and now for something different
oil obsessed
I’ve been thinking about the components that make up this bag.
nearly all derived from oil.
The extent hadn’t occurred to me until I read Worn. or maybe my inquiry started with the surge of brands purporting to sell vegan clothing. I kept thinking no no NO. They meant 100% polyester. 100% fossil fuels. ancient dead animals and plants. nothing to see here. business as usual!
I’ve been looking around my house, noticing how much is also subsumed. snuggling up to my oil sheets and the oil comforter with my oil pillows and my fluffy oil blanket. It’s all very strange and magical. the shapeshifting.
While making the bags, I kept thinking about how all of their parts were privy to invisible supply chains. how they likely touched human hands, probably migrant hands, in far off factories. how they sat at ports, waiting. how they traversed oceans on the backs of container ships.
At work, I am a tiny cog in this chain; a remote worker in the West. I tap on my computer all day, sending messages to those far off factories. Is the order still on track?
I wonder about the garment workers sewing the clothes bought by my company; some of those clothes sold for 10 times what the factory charged. My superior taps away at her computer, negotiating for an even lower cost. The vendor obliges. The executives squeal.
At the board meeting with the private equity firm, they report that the juice was worth the squeeze.
This is a new exploration - all things maritime, global supply chain and working in the garment industry. I still plan to write musings on the creative process, but I need to free this space up, get a little messy. I hope you’ll stick around.
- Meredith