With Sao Paulo Fashion Week just closed I am here to write (again) about Brazilian fashion.
This time it is about an interesting project I got to know of personally, Projeto Contem, a private and independent initiative.
Projeto Contem is both a brand and a network of entrepreneurs working in textile and fashion as well as in food, beauty, design, arts, music and cinema.
Drakes is synonymous around the world with the most beautiful silk ties that money can buy. Founded thirty years ago on a top floor in Old Bond St and operating from a former Royal Mail depot in Old St for the past twenty, Drakes brought manufacturing back to the East End. A portrait.
Sashiko - a now extinct Japanese textile technique and tradition which for centuries was used to adorn as much as make garments more durable. A portrait.
The coastal areas of Eastern Japan, while largely unaffected by the grade 9 earthquake from March 11th, 2011, was thoroughly washed away by the tsunami following the quake. Now that the recovery efforts are under way, also fashion companies and fashion related projects contribute their share. An overview of what is happening on the ground to-date.
Julius Walters of Stephen Walters & Sons is a ninth generation weaver of a family business founded 1720. This is the company that wove the silk for the Queen’s coronation robes and for Princess Diana’s wedding dress.
Laces have been a firm part of haute-couture since the medieval, and the fabric still is, and always has been, a luxury product. The StGall exhibition in Switzerland pays tribute to 800 years of lace work featuring the best of European textile artisanry and technology.
The developments in the British Midlands of the industrial revolution have coined the textiles industry possibly like no other.
It was is this area that we find the roots to the modern textile industry, including case studies that (nearly) could be dated from our modern times. From archives and historical records the industrial revolution left behind in the area, we can gain many an insight that will trigger a simple ‘déjà-vu’ when taking note of news about textile factories from the Far East that with regularity hit our headlines.
One by one European manufacturers go out of business, and with them a vast quantity of skills and knowledge is lost. The most recent example is Switzerland's Weisbrod silk weavery. Yet: it seems the tide is changing, for good reason.
The British textile industry, chances are, never would have reached its former pre-offshoring movement glory if it was not for immigrants. In fact, if it had not been for the Huguenot influence on silk weaving – and by means of cross-fertilisation, cotton and wool – the industry would have served a pure domestic purpose for the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century.
The Spitalfields taylors Alexander Boyd is London's last shirt maker. All their shirts are made at the Rayner and Sturges factory in Kent. Impressions from the factory, and the 'making of' a bespoke Savile Row shirt.
The issue of wages in the fashion supply chain is a never ending story: the paid wages, the unpaid wages, those that suffice, or not, for a livelihood. tackles this issue in a very thorough, and at the same time visionary way by laying out a practical frame work for a Fair Wages
The European wool industry has all but disappeared. Recently however, a grassroots trend is emerging. Mini mills now cater to small hold breeders, which turns wool source more transparent then ever.
Everyone seems to join in for the treasure hunt called Christmas shopping. Are the 'ethical' Christmas fairs worth it? Only for discoveries - such as these 3 tiny brands.
In Tunisia, like across most of the Maghrib region, textiles, their significance and methods of production remain a firm part of the country’s identity and history. A portrait.
On March 3rd, 2011, ethical fashion was discussed in a Question session of the UK's House of Lords. Much focus was on human rights & the environment. But fashion is driven by SMEs ...
When looking underneath the surface of the Japanese fashion industry, a fundamental shift is taking place: Production is shifted back to the Japanese home land.
When looking underneath the surface of the Japanese fashion industry, a fundamental shift is taking place: Production is shifted back to the Japanese home land.
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