the district

Columbia Sportswear, most well known for their advertisements featuring Gert Boyle subjecting her adult sons to inhumane treatment to test their wares announced yesterday plans to install 100 kw of solar power to power their Portland Oregon headquarters.

When completed, the system will consist of a total of 570 photovoltaic (PV) panels mounted on the roof of two of Columbia’s buildings. Power generated by the system will be fed back into the power grid through a meter and credited to Columbia’s account. Tanner Creek Energy, an Oregon-based developer of commercial and industrial scale solar electric systems, designed the solar system for Columbia and is acting as the project’s general contractor.

“Columbia’s participation in this project demonstrates the growing viability of sustainable energy solutions and reinforces Oregon’s leadership in solar energy,” said Kristen Sagan, Columbia’s sustainability manager.

So we would like to salute Colombia for their plans, and also just because they have someone who’s job title is “sustainability manager.”  More clothing companies could use one of those.

In a seemingly odd new PR strategy, Cotton Inc (American Producers and Importers) has begun a web-based campaign to discredit general environmental wisdom, such as the advantages of organic cotton in an effort to enhance their own ‘greenness’. Using such tools as an online game-show, the Cotton website quizzes contestants to differentiate between green-washing and actual facts about living in a more sustainable fashion. Questions include such generalities as “True or False: Its always better to buy local produce?”, which is of course false, but misses the point that it usually is true. Unfortunately, this kind of misleading information only discourages people from adapting better practices by allowing them to rationalize-away anything. The quiz goes on to discredit organic produce in general, and organic cotton in particular with such gems as “All cotton comes from a plant, so it is renewable and natural.” The move seems baffling, as one might think that encouraging the sale of all cotton might be a goal of the Cotton Board. In the humble opinion of this organic cotton salesman, it is not necessary to denigrate all things organic in an effort to make conventional cotton seem not so bad.

You can take the quiz at the Cotton Incorporated website, and while you’re there, feel free to tell them what you think.

Ok, I will keep this brief because this actually has nothing to do with socially conscious apparel, as Gildan is about as bad as it gets, but… Cheap shirts that are pretty cool.  Monstar $6.66 Halloween Sale is a great place to score some cheap shirts.  In particular the Monzilla is pretty cool and so is the Misfits one.  Otherwise, I do have to point out that this logo loks real familiar from somewhere else, but I can’t place it. Still, check it out at Monstar’s Big Cartel page.

In a new effort to increase the irreverence and irony of being an American Apparel clad hipster, AA has unveiled shirts with letters on them. Because helvetica is currently ‘cool’ (although even I thought it was passe by now) American Apparel will print the entire alphabet one letter at a time so that you can sport your favorite symbol loud and proud. Now I have written on this topic before, so I will keep it brief, but I am still at a serious loss in trying to understand how a font could have developed a popular following, or even a fan-club. Its so Meta it hurts. If you really want to be uber-cool you can get five of your friends together and each get one of the following letter shirts: d-o-u-c-h-e.

I recently received an email about a new(ish) t-shirt company, which is based in Italy or California or Australia and prints on bamboo and organic cotton Alternative Apparel T’s.  As I sat down to write review I googled the company’s name, Frustone, to try and get some background on what exactly it means when I stumbled upon a review written by Andy at Hide Your Arms, which pretty much said everything I was already going to say, so maybe you should just go read that.

However, if you really want to hear what I have to say about the line, read on.  Basically, after reading the email and the ‘About’ page on their website I walked away feeling like the company is based on an inside joke that I don’t quite get. Maybe its a translation issue or maybe (and likely) I’m just not hip enough to use phrases like “It would be very monkey drummer if …”   That being said after looking at the website, it seems like they are having lots of fun being Frustone-y so more power to them.  Additionally, despite my lack of understanding I do like the shirts and always applaud the use of Alternative Apparel over American Apparel, and using water-based inks.  The designs are simple and iconic, and all have the word Frustone on them.  The Neil Armstrong design (pictured above) is definitely my favorite, while the MLK print lacks enough detail to really be clear.  As previously mentioned the use of bamboo/cotton blends from Alternative Apparel make for a pretty comfortable shirt, although they are not cheap, making the 20 Euro price-tag seem pretty reasonable. You can view the website here, its Frustone.

“After all, in the wise words of Mr. T, ‘Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt don’t wear clothes with your name on it, so why should you wear their name?’”

Using a quote like that to help explain 6 Foot Owl’s raison d’etre certainly earns them points here, because well, its just so true.  SFO is a new clothing label (or at least clothing embellisher) based on the pretty simple idea of sprucing up basic garments (such as Alternative Apparel T’s) with original hand painted art.  As they are all originals the range of designs is pretty broad, with some of them being significantly more compelling than others.  I must say that despite my general disdain for everything having to do with the resurgence of cassette tapes their “devil’s music” shirt is definitely worthy of note.  Most of the t-shirts are priced between $60 and 80, which is a lot for a shirt, but a pretty reasonable number for a piece of art.  I guess its up to the buyer to decide if they are buying art or apparel before their purchase to establish what kind of value they are getting.  According to the website (presumably) lower priced screen printed shirts are coming soon.   Hopefully a website restructuring is also on the way, as the site unforgivably gives precious little real-estate to photography making it very difficult to view designs.  Oh yeah, this one rocks too:

Ok, well maybe that it is not technically true, or even a little bit true for that matter, but John kruse’s new website “How to Start a Clothing Company” is a welcome addition to available online resources for budding t-shirt entrepreneurs. The site features simple straight forward design and some pretty insightful information to boot. The content varies between advice from established t-shirt producers like Johny Cupcakes (visited his store on Newbury and understand it even less now) and Eric Terry from Linty Fresh, to more practical information about taxes and incorporation options. Posts are also neatly divided into useful categories such as Design, Marketing, E-commerce etc. While the site is still clearly in its early stages, it is definitely worth checking out, if not for anything more than some of the interviews. Additionally, it should be interesting to track the growth of content as the site’s founder progresses down the road with his own t-shirt line Mediocore Clothing.
on a side note, sorry for the dearth of posts lately but I was in Hotlanta.