Pick Up Post - Share Your Latest Purchases

No:1 Final Fantasy Fan wrote:

Moggy wrote:

No:1 Final Fantasy Fan wrote:Bought this framed print of The Scream

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00 ... prod_image
Always been fascinated by this one.

Is that the cursed painting?

I hope not There is currently an Edvard Munch exhibition on at the British Museum in London. Hoping to go see it after work on Friday evening when it should hopefully be quieter!

I think the original paintings are ok, but there is a bad luck curse in people that display prints of it.

Good job there's no such thing as curses then.

Ad7 wrote:Good job there's no such thing as curses then.

Well there’s certainly no such thing as a wind up with Ad7 around to miss the joke.

I am the joke.

When i go to the museum I am gonna buy the black and white print as well and maybe a mug too! There are actually several versions of The Scream. Also its not that figure in the painting that is screaming, its the world around it.

Saint of Killers wrote:I think people think like that because they believe they have to make huge changes from the get go, as opposed to making small changes and going from there. One of the small changes I made is that I wash my printed tees less often as I am assuming the print is made using PVC, solvents, etc.

The way I approach it as a garment decorator is while yes using ethical suppliers, and paying attention to policies on for instance water usage or organic production (although organic farming can in some cases actually be worse) is important, things like fabric weight and customising the garment as a one-off make it inherently more valuable and unique to the customer meaning they are more likely to keep it and wear it for 5-10yr+ than really any other kind of garment. It also means they're doing that instead of supporting a supply chain of print runs going into the thousands 10k or even hundreds of thousands of units, a large portion of which may potentially never be sold and destroyed because they can't be stored.

And of course the answer is to stop buying or even wearing clothes. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place because I've identified a tiny market and I can only make a living by creating things which inevitably means using resources and in some cases virgin resources - nobody is going to buy a print made on a second hand shirt. I can offset that buy recycling and re-using about 90% of stuff and having low carbon footprint.

I would encourage people to by more old stock or second hand prints on sites like Depop though rather than the mass suppliers. If you're conscious and you see an opportunity to refresh your daily attire from 5-10yr+ other shirts (my last few uniclo shirts specifically were from 2011) for a lower price, that's a fairly environmentally conscious act because by waiting for deals you're wearing your existing closet for longer. I'd say different if it was 5, 10 shirts that only get warn once or not at all. I've recycled and donated some clothes but I've never in my life simply thrown them away - some people do do that.

Price does matter for the ecologically conscious because it usually reflects the quality of the supply chain and who is getting paid and where - obviously fair trade garments are more likely to be expensive. You can only make £2-4 for a garment go so far, usually this is to the factory and distribution and barely anything for the resource, which means low cost (chemical) agriculture and exploitation of farmers. I'd class fast fashion as more shops like GAP, Primark, H&M, River Island etc. because they are incredibly cheap or cycle through "seasons" very quickly with enormous stock levels.

Limited run printed tees are a little different because they tend to be done in batches (screen print) and rarely printed on demand (or sewn or made up in other ways for a practically limitless supply). Bear in mind a T-shirt from somewhere like Primark is £1, £7 discounted is more to pay and then I charge something like £20-£25 to compensate myself fairly. My supplies aren't the cheapest but I'll admit they're exceptional value. Cotton is totally unsustainable in its current state and so I'll be switching to organic and bamboo, hemp or recycled plastic based garments in the next 3-5 years I reckon, provided my market can carry the burden of increased cost, as I cannot subsidise it (most small businesses can't). I already subsidise the better quality 200 gram shirts that I think will last longer. I keep an eye on what the industry is saying in this regard because it's aware consumer habits are changing and so there needs to be an answer to that or livelihoods in this sector will suffer as well as the environment.

Also my prints are polyurethane base mostly so no PVC and free from thousands of known carcinogens, they are ecologically inert (similar to silicone which gets put in our own bodies) and so release no harmful chemicals, the organisation that tests for this Oeko-tex and the same standard applies to the garment and dyes used: https://www.oeko-tex.com/en/business/ce ... tart.xhtml

You can find out all sorts of stuff about how things are made with ecological and ethical values, most clothing websites have some kind of environmental policy or CSR report but yeah some places there's zero about it or just really bad 1 paragraph policies. Don't buy from those places as there is a knock-on effect of doing so, they should be going out of business as it's right the customer's attitudes to environmental impact are changing for the better. The best printers choose their suppliers, factory partner etc. diligently and are transitioning over to more sustainable threads. But I still think people should buy less overall and make each purchase more meaningful if they're going to buy new clothes at all, that's why I do what I do. I don't think I'll ever mass produce anything because the environmental onus is so strong/bad with apparel it will never really be "good" or zero impact, that's fundamentally impossible. Artists depend a lot of fossil-fuel derived products as well such as paint usually is an oil product. The only relatively friendly practice I can think of in independent artist/makers is woodwork using only recycled or FSC wood and even then you will find them using high emission finishing oils, varnishes, glues agents etc. It's really a very hard problem to solve and the route of it is capitalism which businesses can't really do anything about unless they start only accepting bread or barter for currency etc. which wouldn't go down so well with g'ment etc. because then how are you paying taxes. It's all set up to fail, the entire system is unsustainable.

I think of things like recycled PET fibres but then that is totally dependent on fossil fuel extraction to make the original material, high energy usage to convert it from recycled collection to new usable fibres which uses more carbon - even if you are using non-virgin materials you are depending on the original source. The route of the problem is the existence and proliferation of endless products that are generated need via marketing etc. and that includes clothes. We do not need to wear clothes to survive yet we do and so we want to customise them to suit our tastes. Yet you don't see nudists running around denouncing the apparel industry, some of these problems are so deep they can only be addressed on a surface level by the industries seeking to make a profit/livelihood from their existence. Only consumer attitudes can change commerce and resource/environment problems from that;- you need to change people for the problem to go away, and since that's the hardest thing most businesses simply don't bother, besides why should they encourage individuals to change if they're going to lose money and not be able to make ends meet or pay people's salaries next month? Most businesses would say no they wouldn't change and on some level I think even the most diehard environmentalist can understand that, because at the end of the day it's a human problem not a planetary one. Those things were never really aligned in the past few thousand years of human civilisation and late stage capitalism is just highlighting how strawberry floated this really is.

Jesus christ I need to go to bed now.

Green Gecko wrote:...Jesus christ I need to go to bed now.

GG, I need to go back to bed after that .

I just got Sushi Striker for the 3DS for £4.99 from game , I have it on Switch but at that price figured hey why not it was also on a Buy one get one free promotion, there were no other cheap 3DS games so I got Teslagrad for PS 4 for free with it.

Peter Crisp wrote:

That's not a growth wrote:https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/6/19/18684326/amazon-new-kindle-oasis-color-temperature-night-reading-2019-model-update

You have to pay extra to remove ads, da fuq?

I have a paperwhite 2 with ads and they really aren't a problem.
They only pop-in on the lock screen and have almost zero impact as I can't say I've ever taken notice of them as they disappear as soon as you unlock the device. I could pay the £10 to remove them but as I said they don't bother me as I just unlock my kindle without thinking about it but maybe I'm just odd. I can honestly say I've never even noticed an ad and have certainly never been lured into a purchase so of all the ways ads get shoehorned into stuff I think this may indeed be the most unobtrusive.[/quote]

Just get on chat and tell them it's a gift. They remove them for free. I did this with my paper white. You still get the recommendations based on what you've bought/read on the library page but I don't mind that.

Mafro wrote:

Rocsteady wrote:

Mafro wrote:

Rocsteady wrote:

Saint of Killers wrote:I cannot help how unsustainable cotton is. However, I wear my clothes over and over and over and over and over (I'm not one of these people who buys, wears once and then bins them or whatever) meaning everything I buy I keep for *years* and then either sell on, or recycle. I also don't wash them as often as I could, though I started doing that more out of fear of them losing their colour, than worries about the environment. So yeah, I probably could do better by buying more sustainable materials, but I think I'm a more considerate consumer than your average fast fashion shopper.

Wasn’t aimed specifically at you, more at mafro and the previous five pages or whatever of random stacks of Uniqlo t shirts being bought for a fiver.

Uniqlo aren't in the "fast fashion" category and I couldn't really give a gooseberry fool how my clothes-on-sale buying (or anything else I do) is affecting the environment in the grand scale of things. These t-shirts will last for years anyway just like all the previous Uniqlo ones I've bought will (still wear ones bought 7+ years ago)

Brilliant.

Not sure why this has you all wound up but I’m finding it pretty amusing

I think you grossly overestimate how much I care. It’s a very selfish position to take though.

Don't want to be a drive by debater but the onus should be on the retailer, not the consumer to do these things. For a start they are Big Money and know exactly what they are doing and have a bigger collective carbon footprint then any consumer group would.

This is the post I was thinking of that I tend to agree with: https://www.fastcompany.com/90290795/fo ... rporations

Rocsteady wrote:

Mafro wrote:

Rocsteady wrote:

Mafro wrote:

Rocsteady wrote:

Saint of Killers wrote:I cannot help how unsustainable cotton is. However, I wear my clothes over and over and over and over and over (I'm not one of these people who buys, wears once and then bins them or whatever) meaning everything I buy I keep for *years* and then either sell on, or recycle. I also don't wash them as often as I could, though I started doing that more out of fear of them losing their colour, than worries about the environment. So yeah, I probably could do better by buying more sustainable materials, but I think I'm a more considerate consumer than your average fast fashion shopper.

Wasn’t aimed specifically at you, more at mafro and the previous five pages or whatever of random stacks of Uniqlo t shirts being bought for a fiver.

Uniqlo aren't in the "fast fashion" category and I couldn't really give a gooseberry fool how my clothes-on-sale buying (or anything else I do) is affecting the environment in the grand scale of things. These t-shirts will last for years anyway just like all the previous Uniqlo ones I've bought will (still wear ones bought 7+ years ago)

Brilliant.

Not sure why this has you all wound up but I’m finding it pretty amusing

I think you grossly overestimate how much I care. It’s a very selfish position to take though.

You cared enough to post and have a weird pop at folk thought!

Johnny Ryall wrote:Don't want to be a drive by debater but the onus should be on the retailer, not the consumer to do these things. For a start they are Big Money and know exactly what they are doing and have a bigger collective carbon footprint then any consumer group would.

This is the post I was thinking of that I tend to agree with: https://www.fastcompany.com/90290795/fo ... rporations

Yup.

And there it is. That's why even though I maybe only get through 100-200 garments per year (as a decorator not a customer lol) I consider all that I can.

It's interesting because technically Uniclo are the same thing, they're a fashion outlet now yes but they probably found some success just printing merchandise before expanding massively over several decades. I know some custom shops used to work as concessions inside retail outlets and then ended up moving into distribution instead of and so driving the cotton apparel industry that way, others move into sustainable garment production. It's interesting nowadays that business owners in that sector are going to be making more directorial decisions in response to the climate and environment moving forward.

Thankfully we're seeing more things like soya based inks, removal of PVC from white underlayers, converting these processes however comes at a massive cost.

For example current DTG printing systems are designed with aqueous inks that will seep into an absorbent fibre like cotton; it won't work on polyester which has its own problems. I'm not entirely convinced at this point that there is such a thing as a sustainable fibre base for apparel as they all have down sides except possibly hemp.

little model shop near me has been open for 31 years but shutting down today because the old lady who owns it is on her way out and no new buyers

nipped in to buy a few little bits and models as a peace out



only place for miles and miles where you can just drop in to get odd bits, rip another to amazon

Buy the shop, Falsey. You deserve it.

False wrote:little model shop near me has been open for 31 years but shutting down today because the old lady who owns it is on her way out and no new buyers

nipped in to buy a few little bits and models as a peace out

only place for miles and miles where you can just drop in to get odd bits, rip another to amazon

That's so sad

There used to be several of that kind of place near me when I grew up, which all just became generic tat newsagents and then eventually closed.

I’d love to buy it but it isn’t viable as a business

The woman who has it owns it flat out and has done for several decades so it costs her strawberry float all to keep going

For someone new to come in and take over I’d need to buy the building and all the stock and to make that money back.. even just the mortgage payments... the turnover would have to be obscene, and it’s just not the kind of market

does anyone have any personal recommendations for vintage stores in London?
obviously googled 'best vintage stores' but id rather not waste my time - im just looking for some white minimal print/branded tshirts

<]:^D wrote:does anyone have any personal recommendations for vintage stores in London?
obviously googled 'best vintage stores' but id rather not waste my time - im just looking for some white minimal print/branded tshirts

Camden Market is probably your best bet.