Want Lots, Waste Lots

As a follow up to the previous post about destruction of unsold clothing by retailers, we also have Alex Pasternack’s witty account of scavenging through Urban Outfitters’ discarded merchandize, labeled “Broken Glass.” (That cover is blown; what’s next “Radioactive Waste”?) And Jim Dwyer at the New York Times stokes the outrage with a report that our tax dollars are now going toward the practice of destroying usable clothing in the interests of preserving private “intellectual property.” Indulge a brief rant: I’ll acknowledge there is something sordid about idea thieves profiting off someone else’s creativity, but most of the truly creative people I know seem to take this in stride and nourish their creativity rather than spend energy defending their turf. Also, there is something truly wasteful about walking down Canal Street near Pearl Paint and realizing that this business is now the only thriving one for a whole block on the south side of the street. While the “creative classes” worry about profiting from the next big trend, real artists—even applied artists--just keep coming up with innovative ways to keep themselves afloat and their vision moving forward. The current city administration follows up its failed economic policy of supporting Wall Street, real estate, and tourism with support of the fashion industry’s sclerotic and hypocritical model. Do we really need to promote businesses based on continuous outsourcing of production for the lowest labor costs, high markups, marketing waste, and in the case of H&M and Urban Outfitters rapid, high-volume cycling of merchandize that inevitably leads to waste.


http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/digging-into-urban-outfitters-perfectly-good-trash.php?campaign=daily_nl
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/nyregion/13about.html



Now, on a positive note On my way to dinner in the city, I spotted on the Bedford Ave. L train platform a woman who defied all the “rules” of fashion. (The rules of fashion have as much to do with real style and taste, as the “rules” of courtship have to do with love.) A strawberry blond with a creamy complexion, lips glossed with a peachy tint, she was nearly in the plus size range and maybe well in it. She was wearing an orange outfit. No coat. Just a thick, over-the-head, fuzzy leisure sweatshirt top in traffic cone orange topped a slightly more reddish orange skirt. And yes I can top that! She further embodied her concept of orange as a monochrome neutral with an orange boa in the frankly synthetic spiky fuzz popular in the down market about 5 years back and athletic shoes with (you guessed it) an orange racing stripe. This woman, readers, is a fashion hero of mythic status. All the slim twenty-somethings safely betting on black down coats and the odious and ever-present white knit helmet caps suddenly became wallflowers in the subway car as it sped into Manhattan.