We’re surrounded by material objects – our brains would go into overload if we acknowledged day in and day out where our stuff comes from – its materials, where and how they were made, the miles they travel and the energy they require before they reach our hands. But the hard cold facts are that our material objects, the energy we use and the food we eat, all require human and materials resources. I’m inspired again and again by Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff, which highlights how our global material supply chain is broken, spinning out of control, and that our resource base is not only finite but caustic to our environment and health. 1/3 of the planet’s resource base is GONE. I know, heavy, right?

Our responsibility as consumers is to pay attention to where our “stuff comes from” how much stuff we’re consuming and buying, and on a positive note, how our purchases have the power to make a difference in people’s lives. Proxy’s Social Media Maven and Blogger Miriam interviewed Laura Collins of Pansy Maiden for the Proxy Blog this past fall. Laura is located down the road from us in Medford, MA. A passionate vegan, Laura designs and sews (yes, she sews every bag in her home studio!) fashionable bags that are made from 100% eco-friendly, vegan fabrics. I’m so jazzed to feature her Lady Day Bag on our site – its made from eco-friendly, and even better recycled fabrics – and is sewn a quick bike ride from the Proxy office. NOW that’s a localized supply chain we can all feel good about. So, the story of this bag, of this stuff, is a great one. Support an independent designer, a local supply chain, with this product with a green footprint. Oh, and the best part – its gorgeous and practical. 

Xo, Heatherjean. 

 
Many thanks to d.aMA for hosting this give away!

Proxy Apparel is an ethical fashion company dedicated to empowering women through fashion. Proxy's mission is to empower and employ women in a sweat-shop free, sustainable world and this mission drives our daily efforts and we are working to infuse it into every aspect of the Proxy brand.

The TransparenC-Tee is made from 100% GOTS certified cotton sourced from Pakistan. The t-shirt is produced by a small family-owned factory in Salley, South Carolina. The tees then travelled to Pawtucket, Rhode Island where they were screen-printed in a Union-Owned shop.

100% Organic 100% Fair Trade. Made in the USA. 

In our efforts to bring you transparency on where and how your apparel is made, this shirt pilots openhup's fair trade receipt TM

Ashley Lucas started a business that brings together a community, supports human rights, and has some fun with fashion. These are three things Proxy can majorly get behind, so we thought it would be fun to hear her thoughts on Boston, her business, and the local fashion scene.

 Proxy: Tell us about Diffuse 5. What is it and why did you start it?

Ashley: The social and political landscape in Boston is such that the Lesbian or Queer community – depending on how you identify – doesn’t have any venues dedicated to them. Women don’t have to go to that bar with the shady sign that doesn’t really say anything with no windows, because most of them feel comfortable enough to go to a straight bar and meet their friends there. All of a sudden Boston has started losing the bars that were dedicated to these women and has started having these one off events, everything from night life dance scene to activist events. And it was very difficult to figure out what was going on when, what was starting, etc.

We decided that we wanted to pull all of the events together and create a place where the community could go and figure out what was going on. We could give non-profits and other organizations that were having events more exposure, so that they had a better chance of succeeding. And I’m a firm believer that competition breeds better things, whether it’s an event or an organization. So, create a little more competition in Boston around that. We started with the events, and people got really interested in what we were doing. I was writing a blog occasionally and then more and more people started asking me if they could contribute content to the site. 

Then we hosted a fashion show called Found: Revealing Queer Fashion. We did that because I realized there were all these cool companies that were creating fashion, or were creating a friendly environment for the community that weren’t getting a lot of exposure. So we paired those companies with our demographic so that they could find each other. 

We’d like to branch out to other cities, that’s the next big step. Right now we’re talking to different developers to see how much it would cost to build the site out to do that.

Proxy: So how long has the site been up?

Ashley: It launched March 2010, so almost two years, so it’s been up for awhile and out numbers are growing and it’s getting much bigger.

Proxy: What cities are you looking at next?

Ashley: There are fifteen cities in the U.S. that have the largest gay and lesbian populations, and the ones that will likely target next will be New York, Washington D.C., and San Francisco.  Los Angeles has two other sites that are similar to ours so we’ll probably steer clear of it for awhile.

It’s interesting because some people see us as this cool, hip, night life event site, and other people see us as this warm, feel-good, community promotion site. It’s interesting when you talk to different people how they view the site, and myself and other team members and the brand.

In terms of team make up there are ten of us at this point. Myself and one other person essentially work anywhere between 30 and 60 hours a week. Although I’ve actually taken a vacation, which is the first in three years, which is pretty incredible. And then we have six writers, one intern who does event management, and another woman who does all of our video work. I feel like at this point I do less work than anyone else, which is not actually true, but it’s definitely a big, full team of individuals. We do everything from news to fashion, which actually people really like.

Proxy: Are there many venues for queer fashion?

Ashley: We’ve actually been considering going in that direction.  I have this major thing for suspenders and bow-ties, I think they need to make a major comeback. And I would never wear them, but I think everyone else should. So I googled “suspenders” today and our blog post – actually one that I wrote – came up on the first page. And then you google things like ‘dapper’ or other words that I would associate with the Lesbian or Queer community and there isn’t a lot of content there. A lot of the sites that generate content around fashion go so niche that I think it’s difficult for them to get any major traffic. So dapperQ is one, but I think that a lot of times they break it down based on identity. Are you super feminine? Are you more of a butch? And then a lot of times by race and ethnicity, so you’ll find these microsites, but nothing big that covers everything.

Proxy: In the interviews I’ve done with fashion bloggers a lot of them have commented that when you look at all of the blog pictures, everyone is wearing the same thing and it’s not that interesting. If Queer fashion were to jump in, it would be a different voice in the monotone of the fashion world. 

Ashley: Yeah, the looks are so incredibly different because there’s this huge gender spectrum so I think the queer community adds so much interesting fashion to Boston, and I wanted to give props to that as well.

Alana Brooks must be doing something right. Not only does she have a successful blog, she’s also hooked a job at a startup so hip that hip is in theie name. Alana is originally from Baltimore, and she came to Boston to study journalism at BU. This lasted until she realized that she wanted a job, so she switched to PR. And now she does social media for HipHost as well as engaging in a bazillion other social media tools. (She keeps touting the merits of StumbleUpon although I have no idea what that is. Maybe for journalistic purposes I should Google it, but I’m in a café that doesn’t have Internet. Also, does Internet really have to be capitalized MSWord? I would Google that, but alas, alack.)

I don’t have any direct quotes from Alana due to a recording malfunction and my photographic memory malfunction, but she’s pretty memorable. So here’s what I’ve got:

1) She used to eat bagels from Espresso Royale Café when she was in college and she hadn’t had one since then, so she was pretty excited when I suggested meeting there to chat.

2) More companies should make clothing for petite people. Although you can’t tell from her well-proportioned style photos, Alana is tiny. “Petite bloggers all wear the same things. Ann Taylor and J. Crew.”

3) Actually, too many bloggers wear the same things. We discussed the brilliance and perils of Modcloth embracing the blogging world. Brilliant from a marketing perspective, perilous in that some bloggers give up their innovative thrift and start wearing Modcloth exclusively.

4) Puppies! They must have come up at some point. Alana lives in the South End: Dog Capital of Boston. Also, sometimes she puts cute pictures of dogs on her blog, which is another good reason to read it.

5) Alana told me I should be a HipHost if I wanted to make extra money on the weekends. You can create any kind of tour on the HipHost website. I realized I value my weekends more than money, mostly because that is the only time I see my boyfriend, but if he lived closer I would definitely consider it. To all of you out there who want some easy extra money, this is way less sketchy than working for a psychic hotline. 

 So check out The Good Girl Gone Blog, and good reading!

Samantha Chu of A Glimpse of Glamour is very outgoing and friendly and full of interesting observations on the world of blogging. After going over the transcript of our interview, I realized that while I had meant to ask her about her blog specifically, we ended up discussing the nature of personal blogs in general, and their limitations. That’s not too surprising a turn for someone who spends a great deal of her free time reading and considering big ideas. So while I did get a few snippets about her personal style, (“My dress is vintage. I watch all of these old movies, and I’m like “Why don’t I live in that time period,” I hate jeans. I HATE them. When I look at myself in jeans, I’m like ‘you look average, get them off.’”) below are her thoughts on the state of fashion blogs in general:

“I want to have a blog, but sometimes it’s hard when you start comparing yourself to everybody else, and what everybody else has. Before, I used to wish that I had all those things the other person had in order to make my life better. But then I started working at Louis Vuitton part-time, so now I work everyday so now I look at other blogs and I’m like “Look at their free time! Look at their coffee! They’re just sitting around with their cat. That’s the kind of life that I want!” So it’s funny now, I’m jealous of people’s free weekends instead of their clothes.”

“Sometimes it’s hard because you put yourself out there and if you don’t get the response you want to. I’ve been reading so many books, I just read the Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth and it’s all about ego, and I’m sure that everyone who writes a blog and puts themselves out there has a bit of ego, how many followers you have, how many comments you have, who is actually reading it? Then you start looking at other people’s blogs and you start thinking I’m never going to attain what these people are attaining, I’m never going to get those free clothes.”

“I read The Beauty Myth, which is about how magazines create this idea of beauty that all women strive to attain. And now I feel like it’s the same in blogs."

"I see the same kind of look everywhere, tight pants and big shirts, and boots, and I go out into the stores and that’s all I see right now, and my body doesn’t look well in those clothes. I hate separates, I like dresses all the time. I don’t look well in pants. And I’m like, just buy the pants, then I’m like, “Oh my god, I’m trying live up to what these bloggers look like.” Everywhere I look it’s long, bedraggled ombre hair. And everybody is holding their coffee and looking relaxed. It’s funny. What is beautiful? Is it just everything you see all the time, everybody wearing the same thing?” 

“With blogs, and pinterest, you can scroll through it and see the same thing over and over again. Everybody wants to be French. Everybody wants to monogram everything, they’re all obsessed with chinoiserie, which bothers me because I’m Chinese – this is just a rant – and everyone wants to be French. It’s always the same type of beauty. Everybody wants to be the same person, everybody wants to be Alexa Chung; everybody wants to be Kate Moss. People like to reblog the same pictures over and over again. How can you have a favorite song when the same five songs are being played on the radio? It’s like that. Where is it going now, what next? Are we just going to be taking pictures of ourselves forever?”

What do you think? Is Samantha right? Do blogs enforce the same kind of monolithic idea of beauty, or is there more diversity? What do you think is the future of personal style blogs?