Comments on: News From You: Earth Day 2008

By: Zaz

Zaz — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:41:37 +0000

hello kathleen,
i don’t get it how people measure “eco friendliness” and being “green”. especially those DIY that are so widespread on the websphere now. you have to COLLECT plastic bags in order to fuse those and make yet another big bag and then people will ask that you make them others… so is that getting rid of the habit of consuming plastic. it’s the same with cutting plastic bags in strips and knitting them to make a market bag, people seem to be proud of those “achievements”, etc, etc, there are so many unbelievable acts like these. one of them that i thought very funny was knitting Xmas balls around a styrofoam form to raise money for some echological association. i wrote to them begging they use something other… they replied with: yes but it’s more practical.
in short, people are in use of MORE waste to act greener, this is too crazy for me.

what i do? i bought two bags from a local market: one huge straw market and another to wear everyday , much smaller, i bought them in bretagne, they’ve been making them for ages and that’s what our grandparents used.
i refuse to have my vegetables and fruit to be put in plastic bags, if they insist then the paper bags are ok, then all goes in my straw bag.

i recently read an article on a useum website where the women had a dress for ceremonies, one for everyday and one black dress (i guess for mourning) alongside with a night dress and some underwear and also some shawls, mittes, hats. i love this idea.
the dresses were knit i suppose starting when the girls were nearing marrying age and “special”, like i could imagine they would incorporate green when one had green eyes, etc etc…
what a lovely way of dealing with clothes.
i’ve so many clothes that i could put in the “maybe” filing… it’s a real shame. i will do my best though.

By: Timo Rissanen

Timo Rissanen — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:51:54 +0000

Thanks, Kathleen!
Yesterday was strange, I wrote another short post about copying (one of my big gripes about the industry here; I’ve seen a designer become completely helpless after losing a page from Vogue; this after I’d made the pattern and we had a toile. The designer couldn’t make any decisions without that page. Pathetic.) and mentioned pants. I’d been here just before and when I returned an hour later, you’d posted about jeans and mentioned copying. Weird synchronicity. I reckon it was about 5am here and the previous evening over there.

Kate Fletcher’s book is fantastic, I think. She doesn’t shy away from the complexity of the problems but the optimism is contagious. I’ve been carrying it with me for two months and turn into a mad evangelical person at every opportunity (I do same with your book when clients come over. Some are now scared of me – this is good). When I get a chance, I’ll try to post about the nice links between her book, your many posts, and even some pieces of writing by Julian Roberts – the links are definitely there!

Thanks again, truly humbling. Now for the 40+ jeans comments…

By: Nadine

Nadine — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:22:21 +0000

Thanks Kathleen – I always really enjoy your ‘News from You’ posts.