Tag Archives: Jacques Peretti

Sew 199 – Coffee dyed crochet

Dyeing with coffee groundsWe humans are autonomous, we make our own decisions, or so we think. Watch this documentary The Men Who Made Us Spend to learn how our ‘free choice’ is easily manipulated so a few makes lots of money while our environment is junked with unnecessary resource use and waste.

Investigative journalist Jacques Peretti explains how planned obsolescence, the organised creation of dissatisfaction and computer-aided design have cultivated competitive consumerism throughout capitalist society.

The documentary includes an economist saying change during the past two decades has seen the average American’s clothing consumption double from 34 pieces of apparel per year to 67 – equating to a brand new item of clothing coming into their wardrobe every 5.4 days. Once the garments are no longer ‘socially valuable’ they either go into the waste stream or the global apparel trade.  Continue reading →

Sew 158 – Stretch the imagination

upcycled tights to scarf and top to skirtEvery day we eat and we dress. We know fresh, varied, nutritious meals enable us to survive and thrive as human beings but the recent series The Men Who Made Us Fat unmasked the shocking truth about our consumption habits. We are over fed while under nourished. This British documentary by Jacques Peretti exposes how corporations devise tactics to sell us more and more unhealthy addictive processed food. Two-thirds of us are overweight and at risk of chronic diseases. This downward spiral of socially irresponsible businesses exploiting human weaknesses and addictions for commercial gain is disturbing. 

In the same way our food intake is manipulated by commercial interests, our clothing wants are too. We allow ourselves to be victims of fashion trends, constantly feeling the need to have the latest greatest so we keep up with the Jones and look sharp. Yet we often feel dissatisfied and need to shop for more.

The extent of clothing waste in the name of fashion is astounding, and my Sew it Again project is a simple effort to demonstrate what we can do as individuals to reuse existing natural fibre clothing. Used clothing is not waste – it is resource that can be harvested and reused in imaginative and creative ways when you have the skills and allow time and space to do so. Continue reading →