Make Black Friday Green

Posted: Nov 27 2013

It's Black Friday at Marlandia! Help us make it green! Sustainable consumption can include investing in local small businesses in your community. Buying organic. Hand made. Recycled. BPA free. Produced with fair trade wages. Donating a percentage of profits to charity. Funding products that help those less privileged among us. Green. Eco. And on and on and on.  So, this Black Friday Thanksgivukkah 2013, what will it be?  Getting to that first place in line at Best Buy before the Turkey has even cooled?  Landing that deal on your big screen TV you've been waiting all year for? Thanksgiving midnight mall run for 40% off at Banana Republic with your cousins? It's a family event, after all! Here at Marlandia, we define sustainable as leaving people or planet better off than we found it.   Today, for Black Friday, we offer you deals on our hand made, fair trade products made from recycled fabrics....

Graffiti Art

Posted: Nov 22 2013

I finally made it to Five Pointz this past weekend, just before the sad and tragic whitewash. Brings this song to mind by LCD Soundsystem. What a spectacular masterpiece of sweat, passion and talent.              Surprising I hadn’t made it there before, since my draw to graffiti art was manifested in many gigs of memory cards roaming around Sao Paulo and Rio, documenting Brazil’s fervent graffiti scene. Hiding my tiny canon powershot under my shirt, sneaking out from behind parked cars, shooting out bus windows, darting from the shadow of a telephone pole for a quick snap. I was determined.                      As a gringa with a mildly expensive electronic product in hand, I could have easily gotten robbed. But since luckily I did not, my risk yielded delicious rewards. Vila Madalena, Santa Teresa, Jardins Botanico, and many other neighborhoods where I lived...

Vogue: Retalhos Cariocas with Afro Reggae

Posted: Nov 07 2013

 

Retalhos Cariocas and Grupo Cultural AfroReggae share the mission of empowering youth in Brazil’s favela communities, and were recognized together by Vogue Brasil in a special feature. Afro Reggae was profiled in the film Favela Rising, which focuses on the work of Anderson Sá, a former drug trafficker who establishes the grassroots movement to draw in adolescents interested  soul, reggae, rap, and hip-hop as well as workshops focusing on dance, recycling, football, percussion, and more. The group uses music and education to better the lives of youth and prevent further growth of gangs. Grupo Cultural AfroReggae believes that through education, there is a greater likelihood that adolescents will not get caught up in drugs and gang violence. Retalhos Cariocas is part of the new Favela Rising movement, where Silvinha, Fafá, Luciana M, Luciana A, and Nadja serve as role models for young girls who can see that people from the favela can create businesses, impact lives, find success and be...

Glen Ridge Eco-Fair, Montclair

Posted: Nov 07 2013

 

5.6.13 Marlandia took a road trip today with Theresa Vandermeer from Work + Shelter and Nimet Degirmencioglu from NYC Fair Trade Coalition. We braved flash flooding in a tiny, packed fiat and fueled up at the Fine Grind coffee house to bring our sustainable fashion wares to the suburbs. It was fun to watch an extended family of locals and families meet, to see fathers buying presents for mothers day, mothers buying presents for daughters, and to be part of New Jersey for an afternoon. Just minutes after the festival ended, the sky cracked open and we were lucky to escape intact. Retalhos Cariocas’ new bags were a hit, and I was especially happy to sell a few pairs of Cano Longo sandals to a Brazilian customer from the region of Paraná, one for her mother and one for her daughter. The best highlight of all though was watching the local...

Is the Innovative Design Protection Act An Answer to the Next Bangladesh Textile Factory Tragedy?

Posted: Nov 07 2013

 

5.16.13 In the shadow of the continuously evolving Bangladesh factory tragedy, I attended an event last week at GGrippo Art + Design in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that got me thinking. The event featured a conversation between distinguished sustainable fashion leaders including the Ethical Fashion Academy, author-academic Sass Brown, Centre for Social Innovation’s Carmen Artigas, Helpsy’s Rachel Kibbe, and designers Organic by John Patrick, Titania Inglis, Francisca Pineda, Kameleonik, and Ecoology, as well as Ecouterre managing editor Jasmin Malik Chua in a discussion about “Slow Fashion”.     A Bit About Slow and Fast Fashion:  Slow fashion is a response to the relatively recent advent of “Fast Fashion”, based on quick design and manufacture of trends from Fashion Week each fall and spring. It is based on the belief that consumers in the Fast Fashion market thrive on constant change and frequent availability of new products. But is it the chicken, or the egg? These endless trends are monsters that need to be fed, and they do so through marketing....