Natty Paint and New Designs

A few new and interesting and upcoming things in the world of labudde:

1. I have teamed up with Emily LiMandri of Natty Paint. She designs and hand silk-screens really excellent graphic tees. Her designs include bicycles, skeletons in mid-makeout session, peacocks and lots of other great things. We've been setting up a table together at the Waverly Farmer's Market in Baltimore for the past few weeks. Come stop by if you are a Baltimorean. We're also planning to team up and create some hand-made, hand-silk-screened shirts (yay!). I'll post some pics once we whip a few up.

2. Moving! I am moving July 15th to a great little rowhouse on Guilford in Charles Village. I am very excited to have my studio, the internet, and a kitchen and food all in one place! (Right now I make all my clothing in one place, but eat, sleep, and use the internet and do all my photos and shipping in another place...this sounds like a relatively minor inconvenience, but I am not a person with a gift for organization, and forgetting things at one place or the other has been a major time-suck. It reminds me of friends of mine who had divorced parents in high school, constantly forgetting homework at Mom or Dad's house.) I'm also working for Outward Bound for about a month from late July-mid August. So, I will be moving all my stuff, then in the woods for a while...which will most likely be a big setback for my etsy business. Hopefully the time away and the excitement of moving into a new place will help motivate me to make more things, and my new setup will increase my productivity a bit.

3. Some new designs:


Some new ruffled-edged tanks:

Watermelon Slice Tank:

This one was created from a lovely velour fabric, with organic cotton trim.


Smock-style loose-fitting tanks:

In Poppies and Plaid

Avocado Smock

All these designs, plus some other new ones are now up in my etsy shop!

New Bags

I have been neglecting this blog and my etsy site a bit this month, partially because I had the opportunity to go on a lovely pre-mother's day yoga retreat with my Mom, I visited some friends in Annapolis; but I have also been making things! Here are some pictures of my new batch of bags. I'm starting to play around a bit more with ways of embellishing tote bags with different colors, textures, trims, and, of course, new vintage buttons!

Fleur de Lise Tote

Sunworshipper Tote

Fleur de Lise Tote

Cripple Creek Tote

Durango Tote

Miniskirts

It is a rainy morning here, and I keep procrastinating before leaving the house, trying to find one more useful thing to do on my computer. Which brings me to this post.

I am sometimes slow to catch on to trends, so I tend to lean heavily upon people and websites for ideas on what to make next. My sister planted the seed a while ago that I should start making miniskirts. I don't think she used the word "miniskirt"--which sounds a bit anachronistic to me, the miniskirt seems mired in 1960's reruns of I Dream of Genie--but she quickly bored of some of the styles that I was making a few months ago and suggested that I try making some skirts that were SHORT. So here they are (they are both up in my etsy shop now).

No Warning Signs Skirt

Elements of Flirtation Skirt

Eighties Dance Party Legwarmers

I wish I had had these legwarmers (now in my etsy shop, p.s. THANK YOU Jessie for finding this fabric for me!):



At this 80's dance party (circa 2nd semester, freshman year):

Sunworshipper Tote Bags

Hey. I wanted to post some pictures of the tote bags I've been working on recently--they have given me a great reason to collect vintage buttons. All of the materials for these bags are reclaimed, and some of them (the red damask print, the green and white stripes) came from the Sew Green project in Ithaca NY, which collects fabrics that people have had laying around forever and makes them available for resale.

I've always been more of a tote bag kind of gal; handbags always seem a little too formal for me, and these are big enough to fit a small laptop, or all of your beach essentials, stuff for a weekend roadtrip, etc. I'm working on putting some more up in my etsy shop, but for now they are for sale at Pandora's Box, in Federal Hill, Baltimore Maryland.

TUFF SOUL

I am excited to write that my clothing is for sale at its very first retail location in Ithaca, NY. The store is called Tuff Soul, and it is truly a treasure trove; chock full of vintage, reconstructed, and eco-friendly clothing.

Bamboo Fabric T-Shirts, Tanks and Tunic Dresses







Mina's Tunic Dresses, made out of vintage fabrics, vintage buttons, and bamboo




Jumpers, made primarily out of vintage and repurposed fabrics



So, all of these items, which used to be featured in my Etsy shop are now for sale at Tuff Soul. I'm working on getting a bunch of new things together at the moment...a line of spring tote bags are in the making...more updates to come.

Ode to my Favorite Coffee Shops

I got down to business last night and whipped up a new crop of laptop cases from my latest supply of coffee bags. I got these great bags from Gimme!Coffee in Ithaca, NY. Thanks again, Gimme Coffee. In fact, thanks to all the lovely independent coffee shops that have given me bags and kept me caffeinated:

B.B. Bean Coffee, Colorado Springs, CO. All they serve is coffee here. No lattes, no espresso, just really, really strong, really great coffee. My favorite is the Earth Friendly Sumatran Gayo Mountain blend. I wrote many papers at top speed propelled by BB Bean coffee alone. In fact, I think in order to get through college without BB Bean coffee I would have had to learn to stop procrastinating and sleep more. Good thing there is coffee instead.

Newport Coffee, Lake Forest, IL. Great lattes. Nice midwesterners.

High Grounds, Baltimore, MD. This is a combination coffee shop, coffee roastery, and used bookstore. They have a really great selection of books here, and they even roast the coffee beans right in the back of the shop. They also sell their coffee at Whole Foods in Baltimore, and feature local artist's work on the packaging.

Stagecoach Coffee, Cooperstown, NY. This is my hometown local coffee shop. They are a great family-run business. I often go there to manage my etsy site and use the internet when my rural, snail-pace-slow internet connection at home goes down (which is constantly). They serve good sandwiches for lunch, but my very favorite thing here is the soup.

Here are the new laptop sleeves. You can also see more of them at my etsy shop:

Consume Less, Buy me.

In my recent quest to learn more about sustainable fabrics I have had one nagging thought that keeps creeping back to gnaw away at my do-good intentions: it seems like perhaps the most sustainable, ethical way to buy clothing is to just not buy so damn much of it. Buy a few, high-quality, versatile things that you love, and stop over-consuming. “Buy less” doesn’t exactly seem like the best business strategy for a budding clothing designer, but it does seem practical. Is the command that people be satisfied with less an unavoidably anti-fashion edict?
This issue reminds me of an article from the New Yorker’s financial page about piracy and fashion:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2007/09/24/070924ta_talk_surowiecki

The gist of the article is that fashion actually thrives because of the high rate of piracy. This is how it works: Once a new trend emerges on the runway, thousands of copycat versions come out within weeks, and this ensures that the fashion-savvy public becomes sated and bored by the trend as quickly as possible. And this quick-acting ennui fuels the desire for something new. A design that looks fresh is only exciting in the context of its opposition that that which is tired-looking; high fashion’s value is constantly in relation to its quickly approaching expiration date. The article also points out that fashion is one of the few industries where consumers are still willing to pay much more for authenticity. The thing that strikes me as important here is the pervasive atmosphere of overconsumption as a precondition for the production of value in the clothing industry.

So, how do I go about justifying the value of my own products? I do ask my customers to pay more than they would at the Gap, but it isn’t high fashion “brand loyalty” that I’m looking for. I believe that people should be willing to pay more for responsibly made, thoughtfully designed garments. We tend to produce things so far from ourselves that we forget or erase the means of production in order to consume at the rate that we do. Producing clothing by hand is slow, it is labor intensive, and more prone to variation in the results. But, there can be a deep satisfaction in this intimate production model. As Michael Pollan points out in his writings on the food industry, we can begin to counteract the industrial model with more locally-based alternatives and there is greater pleasure in knowing than in forgetting. It seems logical that people who value handmade products should also be concerned with where the materials come from, and that cost should be secondary to these concerns, or further, that value should be based in them.

In the handmade economy, authenticity and sustainable production are definite selling points. But handmade products are not immune to the ironies inherent in trying to promote environmentally responsible spending in a capitalist system. It is somewhat paradoxical to use sustainability as a marketing tool. At the heart of any real attempt at sustainability ought to be the sincere effort to buy less. On some level, marketing a product as “sustainable” screams “consume less!” and “buy me!” simultaneously. The obvious way to get around this hypocritical standpoint is to point out that people will continue to buy things whether we like it or not, and that more sustainable products are a step towards lessening that impact. But it doesn’t exactly demand that we alter our over-consumptive outlook. I think it is important to consider the extent to which the imperatives of fashion and those of sustainability are compatible, and what underlying attitudes need to be altered to bring the two closer together.

Sustainable Fabrics, Part I

I’m starting to do some research on sustainable fabrics and am coming up (not surprisingly) with mixed reviews. I was really interested in bamboo because it has a really beautiful look to it, and it gets a lot of hype as a “green fabric.” From what I understand bamboo is good for a number of reasons, primarily because of the way in which it is grown: farmers don’t need to use pesticides on it, it grows close together, doesn’t deplete the soil as much as cotton, and eats up way more greenhouse gases than cotton per acre. Bamboo also is naturally anti-microbial, resists odor, and has a great weight and sheen to it. The downside is that once the bamboo is harvested it takes a chemical intensive process to break down the fibers and make them into textiles (it’s really not astonishing that it takes some heavy duty chemical processing to turn a woody reed into a soft, stretchy luxury fabric). The process uses lots of ammonia, and not only are the leftover chemicals dangerous, but the process causes neural damage for people that work in the bamboo processing facilities. Also, bamboo is only grown and processed for textiles in China, so, if buying locally is a concern, which it ought to be, bamboo doesn’t make the cut. Perhaps United States manufacturers just aren’t willing to sacrifice their employee’s neural systems for the greater good. Some people are so selfish.

I did end up buying some bamboo fabric (jersey knit) to try it out, and I love working with it, but it’s too bad that after doing some research on it, I feel that using bamboo doesn’t really absolve me from very much environmental guilt. Plus, it feels a little disingenuous to tout its “greenness” in my product descriptions. So, for now, I am trying out bamboo and looking around for some better alternatives if they are out there. Anyone else who wants to weigh in on this issue is very welcome.

Ok, now if I could ask you to put away all the moral ambiguity for the moment, here are some pics of the really cute tops I made out my first few yards of bamboo fabric (in sunshine! What a great color)



















I’ve also used raw silk, but I’m not sure what the sustainability issues are with silk. I know that lots of little worms die in the process, but I’m not sure what the wider environmental impacts are. I’m inclined to think that killing a lot of worms (which must have fairly short life spans anyway) is not as big of a deal as dumping huge amounts of chemicals into the environment. Maybe if I got to know some worms better I would feel differently.

Hippie meets Hipster

This is my tagline on my Etsy site: "Hippie meets Hipster," and it is sometimes met by smirks or confusion. So I thought I would explain myself a bit. Why invoke two opposing stereotypes and call it a motto? (Maybe it's just my over-powering affinity for dialectical argument. And alliteration.)

First, there is something attractive to me about hippie sensibility. Thrift and sustainability are important to me. Part of the impulse to make things is the problem solving; I like figuring out how something was made and trying to duplicate it. But part of it is economical. There is a lot of waste in the world, and lots of ways to reuse things if people would only use their brains and some creativity. One example is the coffee bag laptop cases that I make. Coffee bags are leftovers, but they are beautiful. It is important to rediscover the value in rediscovering old things.

Second, I strive to make things that are hip. Reusing and recycling doesn't mean things have to be frumpy. I like the challenge of searching for discarded, unloved materials, but my ultimate goal is to make them into something cool. Aesthetics are important. I seek to use materials thriftily and value the challenge of making something out of nothing, but in the end, the things I make are not necessarily meant to be the product poster-children of sustainability, but they are made with both design and resourcefulness in mind.

Hello there blog-o-sphere.

Welcome. I'm starting this blog partially because it seems like everyone else has one, so why not me too? So then I figured I had better come up with some reasons for having a blog. Mainly I would like a space to write about issues relating to my small business on etsy.com, (www.labudde.etsy.com), where I sell all kinds of things that I make: laptop cases, clothing, accessories, etc.

One of my dreams since about the age of 12 was to be a fashion designer. Ok, granted, 12 year olds have lots of silly dreams that aren't actually worth pursuing, and wanting something when you are 12 isn't necessarily a good business plan. But, I am post-college and find myself always making things of some kind, and additionally, jobless, so I decided now was as good a time as any to make this happen.

I also like writing and thinking, so this is a good space to record some ideas, and to do some reflecting about why I do what I do. And maybe someday other people will read this blog too, whether they be friends, family, or (someday?) fans.

About me:

I have dabbled in all kinds of art and craft; drawing, printmaking, painting, knitting, weaving, crocheting, jewelry making, woodworking, sewing, and bookmaking. I am thrifty. I am also by nature a collector. I collect old books, coffee mugs, pebbles, buttons, secondhand fabric and beads. I love to cook, I am a beer conoisseur, I like rock climbing, and tea is often an integral part of my seduction strategy.

I am from upstate New York originally, I work for Outward Bound in Maine, and I went to college in Colorado. I have one sister, also an artist, and two wonderful parents.