looking website (luxuryredefined.co.uk) and, being t-shirt related, it sits in my bookmarks in the t-shirt websites category (it is a BIG category!). I do though find it’s presence there a slight irritant and hence the reason for this post. I have to get these feelings of my chest, to explain why that simple link always catches my eye and gnaws at me.
The aim of Better Thinking, the company behind the project, as I understand it, is to develop a t-shirt that is great to wear and is environmentally/socially responsible too. The project started in October 2005 and the t-shirt will be available online and from John Smedley stockists from Spring 2008 in men’s, women’s and children’s versions.
To quote from the press release (PDF):
The Luxury Redefined t-shirt is made in Derbyshire from organic, undyed, unbleached, fair trade, extra-long staple Peruvian cotton with an exceptionally low water footprint. Attention has also been paid to minimising waste, energy and packaging.
Clearly this t-shirt is being pitched at the retail market, rather than the promotional one that Indigo Clothing resides in, and looking at the prices of some of the other John Smedley t-shirts, I don’t expect this to be cheap range! All very commendable and maybe it is too early to comment having yet to see the t-shirt and the price list but I have an issue with yet another company peddling this ’story’ for some of the reasons outlined below:
Continue reading ‘Luxury Redefined’
My pet hate at the moment is scrapping the pizza delivery flyers out of our mailbox. Hackney (a London borough) households receive approximately 35 million pieces of unwanted mail each year, which weighs 900 tonnes and takes 6,000 trees to create. They produce a pack (pictured) which can help cutting it down including stickers and advice. Signing onto the Mail Preference Service (MPS) also is a good start. The pack is free (Hackney residents call 020 8356 6688) and most councils across the UK have an equivalent.
Darsh from Trendster grabbed my attention on Messenger today to point out a new site that had come onto her radar called Pantone 359. They sell organic t-shirts with eco-friendly messages. Also, a nice touch is:
50p from every Polar Bear pantone359 t.shirt you buy goes to the WWF, towards adopting a Polar Bear to protect their future and conserve our natural world.
Worth checking out if you like that kind of thing!
Indigo screen printed the above design, “TV is Evil,” along with another design, called “Corporation Domination,” for new organic t-shirt company, Waneye-Tedd.
Their site, waneye-tedd.com, tells you more about the brand:
Waneye Tedd is a one eyed ted, using his one eye to see the world around us, and focus on the details.
The designs are responses to the world around us, sometimes on issues that effect great numbers, to enable people to ask themselves questions, to enhance their lives and make it better for others. Other designs are more focused in view, a small capture of life to bring around with you, to tempt you to see your life and surroundings in such detail as well.
The designs are printed on organic mens jersey t-shirts, by Continental Clothing. London and Turkey based, Continental is one of Indigo’s key suppliers of organic and fashionable promotional clothing and have taken great leaps over the past 12 months to become a completely ethical supplier.
Indigo wish David, and all the team at Waneye-Tedd, the best of luck with their new brand!
It is that time of year when it is time to put one’s house (or office) in order and do some filing. A handy help in disposing of all the old white paper lying around is Paper Round. Paper Round was founded in 1989 by Friends of the Earth (FoE) and is now a successful standalone business recycling for over 3,500 London offices.
Indigo Clothing takes different types of recycling bins from Paper Round on their ‘pay-as-you-go’ style service, which is both good for our overheads and for the environment. We just dump waste in one of their handy bins and when they are full, give them a ring and they pick-up, only charging when they make a collection.
In 2008, as a company, Indigo are making even more efforts to build an ethical brand. For each garment manufacturer on the website, we are going to add an ethical profile so you know what you are getting and where it has come from. Last month we expanded our organic clothing section and, going forward, will continue to grow this part of the business as more and more suppliers jump on the eco-bandwagon.
Today is a the start of the Eco Design Fair at Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regents Park Road, Camden (London). At £1.50 for entry, it would be a shame to miss out and it continues tomorrow (Sat 24th 2007) too. Surely a place to get some ethical Christmas presents? Otherwise, if it is too cold to head out, just use amazon.co.uk like everyone else!
[Via Trendster Clothing]
I’m just leaving for California, travelling down from San Francisco to Los Angeles from 5th to 14th November, meeting with our US clients and suppliers, specifically WordPress, whose online merchandise store we launched worldwide this summer (read more here).
Jo is ably running the Indigo office in London with the rest of the Indigo team. Fingers crossed the weather is better than in the UK at the moment!
All carbon emissions for this flight (1.95 tonnes CO2) have been offset (view PDF certificate, 477kb) via Climate Care (in conjunction with British Airways) as Indigo is committed to supporting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
