If you’re a follower of ethical fashion, social shopping or even social media in general, chances are you’ve heard of The IOU Project by now.

Launched last April, the brand is doing truly revolutionary things in the production and distribution of its garments.

In production, all items have a one-of-a-kind nature, with the India fabric weavers and European craftspeople shared on the website and traceable through a unique code associated with each item…

And for distribution, they rely on shoppers like you and me to create digital trunk shows and share in the profits when an item we’ve selected is sold (whether we know the buyer or not).

It’s an incredibly community-focused model that I’d love to see copied by bigger brands!

If I were to put together a trunk show of my own, I’d include the incredibly versatile madras scarf ($39),

a handful of button-downs ($75-$79) and reversible blazers ($175),

and definitely the espadrille wedge ($65).

Great prices for such an innovative concept brand, don’t you think? What do you think of IOU?

On sale for $20 each, with free shipping and free returns! Fantastic price for some beautiful scarves. Check out these great skirts, too, all sewn by hand from Pendleton wool fabric. The Casa scarf is my pick.

Via Modish

A couple weeks ago I published my latest piece on for-benefit companies at Commerce with a Conscience, With Benefits: Nau. For it, I got to learn a lot about the labor landscape from talking with Nau‘s product and textile guru:

I get a little bit giddy every time I talk to someone like Jamie Bainbridge, Nau’s director of product and textile development. I find myself trying to gather as many smart-shopping takeaways as possible from her vast amounts of garment industry knowledge.

Interestingly enough, Jamie was surprisingly pessimistic about the current state of labor certifications, and the auditing processes that qualify them. Crazy, right? (Though, don’t worry, she did affirm the exciting things we’ve heard before about Nau’s textile developments — read more on that at CWAC.)

“The business of auditing factories has become controversial,” she told me. Now that Western consumers and corporations have become more conscientious of how their goods are made, the downside is that factory auditing has become a business unto itself, costing factories lots of money and lots of time. “A lot of Asian factories will have 50 to 100 audits per year, which takes over their lives,” she said.

Jamie shared lots of “hints” about labor practices in the garment industry, so for those of you paying attention like I am, I thought I’d share the juiciest bits.

• “By and large, the good factories are doing everything they can. It’s important to the Western customer, so it’s important to their survival to do good.”
• So what warrants a “good” factory? Jamie said that labor issues aren’t in direct correlation with a product’s price point — “Walmart could do it right if they tried,” she said. (!) The direct correlation for good labor practices is in regards to the brand’s general conscientiousness.

• Nike, Columbia, GAP, Marks & Spencer — these are brands that Nau trusts for vetting the “good factories.” Nau is small enough that it simply can’t afford to audit every factory it works with on its own, so working with factories that are considered up-to-compliance by brands like these are taken as a solid affirmation. (I take that as a solid stamp of approval for my own shopping!)
• About auditing: ”The American consumer would like to think it solves problems, but it has been shown that it doesn’t.” So what does solve labor problems? We don’t know yet (“haven’t quantified it,” Jamie said), but groups like the Outdoor Industry Association are looking at systemic problems within the industry. Their labor solutions will be incorporated into the up-and-coming Eco Index, a standard that will regulate the labeling of green garments (and that Jamie is involved with), sometime next year.
• What else can Nau do, especially at its relatively-small size? “I can make the best choice I can make to work in the best factories I can work in. That’s the only thing I can do to move the lever,” Jamie said.
• And check this out about the Los Angeles garment industry! “The LA manufacturing scene is getting back on its feet,” so Jamie just took a trip there to check it out. “The sad truth is that I have less control in LA than I would in Asia, with a factory I’ve worked with for years,” she said. She mentioned American Apparel and its required layoff of 1,800 undocumented workers last fall. “They were undocumented; who would they complain to (if they needed to)?” she said. “It’s never what it seems.”

Très intéressant.

Any expertise (or even just a strong opinion) on the matter from any of you?

I will keep the conversation going, and I will let you know what I learn. :)

Although Evil Eye Vintage still has some other nice stuff for sale online. I’ve had some amazing vintage finds recently, and I’ll be going out for more this Saturday. Happy weekend! :)

Out of the 200+ designers camped out at Palmer Events Center for Austin’s first-ever Renegade Craft Fair, these seven grabbed my attention for their amazing designs and inspiring backstories. Big thanks to Lilian Asterfield Upcycled Vintage Neckties, Ryan Berkley Illustration, Leah Duncan Illustration, Design & Textiles, Jenny N. Design Handmade Leather Bags, Letterpress Delicacies, Nous Savons Reconstructed Jewelry & Clothing, Scarlett Garnet Handcrafted Jewelry, Minor Mishap Marching Band and everyone at Renegade Craft Fair!

There are many artists I wasn’t able to get on video (or whose video sadly didn’t turn out), but I’ll be sure to tell you more about them soon.

Anytime you get the chance to go to a Renegade event, do it!

Though I wasn’t able to be at Thursday night’s High Voltage student fashion show in person, I was able to watch it via Fashionably Austin’s webcast. The designs and overall show production looked extremely impressive, and I read in advance that the 32 students’ 128 looks would place an emphasis on “eco-friendly fabric and technology-smart garments.”

In the videos I’ve watched I haven’t heard much about the eco qualities of the garments, but it’s exciting to hear that fashion education programs really are grooming designers to consider the impact that their decisions will have on people and the environment, and I hope to learn more about those local programs soon.

On the topic of socially responsible fashion education, I can’t help but mention my friends at Social Alterations, who work really hard to provide open-source curricula for fashion design students and educators. Even as a consumer, anytime you’re looking for in-depth information about eco-friendly textiles or labor issues or more, be sure to check what SocialAlterations.com has to say.

Images by Rachel, via Diya. (View more here.) At top: Any handmade suiting amazes me! At bottom: Student designer Liz Wong designed the dress on the right, featuring a textile she designed and had printed on an organic cotton knit.

Hold the presses! Bamboo rayons aren’t a green fabric?

Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission officially started its campaign to stop well-meaning retailers from misleading consumers about bamboo’s perceived eco-friendly qualities. From the FTC consumer alert:

Bamboo stands out for its ability to grow quickly with little or no need for pesticides, and it is used in a variety of products, from flooring to furniture. But when it comes to soft bamboo textiles, like shirts or sheets, there’s a catch: they’re actually rayon.

… They are made using toxic chemicals in a process that releases pollutants into the air. Extracting bamboo fibers is expensive and time-consuming, and textiles made just from bamboo fiber don’t feel silky smooth.

… Even when bamboo is the “plant source” used to create rayon, no traits of the original plant are left in the finished product.

The FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection director told Eco Textile News, “Rayon is rayon, even if bamboo has been used [as a source of raw material] somewhere along the line in the manufacturing process.”

According to that article, the FTC says that the soft fibers we’ve come to know as bamboo-derived, like modal and lyocell, “can really just be considered man-made products, on par with traditional rayon.” Bamboo can be made into fabric in a more direct way, but when it is, it is more like a rough linen.

The FTC sent out letters to 78 retailers warning them to stop labeling various rayons as bamboo, and that they would be breaking the law and subject to $16,000 fines if they didn’t comply.

It was last summer that I first heard someone question the eco factor of bamboo — my friend Kelly LaPlante of Organic Interior Design called it one of the biggest green misconceptions out there, citing the clear-cutting of bamboo forests and thus the ecosystems within them. This Treehugger article from 2005 reported that existing trees and vegetation were being cleared for the growing of bamboo, and that it was becoming a monoculture (meaning a lack of crop rotation, which depletes soil).

Mary Hanlon at Social Alterations has put together piles of fabulous information on sustainable textiles in the site’s Fibre Analysis, published last fall, which includes this break-down on bamboo:

Via Social Alterations.

Image from Flickr user kimicon