WARNING: Don't read this if you have a fragile ego.
I get really sick thinking about "INDI-CORPORATE" or in other parallel worlds: when the hippies turned to yuppies. Is that like hipsters turning to yupsters? I'd be happy-happy to stay a gypsy or maybe you call it a hypsy. There is a difference between authenticity and impostering, people dressing like you are on a woodland safari but are a squarepeg in a woodbox, and want to ignore that the products they buy are actually destroying woodlands. Way to go people, make money! The fact is that we are still under the hegemonic rule of pleasing people who have money to buy our makings. But i won't let that change me, or make me a failure in the eyes of mongers. And that for certain doesn't mean i'm about to do any a**kissing on your blog. I'm also not going to steal images from your blog and put them on my blog in the name of inspiration and networking because i can't personally make things that cool myself. And i also can't stand the marketing ideology that ignores the fact that materials are shipped from hither thither, or even more discuss-tingly blatently try to cover it up by lying and calling it locally handmade. YUCK! Fakers.
The point of D.I.Y. is authenticity, endorsing self-expression through one-of-a-kind. Think about that: UNIQUE. Amount in stock: ONE. Why is that so hard to look at!? Because people yearn to be a part of something? They want a whole community of people with the same product so they can have a tribe? You need me to stand infront of a picket fence so that you can associate my makings with a bunch of yuppie homemakers in order for you to like it? Just curious. Artists become artisans when they mass produce, removing the creative factor from the crafting production line.
Maybe this is like Modernism vs. Post-Modernism. Or Renaissance Art vs. Impressionism. Denial of the process by creating a final product that hides it. Streamline and shiney. More lies. Authenticity doesn't deny that process and strip products of their character.
People love to feel like they're "GREEN" they are helping the planet by buying things, but the fact is, you aren't because all that stuff is bad for the planet to a degree. People spent *blank* amount of money on leisure wear in *blank* year, which converts to *crazy amount of working hours*... IRONIC? you could have been leisuring the whole time! People need to brush up on their Henry David Thoreau.
And just because you are an "indi" designer isn't going to be enough of a good deed. Marketing is exploitation of peoples need to feel a certain way: part of that tribe. Oh, i remember why i stopped being "preppy" in 6th grade. Because that one girl talked me into dumping my boyfriend so she could fake that she was going out with him, tell everyone they were playing a trick on me, and then herd people to my locker after school to bitch me out, steal my winter hat and flush it down the toilet so i could walk home alone without a hat while they shouted obscenities in my naked ears from across the street. maybe i'm scarred, but those preps all in their fancy pants were a bunch of fakers too, faking that they were nice people while exploiting other people for their own self-interest.
Maybe I just wish the consuming public would be a little more eccentric in their tastes. If people didn't need everything dumbed down for them in 3 specific sizes and 10 specific styles, maybe we wouldn't have so much waste in the world: in otherwords, maybe eclectic tastes would prevent so many people from having to buy brand new shit, and maybe then the people who make brand new shit wouldn't make so much of it.
Yes, I will recycle old clothes into new ones, because I'm going to carry on in a tradition that increases the degrees by which i can say I'm saving the planet by decreasing the amount of new extraction needed. And that doesn't mean that I'm less talented than people who cut brand new expensive fabric out by tracing a bunch of shapes.
Yes, I will custom make that for you, because I'm p.c. and i know your body doesn't fit into one of these little size charts that's never uniform across the board anyway; so fill out my measurements chart, pick out the combination of fabric that is limited edition and vintage, and I will happily create that for you in the name of authenticity and one-of-a-kindness. OR, maybe you would just like to learn how to make it yourself, I would be happy to borrow you the tools to get you started.
Perhaps you'd like to argue: say that monoculture is actually producing less waste by increasing efficiency. But that just isn't true, because monoculture IS waste by destroying biodiversity in both human culture and nature.
thank you,
madam chino
