Blog

Moving from conspicuous to conscious consumption and doing reviews along the way.  Find plenty of unsponsored reviews of Quince, Everlane, Grana, and Cuyana on the site!  I'm working towards a minimal waste lifestyle, and oh yea I love bags >.<

Weekend Update/Ramblings

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I know you guys are all probably feeling some virus-fatigue so might not want to hear my current thoughts about the coronavirus, so feel free to skip this post if you are feeling this way. But as our pandemic summer turns into a pandemic fall, I started thinking about where we were in Spring when all of this was terrifying and brand new. My first post about it was back on February 9th and I wrote about it again in March (where I was freaking out about 29 cases in my county—lol that is like nothing now). I feel like I’ve aged quite a bit and changed quite a bit since then, and not only because of the virus. There are sooo many things going on in the US that can change a person (in fact if you haven’t changed at all since the pandemic started I think there might be something wrong with you). Any-who, I recently read this great article from National Geographic about herd immunity (what it really means and what it would take to get there in terms of this novel coronavirus). The stats and public health history reminded me of my grad school days in Epidemiology (and why I wanted to study Epi in the first place). Anyway this is all to say that this virus is not going away any time soon (duh) but we are making plans to move temporarily back to my hometown of Honolulu to be with family (yes, another move into a temporary house *facepalm*). We are definitely aware of the risks and are going to be doing as much as possible to keep ourselves healthy. But we have no family here in California and when push comes to shove, being with family is oh-so important. Anyway I’ll probably be talking more about it here on the weekends but that’s a big thing we have coming up.

Also as much as I am disappointed in how Everlane executed their union busting and performative BLM activism (which is why I’m no longer promoting them even though it hurts financially), I still keep an eye on them because I don’t believe in just “cancelling” them. If only they could make internal changes to the company as well as they do to their products. I have to say when I saw their recycled waffle cashmere sweaters (or ReCashmere Stroopwaffle crew as they like to say in their fancy marketing terms) I had an itch to click buy. But I’m not going to because 1) I haven’t seen any “radical” changes to their internal business (I did see that they are part of Black in Fashion Council though it’s not listed anywhere on Everlane’s site or what they have done other than just pay money to have their name associated with the council) and 2) I’ve already stated a pledge on Insta not to buy anymore new sweaters this year after having gone through a bin of all of them earlier in the month (I really have more than enough). But I mention the ReCashmere here because I believe recycled cashmere is the best solution for a cashmere sweater. Everlane is sourcing their recycled cashmere from the same Italian mill that Cuyana uses for their recycled cashmere sweater which I reviewed last year, but are offering them for $100 less (Everlane is selling them for $150, Cuyana was for $255) and at 100% recycled cashmere (Cuyana was 95% recycled cashmere and 5% wool which made it slightly itchy). Plus I love Everlane’s waffled cashmere from several seasons past (of which I have two and thus definitely do not need another waffled cashmere sweater). Anyway despite some qualms about the company, I wanted to highlight this product since it really is something I want to see more of in the marketplace. I guess this is is how it is with “sustainable” lines from Zara and H&M— the company is still not ethical but they have some ethical items that are a step in the right direction.