Last week there were a few thousand activists in town for a big conference on social justice and there were a few dozen protest marches crisscrossing the city. I don't really get into protests (that is, unless the issue is really close to my heart, like protecting dwarfs from angry mobs), but I'll admit it was pretty cool to see lots of young people in the usually-empty streets of Detroit. I am sure some of them caught on to the cool things happening here and hopefully some of them will come live here after their stint at Oberlin or Reed or wherever. This city, of course, has a long history of picketing and protests as the historical hotbed of worker's rights and unionism. Kids like those in the pictures above picketed right alongside their parents during strikes.

I'm not sure if this history influenced the kids in the following photos (or if kids did this sort of thing everywhere), but I love these photos of kids picketing various transgressions in their Detroit neighborhoods. The children in this photo from the 1930s are picketing the house of "Miss Uiyys" (sp?) who keeps baseballs that end up in her yard and refuses to give them back:

A few years later, a Detroit News photographer captured a similar scene; it's unclear who's been unfair to them, but judging by the mitt on the second-to-last kid in line it was likely a similar act of cruelty. I love the bemused parents watching from the porch:

These grubby little hippies are protesting high prices and encouraging some kind of boycott:

Of course, kids protesting aren't always this adorable. In addition to being a hotbed of unionism and worker protest, the dark side has been the extreme racial hostility that helped create the city we see today. That ugly side showed its face during protests over busing to desegregate Detroit's schools:

Of course, it also gave a chance for people to show a welcoming spirit and a hope for racial harmony that never panned out here. It was much easier for most people just to move to the suburbs.

All the above images were found in the Virtual Motor City Archive hosted by Wayne State University.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

I found a stack of old Detroit teen magazines from the 1950s not that long ago and was blown away by the prices in the fashion section: $49 Mackinaw coats and $19 chambray shirts and $47 leather boots. It occurred to me that despite inflation, sixty years ago parents paid the same thing for kids' clothes that today's parents pay for that garbage they sell at Old Navy. Then it occurred to me that not only were those clothes made by American workers, but they were also made to last, both in quality and style. The clothes at H&M and Old Navy are practically disposable after a single wearing.

I've been shopping at thrift stores my whole life, and I learned early on to look at the tags: not for brand information, but to figure out what the garment was made of and where it was made. The latter was usually the best indication of how old something was, and the fact that something decades old had made it through all those years always felt like a sign of its quality. I don't shop at thrift stores as much as I used to. With two kids it's hard, but more than anything all the shoddily-made, tacky, two-to-seven-year-old sweatshop crap from Old Navy has infected the racks at even my favorite thrift stores. I don't have the energy to wade through it anymore.

When I found the blog Archival Clothing through Reference Library, I became enamored with the idea of "shopping from the past": looking at decades-old catalogs and wishing I could order clothes from a time when they were made with quality materials for longevity by American workers. A recent guest post there linked to this collection of images from vintage Montgomery Ward catalogs and I couldn't believe how cool the clothes were at a store I grew up thinking was just slightly better than Zayre. Check out those guys in this photo at the top of this page. Those clothes are like the uniform of a superhero whose job it is to kick the ass of every GRUP in a $37 threadless t-shirt.

I know this is totally a nostalgia fest, but take a look at some of the other catalogs Lesli has featured on her site. Then slap yourself on the head for settling for the kind of crap we buy to cover our nakedness.

source

Previous Inspiration

This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

We first met Jolie Fay, the woman and mother behind Skipping Hippos ponchos back in early 2005 at one of those pre-etsy handmade craft extravaganzas in San Francisco, where we fell in love with the ponchos she makes for toddlers and promptly bought two. Then we bought a few more for just about everyone we knew with a little girl. They were perfect for the always-kind-of-cold, but never-too-cold weather of San Francisco. We saw her around at various craft fairs and she even named one of her poncho designs after our daughter [on sale!].

She recently e-mailed us to tell us that she was using the scraps from all the ponchos to make doll ponchos and wondered if Juniper would like one. It's one of the few "free offers" we've ever accepted and we're happy to write about her fine products here. And now Juniper's doll has a poncho just like hers.

I'm also hoping to use this opportunity to suggest she start making boy ponchos, with very specific inspiration ["the Clint"].

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

Charles Peterson's photograph of the Filson factory in Seattle.

It's so hard to find stylish, reasonably-priced clothing that's made by workers in the United States* that most people don't bother trying. A lot of the online resources for American-made clothing and accessories are of the 1980s "Made in the USA" animated GIF ilk, so style blogger Michael Williams of A Continuous Lean and The Material Review compiled an excellent (and sure to expand) list of "stylish and cool brands that make their goods in America." I recommend checking it out:

The American List

*I keep talking about products Made in the USA but my real interest is in products that aren't made by companies that moved their manufacturing to Asia. That is not to say there aren't excellent Asian companies or goods manufactured in Europe that I don't also love. I just find something particularly repugnant about companies like Lands End or Patagonia with long histories of domestic manufacturing or a lot of lip service to environmental issues, but whose catalogs don't contain a single product that's not identified as imported.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

via SEXY PEOPLE

Holy crap. Holy crap.

It's going to take me about two weeks to get over the onslaught of awesomeness that is this kid. I would vote for this kid for president. Fuck the constitution.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

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I don't know how I first came across this photo of a Moscow family taken by this guy. Everything about them is perfect though, from the little girl's Laura Ingalls dress to the dad's pathetic blond mustache to the baby's hat to the mom. I would want to shove them down a sewer drain if I saw them in Park Slope but somehow the fact that they are European makes it all okay, even though they make me feel ill-clad and covered in spit up.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.