fashion loves people

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Hi. I’m Janette, and this is my blog.

I’m a freelance writer, writing Fashion Loves People in my spare moments of free time. I started it almost two years ago as an outlet for sharing the socially friendly fashion brands I was researching for my own use anyway, and since Day 1, I’ve loved every minute of it. The writing, the research, the news releases, the designers, the feedback, the comments… all I can say is, THANK YOU for reading!

My interest in ethical-fashion-as-we-know-it culminated during 2007, when the broad impact of each of my individual purchases started to occur to me. For any given item, there’s such a long supply chain that goes into its creation, including the input of so many PEOPLE. People we’d probably like if we met them face-to-face. Plus I read and fell in love with Alex Steffen’s intro to the Worldchanging book, plus I was working on projects at work centered around “sustainability” — and what a trendy buzzword that felt like at the time! I will admit that talk of the then-budding “green movement” sometimes irked me…

Because I’ve always “gotten it.” I grew up in Kansas with two sides of big Mennonite families, and when we weren’t saving resources just to be good stewards, we were saving resources to save money. My mom has always boycotted aerosol-anything. My dad has always made purchases sparingly, but of lasting quality and value. My grandmother isn’t a vegetarian but doesn’t eat meat very often because of all the resources raising meat consumes. I could go on with these anecdotes. I credit my family in large part for making me sort of “inherently green.”

I started this blog in the fall of 2007 while working as a writer and account coordinator at Willoughby Design, an incredible brand design studio in Kansas City. I’d studied magazine journalism at the University of Kansas and watched most of my classmates move to NYC to be magazine editors. I got recruited to work at Willoughby, which I did for three happy years, but I eventually found myself doing much more of account services than actual writing… which was what I really wanted to spend my time on. I left that position in the fall of 2008 (in the midst of a recession, what?), and since then have written for a healthy mix of both editorial and commercial outlets, including Storenvy.com (my husband Jon’s web startup), the PopTech blog, an awesome local 86-year-old cosmetics brand, a handful of local magazines, a bit of volunteer nonprofit work, and Fashion Loves People. Working for myself has been the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

With this blog, my main goal is to help us all begin to shift our shopping paradigms — to recognize and understand what goes on “behind the curtain” of the purchases we make. There are so many resources being used, and so many economies being affected, and so many mothers and fathers and sons and daughters playing their parts.

In my shopping, I want to use less resource and more compassion.

And still look really, really good.

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I have never posted here as much as I’ve wanted to, or, as I recently realized, even properly introduced myself! So I’m remedying those two things at once — there’s the introduction, and starting next week, more posts, because I’M GETTING A PARTNER!

Her name is Katie Brown, and in a nutshell, she is an awesomely cool and sweet stylist who has a huge heart for people and the environment. She recently graduated from the Fashion Institute in LA with a degree in merchandise marketing and then moved to KC for love. (Awww.) She specializes in wardrobe styling and helping to bring out everyone’s own personal style, in addition to designing her own stationery line. We’re both super excited to be adding her mad styling skillz to the FLP mix.

As Katie and I bring you more stuff, please always feel free to let us know what you think. Most importantly — what YOU need to become a more educated and conscientious shopper. We want to keep you covered.

(Get it?)

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I also have a long-overdue site redesign finally in the works. Can’t wait!!