Swap-o-rama-rama: Making A Difference

“There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness.” Gandhi

In honor of Earth Day 2008, Greenloop begged the question of eco fashion: Are we making a difference? This series continues with this response from Wendy Tremayne, creator of Swap-O-Rama-Rama(who we featured in an earlier article on In The Loop dedicated to greening your closet). Swap-o-rama-rama is a traveling clothing swap and do-it-yourself workshop in which various communities explore creative reuse through by turning their old used clothing into fabulous new creations. Wendy is of course a champion of DIY culture and these are excerpts from the insightful thoughts she wanted to share for Earth Day 2008…

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..Less than a hundred years ago things were quite different. What people owned is what they created or what someone they knew created for them. Imbued with the stories of our lives our material goods embodied our creativity and spoke of our community. Before the industrial revolution objects were not likely be tossed to the trash like the heaps of plastic that line our streets and overload landfills today. These objects were made of sacred stuff, the energy and intention of people. You could say that one difference between 100 years ago and today is that 100 years ago we were all makers, that is we made the objects that filled the landscape of our material existence. In less than 100 years we’ve lost sight of the discovery that the making of things is not an activity to be avoided in order to attain leisure, but rather a playful and leisurely endeavor unto itself. Naturally when we are makers we are part of communities of people connected through the history of ideas and even the natural world from which all of our materials arise. No maker can exist on their own.

Knowledge, teaching and the sharing and collectivizing of ideas are inherent in the creative process. The maker learns that every craft and skill tells a story that involves the evolution of an idea that leads to this moment in time. Time collapses and we sit face to face with our brothers and sisters of the past. If we look back far enough we see our materials as they come from the planet in the form of raw material. From here a maker can see that we can never really take credit for the creation of anything as we are never independent of this history or the earth - the ultimate and only real maker…

…Today we sit upon a fantastic resource, the greatest surplus the world has ever seen. In this surplus exists an opportunity to improve the care of the planet and the soul of the individual. Our surplus can be seen as materials to create the new at little cost, without consuming raw materials.

Of course surplus is temporary, perhaps enough to bide us time to relearn how to live in harmony with the earth and each other. But for a time surplus is what is here, and it gives us a starting point, training wheels. No real change can occur if industry continues to perpetuate a need for new regardless of surplus, a polluted planet and destruction to people who share the earth with us. We must face the whole monster, the corporations as well as the governments that support them. Today they are closer than cousins; they are one in the same.

Like all magnificent things the journey begins with a leap of faith, arms in the air, falling back while questioning if there is a net to catch you. This is the task of our time, to scream with full lungs we are unbounded, not limited and mechanistic. We are creators.

Wendy closes her response with this beautiful quote from Javad Nurbakhsh, “The merchant of Love’s Bazaar is none other than the customer himself. Where then is the profit in trying to buy and sell?”

Check out Wendy in a great interview on RyanIsHungry.com