stories from my red thread life
No Exit
This hand belongs to a real person who deserves to be treated with respect I’ve already shared with you my outrage about the lax safety standards in garment factories that have led to the deaths of hundreds of workers overseas in the past few years, workers sewing clothing for us and for our children. But our outrage, however deeply felt at the moment of a catastrophe, is clearly not making an impact on the safety of workers, particularly those in Bangladesh, and I just can’t let it go. These are not rare events. The devastating fire that killed more than 100 people in a garment factory in Bangladesh last week was notable only for its scale. Authorities declared that the loss of life would have been dramatically lower if the exits had not been locked from the outside. Why would any company allow its products to be made in a facility that permits workers’ lives to be put at risk? Are we truly willing to sacrifice human life in exchange for low labour costs? What’s stopping us from demanding answers to these questions? Katrina Onstad wrote an excellent article in The Globe and Mail last week on this subject entitled [...]
A Big Day
Nine years ago today, I met my daughter Samantha. Meeting your daughter in an office building in China is a tiny bit different from giving birth. She was 9.5 months old, and not happy to be there. She had just been driven for four hours in the arms of an orphanage worker to meet her new parents, who probably looked to her like space aliens. Her first few minutes in my arms were spent crying and pushing against my chest. Her clothes were soaked with pee from a bursting diaper, and snot was pouring out of her nose. I cried too. I don’t know what I felt more strongly – love or empathy. Sam cried and cried, with a determined persistence that I would soon learn is a hallmark of her personality. I knew that this was a very healthy reaction, and was grateful to see her tears even as I tried to calm them. When Sam finally stopped crying, she became very quiet and looked around her intently to assess the situation. By the following morning she was laughing. Her transformation was stunning and quick. Here’s a photo of her the day after we met, right after we signed [...]
Announcing… The Love Dress
For about a year, I have been working on a special project. You know how sometimes an idea pops into your head, and you wonder “Could I really do that?” This is one of those. I am frequently asked to donate dresses to charities, mostly for silent auction fundraisers. My customers have causes that they care deeply about, and they ask, so I give. It’s easy. But sometimes we want to do meaningful things that are not so easy, that require thought, investment, time and risk. And sometimes a cause or an organization strikes our heart in a different, more persistent way. The Canada Mathare Education Trust felt like that to me. It’s a secular, volunteer-run, registered Canadian charity that provides high school scholarships for children living in the Mathare Valley slum in Nairobi. Mathare is one of the largest and most impoverished slums in Kenya, and most of its 800,000 residents live on less than a dollar a day. Thanks to the opportunities CMETrust provides, kids who would otherwise not have access to a high school education are thriving, and several graduates are now starting university. The students are seizing these opportunities, working hard, and taking on leadership roles [...]
Too much stuff!
Something usual happened to me this week, perhaps even cathartic. I live in a rather chaotic environment of my own creation, with three young children and a home-based business. There are times when my house accommodates not only family and friends, but also hundreds of new garments, or dozens of bolts of fabric waiting to be cut, or dozens of boxes waiting to be packed and shipped. Right now I’m busy preparing for the One of a Kind Show, which starts in a few days. But it’s my seventh year, so I know what needs to be done. The complication this year is that I’m selling my house at the same time. The thing about selling a house that is challenging for people like me, is the fact that houses look much better when they are not cluttered with too much stuff. The five of us have accumulated a LOT of stuff. When I was writing my bio for my website, I described myself (humorously but truthfully) as a fabriholic. I don’t love all fabric of course, but when I find a piece I love, my imagination runs wild. Whatever draws me in, whether colour, pattern, or scale, all beautiful [...]
Much Ado about Colour
Last night my sister came to me with a mission: she’s taking a quilting class and wanted to select nine harmonious fabrics to use in her first quilt. Because I own a vast amount of printed cotton fabric, she expected this task to be easy. It wasn’t! As she pulled out bolt after bolt and ruminated over multiple possible combinations, I started to think about what makes a colour or a print pleasing to one person and ugly to another. I spend a lot of time making decisions about colour and scale and pattern, but it was interesting to watch somebody else engaged in this process. We all know what we like when we see it – something in our brain just clicks. We live surrounded by visual stimuli and are constantly judging what we like and dislike from a multitude of choices. But I wonder how much of this is subjective, a reflection of our personal or cultural associations and biases, and how much is attributable to science. A recent (2010) study at UC Berkeley by a team of psychologists devoted to the study of colour perception and aesthetics, postulated a new theory of colour preference. “Ecological Valance Theory” [...]
More than just a photo shoot
A few weeks ago I did another photo shoot, this time for my Spring/Summer 2012 line. Once again my amazing photographer Lise Varrette worked her magic, this time in her new studio space over a five-hour period with a total of nine children! The children were amazing and the photos are beautiful. As I reflect on these twice-yearly photo shoots I can’t help but feel that in addition to tracking my development as a designer, they’re also tracking the growth of my three daughters, my nieces and nephews, and our beloved friends who have generously acted as my models, some for years. My Caterpillar Dress is a particularly difficult one to photograph well. Because one size fits from about 1-4 years, I like to show it on different ages in the same photo to illustrate its flexibility. But it can be challenging to photograph a 12-month-old, and I don’t know very many right now (all the children in my life are growing too quickly!). Visiting friends with tiny toddler twins fit the bill perfectly. Their older “helper” was the lovely Anika, turning 4 next month, the daughter of other beloved friends. Acting as the senior model with two rowdy toddlers [...]
Stereotyping our children from birth?
Toronto couple Kathy Witterick and David Stocker became international news a few weeks ago when they made public their decision to raise their third child, now four months old, without imposing a specific gender identity, and to keep the child’s sex a secret. The couple explained that they wanted to neutralize the way their child would be treated, and to create an environment in which little Storm could grow freely and make independent decisions. The public response illustrated clearly how strong our feelings are on this subject of gender identity and childrearing. I think about gender stereotyping quite a bit, particularly its philosophical and practical application to the design of children’s clothing. Many parents I know have strong feelings about the way children are gender-directed from birth, through their clothing, toys and entertainment, but the vast majority of us participate in this process. Even if we feel the urge to ban the Barbie movies from our homes and encourage our sons to wear whatever they like, no matter how unusual, most of us take the easier road to mainstream social acceptance. I wanted to share a photo with you of an adorable little boy, a toddler, playing outside on a beautiful [...]
My Amazing Customers #1: Alison Fraser
First in a series of tributes to some of the amazing people I’ve met on my Red Thread journey. Many people are very comfortable with the status quo. Especially when we’re busy raising families, it’s hard to look beyond our everyday responsibilities and embrace broader challenges. But that’s exactly what Alison Fraser chose to do, creating life-changing impact for a group of children and young women in rural Tanzania, a world away from her home in Cambridge, Ontario. The story of Salome, a young mother of two, was moving and inspiring to Alison. Salome is currently completing high school, fully funded by Mom2Mom Africa. A full-time environmental toxicologist and mother of three young daughters, Alison doesn’t have a lot of spare time on her hands. But for the past few years she’s built a project called Mom2Mom Africa (http://www.mom2momafrica.ca/) that’s grown from an annual book and school supplies drive into a community fundraising project that’s been paying for the education of 11 children and 4 young women in Tanzania. Most of the money is raised through an annual event she holds in her backyard! This year’s event was held last weekend, featuring lots of live music and an impressive silent [...]
Do you know how your clothing was made?
This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the worst industrial disaster in New York City’s history. Unable to escape, 146 garment workers died, most of them young immigrant women. That March 25, 1911, their workplace had no fire alarm, many exits were locked from the outside and the factory’s single fire escape collapsed. Dozens of people fell or jumped to their deaths from the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the burning building. It was a tragedy for all New Yorkers, and is still commemorated today. Garment workers then as now were lower status citizens, their conditions ignored until the horror of that fire. After 30,000 New Yorkers marched to remember the victims, among the public outcry came successful calls for greater regulation of industrial workplaces. The fire helped catalyze the birth of the modern labour movement. Many workplaces of the day were dangerous. In the 18 months leading up to the fire, thousands of New York City garment workers had been on strike, demanding fair wages and greater safety, such as adequate fire escapes and unlocked doors. As the protests continued, many factories voluntarily improved working conditions, but not the rabidly anti-union Triangle Waist [...]
Child Labour, redefined
When I was a child, my mother had a thriving small business designing hand-painted silk scarves. When she was preparing for the One of a Kind Show, my sisters and I were all called into service. My favourite job was ironing the finished scarves, for which she paid me ten cents apiece (according to memory, the work was all voluntary). Being flat, the scarves were easy to iron and it was very satisfying seeing them transform from a wrinkled mess to shiny, smooth silk. It was pretty good work for a ten year old. When I started Red Thread my children were too young to help, and as they’ve grown I’ve been reluctant to exploit their childlike industriousness. But they’re proud of this business that occupies their home: they and their friends are, after all, my target demographic, and many of their classmates profess to dreaming about becoming fashion designers. With the Spring One of a Kind Show just one week away, I have many racks of bright new dresses in my house. This past weekend was set aside for tagging, and my youngest daughter Georgia, just turned 6, was raring to go. A good friend came over to help, [...]
What does it take to be a successful Mompreneur?
I have to be honest – I hate the word mompreneur. It takes my identity as a designer and small business owner, which in my mind is separate from my identity as an exhausted mother of three, and squishes them together. I’d rather be known as a good designer/entrepreneur without the need for additional qualifiers. But. The truth is, mothers running businesses do have an awful lot in common. We’re all tired, for starters. We share many of the same conflicts and challenges. And we’re very, very good at learning from each other. A new book was released this week that I can’t wait to read. It’s called Mom Inc. and it was written by two very savvy mompreneurs, Amy Ballon and Danielle Botterell, partners in a successful business. Amy and Danielle have helped mentor me since the birth of Red Thread, and both are very smart and pragmatic. I’m glad they’re finally sharing their wisdom more widely, and I know they’ll help a lot of people get started on this crazy path armed with solid advice and a wealth of knowledge. So what does it take to be a successful mompreneur? I am fortunate to know several, and I [...]
A Peek Inside a Red Thread Photo Shoot
I sewed up a storm last week putting the finishing touches on my Fall 2011 Collection, which is now being shown at various wholesale markets. The most fun part of this whole process, of course, is the photo shoot! I work with a great photographer, Lise Varrette (www.lisevarrette.com), and every shoot we do together is better than the last, more creative and satisfying. Red Thread has been photographed in a variety of locations, including a formal photo studio, on the beach, in the park, even the alley behind my house, next to my neighbour’s 100-year-old garage. Last year we photographed my fall collection in my living room, in a makeshift studio. But this time around was a first for me, a testament to the ability of a great photographer to find beauty anywhere. Spring 2010, at the beach Spring 2009, in the alley next to my neighbour’s garage As you can see, I love to shoot outdoors. But this is not an option in February, at least not in Toronto. Lise and I talked about what we wanted to achieve for this shoot, and decided to do it at my house. But when she showed up with less equipment than [...]