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The new black (oil influences fashion)
Jocelyn K Glei, The National (United Arab Emirates)
As designers debuted their autumn 2008 collections on the runway earlier this year, a trend towards conservatism and the use of sober colours – including an overwhelming predilection for black – rapidly emerged. Now, as the season approaches and clothes land on showroom floors, a new undercurrent is welling up: echoes of the energy crisis are rippling through the fashion world, resulting in a raft of oily-finish fabrics from shiny-treated silk to liquid latex, glossy vinyl and other synthetics.
… Like it or not – oil is on everyone’s mind these days. With record-breaking international petrol prices sparking fear of energy crises in Europe and the US, it’s no surprise that fashion designers are starting to convey a heightened awareness of the value of “black gold,” fetishising the most precious of our fossil fuels.
The San Francisco-based art and design collective Citizen:Citizen was one of the first to foretell the rise of fashion-forward fuel. In 2006, the group collaborated with the New York artist Cory Ingram to produce a limited-edition fragrance called Crude, which featured “50ml of crude oil exquisitely packaged and branded”. Sold for $280 (Dh1,030), the product essentially imagined a world where petrol cost $900,000 a barrel.
(23 August 2008)
Cheap clothes, clean conscience
Sarah Butler, The Guardian
Last week, the House of Lords science committee criticised a culture of fast fashion for contributing to the growing amount of domestic waste in Britain. Textiles make up 3% of the 30m tonnes of waste collected from households by local authorities every year, and the committee accused retailers of encouraging consumers “to dispose of clothes which have only been worn a few times in favour of new, cheap garments which themselves will also go out of fashion and be discarded within a matter of months.”
But with the average household’s disposable income down £2,500 in the past 12 months – the first drop for 11 years – it is unlikely that shoppers are about to swap regular purchases from the lower end of the high street for expensive well-made and ethically sourced fashion.
However in these lean times, another sector is experiencing a surge in sales: charity shops…
(28 August 2008)
Interesting to see whether this is a cyclical fashion trend or a genuine move towards more reuse-SO
Power cuts hits textile industry
The Hindu
Frequent power cuts in the past five days had hit hard the textile industry in the district with the load shedding extending beyond the officially declared two-hour load shedding.
Powerloom prdocution had been affected badly, resulting in a loss of production worth Rs 50 lakh daily, industry sources said.
Though officially only two hours of power cut had been announced, the citizens of the district are experiencing six hours of power shut down at three times, each lasting two hours.
Electiricty Board officials, when contacted, said the power cut was inevitable in view of the low generation of hydel and thermal power stations.
(August 2008)
