Analogue Chic

Posts Tagged ‘handmade’

Are you hitting the web today to check off those last few items on your gift list?

Take a look at my posts from last week for online shopping for sustainable and handmade items to revolutionize your gift-giving:

• The Gift Guide that Does Good – a revolutionary gift guide for sustainable and fair trade gifts
• Revolution, Continued: This time, it's personalized – the handmade revolution

Image by 040915 at DeviantArt

*I hope you used your best movie-preview-guy voice for the headline.

Image of Rosey Grier* via Extreme Craft

Hand-in-hand with sustainability is independent, handmade design.  You've surely heard some buzz the past few years about the handmade revolution, neo-craft, Etsy shops, and indie fashion.  There was a documentary, Handmade Nation, and there is a global campaign, the Handmade Pledge, allowing consumers to publicly declare their support of handmade production.

This new(ish) crop of small business-folks and designers fills in the gap between producer and consumer that is left empty by face-less big box retail store.  It reflects a demand for connection with the people who create the products we buy, while often– bonus– also being environmentally and socially conscious.

(*I decided to illustrate this piece with the most revolutionary crafter I could find: Rosey Grier, an American pro football player who was also way into needlepoint, and published at least one needlepoint how-to book.  A manly man of color, rockin' the needle and thread. More on Rosey Grier here. More manly men doing needlecraft during WWII, here and here.)

Probably the best thing about buying handmade is customization.  Most indie designers and crafters will be happy to customize their wares for you, and even create an original design or custom order.  Just get in touch with them– we actually answer our email!

So I've put together this very brief, handy guide to handmade fashion and gifts to get you started on the yellow brick road to handmade for the holidays, or any occasion.  All of the larger handmade showcases have great search capability, so you can narrow down your results by location, color, material, etc.  Happy hunting!

Etsy

The largest and most well-known showcase of online shops for handmade and vintage wares.

Artfire

Similar to Etsy, with searchable listings of handmade and vintage.

Smashing Darling

CT-grown, global showcase of independent fashion designers.

DeviantArt

While it's mainly an online portfolio site populated by anime fans, you can find unique art prints and other wares.

ModCloth

Well-known online marketplace of indie fashion, and a dash of vintage apparel and housewares.

Analogue Chic

Yours truly, with upcycled fashion, vintage apparel & accessories, and personal style services. I also offer custom orders and gift certificates.

Of course, it's not about the stuff, but about the people.  I hope you're able to spend some sweet quality time with all the peeps you love.  Happy holidays!

A counter-example, if that wasn’t clear. Image via Art in Liverpool. Sorry.

Lots of interesting links in fashion news this week:

The Wall Street Journal tells us about a new cable channel with a Home Shopping Network premise, but featuring handmade housewares and indie designers, and informs us that there is a huge market out there waiting to be tapped.

At the same time, consumers are increasingly hungry for independent designs. In part, brand fatigue is to blame. Big fashion labels sell the same products the world over, diminishing their logos’ cachet. Their designers work on collections a year or more in advance of the clothes’ appearance in stores and rarely—if ever—meet the people who eventually buy them. Moreover, many consumers lost faith in luxury brands after watching prices soar during the boom, then plummet during the crash in the fall of 2008. The slashed sales prices raised questions about the true value of branded goods.

[...]  Now, even the huge brands are striving to establish authenticity—sometimes trying a bit too hard. British authorities recently banned Louis Vuitton ads that showed an artisan laboring on a bag, saying the ads suggested, falsely, that its bags are handmade.

The article gives a shoutout to CT’s own Trish Ginter, co-founder of the indie designer showcase Smashing Darling, and designer at Frock in Chester.

The Business of Fashion had more to add on Louis Vuitton:

A month earlier, Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive of LVMH [Louis Vuitton's parent company], told investors at the luxury group’s annual shareholders meeting in Paris of his plan to take a 49 percent stake in Edun, the sustainable clothing label founded by Bono and Ali Hewson. “LVMH shares the vision and ethical values of Edun, a pioneer in ethical apparel, and its founders,” he said later. “LVMH is committed to advancing both the social and environmental aspects of sustainable development, which plays an intrinsic role in the development of our brands.”

The BoF article also discussed the struggle to balance good design, profitability, and sustainability:

Stella McCartney became known as a chic designer label that’s convincingly green, not as a green designer label that is convincingly chic. Speaking to The Business of Fashion, McCartney was clear about her priorities: “Obviously, I don’t use any animals which has a huge impact on the planet. But my first job is to make desirable, luxurious, beautiful clothing for women to want to buy. Then I ask myself: can I do this in a more environmental way without sacrificing design? If I can, then there is no reason not to. I think that women buy my product because they like how it looks, feels, fits and being sustainable is an added extra bonus.”

This emphasis on desirability and design may come as no surprise from a graduate of London fashion college Central St. Martins. But interestingly Ali Hewson, who founded Edun primarily as a means to do good, sees it no differently. She told BoF: “In the fashion business desirability is sustainability! This point has taught us over the years that we must produce quality clothes. Fit must be right, design details correct.”

Julie Gilhart, influential fashion director at Barneys New York, and an early proponent of sustainable fashion, sums it up bluntly: “Consumers respond to good design. Design and desirability must come first.” When deciding whether to spend on fashion, the consumer looks, above all, for good design. Ecological or ethical considerations are still very much secondary.

You can see Julie Gilhart riff on design and sustainability in this video.

You can also read my thoughts on these subjects in two previous posts, here and here.

Lovin’ my peeps at Cosa Verde.

My Mr. Bing Foldover Clutch has been featured on their homepage today!  Click over and peruse all the sustainable handmade goodness over there!

Click the link in my previous post about this bag to learn more about the name and the inspiration.

{UPDATE: This post is now an entry in the Blog Off at What Designers. Vote for me!}

The standing joke among we handmade artists is that any  money we make from selling our crafts goes into feeding our addiction for pretty supplies and cute things made by friends.  In that spirit, a few months ago I treated myself to a Grace Napoleon original, a pink, ruffly wrap sweater.  But seriously, these purchases and the bonds we make in our raucous real-life meetings and in online forums are an important conduit for exchanging ideas and business advice.  In an effort to record this movement of self-employed women artists, and to preserve the lessons and inspiration I glean from them, I am beginning a project of interviewing women who have inspired me as an independent fashion designer. 

I met Grace at a meeting of our local new-wave craft club, and watched with admiration and curiosity as she handstitched her woolly holiday projects.  I finally sat with her on a recent evening for tea and dessert to talk about her evolution as a textile artist.

Grace is a Danbury, CT-area artist who designs and creates women’s clothing made from clothing– that is, she deconstructs secondhand clothes and re-assembles them in unexpected and charming ways.  Every new seam is stitched by hand.  She offers her clothes and other fabric crafts, along with vintage housewares, in her online store at Etsy.com and at regional craft shows and flea markets.

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In the northeast US, it’s full-bore allergy season, and if you’re like me you’ve been going through eye drops and tissues like it’s the apocalypse.  Every week, I empty my bedside trashcan, containing 99% used tissues. 

I do make an effort to order 100% recycled tissues from Seventh Generation, but as far as I know, we still don’t have a way to safely recycle booger-filled paper tissues.  And we haven’t yet implemented the people’s revolution at my condo, so I have no way to compost them, which would be ideal.

So this year, I’m bringing back the handkerchief as an essential ladies’ accessory.

Hankies, clockwise, from: thevintagelaundry, VintageSewandSew, no longer available from pattispolkadots, hankylady, (thevintagelaundry again), hankylady, heirloomlinens, SerendipityTreasures

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