New at Birch- Fused Glass Jewelry

Kathleen Davis is a local Minneapolis artist who makes stunning designs out of fused glass and incorporates them into pendants and earrings. We are pleased to feature some of her hand crafted creations at Birch.

Kathleen makes her unique, artful pendants and earrings out of translucent and clear glass in various colors and shades. Some of the glass is dichroic adding a shimmery quality to those pieces.

Kathleen fuses the various colors and layers of glass together and creates attractive shapes for her pendants and earrings, resulting in jewelry that really pops with style.

Enjoy the beauty of fused glass jewelry. It will be a perfect compliment to your fall wardrobe.

--Your friends at Birch

Mehera Shaw- Fair Trade Feminine Fashion

I attended a fashion show put on by Mehera Shaw at Ten Thousand Villages in St. Paul and was impressed by the beauty, quality and style of the collection presented.

Mehera Shaw was founded by Mark and Shari Keller in 1999. Shari designs and produces fair trade, natural fiber clothing in vibrant and feminine styles. The apparel features vintage, nouveau classic and Asian-inspired designs.

Mehera Shaw uses small-scale, traditional methods of production and works extensively with cottage industry artisan groups in the Jaipur region of North India. The company uses hand block printing, embroidery and hand-looming. All garments are designed and stitched in-house.

Shari Keller notes:

Our business is not only about beautiful fashion, it is about relationships: relationships with people and with the earth. We have relationships with the pattern masters, stitchers, quilters and hand block printers.

Whenever possible, Mehera Shaw uses organic cotton in its collection. When organic cotton is not available, material is selected that has not been chemically treated after looming. Cotton fabrics include voile, corduroy, velvet, and silk blend. Eco-friendly azo free dyes or vegetable dyes are used to color the collection.

Mehera Shaw is a member of the Fair Trade Federation. The company guarantees and pays a fair living wage to employees. All employees have 100% health/medical coverage, including all household members.

Visit the Mehera Shaw Store in Minneapolis if you are in the area. I think you will be impressed with the fine detail work including pin tucking, pleating and crinkling, and with the vibrant colors and attractive designs of the pieces. We particularly love the tunic pieces and leggings for a current look.

Thank you to Shari Keller for providing information for this post and the photograph from the Mehera Shaw collection.

--Your friends at Birch

Simple Style – Six Items or Less

We’re back from our summer hiatus and have another interesting wardrobe thinning challenge to tell you about. It begins in September so you have plenty of time to prepare for this experiment in simple living if you decide to take the challenge.

Can you choose just six items from your wardrobe and wear only those pieces for an entire month? That is what the Six Items or Less challenge asks you to do. The tag line of the Six Items or Less project is: a global experiment examining the power of what we don’t wear.

The first group of about 250 people from around the world completed the month long challenge in July. Now the project is looking for new recruits to take the wardrobe slimming plunge for the month of September.

Here are the details. Each participant agrees to wear a maximum of six items from her or his wardrobe for one month. There are (thankfully) exceptions that do not count towards your pick of six garments. They are:

undergarments, swim wear, work-out clothes, work uniforms, outer jackets (rain slicker, outdoor jacket), shoes and accessories. You can get multiples of the same item for laundry purposes, but different colors count as separate items.

Makes sense but is it doable? I’m going to find out by making the month of September a six item month for me. What an easy way to simplify life for 30 days.

The founders say they have no set philosophy behind their wardrobe challenge but I can think of at least a few reasons to take this on.

One good reason is that having only six items to choose from will make my daily dressing decisions easy thereby freeing up time, energy and creativity for other more satisfying tasks. Another reason, (the flip side of the first reason in some ways) is that wearing only six items may enhance my wardrobe creativity because if I challenge myself to use accessories, jewelry and shoes in ways to make six items into a unique look for each day of the month. And a third reason to give this challenge a try is that it may be a fun way to tame that big old American urge to consume that seems to be wired into many of us.

If one or more of these reasons resonates with you, give the wardrobe diet a try in September. You can learn more about how one participant met the challenge during July here.

--Your friends at Birch

Simple Style- Perfect Fit With MyShape

One important key to creating a simplified wardrobe is to make sure everything in it fits you well. An ill fitting garment is sure to stay in the back of the closet and to make you squirm a bit if you do end up wearing it. And a simple style wardrobe has no room for a piece that is not worn regularly (except of course special occasion wear). But finding well fitting clothes can be a frustrating experience.

MyShape is a website store that helps you find clothes that fit your body perfectly and meet your style preferences. This is how it works. To create your own personal store you take detailed body measurements and answer questions about what types of things you like to wear. Then voila! The site creates your own “personal shop” full of clothing choices that they say will fit you beautifully and meet your style requirements.

The process of answering the questions and taking the measurements to set up a “shop” took me about a half hour. Once you have completed the survey you are provided several web pages of garments that have been selected to fit you properly and to match your style preferences. One limitation is that the site does not take into consideration your color preferences when choosing garments for you to consider. They may add that refinement in the future.

The MyShape web store carries over 200 designers some of which use organic and sustainable fabrics such as Blue Canoe, Jonano and Eileen Fisher. The wide selection of designers helps to keep your “shop” well stocked.

In addition to providing you with personal shopping options, MyShape also puts you into one of seven body shape categories based upon the information you provide. The site provides general tips and ideas for dressing options, cuts and styles that look good on your body type.

MyShape could be a useful tool in creating a simplified wardrobe because it does some of the heavy lifting for you. Its purpose is to find styles that flatter and sizes that fit you. Since fit and attractiveness are two keys to building a simple style wardrobe, you may want to make use of this resource.

--Your friends at Birch

Simple Style- Summer Light Challenge

Here is a terrific summer challenge for you. Pare your wardrobe to 10 pieces to wear for the entire summer. That is the essence of Green by Design’s Summer Light Challenge that starts today- the first day of summer. What a great exercise in simplifying your style and in making the summer carefree and easy.

Green by Design’s Facebook page gives you some tips on how to make the challenge work if you even if you must “dress up” for work each day. The rules allow you to use unlimited accessories and they state that work out clothes do not count toward your 10 pieces. Sounds quite sensible and doable to me. And if you’re not into rules, make up your own version of a pared down wardrobe and try it for the summer or a month or a week. Take the challenge and open up more time to savor the sweetness of summer.

--Your friends at Birch

Alchemy Goods

We’ve added some Alchemy Goods bags to our web store. When we carried Alchemy’s products in our Minneapolis store, they were customer favorites. In addition to bringing back the always popular Haversack and Messenger Bag, we’re introducing some new items such as the East Lake Laptop Sleeve and the uber cool Magnolia Handbag.

Alchemy bags are designed and crafted in Seattle out of recycled/upcycled inner tubes and seat belts. The company denotes the percentage by weight of recycled/upcycled material contained in each of their products by putting a tiny, nicely designed number in the corner of the logo. It is a perfect reminder of what a great, easy on the earth bag you have decided to carry around town.

If you are thinking that an inner tube bag would not be jazzy enough for you then think again. Alchemy embellishes their bags with colorful piping and lining that gives you just the right amount of pop. Take a look at what Alchemy has to offer.

--Your friends at Birch

Visualizing a Slow Fashion Future

What will fashion look like in 2025? That is a question Forum for the Future decided to research. The answer they came up with is described in the report: Fashion Futures 2025: Global Scenarios for a Sustainable Fashion Industry. While the report describes four different possible scenarios for the future of fashion, the one we honed in on and believe is the most likely picture is one in which slow fashion precepts have taken hold of mass consciousness.

In the “Slow is Beautiful” world the authors describe the fashion scene as “über sustainable and über cool… most consumers are prepared to pay more for a smaller number of high-quality sustainable clothing items.” This vision of the future brings clothing that is durable and worn longer. When we are done with a garment we take it back to where we bought it for the fabric to be remanufactured into something else making apparel truly cradle to cradle with no waste.

The report even envisions government campaigns to encourage consumers to “wash less; wash cold”. What a fresh concept to have government propaganda to prolong the life of garments and reduce needless energy consumption by washing clothes only when truly dirty and then with cold water. In our society of hyper cleanliness, driven by corporate propaganda, some common sense messaging about apparel care could save a lot of human and fossil fuel energy.

Imagining a Slow Fashion future is the first step to making it a reality. Once we decide to reframe the concept of “fashion” to encompass appreciation of craftsmanship, longevity and classic style we are on our way to a place where consumers buy more intentionally and with an eye to keeping and wearing well what they purchase. Bring on the slow fashion future.

--Your friends at Birch

It’s Time to Start Line Drying

The weather is fine, the days are long and you just want to be outside. That makes it the perfect time to start drying your clothes on an outdoor clothes line. You get some exercise and time to be in the fresh air and sunshine and your clothes get a deluxe drying treatment. They smell better and fresher and will last longer if not subjected to the rough and tumble action of the dryer.

A large percentage of the environmental impact of wearing clothes comes from laundering if you use hot water to wash and a clothes dryer to dry your garments. Plus, mechanically drying your laundry costs in the neighborhood of $70 per year.

If you are concerned that line drying your clothes will leave them stiff or bunchy or otherwise unpleasant to wear, check out these line drying tips. And remember with line drying you never get that unpleasant surprise of taking something out of the dryer that should never have been put in and finding the garment shrunk and unwearable.
So once you’ve simplified your wardrobe a bit with some of our slow fashion tips, why not take things one step further and hang your clothes to dry? A simple, natural drying method beautifully complements a simple style wardrobe and slow fashion. Try it today and we think you’ll agree.

--Your friends at Birch

Simple Style - Show Some Respect!

The simple style credo calls for a new appreciation of the apparel we put on our bodies each day. For many of us, the sad truth is that we don’t respect our clothing. We toss it in heaps, have way too much of it to truly appreciate, throw it away when the whim of fashion dictates something new, leave it behind on trips, forget it at a friends, keep it trapped in our closet to never see the light of day, and on and on.

True, our garments are not gems or treasures. They are not things we would run back into a burning house to save. Most of our apparel wears out, fades and otherwise loses luster over time.

But-- someone labored long and hard to sew and finish the clothes you are wearing right now. Someone else worked hard on the design. If you are wearing natural fibers others labored to grow and harvest the cotton, hemp, flax, or bamboo that composes your tee shirt or trousers. If your dress was made oversees someone loaded it onto a cargo ship and then someone else transported it across the ocean and then someone else trucked it overland to the store where you bought it. You get the idea. Throw away fashion and fast fashion does not respect people’s labor.

By adopting a simple style, slow fashion credo, we embrace a full appreciation for the garments we choose to buy and wear. Because there are less of them, we can easily be more intentional and purposeful in our selections. This leads to a natural appreciation for each component of our attire. By wearing a streamlined wardrobe each piece of which we truly love, we are honoring the work that went into creating our garments.

So today’s advice is to slow down, simplify and show some respect, already!

--Your friends at Birch

Made in the USA

We’re not trying to promote xenophobia or anything, but isn’t it nice to look at a clothing label once in a while and see “Made in the USA”? With so much of apparel production being done overseas, we are pleased to let you know we’ve found some gem companies that make their clothing on our home soil. From shirts to lingerie to baby clothes to socks to yoga wear to underwear-- we’ve got you covered in “homemade” apparel. And for you Twin Citians we have a local option of Made in the USA for you to love with Sassy Knitwear.

If you are in the mood to boost the home economy, take a look at our collection of MADE IN THE USA clothing. You are sure to find something that is just right for you from one of these companies that manufacture in the USA: Amelia’s, Autonomie Project, Bgreen, Blue Canoe, Cottonfield, Mountains of the Moon, Sassy Knitwear, Swell Foop, Teko and Tianello.

--Your Friends at Birch