Pocket Book 17th July

Ooops! Missed a week last week so this is a catch up with 2 weeks worth of interesting bits and pieces. This week we look at what's been going on...

To Mend

On Wednesday evening, I snuck away from our Dressmaking Class which was expertly run in my absence by Gillian, and took part in a Sashiko Workshop at Finisterre in Leeds. Known for their sustainable stance on clothing, it was great to learn from their London mending guru Ruth Timms. It was great to meet like minded people interested in keeping clothing in use for longer and hopefully they will run more workshops later in the year.

To Fashion

Fast fashion faces a major shakeup this week as European lawmakers passed a landmark ban on burning or destroying unsold clothing to curb textile waste, directly targeting the massive textile waste problem generated by the fast fashion industry. France are also proposing a crackdown on ultra-fast fashion with a proposed law including steep fines reaching up to €20 per garment to fight ultra-fast fashion.

To Stitch

If you would like to read a bit more about mending, reasons for keeping clothing going for longer, this article from the website Reasons To Be Cheerful is well worth a quick read. Called Stitch It, Don’t Ditch It: Resisting Fast Fashion Through Visible Mending, it tells how stitchers around the world are repairing their clothes with pride, turning a once-hidden process into a bold fashion statement.

To Win

Finally, we won the Innovation Award at the Bradford Business Awards dinner last week - one of the reasons I was absent. This was an absolute delight to receive as it was being recognised by the organisations we work with regularly and who know of our work in developing software for clothing manufacture. If you would like to know more, please click HERE.

We hope you have enjoyed reading the Pocket Book this week and please let us know if you have any snippets, recommendations or events that think would be good to share. Have a good weekend, Charlotte