Earlier today when I was talking with our intern about fashion, I asked her "if you could write an article about fashion, what would you write about?" She answered that she would talk about how it doesn't matter where you shop-- that your clothes are your statement, not about how much you can pay for clothing, but about who you are. She said that it seems that more and more people are moving away from the idea that we wear our financial status on our sleeve. We agreed that the statement that our clothing makes will never go away, but that at least the statements are getting a bit better.

It's true. Clothing represents us- who we are, where we come from and where we situate ourselves socially. If you walk around any town, you'll see people delineating themselves by their clothing. In Portland we have yuppies and hipsters, wealthy, middle class and poor, urban and suburban. Believe it or not, much like in Cambridge square in Massachusetts,  the eighties London esthetic is still popular around here. I love that.  You'll also find euro-chics, retro-freaks and goth-geeks. If you got the whole population of Portland together you could easily divide them up by what they are wearing and people would most likely end up with people they know.

This isn't to say that people are shallow-- not at all. All animals present part of their outer being as messages to each other. People are especially creative with how e do it, and I truly enjoy how we create ourselves. Our clothes represent a wonderful creative expression of who we are as people. We're also lucky enough to have designers and design teams working daily to offer us a range of clothing to select our own unique style from. When you think about it, it's quite amazing.

So what does people's clothing say about them these days? I said to my intern, Holly, that at least nowadays the messages that people are sending with their clothing have shifted. These days you can say just about anything you want just by the brand of clothes you choose to sport, but the messages are so much more exciting. Now our style or label says so much without having to wear a slogan on our chest. We can support African development through Edun or Gap RED, we can curb global warming through wearing eco-friendly fibers, we can support American manufacturers through any number of labels. It's an exciting time for the consumer to say "this is who i am" and for the industry to respond by giving them the clothes to match their values.

When I created CROW I wanted to make a place where people didn't have to choose between causes when picking clothing because I know that the world isn't divided like that. I'm not a "one issue" type of a person, so I'm thankful to see that more and more people are getting that "it's all connected." So instead of having to make a choice between supporting, American made, or economic equity over the environment, we incorporated as much as we could into your clothes. You can wear CROW and say "I believe in the future of our community as humans."

At least, that's what I say when I wear our clothes.
What do you say when you wear your clothes?

What kind of change do you wear?



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