Why you are what you wear

[The following is a guest post from Tim from Teecycle.org.]

We always hear that you are what you eat. And it's true.

But I think it's equally true that you are what you wear. This now goes deeper than temporary fashion.

Just like food, clothes are one of the basic necessities that over the years became a cheap, disposable, impersonal commodity. Anyone could buy a forgettable mass market shirt exactly the same as the one behind it (and the one behind it... and the one behind it...) like so many McDonald's chicken McNuggets.

But no more.

Organic, healthy, socially responsible food has grown a strong identify and a movement. Once just for hippies and health nuts, it's now virtually mainstream. I believe that clothes are thankfully headed down that same path.

I believe it will start with the T-shirt. The t-shirt is visible, versatile and allows for instant self-expression. On a small scale, the t-shirt is helping the clothing industry change on two fronts:

Socially responsibility
People care about where their clothes come from, just like they care about the origin of their food. Is it coming from a factory floor, or a family farm?

The same questions are now being asked of clothes. There are protests over sweatshop labor. Patagonia is one example of a clothing company that lives its environmental philosophy. And American Apparel has made organic t-shirts sexy.


Individualism
Organics are the fastest growing sector of the American food economy, and now cater to an incredible variety of tastes that can't be found on a Value Menu. In the same way, T-shirts satisfy individual cravings we can't fill with a rack of pre-packed designs.

I don't have to belabor this point home with readers of this blog. If you're reading this, you don't fit in neatly to the T-shirt mass market, whether you find your limited edition artistic designs at Threadless or you create your own at Spreadshirt.

These two fronts mirror the organic food movement, that has been championed by both hippies (who are all about the social responsibility) and upscale foodies (who are about the taste, presentation and style).

I didn't consciously have this philosophy in mind when I set off to create Teecycle.org one year ago. I just knew I liked the time-worn character of thrift store T-shirts, and I thought mass market t-shirts were incredibly wasteful.

I started selling one-off used-shirts for $7 apiece and donating a dollar of each to restore urban rivers. Thunderfrogs graciously wrote about it back then.

Now we've finally introduced original designs printed on blank, USED shirts. It's pretty exciting.

I also feel that with these original designs, we're fulfilling both of the key principles of the new economy clothes movement: Social responsibility, and artistic expression.

Bon Appetit!