Category: Sustainable Fashion

While reading the process of EF’s steps toward sustainability, I was impressed by the company’s embracement of companies such as BlueSign Technologies and Oeko-Tex Standard 100 Certification. The BlueSign Technologies company “provides safe products, safely produced for the human and the environment,” while the Oeko-Tex certification ensures that the safety of clothes has been checked with testing to ensure safe pH levels. The fact that EF willingly sought these certifications shows that the company actually cares and transparency and sustainability in the production of their clothing. It seems that often in the current fashion industry, many companies claim to have a sustainability focus, however they rarely seek these sustainability certifications and partnerships, bringing up the question of their true commitment to true sustainability. 

The Green Eileen program by the EF company supported women and girls by donating the profits from recycling clothes to programs for these women. This policy, along with the company’s focus on environmental sustainability through saving of water, forest conservation, carbon offsetting, etc, shows that the company put sustainability and ethics above mere profit. These values are something I appreciate in a clothing company, and it seems to me that the EF business model can, and should, be a model for the future of sustainable fashion. 

Team: Ji Hwan Shin and Salomon Ruiz

Zine: zine2

Video:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B_kmb_jXKCiJI7ygCZWd2NHCJ3nIDsL1/view?usp=sharing

Ethnographic research of the Shanghai Notions Market and the South Bund Fabric Market 

For our research we focused on both consumption and the types of materials being sold at both the Notions and the South Bund Fabric Market. Before going to the markets, we prepared some questions for both the customers and the shop keepers, such as “How did you find about this market?”, “Why are you buying X material?”, “Is it for personal use?”, “In general, what kind of costumers come to your shop?”, etc. 

Once we arrived to the Notions Market, we noticed there were not many people at that time, so it was a bit difficult to find customers we could interview.  We started by interviewing and recording some of the shop owners. Eric used his Chinese skills in order to communicate with them as they did not speak English. Some of them agreed to participate in our research, but some of them did not want to answers our questions. Regarding the pictures, most of them agreed that we photograph their merchandise, although a policeman near the entrance told us we could not take pictures. We made about 6 interviews in this market and took many pictures. Here are some of the pictures 

At the South Bund Market, we noticed there were many foreigners shopping and most of the shop keepers were trying to sell us their products or order a tailored attired. Also, most of them knew some English as this is a popular place among expats and foreign tourists. We interviewed both local and foreign customers as well as some shop keepers. The prices were a bit high but bargaining can be done to lower the price. This market was bigger and busier. Different types of fabrics are sold and used for the tailored clothes. Here are some pictures of the market 

After our field trip, we had a workshop during the class in order to have an outline of our research narrative and some conclusions. We arrived to the conclusion  that the notions market is more targeted to local and artists, while the South Bund fabric market focuses on foreigners and locals looking more often for a tailor-made attire, such as a suit or dress. Another thing we assume is that the first market has a business to business and business to costumers models as they outsource to other companies and also sell to regular consumers. The second market is mostly based on the business to costumer model, as there is a strong relation and consumption from direct costumers. Last, we listed the types of materials we found in each market, as you can see in the pictures below

  

For the zine, we used Indesign. We organized the zine in two parts, one for each market. For the front cover we chose a picture of a woman working on a garment as it relates to our research topic. For each market we chose pictures showing or related to the interviews we made during the field trip and some about the materials.  We added descriptions about the pictures and also summed up our conclusions about each market. We played around with the positions of the pictures to make it more interesting and less linear. At the beginning we planned to print it in size A5 but we had some issues with the printers so we ended up using A4. 

Our video highlights the types of labor involved in each market and how this affects the consumption habits of consumers. We made the video using iMovie. We asked around different store vendors and customers about their experiences. We included these interviews in the video and put some subtitles for the conversations in chinese. Upon further observation, we concluded that the notions market tends to draw a more local and artistic pool of customers. Their business to business and business to customers models make the area suitable for direct purchase from both consumers and businesses. Whereas in the fabric market, foreigners are keen to shop here due to recommendations from their coworkers or sites like Trip Advisor. They believe that the quality of products and tailoring services are worth the premium pricing. There still lies the questions like why they import fabrics and whether outsourcing business to business or via the web is more common due to its heavy business to consumer model. Many of these are left unanswered because of confidentiality kept by shopkeepers and because of the short time of this research.

Project Title: sustained 

PDF LINK: https://drive.google.com/open?id=12KgmXU6nXvT63-dNm5GaSX1LZPybZt6-

VIDEO LINK: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_HPgs-iVclIup64uWwMM2_HTNKSAXErf

For our project, We documented our ethnographic research at Shanghai’s Embellishment Market and South Bund Market. For our roles, Jennifer focused on photography and the zine layout, while I focused on videography and graphic design for the zine. For our research focus, we chose the topic of customer-vendor interactions, and how there was a strong contrast between the two markets. 

When collecting information for our research, we conducted several interviews with store-vendors in order to gain insight on how they conducted business. However, the majority of the vendors turned us down, limiting us on the variety of information we could collect. This problem persisted throughout both markets and was one of the biggest challenges we faced in the field research. However, we were able to interview several willing vendors, which we included within our zine. 

Regarding the zine and video, we gathered all of the footage and photographs that we both captured and inserted them in both mediums. We chose the title of zine as “sustained”, relating to the ideas of sustainability and how it relates to the two fabric markets we observed. When creating the zine, we used Adobe InDesign, which allowed us to easily plan out the different pages and layouts. Although we ran into several issues with the software and printing, the overall process was smooth and easy to manage. 

For the video, we used i-Movie to edit and compile all of our footage and photography taken at the two markets. This was a relatively easy process as we just had to rearrange the files and voice record a narration discussing the different aspects of our research project. 

Here are some of our plans and early designs from our brainstorming stage: