the district

Despite some dramatic improvements in quality and variety, most consumers still equate anything hemp with ugly and uncomfortable clothes worn more out of ideology than practicality. While hemp remains a mainstay in the dirty-hippy demographic, it rarely finds its way into more mainstream looking line-ups. The Hemp Trading Company (THTC…get it?) does however make a pretty good run at using the fiber for more than just tie-dying. The mere fact that they are one of the only (if not only) urban-eco companies make them worth noticing, as the hip-hop demographic is not especially known for their environmental activism. With the exception of some bland and rather predictable prints of their pot-leaf inspired logo, most of their line is well worth checking out. They do especially well with hip-hop inspired designs, including some collaborations with Zulu Nation and others.

Most of their current line is pretty steeply discounted right now while waiting for the Spring ‘08 line-up, but unfortunately is still priced in Pounds. The website has a much appreciated if sometimes ambiguous “ethics” page displaying their corporate ethos. We will hyper-link you there now.

Did you know it was the panda who solved the Russian hop-scotch mystery?

Alright, admittedly this has absolutely nothing to do with green-wear, but it is so fantastic I couldn’t help but post about it and it still has the phrase “organic cotton” in it.  California (something this idiotic could naturally only come form Cali) based Spun City unveiled US grown 100% organic cotton candy today.  This is almost as exciting as when I found a cotton candy machine in college, but my roommate wouldn’t let me bring it home because he was afraid it would make everything we owned sticky.

While the company itself doesn’t make any green claims about their concept (which these days is kind of shocking in and of itself), Brooklyn based Ohio Knitting Mills is now offering up some cool new-old knitwear in their Carroll Gardens boutique. (does NOS apply to clothes or just car parts?) Unearthed after several decades in storage, OKM has begun selling off items from the now long-time defunct Ohio based Ohio Knitting Mills. Apparently management over there had a bit of a pack-rat streak and had been saving samples of all of their styles for the last 6 decades or so. Most of the menswear falls into the vintage really ugly sweater category, although some of the womens’ garments do retain their fashion appeal from eras passed. It seems like since the factory closed 30 years ago, this concept can only last so long, so you’d better check it out quick.

This totally falls into the shameless plugs category, even though it’s not really about us. Oscar nominations are out, and while ordinarily this would definitely not be news here, our favorite patron got a couple of nods and that gives us an excuse to rerun this picture. Diablo Cody and her film Juno were nominated for best-picture, best screen-play and a few others. Congratulations Diablo, and feel free to wear our stuff in public anytime.

I just wanted to draw some attention to an interesting article on CNN.com today about starting a t-shirt business, with some comments from Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless.  While the article isn’t incredibly insightful in terms of advice, but I was floored to hear that Threadless sells 90,000 shirts every month. Thats roughly 125 shirts every hour of every day.  The other statistic that I thought was pretty amazing was that they have over 600,000 registered users on the sight.

The article also features some other words of wisdom from Kalmikoff, “The t-shirt market is enormous,” he explains. “Work on the local level and differentiate yourself. It’s important to start slow.”   Nothing earth-shattering, but sometimes the simplest dictums are the most important and easiest to lose sight of.

This post has two titles, you can choose which one you like better depending on how you feel about George Lucas’ protracted attempts to co-opt street art and culture into marketing Star Wars.   On the one hand is the argument that Star Wars is so ingrained in our (let’s call ourselves the creative underclass) collective popular culture that it is only natural for it to manifest itself in works of street art and in this case t-shirts.  Cynics however might be quick to point out Lucas’s mildly covert campaign to recruit underground artists and writers to promote the Star Wars brand and lend it some ’street-cred.’   I’m going to not chime in here because, well, I don’t really care.

Anyway, excuse the excessively long disclaimer.  From the Lucas site:

UK Streetwear brand Addict have teamed up with Lucasfilm to produce an exclusive set of three boxed tees depicting three of the most iconic characters from the original Star Wars Trilogy (StarWarsShop’s got one of them – check it out!) Called the Icons Series, it’s a one-off set of officially licensed tees illustrated by artist Mitch, known by many for his work in the music industry — Amp Fiddler, Bugz in the Attic, Incognito, The Bees, and Howie B are just a few of the musicians he’s worked with.

For the details about where to buy it, blah blah, blah just go to the freakin’ site.

Ok, so the shirt’s not that bad, but a lot of the other pieces in H&M’s spring collection are pretty ridiculous looking, however, they now contain more Organic cotton. The collection will utilize 1500 tonnes of the organic stuff, which because of my ignorance of the difference between tonne and ton means absolutely nothing to me. Safe to say however, its probably a lot. One thing I have definitely learned in the eco-fashion business, is that no self-respecting company would dare issue a press release boasting their green-cred just to make themselves look more socially responsible, unless it was really significant. But I digress.

H&M’s Head of Design, Margareta van den Bosch says, “Our organic cotton collection is also high fashion, as customers are becoming increasingly aware of both fashion and the environment. We are proud to offer clothes made from organic cotton in nearly every H&M department,”

Well, there you have it folks. To check out more fascinating details about the line go to H&M’s flashy-flash website.

Around here we generally don’t think too highly of American Apparel founder Dov Charney’s juvenile sex-charged antics. Considering the size of the garment industry, the number of people I know who can first-hand vouch for what a jackass Charney is speaks volume about how much this guy gets around, and universally offends. However, taking a break from his usual kiddy-porn styled advertisements (ok thats another thing we kind of like about him), American Apparel launched a series of full-page ads supporting immigration reform in the U.S. While the ad’s content is nothing groundbreaking, what is remarkable is the willingness of a large corporation to speak the obvious truth of how hard-working immigrants are bearing the brunt of a fucked-up and archaic immigration system. The ad, which originally ran in the New York Times in December is now being repeated in such publications as the Village Voice. There is clearly little to gain (as a business) from spending large sums of money to run a polemical ad like this, which is why this type of political activism is indeed courageous and in my opinion should be recognized as such.

and here is some gratuitous AA advertising:

Okay, really not much to look at but our Billboard Bags were featured on a site today with Kate Spade and Crate and Barrel.  Kind of makes us feel like we are doing a good job of mimicking an actual clothing company.

This sweatshirt might be kind of funny, if it weren’t 95 freakin’ dollars.  Forget that promotion to making fries, you’d better have your eyes on assistant manager if you want to afford one of these.  If you are however loaded like Zamundan royalty you can check out NY’s Alador and Smith.