Corporate Rhetoric, My Favourite.

I’m beginning to tire of the word ninja* being thrown around whenever anybody wants to communicate the idea that someone is good at something (“My accountant is a number ninja!” “My barista is a shot-pulling ninja!”), but my aunt is a fair trade ninja. Having spearheaded her town’s transformation into a fair trade community and currently sitting as a Canadian Fair Trade Network board member, she really kicks some corporate capitalist butt while remaining one of the gentlest souls I know. Anyway, she said something once that I’d like to recall on this dark day.**

We were discussing Wal-Mart over lunch and she mentioned how much she hates their latest slogan, “Save Money, Live Better”.

“It totally offends me,” she stated in an uncharacteristically aggressive tone, crushing the aluminum pop can in her clenched fist.***

And I get it. What exactly does a multi-billion dollar corporation whose revenue is derived exclusively from exploiting other people’s misery mean by the phrase, “Live Better”? A more apt slogan might be, “Save money! Surround yourself with more cheap product this month than the poor kid lacing up your sweatshop-produced baseball could go through in seventy-six lifetimes!” At the same time, of course, the images they’re running through the commercial make you feel like “Live Better” means “be the perfect mom with the cute hair who lives in That House with the Big Baseboards and Old-School Heating Grates that remind you just vaguely enough of your pleasant childhood to make you feel like you’ve just consumed a big heaping bowl of your mom’s homemade mac and cheese”.

It got me thinking about the incredible slew of corporate ads perpetuating the myth that if we buy more stuff, it will somehow fulfill us on a cosmic level.

The examples you’re about to read are taken directly from advertising I’ve seen at the mall, around town and online. They haven’t been exaggerated or re-worded or any way.

“Expect more, pay less.” More– yes, we can definitely expect more. We can expect more crap on our driveway at our next garage sale. But hey, who doesn’t enjoy bartering with the neighbourhood Weird Guy over a plastic wastebasket?

“Fill your drawers.” Amusing potty double-entendre aside, this slogan promotes the untruth that empty space in one’s closet is somehow an undesirable thing. Space in my closet is something I have worked hard to achieve and maintain over the past couple of years. To me, space represents overcoming compulsive shopping habits; it represents a streamlined and intentional collection of garments that reflect who I am as a person. When applied to life on a larger scale, space promotes wellbeing– healthy relationships, healthy bodies, healthy minds and healthy spirits all result from a healthy margin of space. So I’ll take a pass on ‘filling my drawers,’ thanks.

“You don’t not need it.” I don’t even know where to begin, other than to say that if a student used this sentence in one of my classes, there would be some red pen involved. Beyond its unbearable use of the double negative, I feel that the question really screaming to be answered here is why? Why, in the name of all that is holy, would I or should I ever spend money on something because I ‘don’t not need it’? What sort of consumerist Purgatory are we living in when clothing retailers feel entitled to carve out this amorphous, pseudo-syllogistic no-man’s-land in our minds just to sell us one more thing we never knew we didn’t not need? Anyway, even if I do decide to hang onto my credit card information long enough to play along and bother unpacking this stupid argument, it turns out they’re telling me I do need it, which I don’t, so once again, and finally, WHY.

To all the marketing executives who will never read this, here’s a thought: maybe you could just create a high-quality, long-lasting, ethically sourced, worthwhile product or service that I would like to spend money on in the first place.

*I re-read this line and added italics so nobody would think I was talking about a little word ninja being tossed back and forth. No word ninjas were harmed in the making of this post.

** The day when, as a certain comedian put it, we can all trample each other to death the day after being thankful for what we have (that is, if you live in America. Here in Canada, Thanksgiving is such a distant memory that the trampling’s totally cool).

***This anecdote may have been embellished for narrative effect. Maybe the can-squishing part.

The Finite Wardrobe, Part II.

I’m beginning to feel slightly guilty* for ripping on Anna Wintour knowing that my closet is still a hypocritical hodge-podge. Even though I’ve been working for a couple of years to pare my collection down, I’d estimate that about 25% of my wardrobe still belongs to at least one of these dubious categories:

trendy When I say ‘trendy’, I do not mean ‘stylish’. I mean, ‘I bought this because my naive little eyeballs once read that it was supposed to be in for the season’. After the first few wears, it became painfully clear that oversized polka-dot chiffon blouses do not become these wide shoulders and hips unless I am seven months pregnant, in which case I look adorable. Out of the closet, into the maternity rubbermaid.

 

closet decorator Like some kind of deranged oversized magpie, I decided to line my closet with this at some point because I thought it was pretty. I’m pretty sure my neurons didn’t even fire; it was a strict hand-to-hanger “ooh, shiny!” nervous impulse. Unfortunately, once I brought it home, I realized the lacy part exposed too much lady part. Not exactly ideal for the context in which I was planning to wear this blouse, i.e., in front of thirty teenagers at my Christian school. You are probably looking at these two photos so far and wondering how many times I have to buy something that looks bad before I will stop doing that. WELL…

ethical but ugly At one point, I felt so shopping deprived from constantly putting things back on the rack that the minute I’d see something made in the USA or Canada, I’d buy it even if it didn’t look that great. I hate hate HATE getting rid of items that I’ve barely worn but not as much as I hate being taunted by a surly gang of ill-chosen threads every time I open my closet door. I would take a picture but I don’t think you’re ready for it.**

nostalgic barnacle, irrelevant to current life stage This is a hoodie with history. It is one of two exact replica hoodies I purchased for myself while in University, when I felt a deep need to be validated by my sense of hipster irony. I spilled bleach on the original one, kept wearing it anyway for another 6 months and finally replaced it with Ironic Hoodie 2.0 when the cuffs started falling off. Horrifying, perhaps, but not for the girl who used to wear INSIDE OUT T-SHIRTS TO SCHOOL, NO I’M NOT KIDDING. But my thirtieth birthday draws nigh. These days, I like to wear my shirts right-side-out and no matter how hard I squint, Ironic Hoodie 2.0 doesn’t make me laugh anymore because I am (apparently) a decrepit prune.

Ironic Hoodie 1.0                                           Ironic Hoodie 2.0

I just took all the clothes belonging to these aforementioned groups and purged them (there were lots). My closet looks like this now:

blazerblazersweatersweaterblouseblouseblouseblousebuttondownbuttondownbuttondownhangerhangerhangeremptyspaceemptyspaceTshirtTshirtTshirtTshirtTshirtTshirtcardigancardigancardiganhangerhangertrouserstrousersdressdress

That’s right- I can quite literally visualize every item in my closet right now because each one adds real value to my wardrobe and is in there for a very specific reason.

Full of vigour (from doing this purge) and shame (from shopping poorly enough to make this purge necessary), I hereby declare that from now on, no garment shall cross the threshold of my closet door unless it fits all of the following criteria:

sourced ethically This means that it was assembled in a country with stringent labour standards, or under circumstances where special care was taken to ensure fair labour practices in a country with typically poor labour standards (e.g. fair trade).

purchased thoughtfully I will know what I’m buying before I enter the store, and I won’t leave with anything extra, no matter how cute the bulldog is.

deeply reflective of personal style NOT a passing trend, and therefore won’t leave my closet until it’s falling apart. On that note…

seriously well-made An ethically sourced garment can still shrink, fall to pieces and hit the landfill sooner than it ought to. This US made T-shirt started out awesome but came out of its first accidental encounter with the dryer too snug for Tyrion Lannister.

*not really. She was so mean to Anne Hathaway.

** I forgot to take the picture.

 

The Finite Wardrobe.

This is Anna Wintour.

For those of us who have not a) seen “The Devil Wears Prada”, b) read a fashion magazine or c) been to planet earth, she is the editor-in-chief of American Vogue. In addition to (allegedly) making fresh-faced interns cry on a regular basis, it is also her job to tell us what we, the woebegone masses, should be wearing every season. Wintour’s influence over the Western fashion industry is immeasurable and immense; trends are trends because she endorses and validates them.

Have you ever heard the expression, “Do as I say, not as I do”? Yes, you have. You were probably five years old and asking your dad if you could smoke a cigarette or something. The expression probably both bewildered and exasperated you, because your innocent little Care Bears-watching mind couldn’t comprehend that your parents would tell you to do one thing while they did something else. As adults, we don’t take kindly to hypocrisy. It enrages us when we see it in the news and it alienates us if it happens in our relationships.

So what has Anna Wintour been doing, while all manner of trends have been making their way in and out of her fashion turnstile?

This is Anna Wintour in 1970.

This is a Vogue cover from 1970.*

This is Anna Wintour in 1990.

This is a Vogue cover from 1990.

This is Anna Wintour in 1997.

This is a Vogue cover from 1997.

This is Anna Wintour in 2003.

This is a Vogue cover from 2003.

True, she has posed in the occasional striking, trendy ensemble or sometimes a pie, but after perusing hundreds of Anna Wintour images from the past four decades (I can’t wait to see the ads that Google is going to start customizing for me), I can tell you that far from imitating the trends she green-lights, her own wardrobe is composed mainly of perennial staples and she is almost always wearing some combination of the following:

A knee-length fur coat

A minimalist sheath or cocktail dress falling just above the knee

A bold piece of jewelry, typically a necklace

A plain blouse or t-shirt

A monochromatic tank and cardigan

A collared shirt

A turtleneck

A blazer

A tweed suit

A pencil skirt

Sunglasses

High heels

Beyond her predictable wardrobe basics, her colour choices consist of one of the following, with the occasional addition of an accent colour or print:

Black

Beige

Navy

Cream

White

Gold

I also feel obligated to point out that she has worn her hair the exact same way for twenty-five years.

While we’re talking un-trendy fashionistas– and I realize the point may be rendered less poignant in that he is a notorious crazy man— Karl Lagerfeld wears the same stupid suit literally everywhere. **

And guess what? A Google Image search for Donna Karan, Michael Kors, Vera Wang, Stella McCartney and the Mulleavys reveals a plethora of solid black and a serious lack of patterned leggings.

I may have swallowed “Do as I say, not as I do” as a five-year-old, but the adult version of myself has begun to scrutinize the subtext that titans of the fashion industry are communicating through their own personal fashion choices, which seems to be that trends are to be ignored. Timeless, sustainable fashion choices have been unwittingly advocated to us by the very designers who are constantly coming up with new ways to make us feel out of touch.

*To be fair, she wasn’t working at Vogue when this cover came out.

**His mom once tried to put a diaper on him when he was a baby, but he said no.

Chocolate. That is all.

Last month’s Halloween pillowcases are brimming* with one of North America’s favourite products, at considerable social cost. It’s hard to find fair trade chocolate in the miniature bar form, but look what I found to eat for Christmas time!

I bought this fair trade advent calendar from Ten Thousand Villages in mid-October and if you can believe it, all 24 chocolates are still intact–that is, until I carry out the obligatory taste test I’m about to perform just for you! I have prepared my palate with a judiciously curated assembly of coffee, soy egg nog** and two bran muffins. Give me ten seconds.

…

When December 1 arrives, my husband will open this tiny cardboard window and say, Where is the chocolate, and I will say, I have an obligation to my readers, whereupon he will close his mouth, turn around and walk resignedly into his office to shoot three-pointers into the miniature basketball hoop attached to the door.

*Okay, it’s been two weeks since Halloween, so probably not brimming. Unless you’re like my husband, who liked to take a careful inventory of his Halloween candy, make trades, ration his resources and generally act like the economist (his schoolmates might have used another term of reference) he is. He’s lucky he’s cute.

**This is very gross.

Sweater Weather!

I collect sweaters like some people collect garden gnomes, only my sweaters don’t stare at me with an uncanny, chilling smile and force me to sleep with my eyes open. Also, nobody has yet attempted to kidnap one of my sweaters and take it on a road trip.

Sweaters, when made with high-quality fabric like cashmere or merino wool, sourced responsibly, and looked after carefully, make exceptional (and economical) purchases.

They feel great. Cashmere is the tactile equivalent of drinking hot chocolate whilst looking out a frosted window and listening to this guy.

They’re super versatile. A high-quality sweater can linchpin any look. See what happens to my basic dove grey cashmere when paired with

a) Blue jeans:

b) Black cords and a collared shirt:

c) The same collared shirt and a pleated skirt:

Buying versatile basics is a way of protesting and countering the fast fashion movement (and if you can do it while supporting true artisans who are in the fashion industry for the right reasons, even better*). Also, please excuse the soother in the first ph– I mean, I have placed a soother in this photo on purpose to underscore the soothing nature of cashmere. Yes.

They’re cost-effective. Yes, good sweaters are expensive upfront, but they cost far less than buying a crummy one over and over and over again. Contrary to popular belief, cashmere’s durability is on par with wool, and high quality cashmere won’t pill, unlike the polyester-blend sweater I bought 2 years ago from the Gap for $50 and finally gave away in exasperation because no matter how carefully I washed that sucker in cold water or laid it flat to dry, it still emerged from every cleaning with a new colony of fibre-acne. That sweater from the above photos cost me two hundred bucks, but it’s going to last me until my daughter becomes a snarky teenager and makes me throw it out in the year 2027 because it embarrasses her for some esoteric reason. Meanwhile, she’ll probably be wearing something like this:

They’re trend-resistant. Fashion trends are to blame for turning our closets into revolving doors, contributing to waste and flooding the overseas used garment market, ultimately taking business away from local artisans in those countries. Who among us will deny, for example, that this dress or these leggings or this godforsaken boot will be at Goodwill within 12 months of purchase? A sweater in a neutral colour or classic pattern, on the other hand, has so much longevity that its appeal will quite literally outlive you.

See? This sweater that Katherine Hepburn wore is now in my closet.**

Now, where to buy these magical garments? An ethically sourced wool or cashmere sweater can be a bit of a unicorn, but you can buy one custom-made, 3D printed, at Appalatch, my new favourite store. If you’re looking for greater style and colour variety, my friend just told me about Everlane. While this company does make use of overseas factories, its sourcing practices are far, far more stringent and transparent than other companies offering comparable luxury basics, such as Lord & Taylor. They’ve also been featured on Ecouterre, where the company founder talks about supporting the ‘buy less’ movement. They even went so far as to shut down their online store on Black Friday!

Gotta run– My sweaters are getting antsy and I need to take them out of the wardrobe and sing to them.

*Unfortunately, this particular sweater was not sourced ethically- I purchased it before I was being careful that way- but it has held up to my quality standards if not my ethical ones.

**That is not the same sweater.

My Winter Wish List.

You know that mildly creepy “Grown Up Christmas List” song, wherein a fully-grown adult sings to Santa about sitting on his lap? I like the Amy Grant version. I can’t help it. Nostalgia has forever burned it into the pleasure zone of my little brain. But let me arrive at my point here because my infant daughter just finally went to sleep and I’m halfway through a nice glass of red wine and I have about 23 minutes to spend with you before my personal energy metre officially expires for the day.*

Back to the song… with one quick digression. Oh boy, I’m starting to think Stuart McLean is my real daddy.

I used to love the mall at Christmas. I probably don’t need to spend any time conjuring a multisensory experience for you here. Poinsettias. Pepperidge Farm kiosks. Window displays featuring cozy sweaters, fake model smiles and pine boughs. Santa. Candles for sale with names like “bonfire” and “young spruce”. The Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. Dog calendars. The obvious contrivance was alluring; I could lose myself in it for an evening, kind of like the movies.

I don’t really visit the mall anymore, for reasons that will be delineated in another post. In place of what I will lovingly refer to as “my Christmas wish list as dictated to me by some marketing rep in Manhattan,” I am now producing for you here “the list of things I wish I’d known about before I spent all that money at Old Navy.” Insofar as adulthood consists of independent thought, I guess this could be considered my own “grown up Christmas list,” hopefully minus a potentially awkward Santa encounter.

1. Cold Mountain Cape, Appalatch

 

2. Robie Shirt, Tradlands

 

 

3. Phillip Riding Boot, Frye

 

4. Lizzielooms Slipper, Feelgoodz

5. Star Shoulder Sweater, Chinti and Parker (this would be more like my, “hey, I won the lottery! let’s buy a sweater!” option)

Soother misplaced (by baby). Red wine finished (by me). Over and out.

*this was originally posted around midnight yesterday, not 8:18 am as I think we can all agree that would be more than a little alarming.

The Expensiphant in the Room.

Well, it’s no secret but I’m saying it anyway: buying ethical is not cheap. Well-meaning consumers usually start out feeling like this:

And after an hour of browsing online for ethical comparables to their favourite brands, they feel like this:

I’ve felt personally convicted over ethical consumerism for about ten years now and have found the experience to consist of a long cycle of wins and failures. Mostly failures, if I’m being honest (although I do feel like the win:failure ratio is finally starting to balance out!).

Now I’m going to quote Oprah. Oh, and if you’re wondering about the source of that garbled buzzing, it’s the sound of all my friends covering their mouths to stifle a giggle because let’s put it this way– I am not exactly an Oprah-quoting kind of gal. Take this as a sign of my love for you, Gentle Reader. Grab your Blackberry and your PASHMINAAAA and bear with me past the next paragraph.

Barbara Walters once asked Oprah something like, “Okay, so you give lots of money to worthy causes but you’re still rich. Why not give more of your money away? Why not all of it?” to which Oprah replied with something like, “if I think that way, I won’t do anything at all.”

I think her statement provides a nice philosophical foundation for discussing the purchase of ethical clothing. If we each buy 2 items and 1 of them was made in a sweatshop but one of them was made ethically, it’s better than buying 2 items that were both made in a sweatshop. Yes? Yet our minds want to yammer on and on about how we should have bought BOTH of them ethically, and then we are compelled by the emotionally-enticing-but-logically-barren internal refrain of “if you’re not going to buy everything ethically, why bother at all?” This is the type of thinking that leads a consumer to want to tear his or her hair out at the roots and wave buh-bye to the whole question of ethical shopping in the first place.

Instead of asking, “how can I afford an entire closet full of ethical clothing”, why not ask, “how can I afford one piece of ethical clothing?” Good changes are daunting. That’s why we usually fail when we try to make them all at once.

 

 

The little peplum that changed everything.

I’ve been on a quest to clothe myself ethically for about a year now. This has been a maddening, exhilarating, guilt-inducing, high-producing, damn frustrating yet ultimately rewarding experience. Kind of like a toned-down version of motherhood, minus the unconditional love and endless puke.

Having a baby has seriously weakened my consumer’s resolve as I struggle to locate ethically-sourced clothes for my little girl. When my sister-in-law texted me the other day to ask where I shop for kids’ clothes, a HOT KNIFE OF SEETHING GUILT RENT MY SOUL because I must confess, I haven’t been trying too hard in this area. Oh, I do the token walk-through down the baby section of the thrift store, but if nothing piques my interest, I’m back in the car, driving to H&M before you can say “greenwash!” In a pathetic attempt at preserving itself, my conscience has provided me with a series of cop-outs that I’ve been using to justify all my non-ethical purchases of children’s apparel since April:

But it’s not for me! As any idiot will be able to tell you, the fact that the clothes will be covering a smaller body than mine negates the fact that they were made in a sweatshop!

But they grow out of everything so fast! B is on the 98th percentile for weight, which makes these clothes 98 per cent ethical!

But it’s seasonal! Who can think about the environmental, social or economic ramifications of this garment when the clarion tones of Andy Williams are currently buttering up my little eardrums?

But it’s sooooo cute! This one brings me to the anecdote that inspired this blog in the first place. I was walking through Target to find something for B’s Halloween costume (see excuse no. 3) and revelling smugly in the glow of being a savvy consumer. Look at all these sheep, lining up at the till with their hands full of crap they’ll never– OOOOH! 

My heart stopped along with my feet:

 

Behold the glorious combination of everything I love! Navy! Jersey! Ruffles! Bulldog! I had it in my hands before my brain had time to register the sight. Then I made like Macbeth and figured well, I’m knees-deep in it now, might as well buy it in 2T. Oh, and I also suddenly need this turquoise baby Christmas sweater.

I walked the three pieces of contraband to the checkout counter, produced my debit card and punched in my numbers while scanning the clerk’s face for evidence of judgment because you know, it’s not every day a Target employee sees someone buying something at Target. She broke her eye contact with the ceiling exactly long enough to give me my receipt and I ran out of there like the flames of hades were lapping at my heels.

The Forbidden Garments burned a hole in my living room floor for about 24 hours and then I returned them. And do you want to know what the clerk said when I passed the first shirt back to her?

“You’re returning this? But it’s soooo cute!”

Yep. Excuse number four, ripe for the picking. Every bodily fibre was straining to pluck that peplum right out of her hand and say, “April Fools!” But for the fact that a) my conscience was collapsing in on itself and b) it was not April, I probably would have. But something inside me said I’d feel better without these things, and as I left the store, I felt the iron fist of consumer psychology loosen its grip on me:

 

 

Anyway, with the apparent demise of Fashioning Change, it’s up to me to face my cognitive dissonance head-on and find viable alternatives to the clothes I covet. Here’s my first win:

As you can see, it is conspicuously bulldog-bereft, but this pleated empire tunic from Mini Mioche is made in Canada from organic cotton and therefore makes my heart happy. If you’d like me to find an ethical alternative to something you’re after, let me know in the comments section.