Slow Jams vol 2
Circular fashion wins, global losses & United Healthcare obviously
Hey everyone,
Nothing stuck in my mind when drafting up this newsletter quite like the news I’ve been reading in the last couple weeks. Some things have leaned towards inspiring, others more damning, and it’s all in the roundup today …so yes, I’ll spend a modest soap box amount of time on that ongoing headline.
Without further ado!
The UK’s leading luxury fashion rental is teaming up with my (now previous:/) roommate’s go-to takeaway app for the speediest slow fashion update yet. HURR x Deliveroo kicked off late last month in Central London, and intends to keep a hefty promise: delivery to your door in as little as 20 minutes. Whaaaaaat. I remember even three years ago, when interning and writing my dissertation on a rival (now shuttered) rental platform, same-day delivery was unimaginable & borderline preposterous! It’s incredible to see how far Victoria Prew and her team have propelled HURR forward.
BoF hosted a collection of leading voices across sustainability, innovation and creative design at their 2024 VOICES event. Founder of tailoring and repair service SOJO, Josephine Phillips, led a talk titled From Disposability to Longevity: Understanding the Value of Repair. TLDR, Phillips notes “Repair isn’t about next quarter’s growth, but next decade’s growth, by building a brand that can truly stand the test of time.”
Miu Miu released a Holiday capsule wardrobe for the fifth edition of their Upcycled category. Initially, this headline felt like an easy one to pass by without a second thought; upon closer look, it appeared the brand was doing more than silo off eco-conscious materials into one teeny category. Starring Emma Corrin as the face of their campaign, vintage dresses are reworked by hand and emblazoned with the Miu Miu logo. According to their campaign on site, the collection is “strictly limited selection of just 80 one-off and numbered designs”, sourced worldwide and dating as early as the 1930s to the 80s. Now THAT’s slow fashion.
On growth in the fashion industry: “We cannot keep going down a path of unchecked growth as traditionally defined and expect to stay within planetary boundaries… it is now a necessity to consider ways to create business value outside of continually increasing the amount of new materials extracted and new products made,” reports Textile Exchange’s senior director of climate impacts in their 2024 Material Markets analysis. Degrowth has been an inconsistent calling cry among consumers and brands alike, though especially from the latter. While the strategies underneath that umbrella term have been adopted — namely rental, resale and repair — the question remains if brands will concede their existing production velocities as well. The report notes social change as a crucial lever in curbing overproduction, so while the onus is not entirely on us laypeople to save the earth we sure do make a good gateway to larger impacts.
This Atmos piece confronts the unique challenges a warming climate poses to disabled communities. The specifics are difficult to estimate, in large part due to a lack of data on extreme weather’s impact on disabled people, though this piece points to research that suggests Americans with disabilities are two to four times more likely to be injured or die during disaster. And it’s not just about living with a disability, but all the socioeconomic pressure or inequities that leave disabled people extremely vulnerable to things like extreme heat. Perhaps we all need to read pieces like this more often, where it trickles down to the granular level of the issue, to better understand how to support people with disabilities.
Ruler of all things eye-catching outerwear Saks Potts is closing shop next spring. Unlike some fellow indie brands of late, its founders didn’t cite poor financial numbers… but it kind of sounds like they just have outgrown their previous taste? “Barbara [Potts] and I started Saks Potts when we were very young — we were 19 and 20 years old and we’ve done this throughout our whole 20s,” says Cathrine Saks. Tell me that doesn’t sound like they’re “all grown up now”! The brand’s DTC sales in its Copenhagen store are up 80 per cent, and e-commerce sales up 50 per cent in the last year. I’m a little dumbfounded if I’m honest. Why would you let a good thing go? The counter argument may be that there’s simply more to life. And that can be a full answer! Time will tell for their next moves.
Camille Charriere lends her sustainable design eye to hosiery with Swedish Stockings in a collaboration that brings this category out of its plastic shadows and into a more circular light. It’s not her first rodeo in the accessories department, and perhaps not her last attempt to draw our attention to the longevity of our socks & intimates drawers. Dubbing tights as “the plastic straws of fashion”, Charriere’s capsule hits all the right spots for winter dressing — simultaneously indulgent and risqué, like only a French Londoner can.
Governments (literally plural/global) are at an all-time level of instability. Just this week, we’ve witnessed:
Assad escape to Russia as rebel forces took over Damascus
South Korea’s president enact martial law — which parliament then sprinted to vote and overturn, and then narrowly missed the opportunity to impeach him
Russia is likely interfering in Romania’s elections
the French parliament backed a vote of no confidence against their PM
Biden pardoned his son after saying he wouldn’t
and a suspended EU bid has spurred nightly demonstrations in Tbilisi.
Not to mention our own impending doom!
said it best: American exceptionalism will not work in the face of a crumbling global order.Finally, group texts across the nation are zeroing in on one elusive assassin… or at least he was when I first wrote this, because now the public is tapping into his Goodreads history. But are we missing the point? Below, excerpts from friends and fellow poli-sci minds, as well as my own take on the matter:
No shade to people using the internet for what it does best, which is making unhinged and unfiltered commentary find its way to a humored audience. It’s funny — it is!! People are clever and the punchlines are in perfect reach. But why does it feel a little synonymous with Ted Bundy being called attractive during his trial??? This man literally said violence is necessary to survive. As soon as I see a “You may not like his methods, but…” I KNOW it’s a wrap!
It could be a seminal moment in American history, peeling back the layers of class warfare that have been lurking underneath every other issue. I am sad to only now be learning about the peaceful protests People’s Action has been running against United Healthcare because of this event that could have potentially botched their civic mission. Conversely, maybe we’re memeing it into oblivion as we speak, and the tensions will simmer still until they burst further down the line.
Activism is in a weird place in the digital age, imo. It can spread and organize efficiently — think BLM, even the free Palestine campus protests last summer — but it can also paralyze. Why does the right mobilize to vote, protest, in some cases kill so quickly? Are we on our damn phones too much to be anything but a bystander? Is it desensitization, or anxiety from an influx of terror anytime we open our phones, or constant distractions and genuine brain rot?
The bigger issue at hand is one of a socioeconomic level. The tensions between the wealthy and the disenfranchised public that exist under their thumbs are snapping, and while our usual tools of organized demonstrations still exist, chaos is entering the arena and it’s telling how unprepared or unbothered people are by it.
I leave you with what felt like a timely takeaway from Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things To Me I read on the train this morning:
The shell of a home is a prison of sorts, as much as a protection, a casing of familiarity and continuity that can vanish outside. Walking the streets can be a form of social engagement, even of political action when we walk in concert, as we do in uprisings, demonstrations and revolutions, but it can also be a means of inducing reverie, subjectivity, and imagination, a sort of dust between the prompts and interrupts of the outer world and the flow of images and desires within.
Sontag wrote about how to look past our numbing reactions to loss and atrocity, as did Solnit with a lens for the email age, to engage and organize, empathize and support. I suggest it couldn’t be more true from where we stand now, when our shell is both home and wherever we are with our phones. So let us continue to bear witness to what we can’t always stomach or understand. With that, I’ll put my phone down, get out of the house and walk for some perspective. I hope to see you out there.
Head on a swivel, folks!
I’m looking to write a piece about the books that changed your worldview or made you take new actions in your life. My original intention is somewhere between the sociopolitical and slow living, but whatever transformational text that speaks to you is worth hearing about. If there’s something you’d like to share, please DM or email me at ryannstutz@gmail.com!
i thoroughly enjoyed this ! TY for writing it