Fucked Up News: October
Taken from
Yahoo! News...
Edible Clothes For the Environmentally Fashionable
by
Brett KlineMon Oct 16, 1:44 PM ET
Some of the tastiest fruit and veg is no longer just for eating -- the ethical
fashion industry has decided it has a place in your wardrobe too.
Sweet potatoes and pineapples were among the foods
to make their way on to the catwalk of the Ethical Fashion Show, which was held here in the world's fashion capital, over
the weekend.
Using the sweet spuds, Les Racines du Ciel, a small clothing manufacturer based in the northwestern Brittany
region of France, has adapted a traditional Chinese practice to Western clothing styles.
"In southern China and only
in southern China, silk is lacquered with a sweet potato paste and then buried in the ground," said Natalie Goyette, the company's
development director.
"Then the silk is rinsed up to 30 times, and comes out with a soft off-black color that I find
beautiful," she said.
"And the sweet potato dye makes the silk water repellent and able to absorb perspiration very
well."
She was among scores of fashion professionals to attend the opening night of the show, now in its third year,
and was one of more than 60 designers with stands at the show.
The silk is shipped to the company in the town of Quimper
in Brittany, where it is used to make gowns that are extremely soft to the touch but resemble leather.
Les Racines
du Ciel also makes silk scarves dyed with a Japanese fruit called kakishibu, giving them colors ranging from pink to brown,
Goyette said.
"Our part of ethical fashion and fair trade is the use of organic materials, such as silk, and cotton
for use in denims and knits."
But she said that her work was not simply about clothing.
"Maybe I am too idealistic,
but I want to change the world," she added, "to make it a better place, environmentally speaking."
At another stand,
Grace Trance, from San Francisco-based Grace Trance Designs, is showing off a skirt made of pineapple fibers, called pina
cloth.
The skirts are a yellow colour but do not come from the fruit itself, but rather from the pina leaves.
"The
tradition comes from the Philippines," Trance said, "where the leaves are used to make barong shirts. The leaves are softened
and the fibers are stripped from them."
Other brightly-colored stands display fish-scale jewelry and light leather
jackets by John Estrada from Colombia, traditional silk robes from Torgo in Mongolia and haute couture dresses in hemp and
bamboo by Los Angeles-based Deborah Linquist.
"I'm the only designer at this show using pina leaves," Trance said.
"I find the fabric we get from the fiber to be beautiful."
Another material sharing the ethical spotlight is bamboo,
which comes from China and India.
"Bamboo is a natural grass that grows incredibly quickly and is then transformed
into a fiber," said Summer Rayne Oaks, a fashion consultant who has written extensively on bamboo for the S4trends.com website,
which focuses on sustainable fashion development.
Oakes, 22, is a New York-based fashion model with a degree in natural
resources and alternative development from Cornell University in New York State.
"Bamboo is used instead of cotton
by a growing number of designers because it has what industry people call great drape, meaning it fits perfectly on human
bodies," she said.
Ethical fashion falls into two parts: the organic materials used in the clothing, such as cotton,
silk, bamboo and hemp, and the work to make the garments, which puts mostly women in non-exploitative, labour-friendly structures
in African countries or elsewhere in the developing world.
But industry consultants attending the show said they were
mindful of another trend concerning not the materials used, but the manufacturing and marketing of the clothes.
They
questioned whether the bulk of manufacturing will continue to be done by small companies, or by clothing giants increasingly
jumping into the fair trade game.
"Think of food," said Eric Olsen, the head of Business and Social Responsibility,
a San Francisco-based consultancy group for clothing majors.
"Twenty years ago, organic food was made by small alternative
companies. Today, health food in America is mainstream. Everyone is reading labels. More health food is made by agro giants
than by niche market producers.
"This is the question for the ethical fashion business: who will be able to reach
the mass public?"
Olsen pointed out that the majors had the capacity to invest in materials and labour.
"In
the West, the financial figures may be small, but for example, for the town in Ghana making the clothing, it is a major investment
and major income."
Global Mamas, a women's collective based in Ghana, showed off their batik print dresses during
the runway show in a video produced by Tabeisa, a London-based investment group for artisans in developing countries with
the slogan 'Exchange Designs, Change Lives'.
Another company seeking change is France's largest catalogue group, La
Redoute, which also took part in the show. It is running a competition to find an ethical fashion collection to go into its
catalogue.
"We want to take ethical fashion out of its position as a niche market and make it accessible to the public,"
said Elisabeth Cazorla, director of apparel merchandising at La Redoute.
Cazorla said the company had done a customer
survey.
"Three years ago, the interest in ethical fashion was minimal," she said. "Now 50 percent of our clients say
they want to buy fair trade products. That is remarkable."
Last year, La Redoute sold more than 200,000 organic cotton
T-shirts for between nine and 25 euros each.
And in one case, a plant and flower-based cosmetics and skin care company,
Aveda, based in Blaine, Minnesota in the United States, began small and has become a multinational with 7,000 sales outlets
in 24 countries, as well as being one of the sponsors of the Ethical Fashion Show.
One example of its fair trade practices
is a pact between Aveda, owned by US cosmetics giant Estee Lauder, with aborigines in central Australia to guarantee them
a good price on their sandalwood, used in health and beauty products.
Nicole Kaldes, Aveda's representative at the
Paris show, said: "It is great to have an environmental story behind the materials but if the product doesn't look and feel
great, it wont sell. And small companies may need investment by large groups to continue making products that look and feel
great."
WRONG!!! link at applegeeks, taken from local london october 20th 2006
Girl, 14, accused of supplying machine guns
By Ruth Holmes
The Mach-10 can fire 1000 rounds per minute
A 14-YEAR-OLD girl from north-west London stands accused of conspiracy to supply a machine gun capable of firing
1,000 rounds a minute.
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is one of four suspects from the area who appeared at High
Barnet magistrates' court charged with gun-related crimes.
She was charged with possessing two revolvers, a Mac-10 machine gun and a second machine pistol.
A 16-year-old male youth was also accused of possessing a revolver with intent to endanger life, as well as drugs
and CS sprays.
continued...
18-year-old Korrey Johnson-Bell, of Westfield Close, Brent, was charged with possession of a machine pistol while
Genevieve Sahel, 31, also of Westfield Close, faced charges of conspiracy to supply firearms, possession of prohibited weapons
and possession of ammunition.
Their court appearance on Saturday follows an investigation by London's Trident crime unit, which handles gun
crime in black communities. It occurred as five more victims fell prey to gun crime in the capital this weekend.
