Not only is this a cool looking tee from an artist with an impressive CV (he’s designed for Sneaker Freaker, Lifelounge, 2×4, Mambo, Threadless Select, and Semi-Permanent), it’s also printed on the Earth Positive range that I wrote about yesterday, so if you guys wanted to get your hands on one of Continental Clothing’s new climate neutral tees then this is a good opportunity. It isn’t exactly a cheap tee, so I doubt that there’ll be many Americans jumping at the chance to purchase one of the 500 tees available, although to be fair to Turtlehead, Ireland is a pretty expensive place to be, and they do include worldwide postage so I don’t think they’re gouging you!

Costiness=€38 (including postage) Link

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Tags » adam cruickshank • black • eco • Mens • T-shirts • turtlehead

Every so often I get reminded by people just how much water and chemicals it takes to make a t-shirt, I’m pretty sure that they’re just jealous because my t-shirt collection is so awesome, but they are making a good point about how I’m destroying the planet by having tees in my closet that only get worn every few months.

I know I’m being flippant in the above paragraph, but seriously,
Continental Clothing are attempting to do their part in the global war on climate change with their new Earth Positive range. Over the past couple of years Continental have been trying to make the company more environmentally friendly, they’ve managed to reduce the carbon emissions of the entire production and shipping process for a basic white tee (size large) by a massive 89% to just 671 grams. It should be noted that this isn’t done by carbon offsetting, they’ve physically reduced the amount of gases that are being emitted from production, in part by only using green energy suppliers that use wind and solar power, using biodegradable packaging, no airfreighting, . This particular tee is also 100% organic (are you surprised?), as certified by the Soil Association, and produced under the Global Organic Textile Standard from Indian Cotton.

These steps have led to the Carbon Trust (a UK governmental organisation) asking for Continental Clothing to serve as a case study for the clothing industry so that others can benefit from their research and development, so they’ve clearly done some impressive work here improving their products.

Its quite hard to review a t-shirt like this, because even though you know it is much better for the environment, it still just feels like a normal (albeit high-quality) t-shirt. Obivously, that’s a good thing, if a t-shirt sucks, people probably wouldn’t buy it just because it wasn’t bad for the environment, so creating something that is either better than the original, or of equal quality whilst resulting in about a tenth of the emissions is a great step for them to make. I had noticed Continental Clothing becoming popular with more and more brands (including perennial HYA supporter Turtlehead) over the past few months, and I would imagine that a tee like this would be popular with people that usually look towards American Apparel when they’re picking a stock tee to print their tees on.I can’t find any information about pricing in the literature, or on the websites, but I would imagine that it would be pretty comparable to most similar offerings from other organic and ethical producers.

You can see the whole range (more than just t-shirts) at the dedicated Earth Positive Online site, and there’s also some info on the range and everything else CC at the main Continental Clothing site.

Yes, I managed to take extra pictures of a blank shirt.

• 5 Comments
Tags » continental clothing • eco • Environmental • green • review • Reviews • T-shirts

Fear not gentle readers, HYA has not turned into Hide Your Ass (now there’s an idea!), but I promised these guys that I’d write something about them even if I don’t have the first clue about the world of premium jeanswear. I met two of the people behind Trousers London at the pre-party before the main event at Margin and they they were great, very concerned about the two friends I took to the party who ‘over-extended’ themselves on delicious free cocktails from the bar. In short, being nice to me will get you a feature on HYA.
Trousers London was officially launched at Margin, though the brand was born in 2007 with the intention of creating a jeanswear label that stood out from other high-end offerings. Here’s how they describe themselves:

Trousers is an experimental, ambitious, future-focused jeans label inspired by London.

From unique designs and shapes, to small but important details, Trousers stands alone among the clones of the daily jeans parade. Trousers makes jeans for the genuine modern day gentlemen, for the man who loves the thrill of the new and is always at the forefront of the avant-garde.

We at Trousers believe in ecologically friendly materials and we care that our products are not born of exploitation. Our range is crafted with patience and skill in small batches, in our Italian factory using organic premium denim.

Like I said, I know basically nothing about the premium jeans market. I do know that their jeans looked cool, and they’re making all the right noises in terms of not wanting to destroy the planet which is refreshing to hear, and I think that it would be pretty hard for you to disagree that these are fairly unique designs, you certainly won’t find anything like them on the high street. So, I do give their range a thumbs up, but unfortunately my thumbs are of little value in this instance.

At the moment it isn’t actually possible to buy these jeans. Those who are interested in the limited edition garments (just 600 pairs in the first production run) will be available to register their interest in May when the Trousers web store opens, with the jeans getting to them in June or July. If you’re a bricks and mortar kind of person, the jeans will be available in a select few retails stores around the UK and Europe around August/September.

Trousers London

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Tags » Environmental • jeans • london • margin • margin2008 • trousers london

Whilst its pretty safe to assume that a Gas Works isn’t the first place that someone would look for artistic inspiration, Carmacazzi has actually produced something pretty cool from a somewhat surprising source.

GasWorks, Seattle’s lake union park. During the turn of the century this beautiful factory refined oil and now is refined art. I added the hidden “Seattle” ..represent. Featuring five hand screened prints the works wrap front to back and an abstracted “gasworks” text up the sleeve onto the shoulder.

Hold up, the gas works refined oil? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, or are we talking about American ‘gas’ as in petrol? Still, it looks cool, and the hoodie itself is environmentally conscious, so its all good.

Costiness=$45 Link

• 1 Comment
Tags » carmacazzi • eco • environment • gasworks • grey • hoodie • seattle

If you’re after some 100% organic clothing, Artifex might be the people for you. Prices are surprisingly low considering that quite a lot of companies see the organic label as a sign to crank up the prices, bravo to you Artifex!

Artifex

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Tags » artifex • organic • quicktees

Well, isn’t this an interesting looking piece? Obviously I’m being a bit of a tease with the close-up image, but since the tie on this hoodie/coat is the interesting part it deserves a decent view.
It’s a pretty clever garment too, I’ll let Rebe explain:

It is made of recycled fiber and trimmed with contrasting rib knit. Tie the Bow and show your support for breast cancer research. With each purchase of our Sara Sweatshirt, made from recycled fiber, we will donate 5% of all proceeds to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

 

How cool is that bow idea? I guess that no one except the wearer will realise the poignancy of the bow, but that’s hardly the point, is it? I like the way that the lining of the hood and back of the bow (and presumably lining of the whole thing) are a bright, refreshing pastel colour to compliment the subdued, natural colours that are on the outside of this outerwear.

Costiness=$136 Link [thanks, Stylehive!]

• 1 Comment
Tags » black • blue • hoody • khaki • pink • rebe • recycled

I’m pretty much snowed under with e-mails coming in from companies at the moment, because of being away on holiday and spending time not looking at my computer screen, so I’m going to start doing really, really short posts about companies, basically telling you to take a look at them and decide for yourself what’s cool. It’s not a perfect situation, but since I’ve got literally hundreds of links that I want you to see then I think this is a decent stop-gap solution for now.

First up, some tees with an environmental message from a brand Bob Eco. This Greece-based project is run by graphic designer Andreas Kioroglou, who decided to put his skills to use after being scared by ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, as we all were!

Bob Eco

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Tags » Andreas Kioroglou • eco • environment • global warming • Greece • quickies • t-shirt • white

And know this sounds like the lazy man’s way of thinking, and it isn’t really what I personally believe, but how much point is there really in people turning down their down a couple of degrees in winter and their A/C up a couple of degrees in summer if ‘big business’ continues to crap all over our planet at any given opportunity?

This tee seems like perfect subject matter for Design Give, the company that lets you (you? that’s me!) choose where a charitable donation goes from each sale, and I’m glad that they’ve finally released a politically slanted tee, because they know how to pick good artists, and we all know how amongst my many quests is the hunt for well design political t-shirts.

The tee should be available for sale now (at the time of writing it was on pre-order), but there’s only 200 of these bad boys available so be quick if you want one.

Costiness=$15/25 (tee/hoodie) Link [thanks, Uncrate]

• 2 Comments
Tags » black • designgive • environment • industry • pollution

Hold up, is this a tee company that’s actually had an original idea? I think it might just be!

The idea, I think, is that you buy a used t-shirt with has a bit of history attached to it. Basically, someone writes a story about their tee, if you like the tee and buy it, you receive the tee and it has a number attached you use to log into the site and record another story about that tee. If you become bored of the tee then you can donate it back to Re-shirt and the cycle will continue again. Personally, I think that buying used tees is a little bit odd unless they’re genuinely vintage tees, no matter what story is attached to the garment, and in that way I like Re-shirt more as a concept than as an actual service. But that said, I do like it, its surprising to see innovation within the t-shirt world, though I guess we can expecit this kind of thing in an age when we should all be more environmentally aware of the impact of products that we use. On their site they claim that every tee takes around 10,000 litres of water to create, I’ve heard varying figures including 2,000 litres (as seen on page 7 of this pdf link), but either way it takes a lot of water to create a tee, and often the chemicals involved are harmful to the planet.

I’m quite surprised that you don’t get some kind of credit for sending them a tee, it would probably encourage more brand loyalty whilst helping them to create a community around their t-shirts.

But most importantly, they do have some cool looking tees.

Re-shirt.net

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… but I have no problem with trying to save the planet and being environmentally friendly, after all, we’ve already sorted out sweatshop conditions by using American Apparel, so I guess the planet is next on the list for clothes designers. Hemp clothing does save the planet right?

It’s a pity that there aren’t more pictures of this hoodie from Hempest because it looks really interestingly designed, with asymmetric panel-stitching, and I can’t work out what the silk screening is on the tan coloured patch, but I still like it. I’ll let Hempest describe it themselves.

New Nibus hoody for men! Complete with hemp ripstop panel detail, with rubber application. Zipper opening, classic mesh lining inside. Silk screen “nibus” detail on lower back. Fitted for comfort. 55% Hemp, 45% cotton. Sizes L-XXL.

Costiness=$68.00 hoodie to be found here.

• 0 Comments
Tags » • brown • eco • hempest • hoodie • panel