#Textile consumption

[indizombie]

Textile consumption causes the third largest land use and water use in the value chain, and the fifth largest material resource use and greenhouse gas emissions. Also, textiles cause pressures and impacts from their chemicals on the environment and climate. Textiles are on average “the fourth-highest source of pressure on the environment and climate change from a European consumption perspective,” the European Environment Agency (EEA) reported.

Baher Kamal, ‘Europe Sells to Africa and Asia 90% of Its Used Clothes, Textiles Waste’, Inter Press Service

[fatehbaz]

[T]he Dutch Republic, like its successor the Kingdom of the Netherlands, [...] throughout the early modern period had an advanced maritime [trading, exports] and (financial) service [banking, insurance] sector. Moreover, Dutch involvement in Atlantic slavery stretched over two and a half centuries. [...] Carefully estimating the scope of all the activities involved in moving, processing and retailing the goods derived from the forced labour performed by the enslaved in the Atlantic world [...] [shows] more clearly in what ways the gains from slavery percolated through the Dutch economy. [...] [This web] connected them [...] to the enslaved in Suriname and other Dutch colonies, as well as in non-Dutch colonies such as Saint Domingue [Haiti], which was one of the main suppliers of slave-produced goods to the Dutch economy until the enslaved revolted in 1791 and brought an end to the trade. [...] A significant part of the eighteenth-century Dutch elite was actively engaged in financing, insuring, organising and enabling the slave system, and drew much wealth from it. [...] [A] staggering 19% (expressed in value) of the Dutch Republic's trade in 1770 consisted of Atlantic slave-produced goods such as sugar, coffee, or indigo [...].

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One point that deserves considerable emphasis is that [this slave-based Dutch wealth] [...] did not just depend on the increasing output of the Dutch Atlantic slave colonies. By 1770, the Dutch imported over fl.8 million worth of sugar and coffee from French ports. [...] [T]hese [...] routes successfully linked the Dutch trade sector to the massive expansion of slavery in Saint Domingue [the French colony of Haiti], which continued until the early 1790s when the revolution of the enslaved on the French part of that island ended slavery.

Before that time, Dutch sugar mills processed tens of millions of pounds of sugar from the French Caribbean, which were then exported over the Rhine and through the Sound to the German and Eastern European ‘slavery hinterlands’.

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Coffee and indigo flowed through the Dutch Republic via the same trans-imperial routes, while the Dutch also imported tobacco produced by slaves in the British colonies, [and] gold and tobacco produced [by slaves] in Brazil [...]. The value of all the different components of slave-based trade combined amounted to a sum of fl.57.3 million, more than 23% of all the Dutch trade in 1770. [...] However, trade statistics alone cannot answer the question about the weight of this sector within the economy. [...] 1770 was a peak year for the issuing of new plantation loans [...] [T]he main processing industry that was fully based on slave-produced goods was the Holland-based sugar industry [...]. It has been estimated that in 1770 Amsterdam alone housed 110 refineries, out of a total of 150 refineries in the province of Holland. These processed approximately 50 million pounds of raw sugar per year, employing over 4,000 workers. [...] [I]n the four decades from 1738 to 1779, the slave-based contribution to GDP alone grew by fl.20.5 million, thus contributing almost 40% of all growth generated in the economy of Holland in this period. [...]

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These [slave-based Dutch commodity] chains ran from [the plantation itself, through maritime trade, through commodity processing sites like sugar refineries, through export of these goods] [...] and from there to European metropoles and hinterlands that in the eighteenth century became mass consumers of slave-produced goods such as sugar and coffee. These chains tied the Dutch economy to slave-based production in Suriname and other Dutch colonies, but also to the plantation complexes of other European powers, most crucially the French in Saint Domingue [Haiti], as the Dutch became major importers and processers of French coffee and sugar that they then redistributed to Northern and Central Europe. [...]

The explosive growth of production on slave plantations in the Dutch Guianas, combined with the international boom in coffee and sugar consumption, ensured that consistently high proportions (19% in 1770) of commodities entering and exiting Dutch harbors were produced on Atlantic slave plantations. [...] The Dutch economy profited from this Atlantic boom both as direct supplier of slave-produced goods [from slave plantations in the Dutch Guianas, from Dutch processing of sugar from slave plantations in French Haiti] and as intermediary [physically exporting sugar and coffee] between the Atlantic slave complexes of other European powers and the Northern and Central European hinterland.

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Text above by: Pepijn Brandon and Ulbe Bosma. "Slavery and the Dutch economy, 1750-1800". Slavery & Abolition Volume 42, Issue 1. 2021. [Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[sidewalkchemistry]

Fast fashion wants to produce fast. So, the garment worker has to produce faster. And cheap. The garment worker is the only point of the supply chain where the margin is squeezed...But also, from the consumer point of view, is it really democratic to buy a t-shirt for $5 and a pair of jeans for $20? Or are they taking us for a ride? Because they are making us believe that we are rich or wealthy because we can buy a lot. But, in fact, they're making us poorer. And the only person who is becoming richer is the owner of the fast fashion brand.

- Livia Firth in The True Cost - The Truth of the Clothing Industry

[howdoesone]

How does one ponder the essence of being while converting an old shirt into a cleaning rag?

In the quiet moments of everyday life, we often find ourselves reflecting on deeper questions about existence and our place in the world. Amidst the mundane tasks of household chores, such as converting an old shirt into a cleaning rag, there lies an opportunity for profound philosophical inquiry. This article delves into how one can ponder the essence of being while engaging in this seemingly…

[reasonsforhope]

It’s an open secret in fashion. Unsold inventory goes to the incinerator; excess handbags are slashed so they can’t be resold; perfectly usable products are sent to the landfill to avoid discounts and flash sales. The European Union wants to put an end to these unsustainable practices. On Monday, [December 4, 2023], it banned the destruction of unsold textiles and footwear.

“It is time to end the model of ‘take, make, dispose’ that is so harmful to our planet, our health and our economy,” MEP Alessandra Moretti said in a statement. “Banning the destruction of unsold textiles and footwear will contribute to a shift in the way fast fashion manufacturers produce their goods.”

This comes as part of a broader push to tighten sustainable fashion legislation, with new policies around ecodesign, greenwashing and textile waste phasing in over the next few years. The ban on destroying unsold goods will be among the longer lead times: large businesses have two years to comply, and SMEs have been granted up to six years. It’s not yet clear on whether the ban applies to companies headquartered in the EU, or any that operate there, as well as how this ban might impact regions outside of Europe.

For many, this is a welcome decision that indirectly tackles the controversial topics of overproduction and degrowth. Policymakers may not be directly telling brands to produce less, or placing limits on how many units they can make each year, but they are penalising those overproducing, which is a step in the right direction, says Eco-Age sustainability consultant Philippa Grogan. “This has been a dirty secret of the fashion industry for so long. The ban won’t end overproduction on its own, but hopefully it will compel brands to be better organised, more responsible and less greedy.”

Clarifications to come

There are some kinks to iron out, says Scott Lipinski, CEO of Fashion Council Germany and the European Fashion Alliance (EFA). The EFA is calling on the EU to clarify what it means by both “unsold goods” and “destruction”. Unsold goods, to the EFA, mean they are fit for consumption or sale (excluding counterfeits, samples or prototypes)...

The question of what happens to these unsold goods if they are not destroyed is yet to be answered. “Will they be shipped around the world? Will they be reused as deadstock or shredded and downcycled? Will outlet stores have an abundance of stock to sell?” asks Grogan.

Large companies will also have to disclose how many unsold consumer products they discard each year and why, a rule the EU is hoping will curb overproduction and destruction...

Could this shift supply chains?

For Dio Kurazawa, founder of sustainable fashion consultancy The Bear Scouts, this is an opportunity for brands to increase supply chain agility and wean themselves off the wholesale model so many rely on. “This is the time to get behind innovations like pre-order and on-demand manufacturing,” he says. “It’s a chance for brands to play with AI to understand the future of forecasting. Technology can help brands be more intentional with what they make, so they have less unsold goods in the first place.”

Grogan is equally optimistic about what this could mean for sustainable fashion in general. “It’s great to see that this is more ambitious than the EU’s original proposal and that it specifically calls out textiles. It demonstrates a willingness from policymakers to create a more robust system,” she says. “Banning the destruction of unsold goods might make brands rethink their production models and possibly better forecast their collections.”

One of the outstanding questions is over enforcement. Time and again, brands have used the lack of supply chain transparency in fashion as an excuse for bad behaviour. Part of the challenge with the EU’s new ban will be proving that brands are destroying unsold goods, not to mention how they’re doing it and to what extent, says Kurazawa. “Someone obviously knows what is happening and where, but will the EU?”"

-via British Vogue, December 7, 2023

[today-i-am-thinking-about]

wool

[heylinfanclub]

I agree with that post about fast fashion and lowballing textile labor and material costs--- BUT---

IS there any prescident for? In the deal for your labor, the purchaser providing materials to cut some costs / just have things be more personal? I imagine you could probably add a convenience fee for the sake of 'i now have to educate you on what kind of fabric is USEABLE here', but it'd get someone else to get things for ya! Idk... I think I'd be keen, but I'm just a beginner with the textile crafts myself. And like the idea of not paying for the materials myself (and making someone else realize wow this shit pricey okay AND/OR getting some like, heartfelt meaningful fabric from their past or some shit damn).

[motherearthday]

Make sustainable fashion choices.

Fast fashion has completely revolutionized the apparel industry, but not for the better. Learn about the detrimental impacts of fast fashion, the importance of sustainable fashion, and commit to responsible consumption. 

Make sustainable fashion choices.

[dresshistorynerd]

The Real Cost of the Fashion Industry

Atacama Desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile. (source)

The textile industry is destroying the world. The industry is wasting massive amounts of energy and materials, and polluting the air, the ground and the water supplies. It overwhelmingly exploits it's labour and extracts wealth from colonized countries, especially in Asia. I assume we all broadly understand this, but I think it's useful to have it all laid out in front of you to see the big picture, the core issues causing this destruction and find ways how to effectively move forward.

The concerning trend behind this ever-increasing devastation are shortening of trend cycles, lowering clothing prices and massive amount of wasted products. Still in year 2000 it was common for fashion brands to have two collections per year, while now e.g. Zara produces 24 collections and H&M produces 12-16 collections per year. Clothing prices have fallen (at leas in EU) 30% from 1996 to 2018 when adjusted to inflation, which has contributed to the 40% increase in clothing consumption per person between 1996 and 2012 (in EU). (source) As the revenue made by the clothing industry keep rising - from 2017 to 2021 they doubled (source) - falling prices can only be achieved with increasing worker exploitation and decreasing quality. I think the 36% degrees times clothing are used in average during the last 15 years (source) is a clear indication on the continuing drop in quality of clothing. Clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2015, while 30% of the clothes produced per year are never sold and are often burned instead (source), presumably to prevent the returns from falling due to oversupply.

These all factors are driving people to overconsume. While people in EU keep buying more clothes, they haven't used up to 50% of the clothes in their wardrobe for over a year (source). This overconsumption is only made much worse by the new type of hyper fast fashion companies like SHEIN and Temu, which are using addictive psychological tactics developed by social media companies (source 1, source 2). They are cranking up all those concerning trends I mentioned above.

Under the cut I will go through the statistics of the most significant effects of the industry on environment and people. I will warn you it will be bleak. This is not just a fast fashion problem, basically the whole industry is engaging in destructive practices leading to this damage. Clothing is one of those things that would be actually relatively easy to make without massive environmental and human cost, so while that makes the current state of the industry even more heinous, it also means there's hope and it's possible to fix things. In the end, I will be giving some suggestions for actions we could be doing right now to unfuck this mess.

Carbon emissions

The textile industry is responsible for roughly 10% of the global CO2 emissions, more than aviation and shipping industry combined. This is due to the massive supply chains and energy intensive production methods of fabrics. Most of it can be contributed to the fashion sector since around 60% of all the textile production is clothing. Polyester, a synthetic fiber made from oil which accounts for more than half of the fibers used in the textile industry, produces double the amount of carbon emissions than cotton, accounting for very large proportions of all the emissions by the industry. (source 1, source 2)

Worker exploitation

Majority of the textiles are produced in Asia. Some of the worst working conditions are in Bangladesh, one of the most important garment producers, and Pakistan. Here's an excerpt from EU Parliament's briefing document from 2014 after the catastrophic Rana Plaza disaster:

The customers of garment producers are most often global brands looking for low prices and tight production timeframes. They also make changes to product design, product volume, and production timeframes, and place last-minute orders without accepting increased costs or adjustments to delivery dates. The stresses of such policies usually fall on factory workers.

The wage exploitation is bleak. According to the 2015 documentary The True Cost less than 2% of all garment factory workers earned a living wage (source). Hourly wages are so low and the daily quotas so high, garment workers are often forced through conditions or threats and demand to work extra hours, which regularly leads to 10-12 hour work days (source) and at worst 16 hour workdays (source), often without days off. Sometimes factories won't compensate for extra hours, breaching regulations (source).

Long working hours, repetitive work, lack of breaks and high pressure leads to increased risks of injuries and accidents. Small and even major injuries are extremely common in the industry. A study in three factories in India found that 70% of the workers suffered from musculosceletal symptoms (source). Another qualitative study of female garment workers and factory doctors in Dhaka found that long hours led to eye strain, headaches, fatigue and weight loss in addition to muscular and back pains. According to the doctors interviewed, weight loss was common because the workers work such long hours without breaks, they didn't have enough time to eat properly. (source) Another study in 8 factories in India found that minor injuries were extremely common and caused by unergonomic work stations, poor organization in the work place and lack of safety gear, guidelines and training (source). Safety precautions too are often overlooked to cut corners, which periodically leads to factory accidents, like in 2023 lack of fire exists and fire extinguishers, and goods stacked beyond capacity led to a factory fire in Pakistan which injured dozens of workers (source) or like in 2022 dangerous factory site led to one dead worker and 9 injured workers (source).

Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 is the worst industrial accident in recent history. The factory building did not have proper permits and the factory owner blatantly ignored signs of danger (other businesses abandoned the building a day before the collapse), which led to deaths of 1 134 workers and injuries to 2 500 workers. The factory had or were at the time working for orders of at least Prada, Versace, Primark, Walmart, Zara, H&M, C&A, Mango, Benetton, the Children's Place, El Corte Inglés, Joe Fresh, Carrefour, Auchan, KiK, Loblaw, Bonmarche and Matalan. None of the brands were held legally accountable for the unsafe working conditions which they profited off of. Only 9 of the brands attended a meeting to agree on compensation for the victim's families. Walmart, Carrefour, Auchan, Mango and KiK refused to sight the agreement, it was only signed by Primark, Loblaw, Bonmarche and El Corte Ingles. The compension these companies provided was laughable though. Primemark demanded DNA evidence that they are relatives of one of the victims from these struggling families who had lost their often sole breadwinner for a meager sum of 200 USD (which doesn't even count for two months of living wage in Bangladesh (source)). This obviously proved to be extremely difficult for most families even though US government agreed to donate DNA kits. This is often said to be a turning point in working conditions in the industry, at least in Bangladesh, but while there's more oversight now, as we have seen, there's clearly still massive issues. (source 1, source 2)

One last major concern of working conditions in the industry I will mention is the Xinjiang raw cotton production, which is likely produced mainly with forced labour from Uighur concentration camps, aka slave labour of a suspected genocide. 90% of China's raw cotton production comes from Xinjiang (source). China is the second largest cotton producer in the world, after India, accounting 20% of the yearly global cotton production (source).

Pollution

Synthetic dyes, which synthetic fibers require, are the main cause of water pollution caused by the textile industry, which is estimated to account for 20% of global clean water pollution (source). This water pollution by the textile industry is suspected of causing a lot of health issues like digestive issues in the short term, and allergies, dermatitis, skin inflammation, tumors and human mutations in the long term. Toxins also effect fish and aquatic bacteria. Azo dyes, one of the major pollutants, can cause detrimental effects to aquatic ecosystems by decreasing photosynthetic activity of algae. Synthetic dyes and heavy metals also cause large amounts of soil pollution. Large amounts of heavy metals in soil, which occurs around factories that don't take proper environmental procautions, can cause anaemia, kidney failure, and cortical edoem in humans. That also causes changes in soil texture, decrease in soil microbial diversity and plant health, and changes in genetic structure of organisms growing in the soil. Textile factory waste water has been used for irrigation in Turkey, where other sources of water have been lacking, causing significant damage to the soil. (source)

Rayon produced through viscose process causes significant carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide pollution to the environment. CS2 causes cardiovascular, psychiatric, neuropsychological, endocrinal and reproductive disorders. Abortion rates among workers and their partners exposed to CS2 are reported to be significantly higher than in control groups. Many times higher amounts of sick days are reported for workers in spinning rooms of viscose fiber factories. China and India are largest producers of CS2 pollution, accounting respectively 65.74% and 11,11% of the global pollution, since they are also the major viscose producers. Emission of CS2 has increased significantly in India from 26.8 Gg in 2001 to 78.32 Gg in 2020. (source)

Waste

The textile industry is estimated to produce around 92 million tons of textile waste per year. As said before around 30% of the production is never sold and with shortening lifespans used the amount of used clothing that goes to waster is only increasing. This waste is large burned or thrown into landfills in poor countries. (source) H&M was accused in 2017 by investigative journalists of burning up to 12 tonnes of clothes per year themselves, including usable clothing, which they denied claiming they donated clothing they couldn't sell to charity instead (source). Most of the clothing donated to charity though is burned or dumbed to landfills (source).

Most of the waste clothing from rich countries like European countries, US, Australia and Canada are shipped to Chile (source) or African countries, mostly Ghana, but also Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire (source). There's major second-hand fashion industries in these places, but most of the charity clothing is dumbed to landfills, because they are in such bad condition or the quality is too poor. Burning and filling landfills with synthetic fabrics with synthetic dyes causes major air, water and soil pollution. The second-hand clothing industry also suppresses any local clothing production as donated clothing is inherently more competitive than anything else, making these places economically reliant on dumbed clothing, which is destroying their environment and health, and prevents them from creating a more sustainable economy that would befit them more locally. This is not an accident, but required part of the clothing industry. Overproduction let's these companies tap on every new trend quickly, while not letting clothing the prices in rich countries drop so low it would hurt their profits. Production is cheaper than missing a trend.

Micro- and nanoplastics

There is massive amounts of micro- and nanoplastics in all of our environment. It's in our food, drinking water, even sea salt (source). Washing synthetic textiles accounts for roughly 35% of all microplastics released to the environment. It's estimated that it has caused 14 million tonnes of microplastics to accumulate into the bottom of the ocean. (source)

Microplastics build up into the intestines of animals (including humans), and have shown to probably cause cause DNA damage and altered organism behavior in aquatic fauna. Microplastics also contain a lot of the usual pollutants from textile industry like synthetic dyes and heavy metals, which absorb in higher quantities to tissues of animals through microplastics in the intestines. Studies have shown that the adverse effect are higher the longer the microplastics stay in the organism. The effects cause major risks to aquatic biodiversity. (source) The health effects of microplastics to humans are not well known, but studies have shown that they could have adverse effects on digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive and immune systems. (source)

Microplastics degrade in the environment even further to nanoplastics. Nanoplastic being even smaller are found to enter blood circulation, get inside cells and cross the blood-brain barrier. In fishes they have been found to cause neurological damage. Nanoplastics are also in the air, and humans frequently breath them in. Study in office buildings found higher concentration of nanoplastics in indoor air than outdoor air. Inside the nanoplastics are likely caused mostly by synthetic household textiles, and outdoors mostly by car tires. (source) An association between nanoplastics and mitochondrial damage in human respiratory cells was found in a recent study. (source)

Micro and nano plastics are also extremely hard to remove from the environment, making it even more important that we reduce the amount of microplastics we produce as fast as possible.

What can we do?

This is a question that deserves it's own essays and articles written about it, but I will leave you with some action points. Reading about these very bleak realities can easily lead to overwhelming apathy, but we need to channel these horrors into actions. Whatever you do, do not fall into apathy. We don't have the luxury for that, we need to act. These are industry wide problems, that simply cannot be fixed by consumerism. Do not trust any clothing companies, even those who market themselves as ethical and responsible, always assume they are lying. Most of them are, even the so called "good ones". We need legislation. We cannot allow the industry to regulate itself, they will always take the easy way out and lie to their graves. I will for sure write more in dept about what we can do, but for now here's some actions to take, both political and individual ones.

Political actions

Let's start with political actions, since they will be the much more important ones. While we are trying to dismantle capitalism and neocolonialism (the roots of these issues), here's some things that we could do right now. These will be policies that we should be doing everywhere in the world, but especially rich countries, where most of the clothing consumption is taking place. Vote, speak to others, write to your representative, write opinion pieces to your local papers, engage with democracy.

Higher requirements of transparency. Right now product transparency in clothing is laughably low. In EU only the material make up and the origin country of the final product are required to be disclosed. Everything else is up to the company. Mandatory transparency is the only way we can force any positive changes in the production. The minimum of transparency should be: origin countries of the fibers and textiles in the product itself; mandatory reports of the lifecycle emissions; mandatory reports of whole chain of production. Right now the clothing companies make their chain of production intentionally complex, so they have plausible deniability when inevitably they are caught violating environmental or worker protection laws (source). They intentionally don't want to be able to track down their production chain. Forcing them to do so anyway would make it very expensive for them to keep up this unnecessarily complex production chain. These laws are most effective when put in place in large economies like EU or US.

Restrictions on the use of synthetic fibers. Honestly I think they should be banned entirely, since the amount of microplastics in our environment is already extremely distressing and the other environmental effects of synthetic fibers are also massive, but I know there are functions for which they are not easily replaced (though I think they can be replaces in those too, but that's a subject of another post), so we should start with restrictions. I'm not sure how they should be specifically made, I'm not a law expert, but they shouldn't be used in everyday textiles, where there are very easy and obvious other options.

Banning viscose. There are much better options for viscose method that don't cause massive health issues and environmental destruction where ever it's made, like Lyocell. There is absolutely no reason why viscose should be allowed to be sold anywhere.

Governmental support for local production by local businesses. Most of the issues could be much more easily solved and monitored if most clothing were not produced by massive global conglomerations, but rather by local businesses that produce locally. All clothing are made by hand, so centralizing production doesn't even give it advantage in effectiveness (only more profits for the few). Producing locally would make it much more easier to enforce regulations and it would reduce production chains, making production more effective, leaving more profits into the hands of the workers and reducing emissions from transportation. When the production is done by local businesses, the profits would stay in the producing country and they could be taxed and utilized to help the local communities. This would be helpful to do in both exploited and exploiter countries. When done in rich countries who exploit poorer ones, it would reduce the demand for exploitation. In poor countries this is not as easily done, since poor means they don't have money to give around, but maybe this could be a good cause to put some reparations from colonizers and global corporations, which they should pay.

Preventing strategic accounting between subsidiaries and parent companies. Corporate law is obviously not my area of expertise, but I know that allowing corporations to move around the accounting of profits and losses between subsidiaries and parent companies in roughly 1980s, was a major factor in creating this modern global capitalist system, where corporations can very easily manipulate their accounting to utilize tax heavens and avoid taxes where they actually operate, which is how they are upholding this terrible system and extracting the profits from the production countries. How specifically this would be done I can't tell because again I know shit about corporate law, so experts of that field should plan the specifics. Overall this would help deal with a lot of other problems than just the fashion industry. Again for it to be effective a large economic area like EU or US should do this.

Holding companies accountable for their whole chain of production. These companies should be dragged to court and made to answer for the crimes they are profiting of off. We should put fear back into them. This is possible. Victims of child slavery are already doing this for chocolate companies. If it's already not how law works everywhere, the laws should be changed so that the companies are responsible even if they didn't know, because it's their responsibility to find out and make sure they know. They should have been held accountable for the Rana Plaza disaster. Maybe they still could be. Sue the mother fuckers. They should be afraid of us.

Individual actions

I will stress that the previous section is much more important and that there's no need to feel guilty for individual actions. This is not the fault of the average consumer. Still we do need to change our relationship to fashion and consumption. While it's not our fault, one of the ways this system is perpetuated, is by the consumerist propaganda by fashion industry. And it is easier to change our own habits than to change the industry, even if our own habits have little impact. So these are quite easy things we all could do as we are trying to do bigger change to gain some sense of control and keep us from falling to apathy.

Consume less. Better consumption will not save us, since consumption itself is the problem. We consume too much clothing. Don't make impulse purchases. Consider carefully weather you actually need something or if you really really want it. Even only buying second-hand still fuels the industry, so while it's better than buying new, it's still better to not buy.

Take proper care of your clothing. Learn how to properly wash your clothing. There's a lot of internet resources for that. Never wash your wool textiles in washing machine, even if the textile's official instructions allow it. Instead air them regularly, rinse them in cool water if they still smell after airing and wash stains with water or small amount of (wool) detergent. Never use fabric softener! It damages the fabrics, prevents them from properly getting clean and is environmentally damaging. Instead use laundry vinegar for making textiles softer or removing bad smells. (You can easily make laundry vinegar yourself too from white vinegar and water (and essential oils, if you want to add a scent to it) which is much cheaper.) Learn how to take care of your leather products. Most leather can be kept in very good condition for a very long time by occasional waxing with beeswax.

Use the services of dressmakers and shoemakers. Take your broken clothing or clothing which doesn't fit anymore to your local dressmaker and ask them if they can do something about it. Take your broken and worn leather products to your local shoemaker too. Usually it doesn't cost much to get something fixed or refitted and these expert usually have ways to fix things you couldn't even think of. So even if the situation with your clothing or accessory seems desperate, still show it to the dressmaker or shoemaker.

If it's extremely cheap, don't buy it. Remember that every clothing is handmade. Only a small fraction of the cost of the clothing will be paying the wages of the person who made it with their hands. If a shirt costs 5 euros (c. 5,39 USD), it's sewer was only payed mere cents for sewing it. I'm not a quick sewer and it takes me roughly 1-2 hours to cut, prepare and sew a simple shirt, so I'm guessing it would take around half an hour to do all that for a factory worker on a crunch, at the very least 15 minutes. So the hourly pay would still be ridiculously low. However, as I said before, the fact that the workers in clothing factories get criminally low pay is not the fault of the consumer, so if you need a clothing item, and you don't have money to buy anything else than something very cheep, don't feel guilty. And anyway expensive clothing in no way necessarily means reasonable pay or ethical working conditions, cheep clothing just guarantee them.

Learn to recognize higher quality. In addition to exploitation, low price also means low quality, but again high price doesn't guarantee high quality. High quality allows you to buy less, so even if it's not as cheep as low quality, if you can afford it, when you need it, it will be cheaper in long run, and allows you to consume less. Check the materials. Natural fibers are your friends. Do not buy plastic, if it's possible to avoid. Avoid household textiles from synthetic fibers. Avoid textiles with small amounts of spandex to give it stretch, it will shorten the lifespan of the clothing significantly as the spandex quickly wears down and the clothing looses it's shape. Also avoid clothing with rubber bands. They also loose their elasticity very quickly. In some types of clothing (sport wear, underwear) these are basically impossible to avoid, but in many other cases it's entirely possible.

Buy from artisans and local producers, if you can. As said better consumption won't fix this, but supporting artisans and your local producers could help keep them afloat, which in small ways helps create an alternative to the exploitative global corporations. With artisans especially you know the money goes to the one who did the labour and buying locally means less middlemen to take their cut. More generally buy rather from businesses that are located to the same country where the production is, even if it's not local to you. A local business doesn't necessarily produce locally.

Develop your own taste. If you care about fashion and style, it's easy to fall victim to the fashion industry's marketing and trend cycles. That's why I think it's important to develop your personal sense of style and preferences. Pay attention at what type of clothes are comfortable to you. Go through your wardrobe and track for a while which clothing you use most and which least. Understanding your own preferences helps you avoid impulse buying.

Consider learning basics of sewing. Not everyone has the time or interest for this, but if you in anyway might have a bit of both, I suggest learning some very simple and basic mending and reattaching a button.

Further reading on this blog: How to see through the greenwashing propaganda of the fashion industry - Case study 1: Shein

Bibliography

Academic sources

An overview of the contribution of the textiles sector to climate change, 2022, L. F. Walter et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science

How common are aches and pains among garment factory workers? A work-related musculoskeletal disorder assessment study in three factories of south 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, 2021, Arkaprovo Pal et al., J Family Med Prim Care

Sewing shirts with injured fingers and tears: exploring the experience of female garment workers health problems in Bangladesh, 2019, Akhter, S., Rutherford, S. & Chu, C., BMC Int Health Hum Rights

Occupation Related Accidents in Selected Garment Industries in Bangalore City, 2006, Calvin, Sam & Joseph, Bobby, Indian Journal of Community Medicine

A Review on Textile and Clothing Industry Impacts on The Environment, 2022, Nur Farzanah Binti Norarmi et al., International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide emissions from viscose fibre manufacturing industry: A case study in India, 2022, Deepanjan Majumdar et al., Atmospheric Environment: X

Microplastics Pollution: A Brief Review of Its Source and Abundance in Different Aquatic Ecosystems, 2023, Asifa Ashrafy et al., Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances

Health Effects of Microplastic Exposures: Current Issues and Perspectives in South Korea, 2023, Yongjin Lee et al., Yonsei Medical Journal

Nanoplastics and Human Health: Hazard Identification and Biointerface, 2022, Hanpeng Lai, Xing Liu, and Man Qu, Nanomaterials

Other sources

The impact of textile production and waste on the environment (infographics), 2020, EU

Chile’s desert dumping ground for fast fashion leftovers, 2021, AlJazeera

Fashion - Worldwide, 2022 (updated 2024), Statista

Fashion Industry Waste Statistics & Facts 2023, James Evans, Sustainable Ninja (magazine)

Everything You Need to Know About Waste in the Fashion Industry, 2024, Solene Rauturier, Good on You (magazine)

Textiles and the environment, 2022, Nikolina Šajn, European Parliamentary Research Service

Help! I'm addicted to secondhand shopping apps, 2023, Alice Crossley, Cosmopolitan

Addictive, absurdly cheap and controversial: the rise of China’s Temu app, 2023, Helen Davidson, Guardian

Workers' conditions in the textile and clothing sector: just an Asian affair? - Issues at stake after the Rana Plaza tragedy, 2014, Enrico D'Ambrogio, European Parliamentary Research Service

State of The Industry: Lowest Wages to Living Wages, The Lowest Wage Challenge (Industry affiliated campaign)

Fast Fashion Getting Faster: A Look at the Unethical Labor Practices Sustaining a Growing Industry, 2021, Emma Ross, International Law and Policy Brief (George Washington University Law School)

Dozens injured in Pakistan garment factory collapse and fire, 2023, Hannah Abdulla, Just Style (news media)

India: Multiple factory accidents raise concerns over health & safety in the garment industry, campaigners call for freedom of association in factories to ‘stave off’ accidents, 2022, Jasmin Malik Chua, Business & Human Rights Resource Center

Minimum Wage Level for Garment Workers in the World, 2020, Sheng Lu, FASH455 Global Apparel & Textile Trade and Sourcing (University of Delaware)

Rana Plaza collapse, Wikipedia

Buyers’ compensation for Rana Plaza victims far from reality, 2013, Ibrahim Hossain Ovi, Dhaka Tribune (news media)

World cotton production statistics, updated 2024, The World Counts

Dead white man’s clothes, 2021, Linton Besser, ABC News

[redd956]

Worldbuilding Food: More than meets the eye

So, you want to world build food but maybe you don't know where to start, have hit a roadblock, or are just looking for some interesting places to addon to. I've got your back.

Vegetables, Fruits, Grain, Nuts, & Fungi

One of the first things I think of when it comes to food is fruits and vegetables, and the line between them is surprisingly small.

Like tomatoes are vegetables? Pumpkins are fruits but other gourds are not? When does a herb become a vegetable? Although important to classify, don't let it be your main focus.

Start with

How the produce grows

What it looks like throughout different stages of its life

What parts are edible

How most people consume the produce

How the product is harvested

Is it seasonal

What about the produce that makes its growable environment habitable

How it spreads/reproduces

There's many different unique ways fruits and vegetables grow in just our real world, but that doesn't mean you can stop there.

Cranberries grow on vines that actually float on the surface of soggy ground and water in wetlands. Cashews actually grow on the bottom of cashew apple, which is it's own edible product. There's lots of different ways plants can grow, and what they even need to do so.

Some produce even have their own defense mechanisms (which often which becomes a form of flavor to us). Don't think these defense mechanisms stop at protection from predators. Strawberries are an aggressive plant, fighting, killing, and taking over any nearby plant neighbors. Some plants have thistles and thorns, and others are the hard shell or peel we end up effortlessly cutting through.

Try to think of some environmental things in the world your working with that the produce would have adapted to.

I think my favor example of this IRL is sunflowers. They change directions to face the sun, and when they can't find the sun they face each other. Eventually their seeds weigh them down, and which they'll always face east.

Don't forget fungi is edible too, and has it's very own unique properties.

(Don't forget yeast -> bread, you can make up whatever food you want)

Meats & Agricultural Animals

I myself am not a meat-eater, but I understand the importance of animal products to a society. If you world doesn't have it, don't fret. This sector won't just be about meat products, but it will contain a lot of it.

Food and what animals are considered for consumption changes from culture to culture. The same can be said for treatment leading up to their role in society as the food on people's plates. Often times a culture cannot imagining eating an animal they see as part of the family, such as dogs or cats IRL, but other times it's seen part of a religious practice such as cows.

There's a lot of cultural stuff that goes into our agricultural animals, both for work, dairy, textiles, and food.

Here's some ideas to start with

What parts of them are edible and used for food

Do they produce any dairy or egg products

How old do they have to be before becoming a produce animal

Are the animals used for other resources too i.e. bones, fur, skins, skulls, blood, etc.

How much food does one animal make

Typically how are they are killed, if they are

What conditions are these animals kept in and are they viewed humane

What environments allow these animals to thrive alongside the people of your world

What does the animal eat

Now... Let's into some culture and religion

Religion and culture has a major impact on what we eat. Take for instance Kosher, Halal, and more. Historical shortages in food even to this day affect what foods we eat. Culture also affects our tastes. The corn line of the United States is drowning in corn, and yet corn is seen as a sweet treat over seas in many nations.

Harvesting

How the harvesting goes changes a lot about a society, big and small. Think about how terrible a year would go in medieval times if harvest came up incredibly poor, or how wealthy our modern day world would look to those people due to mass production.

Here's some things to think about

What time of year are the biggest and most important harvest(s)

How common are agricultural workers

What would the average person see if they watched people work

What technology/tools are used

What happens if the harvest goes wrong

Do farmers/harvesters get special rights for their role in society

In older societies harvesting and how that went completely shaped how the next year would look. In some cultures the harvesters have been revered, while in other if crossed to far would be expected to tear the country to pieces. Think about the role harvesting plays in your society. What would happen if they striked? Or if a disaster swept the land?

The environment itself will change a lot about what harvesting look likes. Why does this environment work? What are the environmental risk to both the crop and workers?

Are we farming in the water, in the middle of the arctic, underground, high up in the trees?

Exotic Food & Immigration

While establish what the everyday food in the area is, don't forget to pay mine to the opposites. Immigration and trade play a major role in what foods end up on our plate. As cultures combine and mingle so do their food.

Take one look at the United States, infamous for it's large potions, fatty foods, and immigrant culture cuisine. A lot of foods in the United States are the results of cultures meeting to improve and add onto one another's foods, that includes American styles of pizza, tacos, and more.

Even major cities around the world have styles of foods unique to them.

Let's think

What locally seen foods count as exotic

What foods are nearly impossible to get

Is there access to foreign brands/produce

How expensive is most exotic foods

What styles of cooking are being brought in by foreigners

How do people get exotic foods

What foods would the locals not be able to eat due to not being used to it

Try to think about what makes this food exotic in the local area. Maybe it cannot grow in the local environment. Maybe the quality of the food is simply better overseas. Maybe the animal or plant is far too aggressively invasive for locals.

Trade & Transport

Food is both a very important export and import, especially in time of devastation.

Don't forget about exports too, what is your society giving out to the world, and getting back. Not all trade has to be capital based. Perhaps your world simply trades on good or service for another.

Here's some things to think about

What's being exported and imported

Are whole animals imported/exported

How is the trade being done i.e. trains, boats, aircraft, teleportation, etc.

Are there any obstacles to trade

What places are all involved in trading

How is the trade brought to where it needs to be inland

In what ways do these trades improve the lives of locals

Transportation is also super important to where food ends up, and more so in what volumes. How do people get all these produce or animals relocated? What kinds of storage are we seeing to keep things fresh (if health standards are even up to code in your worldbuilding)?

What poses a threat to things in storage? i.e. mold, foxes, animal thieves, disease, etc.

Restrictions

With supply and demand, comes outages, taxes, and restrictions. Unfortunately not everything in the food world goes right. There's natural disasters to come and destroy crops, hostile settlements to block trade, and especially that person who is really bad at cooking but they love doing it so you don't have the heart to say no....

Anyway let's talk restrictions and where they can come from

Wartime

Wartime can cause a lot of original farmers and workers to become soldiers. It also can lead to the large scale destruction of precious farm land, crops, animals, and overall places to cook.

Laws

Perhaps there's a particularly poisonous food, and way too many suspiciously poisoned people. That's when law comes in. There's many reasons for food and drink to become outlawed. Religious reasons, danger, regulations, inebriation, etc.

Siege/Embargo/Thievery

Knock knock! It's the United States here to embargo your random country. Outside factions can always become an obstacle, leading to loss of traveling cargo or straight up missing farmers too. Nothing comes in, and sometimes nothing comes out.

Endangered

Perhaps a common plant or favored animal is running low on populous. Now locals are more so focused on reanimating a dwindling population, more so on eating it.

Sickness

Whether it be hoards of invasive bugs, prion disease caused by cannibalistic animal feed, or sudden inexplicable field of dead corn sickness happens. Maybe something has swept over the land, and no one ever bothered to try to plant said crop again.

Natural Disasters

Natural disasters can not only cause the elimination of entire villages, but accidentally bring in lots of invasive creatures too. Catfish is off the menu for as long as carp is intown.

Straight Up Difficulty

Sometimes a fruit appears once a year, or a tasty creature is a dangerous one to take on in order to eat. It can be difficult getting the right ingredient sometimes. Other times it's new to the market. So much can happen when food is involved.

Preparation & Flavor

Finally all the food in the world is available, but what are we going to do with it.

Make it even better!

I personally find preparation to be the best part of worldbuilding. Now I get to imagine my fictional little people stewing their pots, and kindling their fires. Reflect off of real world recipes, and maybe even write down exact fantasy recipes of your own.

Don't forget about herbs and spices (I see you British people).

You have five basic taste receptors in your mouth: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory. They make great descriptors and fun places to explore when looking into what your foods taste like. Smell can play an important role too.

Does it smell awful and taste great, smell sweet and taste bitter, perhaps it doesn't have anything at all going on.

Happy worldbuilding!

[tokidokitokyo]

富山県

Japanese Prefectures: Chūbu - Toyama

都道府県 (とどうふけん) - Prefectures of Japan

Learning the kanji and a little bit about each of Japan’s 47 prefectures!

Kanji・漢字

富　と(む)、とみ、フ、フウ　wealth, enrich, abundant

��　やま、サン、セン　mountain

県　ケン　prefecture

中部　ちゅうぶ　Chūbu, Central Japan, the central region of Japan

Prefectural Capital (県庁所在地) : Toyama (富山市)

Toyama Prefecture is a part of the central region of Japan, also known as Hokuriku (北陸). Takaoka city is the birthplace of Fujiko F. Fujio, the creator of Doraemon, with many Doraemon-themed delights for visitors. Toyama lies along the Sea of Japan and includes part of the spectacular Northern Japan Alps. Gourmet seafood, idyllic scenery, cultural attractions, and a slower pace are all easily accessible by shinkansen from Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. Toyama is an important rice-producing area, as well as sourcing hydroelectric power and minerals from the nearby mountains that serve as a basis for chemical, textile, machinery, pulp and paper, and steel industries. The capital city of Toyama and Takaoka have long been the chief center for the production of patent medicine and drugs.

Recommended Tourist Spot・おすすめ観光スポット Gokayama Ainokura Village - 相倉合掌造り集落

Gokayama Ainokura Village (source)

The Gokayama region is an area within the city of Nanto in Toyama Prefecture. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage List due to its traditional gassho-zukuri houses (similar to Shirakawa-go in Gifu). The region is secluded within the mountains in the upper reaches of the Shogawa River, thus preserving this unique traditional architectural style. Gokayama's lifestyle and culture remained very traditional for many years after the modernization of the majority of the country, and many of the houses here are over 300 years old.

Ainokura is the largest of these villages, with nearly 20 gassho-zukuri farmhouses. Many are still private residences, although some have been converted into restaurants, museums, and minshuku, where you can stay overnight at a farm house. With less development and more difficulty to reach this secluded village, there is less tourist traffic than some of the other villages. There are visiting hours attached to the village to avoid disturbing the residents (8:30-17:00), thus helping to preserve the quiet life in this village.

Folk dances, music utilizing unique, traditional instruments, and special washi paper techniques characterize this area. You can listen to the sasara, an instrument made of over a hundred wooden clappers strung together, which is symbolic of the region and a popular souvenir. There are also washi paper workshops where you can try your hand at making washi paper.

Regional Cuisine - 郷土料理 Kombujime - 昆布締め

Kombujime (source)

Kombujime (also kobujime) is a local Toyama dish made by sandwiching light-tasting foods such as whitefish (most commonly marlin) and wild vegetables between sheets of kelp (or kombu). Other popular fillings include other whitefish, shrimp, tofu, and beef. The prefecture boasts the highest kelp consumption, and thus kombu is also widely available at supermarkets.

The technique used to make kombujime (which means "kombu curing") enhances the taste of the sashimi through aging the fish between two sheets of kombu. This technique softens the fish texture and the glutamates from the kelp transfer over to the fish, accentuating its flavor.

Toyama Dialect・Toyama-ben・富山弁

Toyama-ben is also called Etchu-ben (越中弁), and consists of West (Gosei, 呉西), East (Gotō, 呉東), and Gokayama (五箇山) dialects. The dialect is a combination of sounds and features close to Kansai and Tohoku dialects, but still quite different from the other dialects in the Hokuriku area.

うい　ui

Standard Japanese: いっぱい 、満足、胸やお腹が苦しい (ippai, mune ya onaka ga kurushii) English: I'm stuffed; my chest or stomach feels tight

食べ過ぎて、はらういわ。 tabesugite, hara ui wa

食べ過ぎて、はらいっぱい。 tabesugite, hara ippai

I ate too much, I'm stuffed.

2. きどくな　kidokuna

Standard Japanese: ありがとう (arigatou) English: thank you

あら、きどくな。 ara, kidokuna

あら、ありがとう。 ara, arigatou

Oh my, thank you.

3. じゃまない　(jyamanai)

Standard Japanese: 大丈夫、問題ない (daijyoubu, mondai nai) English: I'm OK, no problem

A: 体調、いかがですか？ B: じゃまない、じゃまない！ A: taichou, ikaga desu ka? B: jamanai, jamanai!

A: 体調、いかがですか？ B: 大丈夫、大丈夫！ A: taichou, ikaga desu ka? B: daijyoubu, daijyoubu

A: How are you feeling? B: I'm doing well!

4. こわい　(kowai)

Standard Japanese: かたい (katai) English: firm, tough

このご飯、こわいわ。 kono gohan, kowai wa.

このご飯、かたいなあ。 kono gohan, katai naa.

This rice is really hard.

5. つかえん　(tsukaen) (also, なん nan、つけん tsuken)

Standard Japanese: かまわない、問題ない (kamawanai, mondai nai) English: it's fine, it's no problem

A: もう少し、待っていただけますか？ B: つかえんちゃ！ A: mou sukoshi, matte itadakemasu ka? B: tsukaen cha!

A: もう少し、待っていただけますか？ B: 問題ない！ A: mou sukoshi, matte itadakemasu ka? B: mondai nai!

A: Can you please wait a little longer? B: No problem!

More Toyama dialect here (JP with EN).

[drewsbuzzcut]

So It Goes (au masterlist)

nick moldenhauer x dallas blankenburg

about dallas blankenburg

series warnings: mentions hockey related injuries, angst, alcohol consumption, some uncomfortable situations, smut

September 2023

A Silver Lining In Ann Arbor

You Did A Number On Me

October 2023

Yours To Lose

First Sleepover

Stars Around Your Scars

All I Need Is You

Baby

Sundays Are For Textiles

Hard Launch

The Black Suit

Halloweekend Night 1

Halloweekend Night 2

Halloweekend Night 3

November 2023

Nov 4

So Scarlet

The Other Blankenburg

Nov 10

The Breaking Point

December 2023

I’ll Be Your Vixen

Dec 5

Sweeter Than Icing

Love In The AM

When You Know, You Know

January 2024

I Want Your Midnights

Jan 8

You Are In Love

Distractions

The Tampon Prank

Pilates & Pleasure

Jan 28

February 2024

Save A Horse, Ride A What?

Can This Be A Real Thing?

March 2024

Sir Moldenhauer

Sugar & Lace

All American Lace

Mar 30

With All My Heart

April 2024

As The Flowers Begin To Bloom

May 2024

Caught Up In It All

The Worst Of Me

Greener On The Other Side

June 2024

Deeper Than Oceans

August

Moving Day

[sidewalkchemistry]

The sheer amount of cheap clothing, even though people feel perhaps somehow that they're off-setting by giving to charity. You know, the journey of a t-shirt donated to charity is unpalatable in itself...

I tell people to stop buying things that is not good, that is costing like $10...you just go to a store and buy yourself a dress for $10. Because, you go, "It cost $10. I don't need it." And you throw it away. And tomorrow, you're going to do the same thing over and over and over again.

- The True Cost - The Truth of the Clothing Industry

[probablyasocialecologist]

TikTok was where I learned about SHEIN. For a while my For You page, which had accurately identified my interest in fashion’s more material impacts, served me videos of sustainable fashion influencers decrying SHEIN’s wretched labor and environmental practices. The textile industry is the second-largest polluter in the world, they said, and of all the fast-fashion producers, SHEIN is by far the worst offender. SHEIN uses toxic chemicals in their clothing production; SHEIN mass-produces fabrics like spandex that never decompose (at this point an image would flash across the screen: an overflowing clothing landfill, or a mountain of discarded clothes in the Chilean desert so large it is visible from space); SHEIN exploits and endangers its factory workers. Employees earn $556 a month to make five hundred pieces of clothing every day, work eighteen-hour days, and use their lunch breaks to wash their hair — a schedule they repeat seven days per week with only one day off per month. A more nuanced TikToker might point out, briefly, that conditions in SHEIN factories are not necessarily unique, or that focusing on suppliers — rather than the larger systems of Western consumption and capitalism that create these conditions — is a fool’s errand, but the platform isn’t built for that kind of dialogue. I clicked on the comments and invariably read ones with several dozen likes saying, “I’m so willing to die in shein clothes.” Before long I was watching SHEIN hauls. There are millions of them — the tag #sheinhaul has been viewed a collective 14.2 billion times on TikTok. In each haul, a woman rips open a plastic bag filled with smaller plastic bags filled with small plastic clothing. Sometimes the woman holds up each garment and narrates its merits, but often the clothes are disembodied, laid flat on a floor or a bed in an accidental stop-motion animation. A stretchy red skirt on a furry white carpet is replaced by a strapless watercolor bustier with a deep-V neckline. A zebra-print skirt is followed by a matching pink two-piece set, with a short-sleeve cardigan and miniskirt constructed from a fabric that looks like bubble wrap. Sometimes a haul is five pieces, and sometimes it is too many pieces to count. The garments appear and disappear in seconds, edited to the beat of a trending song. Rarely do we see the clothing on a body. Usually brand familiarity accrues in a slow drip, building from obscurity to instant recognizability over the course of months or years as a designer’s work intersects with the zeitgeist and gains traction on social media. SHEIN was different. One day I’d never heard of the retailer and the next it was inescapable: in thousands of outfit videos, on millions of social media feeds. The clothes weren’t distinct or cohesive; what united them wasn’t style but price. All those SHEIN hauls entered my feeds with such ubiquity that they began to feel like they’d always been there. I’d opened a door to a new part of the fashion internet: a place where girls bragged about their ultra-fast-fashion purchases, delighting in the cheapness of the garments. Here, SHEIN was the obvious choice for new clothes. Why not, when you could buy on-trend pieces at lightning speed for less than the price of a cup of coffee? It was uncanny to bounce between videos: here was a girl showing off her new halter, here was another girl giving a litany of reasons why it was unconscionable to buy clothes for so little money. Didn’t these TikTokers hear one another? But then again, how could they? “This is what we keep missing here in the whole conversation about sustainability in the industry,” Nick Anguelov, a professor of public policy from UMass Dartmouth, said to a Slate journalist writing about SHEIN in June. “We keep failing to understand that our customers are kids and they don’t give a fuck.”

[balkanradfem]

"Growing flax to make linen was one of the oldest human activities in Europe, particularly in the Rhineland. Archeologists have found linen textiles among the settlements of Neolithic cultivators along the shores of Lake Neuchâtel in the Jura Mountains west of Bern, Switzerland. These were elaborate pieces: Stone Age clothmakers of the Swiss lakeshores sewed pierced fruit pits in a careful line into a fabric with woven stripes. The culture spread down the Rhine and into the lowland regions.

The Roman author Pliny observed in the first century AD that German women wove and wore linen sheets. By the ninth century flax had spread through Germany. By the sixteenth century, flax was produced in many parts of Europe, but the corridor from western Switzerland to the mouth of the Rhine contained the oldest region of large-scale commercial flax and linen production. In the late Middle Ages the linen of Germany was sold nearly everywhere in Europe, and Germany produced more linen than any other region in the world.

At this juncture, linen weavers became victims of an odd prejudice. “Better skinner than linen weaver,” ran one cryptic medieval German taunt. Another macabre popular saying had it that linen weavers were worse than those who “carried the ladders to the gallows.” The reason why linen weavers were slandered in this way, historians suspect, was that although linen weavers had professionalized and organized themselves into guilds, they had been unable to prevent homemade linen from getting onto the market. Guilds appeared across Europe between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries but many of the items they produced for exchange, like textiles and soap, were also produced at home right up through the nineteenth century. The intricate regulations of the guilds—determining who could join, how they would be trained, what goods they would produce, and how these could be exchanged—were mainly designed to distinguish guild work from this homely labor. That linen making continued to be carried out inside of households—a liability for guilds in general—lent a taint to the linen guild in particular.

In the seventeenth century, guilds came under pressure from a new, protocapitalist mode of production. Looking for cheaper cloth to sell on foreign markets, entrepreneurs cased the Central European countryside offering to pay cash to home producers for goods. Rural households became export manufacturing centers and a major source of competition with the guilds. These producers could undercut the prices of urban craftsmen because they could use the unregulated labor of their family members, and because their own agricultural production allowed them to sell their goods for less than their subsistence costs.

The uneasiness between guild and household production in the countryside erupted into open hostility. In the 1620s, linen guildsmen marched on villages, attacking competitors, and burning their looms. In February 1627 Zittau guild masters smashed looms and seized the yarn of home weavers in the villages of Oderwitz, Olbersdorf, and Herwigsdorf.

Guilds had long worked to keep homemade products from getting on the market. In their death throes, they hit upon a new and potent weapon: gender. Although women in medieval Europe wove at home for domestic consumption, many had also been guild artisans. Women were freely admitted as masters into

the earliest medieval guilds, and statutes from Silesia and the Oberlausitz show that women were master weavers. Thirteenth-century Paris had eighty mixed craft guilds of men and women and fifteen female-dominated guilds for such trades as gold thread, yarn, silk, and dress manufacturing. Up until the mid-seventeenth century, guilds had belittled home production because it was unregulated, nonprofessional, and competitive. In the mid-seventeenth century this work was identified as women’s work, and guildsmen unable to compete against cheaper household production tried to eject women from the market entirely. Single women were barred from independent participation in the guilds. Women were restricted to working as domestic servants, farmhands, spinners, knitters, embroiderers, hawkers, wet nurses. They lost ground even where the jobs had been traditionally their own, such as ale brewing and midwifery, by the end of the seventeenth century.

The wholesale ejection of women from the market during this period was achieved not only through guild statute, but through legal, literary, and cultural means. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries women lost the legal right to conduct economic activity as femes soles. In France they were declared legal “imbeciles,” and lost the right to make contracts or represent themselves in court. In Italy, they began to appear in court less frequently to denounce abuses against them. In Germany, when middle-class women were widowed it became customary to appoint a tutor to manage their affairs. As the medieval historian Martha Howell writes, “Comedies and satires of this period…often portrayed market women and trades women as shrews, with characterizations that not only ridiculed or scolded them for taking on roles in market production but frequently even charged them with sexual aggression.” This was a period rich in literature about the correction of errant women: Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (1590–94), John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1629–33), Joseph Swetnam’s “The Araignment of Lewde, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women” (1615). Meanwhile, Protestant reformers and Counter-Reformation Catholics established doctrinally that women were inherently inferior to men.

This period, called the European Age of Reason, successfully banished women from the market and transformed them into the sweet and passive beings that emerged in Victorian literature. Women accused of being scolds were paraded in the streets wearing a new device called a “branks,” an iron muzzle that depressed the tongue. Prostitutes were subjected to fake drowning, whipped, and caged. Women convicted of adultery were sentenced to capital punishment.

As a cultural project, this was not merely recreational sadism. Rather, it was an ideological achievement that would have lasting and massive economic consequences. Political philosopher Silvia Federici has argued this expulsion was an intervention so massive, it ought to be included as one of a triptych of violent seizures, along with the Enclosure Acts and imperialism, that allowed capitalism to launch itself.

Part of why women resisted enclosure so fiercely was because they had the most to lose. The end of subsistence meant that households needed to rely on money rather than the production of agricultural goods like cloth, and women had successfully been excluded from ways to earn. As labor historian Alice Kessler-Harris has argued, “In pre-industrial societies, nearly everybody worked, and almost nobody worked for wages.” During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, monetary relations began to dominate economic life in Europe. Barred from most wage work just as the wage became essential, women were shunted into a position of chronic poverty and financial dependence. This was the dominant socioeconomic reality when the first modern factory, a cotton-spinning mill, opened in 1771 in Derbyshire, England, an event destined to upend still further the pattern of daily life."

- Sofi Thanhauser, Worn: A People's History of Clothing

[qremlin]

Taxidermy, real fur, and real leather aren't inherently unethical and faux fur and yarn aren't inherently less problematic. Faux fur and leather are simply plastic, which this world does not need more of. Even the yarn/textile industry has it's environmental and ethical concerns. Of course, you should be careful who you buy from- temu/amazon are the worst places to buy anything if you care about ethical production.

I think a big part of the problem is over-consumption, NOT necessarily what it's made of or where you get it. Make sure you need what you buy, and use your things! Consider repairing, reusing, or upcycling before reaching to buy new things.