For those interested in the industry side of the clothing we wear, this article by J.B Mackinnon in The New Yorker will surely peak your interest.
Earlier this month, a peculiar vehicle appeared on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn: a biodiesel-fuelled, reclaimed-wood camper that could have been a food truck selling vegan “ish” and chips. But instead of a meal, the truck was made to sell a message on behalf of Patagonia, the outdoor-clothing company.
The camper, dubbed Delia, was on a six-week cross-country road trip, repairing outdoor gear and selling used Patagonia products along the way. The amount of fixing that went on was humble in scale: ninety-three garments in New York City and about twenty-one hundred nationwide. The tour, which ended May 12th in Boston, is better thought of as the latest embodiment of the company’s ongoing campaign to encourage a national conversation about the threat posed to the planet by a global economy that depends on relentless growth and consumerism.
That conversation—despite being spurred, in recent years, by such figures as the author-activists Bill McKibben (a former staff writer) and Naomi Klein; the economists Robert Costanza, Tim Jackson, and Peter Victor; and the participants in a thinly spread “degrowth” movement—has so far failed to reach the volume even of mainstream Internet buzz. Yet anti-consumerism is clearly helping to build the Patagonia brand. Indeed, the company is seeing double-digit annual growth.
For the full article, please visit The New Yorker website here.
