clothing
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Give used furs back to the animals with Coats for Cubs
Grab Granny's fur coat (take Granny out first) and bring it to your local Buffalo Exchange, if you're lucky enough to have one nearby. From Nov. 25 through April 22, their Coats for Cubs program will take your furs (including trims, accessories, and shearling) and use them to "provide bedding and comfort to orphaned and injured […]
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Would you wear fish-skin shoes? Manolo Blahnik thinks you would
Designer Manolo Blahnik, who makes wildly expensive footwear, is launching a line of shoes made with sustainable or recycled material, like "raffia, cork and tilapia skins." Ooh, this is a good idea! What about tin foil? What about banana skins? What about Kleenex boxes? They are already practically shoes! In all seriousness, it's kind of […]
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Patagonia asks customers to overthrow capitalism’s basic tenets
Patagonia, the official apparel of green-minded outdoorsy people and all of San Francisco, wants its customers to buy fewer of its products. Instead, the company is asking that Patagonia lovers reuse and repair their clothes. The company will mend its products for cheap, and help customers sell them on eBay or through their website. It […]
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Ask Umbra: Is banning clotheslines legal?
A reader wonders if neighborhoods can legally hang clothesline users out to dry. Umbra pins down the answer.
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The fashionable cyclist: Why let a little rain get you down?
Got a long, wet ride to work? You can do it, and still arrive looking snappy, writes Elly Blue.
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The most beautiful anti-GMO T-shirts you'll ever see
Threadless, which has long been the thinking person's purveyor of silly T-shirts, just ran a design contest with an anti-GMO theme. Artists submitted designs that conveyed a "no GMO" message, and 25 percent of profit from sales of the winning design will go to the Institute for Responsible Technology, which fights GMOs in the United States.
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Local dressing is the new local eating
The wool and cotton for all of the clothes in Rebecca Burgess' closet was grown within 150 miles of her home in the Bay Area. The wool was spun there, too; the dyes were grown there; the sweaters were knitted there. In fact, the clothes were entirely locally sourced from what Burgess calls her local "fibershed" — the network of farmers, millers, weavers, designers, dyers, knitters, and seamstresses that it takes to make clothes.
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Do your clothes contain toxic chemicals?
Chemicals in clothing can break down in water into hormone-disrupting nonylphenol (click the infographic to embiggen). If you want to avoid dumping this crap in the waterways, you have two choices: One, never wash your clothing -- which, on top of being gross, will probably not be that effective, since wastewater discharges from textile plants sluiced nonylphenol out into the waterways before your clothes even hit the store. Or two, opt for clothing from companies that don't use nonylphenol-producing chemicals (called nonylphenol ethoxylates, or NPEs). According to research from Greenpeace, though, that might be tough. Of the 15 brands they tested for NPEs, only Gap had zero positive results.
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Va-va-vintage: Country club kitsch
I skipped the last pair of mom jeans today for a preppy sweater and a linen skirt. Did someone just call me Muffy?