Cost vs. Ethics

First of all, I apologize for not posting for a while, but I was sick with Swine Flu – that’s right, my whole family caught H1N1. Fortunately, it was a mild strain, and we’re all pretty much better now.

But that’s not the only reason I wasn’t posting. I was having trouble completing the assignment I set out for myself. In a week, my toddler is going to be a flower girl. We have the dress, but I need to get her some shoes, and our baby needs a dress for the wedding, too. For that matter, so do I. I also need a whole new wardrobe for school – not so much because I’m a die hard fashionista (not at this point in my life certainly!), but because when you have a baby that means (at least in my case) over a year you gain circa 60 lbs, and than over the next two years you continuously shed all of it. That means over three years you need about 3-4 wardrobe changes. This all, of course, costs money.

And that is what I want to rant about today. Money. The almighty dollar. Unfortunately, at the same time I need all these new clothes, I also got my OSAP estimate (for those of you outside of Ontario, that stands for Ontario Student Assistance Program, in other words, loans). My husband and I sat down and planned out our monthly budget, and there’s enough for our monthly costs, but just. There is certainly not enough to buy many clothes at all, even at bargain basement prices. So how, I ask you, can I afford a $45 fair trade organic cotton dress for my baby, as much as I may want one? My husband’s response is simply, “We can’t.” 

Now, I am a believer that you can make do with less – buy fewer items and buy them fair trade. Absolutely! But that assumes you have disposable income, and with two kids and a Masters degree, well, we don’t. Let me be clear, I’m not trying to whine about my plight (okay, well maybe just a little). But more about the frustration that I don’t want to buy the sweatshop clothes. I want to dress myself and my family in not-doused-in-chemicals-and-not-made-by-children-slightly-older-than-my-own clothing. But my first priority is to make sure they do have clothes. Fair trade is a lot more affordable than it used to be. But when you’re living on a fixed income, $45 might as well be $450.

We will continue to try our best. My husband had a wonderful suggestion. Set aside something like 20% of our already allotted grocery budget (or whatever) and use that towards buying eco-fair trade products. But once it runs out, it’s gone, and that’s it for that month.

Shukr Fashion

I was searching for fair trade workout clothes, because I’m going to be taking a Nia class this Fall. But in my search I stumbled across a web site that lists fair trade and organic modest clothing companies – what a find! I’m still working my way through the companies, and I’ll continue to post about them here. But the first one I checked out was Shukr. They have sites for Canada, the US and the UK. This link is to their Canadian site, but you can link to the other countries from there. They carry beautiful modest clothing, primarily aimed at Muslims, but certainly many things (particularly the skirts) are transferrable to Christians, or other people.

Here are two of the items I liked:

 

Spanish Skirt $65

Denim Four Gored Flared Skirt $48

Fair Trade Shoes

We walk a lot – our kids prefer it to their car seats, it’s easier than finding parking, it’s healthier, and it’s better for the environment (and our wallet). I’ve walked enough that it’s time for a new pair of shoes. Of course we all know what goes on in shoe factories, and not particularly wanting children only slightly older than my toddler being forced to make my shoes, I went online to search for fair trade shoes – success!

  autonomie project, inc., makers of fair trade fashion and footwear, had what I was looking for. They have high and low tops, and even flip flops! They even sell organic cotton shoelaces.

 

 

 

 

 

These are some of my favourites:

Ethletic Flip Flops - $20

Ponci Peacock Hand Painted Sneaker - $80

 

Ethletic B&W High Tops $56

Ethletic blue low-tops $54 - also comes in black, white, and green

Tarsian & Blinkley

After my last post on Sarah Takesh, I decided to do a little more digging, and oh my, what I found! This is a truly unique and exciting company – and man, has that woman got chutzpah!

She earned degrees in fashion and business, but determined to do business on her own terms. So for her internship, she went to Kabul. She fell in love with the place, and a year later, the day after graduation, moved there to set up her own clothing design store. She chose to be a for-profit business with a social conscience, feeling that is the most sustainable business model. She feels that too often organizations tout that they “empower women”. In her company’s diary, she says, “I always wanted to do it without making a big, cheesy show over it and inadvertently exploiting the topic. I always viewed Tarsian & Blinkley as the hip, lighthearted, no fuss way to create employment and welfare for poor local women while creating something the world actually wanted and did not purchase out of pity.” I’d say she has succeeded! And what a valid point. As much as I love fair trade (and we all know I do!), far too often the majority of what’s sold isn’t what people would normally buy, but rather buy simply because it is fair trade. By the way, Tarsian & Blinkley does belong to the Fair Trade Federation, but she doesn’t make a big point of that.

From tarsian.com:

“The idea of Tarsian & Blinkley was first born in March of 2000 when Sarah Takesh went on a jeep trek to the Northern Territories of Pakistan and saw the phenomenal impact created by the various projects of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). The communities supported by the AKDN were islands of tolerance and relative prosperity surrounded by poor and inwards looking communities forced to take handouts from “bad” sources, namely the Wahabi missionaries that spread an ugly, fundamentalist vein of Islam through their religious schools. In these isolated mountain valleys, poverty and economic limitations created a vacuum that could be filled by any form of aid. The source of that aid made all the difference in the way the community evolved. Takesh was deeply inspired to work in economic development and live in the region she had become so enamored of, but with no experience in the non-profit world, it had to be on her own terms — as a designer and businessperson.”

Every morning, women pick their way through the shattered streets of Kabul to the Tarsian & Blinkley distribution room, where production assistants match each woman’s embroidery specialties with the work available that day. The women leave with collars, sleeves, or whatever else needs to be embroidered, and return sometime within the next two weeks with their work, where they are paid in cash. 

Tarsian & Blinkley has big plans for the future:

“Tarsian & Blinkley has many social objectives that it would like to embed into its programs. These include:

• Putting about 100 women through a rigorous enough training process to transform them into factory-ready tailors. They would then be placed as in-house workers for the new Tarsian & Blinkley garment factory that is currently under construction at the Bagrami Industrial Park
• Making literacy compulsory for the long term and talented but illiterate women
• Creating a day care so that the women who pick up work from Tarsian & Blinkley would feel comfortable bringing their children to the embroidery distribution center rather than leaving them at home under possibly poor attendance
• Providing the regularly visiting embroiders with a commute allowance
• Creating an emergency fund for the very poor workers, usually widows or those with sick husbands, who face unmanageable burdens and cause undue suffering when they are unable to work. Would be named the “Roya Fund” after a particular women who was an excellent embroiderer but passed away, leaving her family virtually destitute

As a not-very-profitable for-profit business, Tarsian & Blinkley cannot engage in these welfare activities with its own very limited and performance-oriented cash supplies. Rather, it will seek to register Maharat in the US as a 501 c3 organization that can raise funds to help with such projects, projects that have immediate and measurable impact on a clearly identified group of people.” 

So go check out this company! To whet you appetite, here are some of my favourites:

 

Kimono, from Collection IV

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cote D'Afghan, collection VI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bias Cut Skirt, Collection III

 

Ruffle, collection IV

 

Papavera, Collection II

 

Blinkley's Scarf

 

Pashtun Shawl

Fair Trade for Women’s Styles

As I said on my welcome page, I want to spend a lot of time exploring whether or not it’s possible to outfit yourself and your family stylishly, yet ethically. See my last post on Fair Trade to see what I mean by this. So for the next while I’m going to walk through the reasons why we need to buy Fair Trade, and follow that up with some good finds I’ve dug out of the internet closet.

We all know that our clothes are made in horrible sweat shop conditions, often using exploitative child labour, or people who are, for all intents and purposes, enslaved.

There are few people callous enough to ask, “so what?” But the world has so many problems. Practically everything we buy hurts somebody, and everything we eat is going to cause cancer. Arsenals of nukes that could destroy the Earth multiple times over hang over our heads on a daily basis, many of which are improperly maintained in the former USSR. We are always on heightened alert about terrorism, and we keep a constant watch on our children, lest the unthinkable occur and they be snatched away from us. It can be so overwhelming that most of us simply shut it out as best we can in order to cope. Our lives are already so full of important matters to care about: family, friends, jobs, school, finances, volunteer work, church, synagogue, masjid, temple, committees, activities, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on, and this economic recession doesn’t help.

After a long day, full of commitments and activities that require more giving of ourselves, how can we be expected to save the world on top of it all, too?

  ”I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” `Helen Keller

No one lives a perfectly consistent life – it’s not possible. We’re all human. But we can try to do better. In Doris Longacre Janzen’s book Living More With Less, Bertha Beachy, an MCC worker in East Africa for 20 years observes, “North Americans find it very hard to believe that their wealthy ways of living affect poor people on other continents. But in Africa, people are fully convinced that North Americans and their actions strongly influence their lives.” The author responds with, “We’re skilled at screening out and arguing away this connection. We don’t believe it, but the poor do.”

So let’s start with some women’s fashion. Fair Indigo is a great place to find Fair Trade and Eco-friendly clothing. It’s a little pricey, but often Fair Trade is. We’ll discuss that in a future post, but for now, considering buying fewer items then you would from a department store, knowing it’s for a good cause, and can help de-clutter your life. Here are some of my favourites from their site (one of the great things about this company is that in addition to some very nice stand-out shirts, they also stock a bunch of affordable basics – crew neck Ts, camis, blouses, turtlenecks, etc.):

Organic Pima Circle-neck Tank $32

 

Washable Rayon Split-neck Top $45 (on sale for $22.50)

Ellen 3/4 Sleeve Shirt $39 (sale $16.50) 5 colours

1/2 Sleeve Shirt $49, sale $14.50!

Washable Rayon Cowlneck $54

Cotton Batik Print Skirt $59

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matte Jersey Tulip Skirt $59 Graphic Leaf Print Flip Skirt - usually $69, on sale $24.50

Fair Trade Clothing

 Fair Trade textiles is a topic near and dear to my heart. When I was in  high school, after reading Craig Kielburger’s book, I decided to only wear clothes that were made without exploitative labour. At the time, it turned out to be impossible. All I could find were some funky Guatemalan sweaters, or the odd t-shirt. Even expensive names were made in less than equitable conditions. Fortunately, very slowly, this is beginning to change. In a later post I will tell you more about where you can get fair trade clothes. 

But first, why buy fair trade?

 Because this is what happens when you don’t.

And this is what happens when you do.

It can be really hard to find fair trade products – at least everyday products. One of the things I would like to explore with this blog is this question: Is it possible to live purely fair? How about even mostly? Where can you find these things?