Bhalo

We’ve been getting such considered and refreshing responses from all of you over the last two days of #bhalotalk. Thanks for your input and keep it coming! Today’s question refers to progress in ethical and sustainable practices and is often divisive in its responses. Some would argue that a small step in the right direction is the only way to create lasting change. Others feel it’s all or nothing. This sentiment may come from a place of questioning the integrity of labels who spend a great deal of time and money marketing their ethics or their sustainability, rather than applying those funds and time to implementing practices that will actually lessen their social and environmental impact. Let’s use an example we can probably all recognise. This year H&M received the Industry Mover Sustainability Award. In 2014, H&M won a Sustainability Innovations Award for their initiative, ‘Don’t let fashion go to waste’. The company makes efforts toward transparency by publishing sustainability reports, information on water stewardship, chemicals management, suppliers lists and more. This all sounds amazing. It IS amazing… And it’s the truth. But is it the whole truth? Despite all of these positive efforts and actions, H&M still receive a lot of criticism from industry and consumers concerned about the true ethics, and respect for human rights, across their supply chain. According to the Australian Fashion Report (1): • H&M have only directly traced some of their suppliers at input and raw material levels – why not all of them? • On an annual basis, they monitor less than 75% of their suppliers – for a business this large, producing such a mass amount of product, 25% is a huge margin for error and exploitation to occur • While they may seem transparent with their online reports, H&M in fact only partially share their audit reports and corrective action plans – again, why not all of them? • In terms of workers rights, their efforts still leave plenty to be desired. - The brand does not guarantee that workers make a living wage (though they have made a public commitment to rectify this by 2018… so let’s hope they are held accountable to promises made) - Prices paid to suppliers are susceptible to world price fluctuations where many brands will allow a fixed price ensuring consistency for their workers - When child labour is identified in their supply chain and removed, there is minimal ongoing verification that it stays this way - When forced labour is discovered, H&M does not facilitate their workers reintegration into the labour market Christine de Leon, a writer for Ecouterre rightly states that, “H&M is in an interesting position – its very business model is rooted in supply and demand, shareholder interests, and free-market capitalism. Despite its glossy proclamations about corporate social responsibility, the fact remains that H&M is a corporation – one that relies on a system of rapid turnover and low prices” (2) Jasmin Malik Chua opinion is that, “No matter what you think of fast fashion, H&M has at least done its bit to raise sustainability’s profile.” (3) But what do YOU think? Are you a purist? Should it be all or nothing? Does H&M deserve the credit it is receiving when their workers are still being so poorly treated? Or do you think they are innovators? Are they changing the landscape and proving that fast fashion doesn’t have to be ethically or environmentally harmful? Is something better than nothing?

Time and fashion are inextricably linked - when you present a new collection you include the year and season, almost like a date stamp of relevancy and newness. It is inescapable even as a socially and ecologically responsible label – even the word ‘sustainability’ implies duration.

So today’s question is a little more personal to us as a label, as it is something that we struggle with as a ‘slow’ business… Adhering to “The Fashion Calendar”.

Now, most people outside of fashion don’t really think about the calendar beyond waiting for a designer’s new collection – and even then many of us don’t even pay attention to that and will simply buy when we are ready to.

Those who follow and purchase from Bhalo will know that we do one to two collections per year. Sometimes we don’t produce a winter collection, due to a number of factors including the nature of our textiles, the (in)ability to travel overseas frequently and other life commitments.

However after a recent discussion with our producers in Bangladesh it has become clear that one collection per year is not quite enough for them, and falls within one of their peak times. It is not only the number of collections we produce, but the due date of them too. If we order within the ‘normal’ timeframes to release a collection when everyone else does, they get overloaded and can’t make the deadline in time (we never push them – the workshop working hours are 9.30am – 6pm and we adhere to this, so if its not ready, its not ready). This results in several ‘dead spots’ throughout the year for our producers when the orders aren’t so plentiful, and ‘rush hour’ periods where they have too much work.

What we do is unconventional and works for us (meaning the designers), but obviously as a fair trade label we are in the process of seriously rethinking our business model in consideration of what works for our production team too.

As a comparison, most large labels do anywhere from 4 – 18 collections per year, with lead times as short as 10 days from ideation to retail!(1) So it’s fantastic to occasionally read about designers bucking the trend. In this article The Business Of Ethical Fashion written by designer Tara St James of label Study NY she discusses the process of challenging fashion timelines and adapting her business to suit both her, her producers, retailers and customers. She states that her “Anti-[fashion]-Calendar”, intends “to release one capsule collection of 3-4 styles per month EVERY month of the year with each capsule being independent of the others, but cohesive in nature, creating a seamless “collection” at the end of the year”.(2)

Sounds ideal! It was really great to read this, as we have wanted to go against traditional timelines for a long time and the idea that it could work is very exciting. Obviously our labels are quite different (particularly in production method) and this exact concept wouldn’t work for us but it is refreshing to hear of a label doing it their way… and it working!

Anyway we’d love to hear what YOU think, either as someone in the industry, a retailer or a customer - or even as someone interested in sustainability but disengaged from ‘fashion’ - would a more random approach to fashion seasons work for you? Or do you love ‘the calendar’?

1 - Global Fashion Symposium, 2015. Melbourne, Australia: RMIT University

Before we started the label I was used to wearing a lot of synthetic clothes - whether it be stretchy mixes or polyester numbers from op shops. I didn’t wear much woven cotton at all, apart from the occasional tunic for travelling. When we started working with Thanapara Swallows I thought that their exclusive use of woven cotton (available in plain, stripe or check only, due to the type of loom used) was restrictive and limiting to the growth of our business. A lot of the labels we looked up to were doing synthetics with prints - in retrospect not because that was the best option for clothing, but because it was the most available and cost effective method at the time. (Prints also carry very well over online shops and social media - but more on that another day!)

One of the things that scared me about cotton was how creased it could become if not kept properly. As a bit of a former slob and iron-aphobic (a fear I had to overcome very quickly when starting a fashion label!) I just didn’t think anyone would want these seemingly delicate garments that couldn’t be screwed up in a ball for a week and then worn immediately.

We designed this embroidery pattern after taking a photo of a piece of cotton cloth that had been mistreated as described above. We traced over the crease lines and along with our team at Thanapara we immortalised these imperfections (and highlighted our paranoia) by embroidering over them.

Bhalo will be participating alongside other ethical labels in the Clean Cut Designer Showcase at Merceded Benz Fashion Week Australia in April! We are very excited about this show for multiple reasons, but one of them is the actual format in which the garments will be shown.

Without giving too much away, the organisers of the event are planning an new interpretation of the runway, a kind of ‘slowing down’… I think this is exciting, as it sometimes seems as if the industry is constantly travelling at light speed, in both the level of production/consumption, and the way that products are sold and communicated to potential buyers, such as fast paced runways and a reliance on photographs to sell.

Our label relies heavily on social media snippets, online store images and digital lookbooks to sell products. To seel our products we must also sell our story, as Bhalo’s narrative is its main marketing point.(Recently we have started doing this through videos of each product being made). Our products are quite sensory - handwoven and hand embellished, there are small imperfections and texture, both detectable by touch and (close)sight - even the smell of the natural dyes is quite distinct. All this is undetecable from a standard 2D image shared on a blog, or a product rushed quickly down a catwalk. Upon reviewing products that have sold well in the past, we realised that the bigger the graphic or more contrasted the pattern (in our case applique, embroidery and colour panels), the more the ‘image’ is shared and results in better purchases. Smaller details are often lost in translation.

However the possibilities for us to operate an online store from an isolated city like Perth and sell worldwide is one that has kept us alive.  French critic Jean Baudrillard referred to it as an ‘ecstasy of communication’, an explosion of information and ideas dating back to the 1940s and 1950s when the birth of mass electronic media created the communications industry. The possibilities are very exciting, however it is a double edged sword for a label like ours. The reliance on such forms of visual imagery for information may be impoverishing our other senses, and largely be leading to a sense of illiteracy in everyday life when it comes to understanding objects, their origins, their making processes and their value.

Hopefully runway shows like Clean Cut can start to allow designers some more time to communicate our narrative, and to allow potential buyers to examine our products - after all the wearing of a garment is highly sensory, so it makes sense to communicate or sell the product in that way to begin with.

"Gamal al-Gitani's novel Zayni Barakat (1974) profoundly influenced my understanding of the nature of surveillance. Information culture is not a culture of computers but a culture of unfolding. Information culture is a culture of surveillance, whose goal is the entire unfoldment of Experience. This abyssal task can never be completed, for Experience is infinitely enfolded. Nevertheless, surveillance, espionage, and marketing attempt a complete unfolding, and information culture is the result"

Last Season A project by Lernert & Sander: "This spring we made space for the arrival of new collections at Kiki Niesten by reducing last season knitted garments from Fall/Winter ‘13 by Céline, Chloé, Jil Sander and Prada to balls of yarn: symbols of hope and aspiration."

http://www.lernertandsander.com/index.php?/projects/last-season/

Infographics have become really popular in the last several years, not just for their ability to more effectively convey certain types of data, but also because they can look really good. We love the Pie Chart Skirt ($220) for taking this graphic element out of context and creating an abstract pattern out of it - and in such sweet colors, too.

Martí Guixé, I-cakes, Galeria H2O Barcelona, 2000. Pie chart cakes, indicating the relative percentage of each ingredient. Decoration becomes information.

'time fabric' - a textile experiment I had been thinking about for a while, and recently started… When looking over a finished hand-loomed cotton you can see slight gradations in the fabric. This is usually caused by the weaver stopping- to take a break, have a cup of tea or to change the bobbin because it has run out of thread. I noticed a kind of rhythm to these gradations, like a tell-tale sign of the actions of the weaver, and wondered if there was a way to emphasise them as a feature, rather than regarding them as a 'mistake' (as some buyers sadly do!).

The weaver of the ‘time fabric’ shown above was instructed to change the bobbin colour every time she stopped working, even if it was a short period of time. The fabric then develops a stripe pattern, of various size and placement, that shows the stops and starts - the tempo of the weaving.

I wonder if there was a way to express this dimension of time, tempo and rhythm in everyday objects, would our interactions with them be more meaningful? Would knowing these textiles and their making process empower us to make more ethical decisions, by understanding the life of a garment more fully? Or at least increase its perceived value?