Clotheshorse

The podcast that loves clothes but hates capitalism. Welcome to the slow fashion revolution! Learn more here.

[clotheshorsepodcast]

It’s really hard to feel okay right now. Last night I was at the grocery store fighting back tears because my anxiety and rage are both so overwhelming.

There is nothing worse than feeling powerless, feeling trapped in an unfair and unjust world and feeling as if there is nothing you can do.  In fact, that makes everything around you feel 1000X scarier and suddenly you’re rooting for societal collapse because then at least the worst thing will be here and you don’t have to worry about it any more.  But the thing is: you can either be a part of the solution or be a part of the problem. And if you’re doing nothing, well, you’re part of the problem unfortunately.

We are not doomed...unless we just give up and do nothing.

Right now, the worst people, corporations, and systems are counting on us burning out, giving up, and becoming compliant.  They think we are weak, selfish, and lazy.

Let’s show them how strong we really are!

The good news is that there are many things you CAN do and they come in a variety of different forms and time commitments. You can do all of these or some of these or one of these.  And they all help and matter. This weekend there are protests happening in all 50 states...learn more by following @50501movement.  And if protests aren't the right fit for you, there are MANY other ways you can be involved in fighting back and making this world better.  

I BELIEVE IN US.

Yes, the world gets scarier every day. The list of things to scare and enrage us seems to be growing exponentially. Yet I still believe that we can and will get through this together. 

Every one of us has an important role to play here. Individual action DOES matter, despite what you might be told elsewhere. Can one person change the world on their own? Probably not. But when working alongside thousands and millions of other people, change is inevitable.

REDUCE REFUSE RESIST!!

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Just like all of you, I get overwhelmed, stressed out, and mega doom-y sometimes too.  

Being unable to breathe and having a brutal headache from wildfire smoke while strangers rage at me about an enshittified Esprit sweatshirt is making me feel pretty hopeless about humanity’s ability to manage climate change and support one another. Seriously people on Threads will fight anyone who says that maybe they don't actually "need" a crappy sweatshirt that is exploiting our human tendency to find comfort via nostalgia during difficult times.

But...I still believe in us. And in the six years I've been doing Clotheshorse, I have heard every excuse and justification for fast fashion and AI "art." And definitely lots of strangers have told me that I'm a stupid, joyless loser because I don't think any of us actually *need* a SHEIN haul.

You know what helps me cope with despair and internet creeps? Making weird graphics using vintage books. A few hours with my scanner, Photoshop and a really good iced coffee is definitely my idea of a relaxing time! Another source of absolute inspiration for me is vintage craft books and magazines.   I have a whole routine every time I'm a thrift store: First, I check out kid's books.  Then I go to the cookbook section (in search of old cake decorating books). Then the "nature" section for cat books (obviously).  And lastly, the craft section for weird (and awesome) books. After all of that, I look at home goods, etc. 

This carousel of images is all from various craft books I have collected over the years. Some are familiar to you, others I made TODAY to help me cheer up.  And you know what? It worked! I hope it gives you a little smile or laugh, too.

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Here at Clotheshorse World HQ (aka my office) we have some important policies:

❤️ Fuck AI generated slop

❤️ Doomerism is boring

❤️ Fake fruit is magic

❤️ Cat dinner is served at 6pm sharp

❤️ Pink and red are the best color combination

❤️ Hearts are the best shape

So here's my roundup of some of my favorite pink and red posts from the past few years.

When I first started working on Clotheshorse, I knew what I wanted it to look like/feel like: vintage imagery, cute details, and lot of pink, red, and artificial fruit. But I was also like, “UM...but will anyone take me seriously if Clotheshorse actually looks the way I want it to look?”

My life is full of anecdotes that involve men telling me that there was no way I could be smart AND like cute things. Like, a guy told me “There’s no way you read any of the books in your living room if you also have a Hello Kitty alarm clock.” REALLY DUDE?! Don’t challenge me to a literary criticism competition because I will defeat you!!!

But the fact is, many of us also internalize that line of thinking, regardless of our gender. Some of us naturally prefer a more tone-downed, minimalist aesthetic. But others (myself included) have felt that in order to be taken seriously, we have to express ourselves via neutral color palettes and a lot less ruffles and bows.

Reclaiming pink and cuteness is a pretty radical act in a society that pushes navy and neutrals as the “respectable” alternative. In a culture that considers anything “feminine” to be lesser. And years ago, one of the main reasons the Clotheshorse blog fell apart is because the team working on it felt that it should move into a more neutral aesthetic. That felt like a step backward for me and for all of the people who had found themselves being seen by what I was doing with Clotheshorse.

So I’m just going to keep posting cute stuff that is also thoughtful and researched. That’s what Clotheshorse is...authenticity, community, compassion, care, and...cuteness. And everyone is invited, no matter what you like to wear!

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Six years ago, the first episode of Clotheshorse was released! It was recorded approximately two feet from my bed on a very hot day in Philadelphia.  One very unglamorous thing about having an independent podcast? You can’t record anywhere near an air conditioner or a fan because it messes up the audio. So any time you listen to an episode that was released during the summer, know that I was sweating my ass off while I worked on it. Literally! Having a podcast has helped me discover just how much sweat my butt can generate.

But that’s not all I have learned along the way! From the technical stuff (Photoshop, editing audio) to the emotional stuff (setting boundaries, stopping my people pleasing habit) to actual hard knowledge about government regulations, private equity, clothing manufacturing, and more.  Seriously I don’t know how my brain made space for everything I have learned!  

It’s had its ups and downs along the way. The downs include death threats from vegans. Stalkers harassing me, my family, and my friends. A whole traumatic experience with Remake.  But the ups have faaaaaaarrrrrrrrr outweighed any of the bad stuff:  The Clotheshorse Jamboree.  The live shows last fall.  And most importantly, all of the amazing friends and collaborators I have met over the last six years, thanks to our shared passion for a better world!

I am so proud of the work I have done so far.  It hasn’t always been perfect because I have been learning alongside all of you, but both my heart and mind have grown exponentially over the past six years.

Lots of stuff coming your way this week in honor of six years: a new episode of the podcast (delayed by epic storms, a tornado, power outages, and a wasp flying up my dress and stinging me multiple times). New iron on transfers, stickers, and postcards.  Some collections of my all-time favorite posts.  And an AMA at some point.

Thanks for being here!!!

About this post: As always, Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone. This post was LABORIOUSLY created using Photoshop, Figma, and my brain.  The images are from the 1969 book Teddy Bears Book of 1-2-3.  Putting these images together was epic because the book is very large and has a lot of damage.  So every image involved piecing together 3-4 scans and a lot of clean up.  Most of the stickers are scans of cute ones I bought in Japan last fall. This post took FIVE hours to create.  I was up until midnight working on it last night, and got back into this morning.  Most of the work was done while wearing a vintage teddy bear trucker hat, if you were wondering. Please don’t screenshot and repost on your profile. It’s rude!

[clotheshorsepodcast]

There’s nothing like a mega heatwave on the 250th anniversary of the United States with an imbecile fascist as president to make you feel...well, really, hopelessly doomed. And a quick scroll of any social media app will confirm that yes, a lot of us are feeling doomed.

And that sense of doom is powerful: it keeps us quiet and compliant. It maybe gets us to buy more stuff, fueling the billionaires and megacorporations that have been enabling/causing climate change, fascism, and human suffering around the world. It definitely benefits the world’s worst people and systems if we just give up, because our resistance can be world changing.

Ask yourself: who benefits when we give up? And could they be trying to convince us that leaning into doomerism is a good choice by flooding our feeds with posts from “people” who are giving up?

What happens next is dependent on all of us. 

We can listen to the voices around us that tell us to give up, that doom is uncertain. That everything is too broken to fix.

Or we acknowledge that WE get to determine what happens next. After all, the good people in this world far outnumber the bad people. And that means we have the power and leverage.

I am not giving up. EVER. And I hope you’ll be there alongside me.

As always, Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone. This post was made by me, using Photoshop and Figma. The images are from the 1980 children's book, Busy Bear, photographed by Gerry Swart. If you know Gerry Swart IRL, please reach out to me because I am obsessed with her work. This post took three hours to put together.

P.S. I fucking hate fireworks.

[clotheshorsepodcast]

There are certain recurring behaviors on social media that annoy me to no end. And one of them is "whataboutism."

You know, you post about SHEIN's unethical supply chain and someone says "yeah, but what about prison labor in the US?"

Or you post about AI, and someone's like "well what about people who are still eating meat?"

Of course the frustrating implication here is that if you care about fast fashion, you can't possibly have space to care about prison labor.  Of if you're posting about AI, you never think about animal rights or the climate impact of industrial farming.  And so on. 

It's annoying and distracting, but I think it's also a coping mechanism. When you feel overwhelmed by the "badness" of something, it feels emotionally helpful to call out another bad system/problem. Why? Because now there are TWO bad things in the conversation and you can kinda walk away thinking "there are so many bad things in this world that one person like me could never have an impact on anything." And then you don't have to think about it ever again!

Fortunately, all of us have the ability to care about AI and prison labor and fast fashion and animal rights and more. We contain multitudes, my friends!  And of course the "fix" for any of these things is complex, a combination of social change, governmental regulations, and individual lifestyle changes.  That means "fixing" them requires all of us, doing a million little tiny things every day that move us in the right direction.  I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and it motivated me to make a list of the conscious things I'm doing every day while envisioning a better world. I hope this inspires you to make your own list, too.

Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone, so the images in this post were created by me, using Photoshop and lots of scans from two different mid century children's books:  Teddy Bear's Book of the Alphabet and My Big Picture Book of teddy bears.  The superhero bear graphic came from a different craft book, Cuddly Toys and Dolls. This post took three hours to make. 

P.S. The black kitten in the last photo: I live on a farm in Lancaster County, PA. We rent our home from an Amish farmer who owns lots of land around us that he rents out to other farmers, including a few barns. The barn next to our house is really dilapidated and it is used by a goat farmer. Yesterday my husband Dustin thought he heard a kitten crying inside that barn, but I didn't hear anything when I walked by. This morning, he heard the crying again. After walking around the barn trying to figure out the source, I saw a little tiny black tail stick out of the wall. We found a way into the barn (it was very creepy in there), where we found a tiny black kitten with his leg stuck in a crevice between the wood floor and the concrete foundation. We tried to get him out, with no luck. He was so stuck! I had the idea that if we could shave down some of the wood, we could get him loose. Dustin went in the house and returned with a metal file, which he used to file down the wood. It worked!

When we took him in the house, we realized he was having trouble walking. Off to the vet, where he was very popular! The good news is that his leg is not broken, just injured and swollen. He is four weeks old and I guess he will be living with us forever.

[clotheshorsepodcast]

I originally created this post last year to accompany an entire episode of the podcast about cause marketing. Cause marketing/cause washing is when companies use charitable giving and social issues as a marketing story. This is something important for the slow fashion community to understand because it’s just another way that brands get us to buy stuff we don’t need. I wanted to share it again today for a few reasons:

1. I think it ties into last week's episode of the podcast about Everlane, SHEIN, greenwashing, and the reality of sustainable fashion/slow fashion.

2. I still see brands using a last minute sales-based donation as a way to "fix" a bad PR situation. A great example is the recent Selkie patriotic dress collection. Rather than participating in a dialogue with customers about the optics of the collection, how it made them feel, and why it might not be the right time for it, the brand doubled down, ignored feedback, and leaned on a very spur of the moment donation.

3. Right now, with the whole world feeling like it is on fire, we are extremely vulnerable to cause marketing. When everything feels scary, we lean on easy dopamine hits like shopping. And when that shopping also might "help" fix one of the scary things happening in the world, we are even more likely to buy stuff we don't really need.

I swear at this point I could have an honorary master’s degree in “cause marketing” / “cause washing” after working for a “feminist” brand in the late 2010s.  I have way too many miserable memories of negotiating feminist tee orders on the way to my own wedding and the time my employer decided to do a fundraiser based on Melania Trump’s Zara jacket. I want a plaque for my office that says “I SURVIVED THE FEMINIST TEE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.”

Want a text only version of this post? Find it in the "Slow Fashion Resources Center" section of my website. 

As always, Clotheshorse is anti-AI, so this post was created using my brain, Photoshop, and scans of several books in my growing collection of late 60s "puppet" books.  The cover image is from Kitty's Walk (which TBH the real cover of the book has a bit of an ACAB vibe). This post took several hours to create.

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Me last night in bed: I have to get up early tomorrow to work on Prime Day content. Of course Dustin laughed when I said this out loud.

So yes, I got up early this morning and spent a few hours in my pajamas creating ANTI Prime Day content.

It's a prime day to remember that billionaires should not exist.  And it's also a prime day to remember that where you do/do not spend your money has impact!! For so many people around the world, Amazon has become the ONLY option for a lot of different items.  Yes, that situation exists because Amazon engaged in a lot of shady, unethical behavior. But it's also because lots of people started buying stuff from Amazon instead of shopping small/local.  And of course there is a whole "listicle industrial complex" that encourages people to do a lot of impulse shopping on Amazon, too.

So here's my Prime Day counterprogramming:

★ Shop small and local.

★ Look for it secondhand first before buying something now.

★ Or skip buying something altogether, by mending, repairing, repurposing, and rethinking.

And remember: it’s cheap because someone didn’t get paid.

About this post: Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone. This post was created by me, Amanda Lee McCarty (while wearing a vintage Lanz of Salzburg nightgown).  I used my brain, Photoshop, and Figma.  The images are from the vintage children's book LET'S GO TO THE PARK, which was printed in Japan! It took me 2.5 hours to make this post and I'm pretty happy with it.

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Hi! I'm Amanda (aka Clotheshorse).

I hate sharing any photos of myself on the internet because there's always someone who gets weird about it, but here I am! I know I have to do this periodically, especially when I start getting DMs/emails/comments addressed to "the Clotheshorse team" or "you guys."

The Clotheshorse team is...ME! But also my husband Dustin, who does our the music and audio production for the podcast. And my cat Brenda, who sleeps in the office all day while I'm working and occasionally models for content/merch. Sometimes this one mockingbird who sings as loud as possible outside my window on nice days. 

So yeah, I'm Amanda. Right now I'm reading the series of books that the Apple TV show Silo is based on.  

My garden this year is AMAZING (I think I'm really getting the hang of it). 

I feed a lot of feral cats. There are currently six foster kittens in my spare bedroom. 

I think pink and red are the best color combo ever.

I'm really into baking gluten free bread these days.

I love voting!

I really want to find a secondhand Angelic Pretty Be My Valentine JSK (watching two right now but I'm nervous about tariffs).

Lately my uniform is a vintage trucker hat, prairie-ish dress, cute socks, and neon Dansko clogs.

Now introduce yourself!!

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Today is a terrible person's birthday, so here is a round up of some my favorite applicable graphics from the past year.

Donald Trump was elected president for the first time in 2016, just a few weeks after Dustin and I were married. And since we are celebrating our 10th anniversary this fall, that means we've been dealing with MAGA bullshit for more than a decade.

I see the impact of that decade all around me: in people lost to his mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, small businesses that were crushed by his economic policy, the friends and family members who died deaths of despair, members of my community who are afraid to leave the house because of ICE, anti climate policy that we will be "fixing" for generations...that's just the beginning of the list. 

I feel the physical and emotional toll of ten years of fear and rage. I am exhausted, but I know I cannot give up. Sometimes I'll be working in the garden or folding laundry and I'll think about all of the people around the world who would be alive right now if Donald Trump were never president...and I cry. So I know we have to keep fighting the fight to protect our fellow humans.

We are not doomed. It does seem as if Trump/MAGA's ugly, stupid house of cards is starting to fall. And it's happening because of the individuals and organizations around the world who refuse to give up, even when fighting is scary and hard.

We can't fix what has happened, but we can stop the damage and start rebuilding. Yes, Trump and his cronies are terrible people. People who continue to support him are filled with hate. But hate weakens people. And good people far outnumber bad people in this world.  When we work together, when we show up, when take care of one another...change does happen. So eat your vegetables, stay hydrated, get rest, and check your voter registration.  We have a lot to do!

About the images in this post: OBVIOUSLY AI was NOT used (this is Clotheshorse after all). These began as scans of vintage cake books, valentines, children's book, and more.  I used Photoshop (and many hours) to turn them into what you see here. Don't get me started on how much time I spent trying to get cake icing just right...

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Yes, there are still "good" things in the thrift stores, amongst the SHEIN clothes and Temu crap. With patience, persistence, and a love of the dig, you will find some AMAZING things. Case in point: this incredible library book cart that I thrifted today in New Holland, PA. 

This was something that I sorely needed, without even knowing exactly what it was. As you all know by now, the vast majority of my posts (and any other graphic content/assets I create) start as vintage books, stickers, papers, really anything that inspires me. I currently have a box of vintage Highlights magazine stamps sitting on my desk that I need to use and scan this week for future post adornments.  I find all of this stuff at thrift stores, yard sales, eBay, and even free piles.  And while I have shelves and shelves of books all over this house, I needed something that would hold a lot of my books in my office for easy access.

When I started Clotheshorse six (!) years ago, I was kind of stumped about how to create social content, I had a budget of exactly $0, so I knew I would have to do it myself. In the beginning, I used a lot of vintage fashion photography, but that didn't feel right to me because it only featured thin, young, cisgendered bodies. And I wanted EVERYONE to see themselves as part of the slow fashion movement. 

When I had a serious think about it, I had to admit that what inspired me most was vintage books and other ephemera. I had been collecting midcentury cookbooks for years. Most of my tattoos are from vintage children's books.  And back when I used to draw band flyers for my friends, I always leaned heavily into collaging vintage paper and my own drawings. So I bought a scanner and an external hard drive. I learned how to use Figma and Photoshop. Sometimes my posts were completely fuggo. There was someone who showed up a lot in the early days to tell me my font choices were not inclusive. And I just practiced every single day. Dustin showed me tricks. I watched YouTube videos. And I just stuck with it.  All without AI...even years later.  

Anyway, here's my new secondhand library cart.  As you can see, cat books far outnumber horse books!

[clotheshorsepodcast]

I am the angriest cat today!!! So here are some of the things on my mind right now.

I also want to add this: I don't have hate or even animosity toward people who use generative AI. I get that some of us can't avoid using it for our jobs. I also understand that AI can be incredibly useful for science and medicine. I also recognize that in our current stage of capitalism, we're all tired, stretched too thin, and broke. Using generative AI to create a flyer, a meme, or even a social media post feels easy and victimless.

But here is what fills me with rage: a small group of people is making a shit ton of money -- far more than any of us will ever see in our lives -- by stealing our unique, human-created work: art, music, writing, photos, recipes, and more. And oh yeah, they're also trying to take away many of our jobs…while offering no safety net to us. To make matters worse, they know this whole genAI thing isn't really living up to their promises, so they are aggressively trying to convince all of us that we will be "left behind" if we don't use it.

ONE BIG @#$%ING GRIFT!!

And that's why I talk about it so much. The whole premise of AI: cheap, easy, and convenient is not dissimilar to fast fashion. The problem? We end up with shitty, disappointing stuff…at the expense of this planet and lots of people.

Okay, glad I got that off my chest.

About this post: OBVIOUSLY Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone. The images came from my latest secondhand book score, The Wondrous World of Cats by David Gibbon, published in 1976. I took me about an hour to scan all of the images from this book. Btw my drive of scanned vintage images now has a folder called "cats" and it currently holds 596 photos. I used photoshop to edit the photos and add the text. All in all, it was about four hours of work spread across a day. It should go without saying, but please do not post screenshots of my work. Just saw someone else credited for my work in yet another person's screenshot of someone else's screenshot of my post. It's rude! Don't do it!

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Summer: on one hand it's awesome because my garden is growing, I can spend more time outside, and maybe I'll get to go to the beach.  But also: summer is full of "shopping holidays" here in the US. It all gets started with Memorial Day sales that last a week, followed by 4th of July sales that last another week, and then it all gets wrapped up with a weeklong Labor Day sale. These shopping holidays can have a negative impact on small businesses, who cannot afford to offer discounts to the level of say Kohl’s or Anthropologie because they don’t have exploitation built into their model. Big retailers can offer low, low prices because they engineer product to sell at a discount by cutting quality and underpaying all of the workers involved in making, shipping, and selling their products.

That said…Shaming people for shopping on during these sales is completely ineffective and it makes you look like a classist jerk!  It's expensive to live right now and if that thing you've been needing for a long time goes on sale, go for it.

But knowledge is SO VALUABLE in this situation. A lot of the stuff featured in these sales aren’t really great deals. Unsurprising, since we know fast fashion has been cutting corners and quality for years now. Many things are never intended to be sold at full price and most are highly profitable even at a deep discount. This model extends past clothing...we live in the era of FAST EVERYTHING! Yes, just about everything we buy was designed to sell on sale! This post explains why this happens and how to deal with it.

About this post: As always Clotheshorse is an anti-Ai zone. and yes, I'm not stupid/heartless and I know that some AI uses are good, like treating cancer. But generative AI for graphic design just wastes resources, rips off artists, and creates low quality stuff. The images in this post came from the 1970 book Busy Teddy Bear. It is made of this sort of crinkly wax paper.  I spent hours trying to make the texture work, but everything was illegible. And then I thought...how would I make this post IRL with that book? I would layer stickers and paper for the text. So that's what I did! It took SIX hours to make. 

[clotheshorsepodcast]

One of my favorite times of year has arrived...YARD SALE SEASON!!! And unfortunately, AI has come for the humble yard sale flyer. The FB group where everyone posts about their yard sales here in Lancaster County if FULL of horrible AI flyers.

Just a reminder that Clotheshorse is an anti-Ai zone. I don't think AI is an inevitability. Crappy AI art made with stolen art is garbage. Blog posts and captions written with ChatGPT are almost painful to read. And not thinking for ourselves is really bad for our brains.

You might not be surprised to hear that I was a theatre kid in high school. The thing about high school theatre is that as the opening night gets closer, rehearsals happen every school day. My mom was fine with me doing any activity I wanted, but she was unwilling to pick me afterwards. So I had to beg for rides from other kids.

One night I came home from rehearsal and my mom was angrily sitting on the couch.

"I know you're not in the play. You're just lying so you can hang out with boys. I saw one drive you home."

I was speechless. Like why would my mom think I was such a terrible person that would create this web of lies for months? Also, I had literally no interest in boys.

She said, "I'm going to come to that play on Friday night just to prove that you're lying. So you better hope and pray that you are somehow on that stage."

Well of course I WAS on the stage when she came to Friday night's show. She left immediately after seeing me, leaving me to find a ride home yet again. Yet I still felt rotten about the whole thing. If my mom thought I was capable of lying like that, I must be a bad person and just not know it yet.

I get that same feeling when someone inevitably (at least once a week) accuses me of using AI for my posts. I would have to be a really terrible person to talk nonstop about how anti-AI I am...and then secretly use AI to create posts? 

As always, this post was created by ME and my brain, with help from Photoshop. The images in this book come from the 1973 book "The Splendid Soft Toy Book." You can find the entire thing at archive.org! This post took me 2.5 hours to put together, including scanning and cleaning up images.

[clotheshorsepodcast]

"Quince is a sustainable brand, right?" "Quince isn't too good to be true, right?"

I receive questions like this multiple times a week. And it's actually one of the reasons I no longer respond to DMs. With two full time jobs, feral cats to TNR, and a desire to have some work/life balance, I just don't have time to do the work of background checking brands for others.

But you know what I can do? Is show you HOW to do it yourself!!! I am not a super genius out figuring out what's going on with a brand. I just know how to search for information. Maybe it's all that time I spent hanging out the library when I was a kid. Maybe it's all the mystery novels I read as a bored tween. Maybe it's just that I love learning new stuff. And seeing through greenwashing and other marketing scams makes me feel so powerful!

In this post, I will show you exactly what I do when I want to figure out the true story about a brand. And specifically in this post, we will dig into Quince as an example. So all of you who are wondering about Quince will get your answers!

The last thing I want to say is this: I get a lot of requests to do "take down" posts on brands. I am not going to do that. For one, it's just not that interesting to me because it's almost the same story over and over again. It's also has this super negative undercurrent that feels unnecessary in scary times. I want to be a source of education, inspiration, and hope. And lastly, it puts me in legal peril that I just do not need as a person who does this work for free and does not have extra money to pay lawyers. Quince specifically has spent a lot of money over the past few years sending scary letters to activists and journalists in the sustainable fashion space. I don't need that.

About this post: as always, Clotheshorse is an anti-AI space. This post is an updated version of post from last year. Cumulatively, I spent six hours on it. Obviously there was there was the research and writing. I used photoshop to fill in the screens on a vintage computer photo. The cats are cutouts of scans from my ever-growing library of vintage cat books.

[clotheshorsepodcast]

A while back, in a caption on a post about anti-reseller sentiment, I talked about how much I love dystopian novels and how reading them helps me see a path forward out of fascism, climate change, and late stage capitalism.  Some of you Caption Kitties (the elite group of people who actually read my captions) said you would like to see a list of some of my favorites.  So here it is!!

I really do believe that art is an important part of understanding one another and our potential.  And specifically, reading about a world where literally everything has gone wrong helps me see what we can (and do) get right. So while the subject matter is dark and scary, I end up feeling really hopeful and inspired. 

I wouldn't say that I am a "book influencer," but then again, I am ALWAYS reading and I have read sooooooo much stuff.  So actually, maybe I should be a book influencer haha.  No, I would never want to ruin reading for myself. 

This is not a comprehensive list, but just the ones I was thinking about a lot this weekend while I was in bed with a kidney infection. I think that means they are my favorites! If you have more suggestions, add them in the comments.  I'm always looking for new stuff to read!!

As always, Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone.  This post took more than three hours to put together, mostly because I kept rewriting it.  It's really hard to convey the essence of a beloved book in just a few sentences! I could never be the person who writes the summaries on the back of books! The graphics themselves were built inside Figma (a cloud based graphic design app that allows me to create massive boards where all of my posts EVER live), using scans of paper and colored masking tape.  The graphic on the cover is actually a scan of vintage White Sands National Park postcard.  That's where Dustin and I got married and it's a super special place to me. But it also feels kinda eerie and post apocalyptic? And...beautiful and magical?

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Every week I receive multiple emails from startups and PR firms announcing a new thing that will “save” the world from fast fashion. Apps. New miracle fabrics. Blockchain. Virtual outfits (remember when the solution was that we would all just start buying virtual clothing for the Metaverse?) The conceit is always that technology will “fix” this problem.  

Yes, I think technology can be a part of the solution, closing some of the waste loops in the fashion production system. BUT…we know that the real “fix” to all of this is buying less new stuff in the first place. I always say that slow fashion is a way of life that extends far beyond the actual fashion/clothes part of our lives.  And that involves a lot of changes in how we live our lives.

🐴 Shopping secondhand first.

🐴 Shopping small and local.  

🐴 Repairing what we already have.  

🐴 Mindfully rehoming our stuff. 

🐴 Doing a lot of work on ourselves to unpack our own relationships with stuff, shopping, and clothes.

The solution to the fast fashion crisis, to overconsumption…the way to “fix” the fashion industry is…PEOPLE.

And one way people come into play as part of all of this is via their small businesses.  In this week's episode I am joined by Malena of @theslowera. The entire business is built off of Malena’s slow fashion values.  And we had a lot to discuss:

🐴 How Malena uses their own values as a decision making tool for their business

🐴 Why writing a business manifesto made this a lot easier (and why you should write your own PERSONAL manifesto)

🐴 How they reconcile their own anti-capitalist beliefs with being a small business owner

🐴 How they connect with and educate their customers and community via the business

This whole conversation ties so nicely into this week's big news: SHEIN is buying Everlane.  And in this episode I also explain how Everlane, All Birds, and my worst job ever are all cautionary tales of brands using sustainability and social justice as a marketing story, not a core value.

Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone.  This post was created using scans of three vintage books (show in the last image).  I used photoshop to clean up the scans, then add copy. The process took 2.5 hours.