Sewing in the News

It's been an extraordinarily busy summer. But during snippets of downtime, I surf the NYTimes app on my iPhone and read the free articles. I enjoyed these stories:

A Return to Basics, One Stitch at a Time
Published 8/9/10 -- FLORENCE — When Sara Checcucci opened her atelier in Galluzzo, a southern district of Florence bordering the Chianti hillsides, she was astonished by the number of young people who would stop to gaze at her through the window as she worked. Later some of them came in and asked her to teach them her skills. So she arranged a series of evening courses, and was even more surprised when her pupils included young men. ...

Fashion Tries on Zero Waste Design
Published 8/13/10 -- YOU wear organic T-shirts. You hang your clothes to dry. You recycle your unloved suits and dresses. But frankly, that’s just the tip of the green iceberg. Today’s truly fashion-forward have a more radical ambition: zero waste. That may sound more like an indie band than an environmental aspiration, but it’s a new focus of top fashion schools. ...

Is Italy Too Italian?
Published 7/31/10 -- “THIS tradition is finita,” says Luciano Barbera, as he opens the door to an underground warehouse. Dozens of large wooden boxes are stacked to the ceiling, containing nearly 80 tons of colorful thread, wound in spools and idling like sunbathers at a beach, absorbing moisture in a cavernous room kept naturally cool and humid by a creek that burbles under the floor. ...


Plus, is Elaine Benes style (remember Seinfeld?) now "in"?

The New Adventures of Old Elaine
Published 8/18/10 -- ON a recent August night, young women in stilettos teetered precariously through the cobblestone streets of the meatpacking district in Manhattan. Appropriately for the neighborhood, they were squeezed into minidresses that were as snug as sausage casings. But a few blocks south, far away from the blare of Hummer limousine horns, at the fashionable opening of the Algus Greenspon Gallery on Morton Street, a more demure look prevailed. Like a modest Robert Palmer-girl army, the women mingled in floor-length print dresses and brown lace-up boots with their hair in messy secretary buns. The genesis of the look could have been those unforgettable images of fundamentalist Mormon women that dominated the news a couple of years back. But if you squinted, what you saw was a sea of Elaines. ...

Image from NY Times

You gotta be kidding me ... I hope ...