I Love the Sweatshop- Saturday at Lambi

Press Release:

You are invited to the “I love the sweatshop” party (10pm-3:30am) and designers market (5pm-10pm) taking place on December 2nd 2006 at club Lambi located at 4465 st.Laurent blvd.

What is wrong with today’s garment industry? Obviously, like every other industry, people are over worked and underpaid! But in this industry the conditions are even more of an issue. We are organizing an event to promote both Canadian talent as well as Canadian standards. The name of the party is “I love The Sweatshop”

It’s going to provide information about the problems overseas and create an artistic interpretation of an ideal sweatshop environment through a live sweatshop installation.

There are going to be custom made products with crowd involvement, a production line that is going to include custom sewing, silk screening, and air brushing, and a production line dedicated to producing bags and hats, where the crowd can see the piece by piece construction of the product.

Items can be bought and each item will be uniquely created.

Did I forget to mention good music and alcohol?

We promise no one was over worked and underpaid in the making of this press release.

I also received this from Maryanna, the Detention artist who is participating in the assembly line performance art part of the night, and who is also a new member of the Indyish team. (yay!) The following text is by Proper Apparel and FDOE designers and project founders, on the subject of sweatshops..

The horrible working conditions of sweatshops should not be overlooked just because other alternatives are worse. The fact is that they are in some cases still low paying, and below global health, and safety standards. Westerners do not control the other alternatives in countries around the world, but we do control our usage of the apparel industry, and what we control we can change. The least we can do is make the factories safe and healthy. Our goal is to take it even further by providing higher wages for the workers, while giving positive benefits, such as massages, music at work, and other incentives to increase their livelihood. Anyone who has produced clothing themselves understands the intense stress put into garment production.

We as designers are always concerned with the working atmosphere of sweatshops, because we ourselves are constantly working away day and night at creating our dreams. Luckily for us we work at our own pace and chose our own environment based on what we are able to afford. Unfortunately this is not the case for everyone working in the fashion industry. Due to high turn over rates and continued pressure by companies all over the world, to out source work at a low cost, many people all over the world are facing the consequence of poor working conditions.