Mirroring Suzy Bee Sews - Life So Strange It Should Be Fiction

I read "The End of Fashion" so you don't have to.  If you have it on your to-read you should probably take it off.  I found it mildly interesting as a piece of fashion history, but it was hard to get through.  Agins covers, among other things, Paris as the center of the fashion universe, the story of designer/movie star synergy, and the (temporary) reprieve Marshall Field's bought itself as a strictly high-end merchandiser. I had to google "Hilfiger Vintage" to find this. Writing in 1998 or so (the book was published in 1999), Agins argues that fashion is dead.  Forever.  When you read the book you remember why this would be easy to believe:  this was the height of Tommy Hilfiger Hegemony, as covered in a chapter of the book.  Those hideous oversized color-blocked sweatshirts were all over the damn place.  Less facetiously, there was also the perpetual issue of couture being a huge money-loser, and fashion people making very bad busine...

I finished Overdressed (link goes to Goodreads; the cover photo above is linked to Amazon) over the weekend.  The author explores various angles of our addiction to cheap clothes:  the poor quality of clothing, the enormous waste generated by throwaway items and the (lack of) secondary market for used clothing, the loss of American (and most first world) textile jobs and production capacity, and the pressure on third-world garment-makers to keep worker wages as low as possible.  It was a good complement to Deluxe:  How Luxury Lost its Luster (and actually cites Deluxe).   By the end of the book, the author is a convert to "slow clothing" over fast fashion:  fewer good quality pieces produced by well-paid workers in the U.S.  She even learns to sew.  She thinks if we could all just realize how poorly made fast fashion is, we'd all see the light on good-quality, more expensive clothing (which can end up with a *lower* cost per wear than fast ...

So, I've been feeling a little out of control on fabric buying lately.  I decided that I would not buy any fabric during Lent.  It's not that long, and heaven knows I don't need more fabric, or at least no need would arise in 6 weeks. I blame Cidell for this.  She sent me a tweet from Fabric Mart about it receiving a shipment of Dry Flex knit.  You know I've been looking for good quality knits for months.  They had it in peacock, one of my favorite colors.  I tried my mantra, "There will always be more fabric."  (My other mantra:  "Buying more fabric keeps me from projects I love.")  But in fact, this kind of fabric is not easy to find and definitely not at that price, and Fabric Mart's stock was quite limited. Because it has flat rate shipping, it is just economically foolish to buy only one piece of fabric from Fabric Mart.  Right?  (OK, fine, I know that the best "bargain" is spending no money at all.)  But they were also h...