Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Vote for Cute Clothes!


You should go here www.flipp.ca and fill in as many email addresses as you can for Osei Duro. I NEVER send out mass emails or mass texts, so this is my one request. They are trying to win $50,000 for marketing and their clothes are not only radical, sustainable, and socially responsible but the ladies that run this company are so nice!!


Check out Osei Duro:
http://www.oseiduro.com/

From their website:

"Maryanne Mathias and Molly Keogh developed Osei-Duro to create socially responsible and sustainable clothing that encourages international/intercultural cooperation. The designers integrate West African textiles with contemporary Western clothing design.

Mathias and Keogh work directly with the West African garment workers who produce the clothing. This allows the designers to pay their employees an equitable wage and observe high quality standards. Equitable wage means the women who make these clothes are able to send their children to school, see a doctor when they need, and have something left over to spend as they choose once ends have been met. Each seamstress is payed by the piece, constructing each garment from start to finish. This means she knows each step of the process and can make finished garments in her own time if she chooses. Unlike most factory systems that protect their designs and fragment the construction process into specialized tasks, Osei-Duro encourages the seamstresses to produce for their own gain outside of the orders they place. The seamstress negotiate prices with Osei-Duro based on their needs, the time the piece takes to complete, and relative to previous work done.

Osei-Duro’s designs use mainly natural (non-petroleum-based) materials such as hand-spun cotton and the garments are often hand-dyed. We seek out fabrics that have grown, spun, woven and printed in West Africa, making the material a completely West African product. The printing/dying is either done by the local print houses, Akosombo Textiles Limited and Ghana Textile Products being the largest and most well known, or artisan dyers who work in small batches and specialize in processes such as tie and dye, block printing, marbling and a sew and dye technique similar to shibori. We also buy handwoven cotton made by traditional weavers, and are excited to start collaborating with a small Ghanaian family business doing hand crochet pieces using light cotton rope commonly used to make fishing nets."

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