09 Sep
How far do your clothes travel?? and other musings
INTRODUCING FASHION MILES: Promoting Sustainable Fashion by Measuring More Than Hem Lines
At Arboretum Apparel, we’re always thinking of the many ways our business impacts the world around us. We’re very aware that for every transaction there’s a reaction. One of the ugly truths about the mainstream fashion industry is that it’s riddled with pollution, pesticides and unsavory labor practices. Instead of these reactions, we’d prefer organic crops, living wages and your voice saying, “Wow, I look great in this!” And so we take a lot of pride in the very select, independent fashion lines we stock, all of which we know are as dedicated as we are in promoting an ethical fashion industry.
Introducing Fashion Miles!
Many of you have heard of Food Miles—the distance your food traveled to get to your plate. Food Miles are an important part of calculating the impact your diet has on the world around you. It’s no different with fashion. While our store is moving closer and closer to our goal of 100% domestically produced clothing lines, we also need to consider the source of the raw materials. So we’ve introduced the concept of Fashion Miles to our buying guidelines. This lets us make easy distinctions between, say, a local denim house that sources cotton in Egypt vs. one that sources from Texas. Yes, we’ve been making these distinctions since day one, but by introducing the term ‘Fashion Miles’ we can easily educate suppliers and help nudge them toward better practices in much the same way our demanding clientele nudges us.
Yes, we’re aware that Fashion Miles don’t tell the whole story. Cotton that travels around the world on a boat is less ‘energy intensive’ than similar cotton traveling half the distance by truck or by plane. But Fashion Miles gives us yet another general, if admittedly imperfect indicator to help us make good buying decisions.
CARboretum? What’ With the 1956 BMW Isetta in the Window?
What better way to draw attention to Fashion Miles than to display what is hands down one of the most fashionable, gasoline-thrifty cars ever produced? On loan to us by local artist Stasea Dohoney, the show-quality Isetta is a rare bird, with only 200 or so of this particular model ever produced. Which reminds us, did you know you can double, even triple the True Fuel Efficiency of any car immediately? It’s simple: Carpool. The more people in a car, the more efficient the people mover. For all the hype of a hybrid, a Hummer with four passengers outperforms a Prius carrying only a driver.
Gold LEED Pop Up on October 9
We’ll be leaving the Isetta in the shop when we venture to H2 Hotel to open a weekend pop up store in the main lobby. If you haven’t checked out H2 and you’re in or near California wine country, you really should. With a living roof, free bicycle rentals, a locally-sourced food menu and soon-to-be gold LEED certification, H2 is lodging done right. Oh, and H2 is three blocks away, so total Fashion Miles accrued by the pop up effort: 0.4.
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