Going Green? Required Reading from Fashion-Incubator

Fashion Incubator is required reading for anyone starting an entrepreneurial textile or clothing company. Kathleen Fasanella is a wealth of experience and information. I want to call attention to two of her posts that address naming and promoting your "eco-friendliness" or sustainable values. Kathleen pulls no punches, and part of her great value is that you get a very educated and clear opinion - she tells her truth and tells it directly, and she's got depth and breadth of experience to back it up, along with a real commitment to sustainability. Bravo. If you've started a company called "eco-mommy creations" and your feelings are easily hurt, brace yourself before reading. But by all means, read! You may disagree, but at least you'll do so having heard a very good argument about some things that rarely get said out loud about sustainable fashion and textiles. 

• Is your strategy patently obvious, pathetic or parasitic? Here's a quote from the pathetic section: "This usually falls in the vein of “I’m a good person, I recycle, I’m not a sweat shop, I give a[n undefined portion of the proceeds] to charity (assuming there’s something to give) and I’m uber cool, so buy my incredibly overpriced tee shirts." With a pitch like this, you haven’t sold anyone on the value of your product. How have you conveyed the value of it? If we want to support a charity, more of the money will go to the charity with direct checks rather than filtering it through you. These days you can’t be heard amid the clamor and din of everyone else who’s also making these claims. And even if this argument were convincing, it’ll take more than your propensity for buying organic fruit (in this particular case) to convince us of your social commitments."
• Naming a product line pt. 69 This post critiques product line names and company names that focus on the green: "Everybody’s putting eco this and green that in their label names. I know that ten years from now, those label names will be very dated. Not that the impetus toward sustainability will be less (who knows) but it’ll just look dumb. Look at it this way, assuming everyone’s on the bandwagon then and sustainability is de rigeur, it’ll be too obvious." Not to mention that there's nothing original about it anymore. Fasanella then takes on women who start businesses that identify themselves through that woman's particular stage or status of motherhood, as if that's going to qualify them as better. She rightly points out that it will alienate as many people as it attracts. 
  
  

Comments

[Patternmaker]

Thanks for the mention, I wouldn't have known of you otherwise and there's some good content here.

Re: my commitments to sustainability. LOL. I try not to flog my credentials because, well, I can't be "reasonable" about it. Working in fashion one becomes cynical of fads and as an eco-activist of nearly 40 years, recent eco interest gives me pause. I'm eco fatigued by the din of competing clamor. [Me, I'm green! No, I'm green! I'm greener than all of you!] Imo, if people were truly committed, they'd worry less about buying their way into sustainability and become vegetarians. This has greater beneficial impact on the planet than going off the grid, buying local, recycling, driving a hybrid and buying all organic combined -and by a wide margin. Like I said, with the raised barre of competing claims, I'm not centrist when it comes to sustainability. :)