More partial to Havaianas than hemp – Green in the new black

Posted by Helen Lee at 6:07 pm October 23rd, 2007 | 0 comments

I read an interesting article on the News.com.au website. It talked about how we’re always on the look out for the next fashion bargain, but in the search for the next bargain find, do we even consider where it came from and how (and by whom) it was made?

The article looks at Green is the New Black, a new book by British style guru Tamsin Blanchard, with a foreword written by flame hair British model, Lily Cole.

The book is aimed at those who are more partial to Havaianas than hemp and who don’t want to spend their spare time knitting purses out of recycled onion bags.

As model Lily Cole puts it in the introduction, we may make an effort to ride bikes and buy organic apples, but rarely consider something as simple as inexpensive socks.

Sure, she goes on to explain, we may love the idea of the $4.99 cotton sock, but the bargain price makes it easy to overlook the fact that the cotton may have been picked by underpaid children in Uzbekistan and sewn together in Bangladesh by workers getting paid 11 cents an hour for an 80-hour week.

Read the article here, or buy the book on Amazon now.

P.S. I loath people who use the phrase, “[insert trend/colour] is the new black”, but the book could be interesting.