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