Stripped Bare Fashion

Tag: Kate Harcourt

  • Failure

    Failure

    Radio 4’s series, The Value of Failure, has really got me thinking. Apparently, failure is a good thing. Who knew??

    Personally, I’ve experienced plenty of failure: failed friendships, failed pregnancies, failed romances, failed jobs… and my kitchen failures are verging on paranormal! (Which is why I post recipes here – I get so excited if something works out well that I need to photograph it and share it… and I like to think it works out well for my lovely readers too, because honestly, if I can make it, anyone can!) But that’s success. I’m fine with success.

    Back to failure, and those moments of realisation that smacked me in the mouth, that held my face to the mirror until I opened my eyes and saw what was there: me.

    Some of my earliest failures were sports-related. Despite picturing myself as a champion, I discovered early on that my legs didn’t move as fast as some people’s, nor did they jump as high or as far. I can still visualise being about six and lining up at the starting line for a sportsday sprint. I can see my unnecessarily large, trainer-clad feet poised to carry my little self to victory, and feel the adrenaline of certain glory as I waited to race. But when the starting gun went off, I was surprised to discover that my feet didn’t sprint, they clomped. And my arms didn’t slice through the air, propelling me ever faster down my lane, no, I looked to my sides to see my arms awkwardly punching along completely out of sync with whatever my feet were doing. The other thing I saw was everyone else’s back. I not only didn’t win, I came last. Puzzlingly, disappointingly last. (And note, dear English friends, I grew up in Australia where there’s no lovely sigh of encouragement for the well-intentioned losers on sportsday.)

    It’s heartbreaking to look back and remember how I spent the rest of the day thinking that the next event would surely be the one I would win, throwing myself at each and every opportunity with commitment and enthusiasm only to come consistently last. Last, last, last, last, last. I went home without a single ribbon proudly pinned to my chest or even one of those happy little “I did my best” stickers that children get in the UK.

    So, what did I learn from this early failure? Well, I learned I was slow and uncoordinated. But I didn’t give up. I determinedly continued to do my absolute best at many sportsdays to come. After leading my team to last place as primary school house captain, I carved a mildly successful niche as a distance runner in secondary school. If nothing else, I could count on my tenacity to force me through the many gasping, heart-pounding paces to a respectable third in the 1500m. Did failure teach me to adapt, teach me resilience, fuel my tenacity? Maybe.

    I failed in the physics classroom, and when my mother came home upset that she had been approached by my physics teacher over the possibility of a D on my school report, I reassured her that it would go well with the D I intended to get for chemistry. Perhaps I should credit failure for my sublime skills in smart arsery?

    I failed to be selected as a secondary school prefect. Then I failed to finish school altogether. I don’t think I even recognised those as failures at the time. I thought they were cool.

    But I recognised my next monumental life failure: the dissolution of my relationship with my eldest child’s father. Wow. That was one heavy duty failure. Looking back it was kinda destined to fail. At 19, upon the startling discovery of two blue lines on a pregnancy test, I knew that I desperately wanted a child while my partner had perfectly understandable reservations. I had recently been named one of the city’s most photographed models, and he was a rising star in the advertising world. We had dreamed about owning Ferraris and living in New York.

    Overnight I decided I wanted to throw it all away, settle down and have a baby. We put New York on the backburner for a homely little cottage in the suburbs of Adelaide and instead of a Ferrari, we made plans to buy a twelve year old Volvo stationwagon. But we just weren’t equipped to deal with the reality of family life together. He slogged out his working week as a junior ad man and came home to dirty nappies, and a tired, milky, emotional, distinctly un-modellike girlfriend while his workmates headed out for flaming Sambuccas with the media crowd.

    We squabbled about money, spare time and domestic chores. We screamed about responsibility and friends. We forgot to have fun. We neglected our commitments. We fought about everything. Our time together became painful. I cried a lot and decided I wasn’t enough: my everything wasn’t enough. A relationship counsellor eventually recommended we split up.

    At the same time I lost many of my oldest and most loved friends. Everything and everyone seemed to be caught up in the one big, disastrous failure that had been set in motion by yours truly. I scooped up my 10-month old son and walked out on my smouldering wreck of a life. 20 years on, my honest appraisal of the situation is that in respect of my eldest child’s father, I have failed to repair the damage of the relationship breakdown, failed to be a great co-parent, and failed in several attempts at friendship and communication.

    But I did make a surprising discovery during the fallout of the whole miserable bust up which I have relied upon throughout the many subsequent failures: I can fail and be ok. I can’t tell you what a big surprise that was. It doesn’t mean I want to fail, it doesn’t mean I take a “who cares” approach to failure, it just means that if I’ve truly done my best and it isn’t enough, life goes on.

    Over time I have become more familiar and less fearful of failure. It hasn’t killed me and it has made me stronger, just as some wise person told me it would. I’ve had all manner of failures, personal and professional and the thing is, I’m still here and I’m still happy.

    But just as I was beginning to feel I had a handle on failure and its inability to create permanent havoc in my life, along comes a new kind of failure, one I feel poorly equipped to manage: my child’s failure. Yes, my daughter failed her grammar school entrance exam. My curious, independent, funny, ambitious, clever daughter went “all dreamy for a few minutes” during one of the three crucial papers. She was a sure thing. She was me at the starting line with too-big-feet, ready to race, ready to win. She was me with the confidence of youth and love and foreverness. She was smiling, happy, confident, successful me.

    Sadly, she was also crumpled, defeated, sobbing me, trying to hear people explain that failure will make her better, make her stronger. And one of those voices was mine.

    In attempting to console my daughter last night I found myself telling her about a recent proud moment. It was the day she found out she’d failed her exam and wouldn’t be going to the secondary school she – and many of her friends – had pinned their hopes on. After wiping her tears away and calming her breathing, she wanted to call her friends to see how they’d gone. As one after the other announced with jubilant excitement that they had passed with flying colours, she genuinely smiled and said “I’m so happy for you – congratulations.” And she was. I found her grace and courage in the face of failure profoundly moving.

    However, dealing with failure isn’t the same as seeing it’s value. I’m not sure my daughter can see the up side of this experience just yet, and in fairness, I’m struggling to embrace it. Ahead of us we have a bureaucratic appeal process, lingering uncertainty, a potentially hurtful tribunal appearance and at the end, the possibility of another dose of failure.

    But bouyed by The Value of Failure radio programme, and in recounting some of my own failures here I have managed to remind myself that whatever happens next she’s going to be alright. She’s going to be alright.

    If you’re going though something similar, I’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts on failure, what you’ve learned and whether it can indeed be a positive experience.

    Also, I strongly recommend listening to The Value of Failure on the BBC radio iPlayer…

    Post script: My daughter did indeed get a place at a grammar school on appeal. Her failure dented her confidence in a way I can still see two years later, but has also motivated her to be an even more attentive and committed student.

    Post post script: Turns out my youngest daughter is also heading for a schools appeal, having missed the grammar score by two marks on her maths paper… here we go again.

    Post post post script: It’s going to be alright.

  • Oh Gary, how could you?

    Oh Gary, how could you?

    Screen Shot 2017-05-24 at 13.22.19This post was the Mumsnet Blog of the Day on May 14th, 2014… thanks for the support Mumsnet, we consider it an honour!

    —

    Oh Gary, how could you?

    You were my favourite boy from a boyband… who turned into my favourite man from a manband… and then went on to be a lovely husband and dad who showed himself to be committed, loving and courageous in the face of personal tragedy. You espoused your dedication to family life, the wider community and your country no less.

    Screen Shot 2017-05-24 at 13.22.31You wrote Patience and we all wanted to wait. You wrote Rule The World and we wished you did. In The Flood you wrote that “no one understood” and although we had no idea what you were talking about (a rowing race?), we saw through all the misunderstanding to your inner – and outer – beauty.

    Over the years you have become our lovable Mr Britain. You were kind and wise on the telly, expert, honest, funny… but you could still conjure up a smoulder in your lovely black and white music videos. You climbed mountains, organised concerts and sang all our favourite songs for sick and underprivileged kiddies everywhere.

    In 2013 you wrote Sing and we wept with happiness and patriotism as all those beautiful children from all over the commonwealth joined with the Military Wives in our very own choral tribute to the Queen.

    Screen Shot 2017-05-24 at 13.22.41You were such a good chap that you got an OBE. Sir Gary. We thought it was lovely, and you were lovely, and your kids must have been so proud. Awwwwwwww……

    And then the next thing we know, you’re exposed as a tax cheat!! Hoarding your own money away in some tax avoidance scheme while simultaneously asking us to reach into our own pockets (ones that aren’t lined with royalties from thirteen no 1 hits) to support Children in Need. Heck Gary, if people like you just paid your taxes maybe there wouldn’t be so many children in need in the first place.

    Of course, there’s been a lot of media attention around your own donations to charity, but I have to say, even that is soured by this. What would happen if we all decided to pay the amount of tax we thought appropriate to whichever charity we thought appropriate and just tuck the rest away for posterity? Our whole society would fall apart, Gary, that’s what. You know, schools, roads and hospitals all depend on everyone paying their taxes, and you don’t get to pick and choose what your tax bill is spent on!

    So what happens next? What do we do when our charitable and generous national treasure is revealed to be a greedy tax dodger who owes us several million pounds??? Demand he repays the tax he dodged and take away his OBE. Sorry Gary, your services to music still stand but your services to charity – except for helping make them a necessity – are questionable.

    And of course we’ll have to boycott the X-factor and anything Take That-ish, which is a pity, but now that I think about it, I’ve grown out of this crush anyway.

    Lily Allen tweeted: “Can’t get through to NHSDirect, no midwives in your area ? Well at least the Queen got a nice birthday party/jubilee , whatever @GaryBarlow.”

    Ad endum: I’m giving the last word to Take VAT, with their comedy spoof Pay it back for good. For the record, Davie Quinn “adores Gary” and is “actually not bothered at all by what he did.” He even says he’d do the same. Sigh… eyeroll… He has however promised to pay tax on any profits made by this particular song in the event of it going viral as a direct result of its appearance here…

    **Sadly, I can no longer upload the link that originally appeared on diamondsanddaisychains.com, but if you want a smile at Gazza’s expense, have a look at it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me0UydKq_ig

    Published on May 20, 2014 – Comedy spoof cover about Gary Barlow’s tax Scandal.
    Vocals, lyrics & video by Davie Quinn
    Production by Alex McGowan @ SpaceEko Studios

    Post originally published on diamondsanddaisychains.com

  • Struggling to be ethical

    Struggling to be ethical

    Be grateful for small mercies, Kate.

    Well, I am trying to be, but sometimes it’s so frustrating to see something that you really believe in making such slow progress. I’m talking about our ethical clothing campaign.

    I guess that I expected the rest of the world to have the same reaction as I did when I saw the Rana Plaza collapse: Shock, sorrow, guilt… I had vaguely assumed that sweatshops were just something in Nike’s shady past. Nike and other “sweatshop brands” had been shamed out of their grubby profiteering decades ago, hadn’t they? Despite my lifelong boycott of Nike (I bear grudges) the thought of sweatshops hadn’t crossed my mind in ages. But images of the Bangladeshi wreckage brought it into eyebulging focus. This kind of treatment of unlucky humans by lucky humans is unforgivable, and definitely not something I, or my fellow lucky-country citizens would ever want to be a part of. Am I right?

    So why hasn’t there been a global call to end sweatshops? Why no universal outrage at the plight of our fellow humans? It seems we only care about poverty and suffering if we can point the finger of blame in someone else’s direction. Meantime we turn a blind eye to the fact that people are enslaved to meet our own demands for cheap, disposable fashion.

    I feel like we are just drifting obliviously towards forgetting about the Rana Plaza collapse. I feel we are pretending that it’s all been fixed up by token efforts and half measures, like The Accord. It hasn’t. It’s hard.

    I admit, I have wavered in my own commitment to shop ethically. There was the time I took a princess costume to the checkout of my local Disney shop and asked whether their clothes were made in sweatshops, to which the sales assistant replied, “Probably”. Flanked by my two daughters who were wide-eyed with embarrassment and watched by every customer in earshot I said, “I’m sorry to hear that” and left.

    There was the time I had to buy a Christmas hat for my son, and was tempted to pick one up from the pound shop – so quick, easy and cheap! – but chose in the end to blink back my tiredness and stitch one up late at night.

    There was the time I fell in love with a pair of uber-flattering Karen Millen jeans, and didn’t even want to ask the sales assistant about their provenance for fear of bad news… which it was. Even at that point I struggled with my commitment! It’s not “nice” to make a fuss, is it? And my desire to be friendly and non-confrontational is almost as strong as my desire to make a stand for all those women and children locked up in sweatshops! But you’ll be pleased to know I walked out of the shop empty handed.

    And there was the time my daughter showed me her own heartbreaking and heartbroken letter to Build-A-Bear in which she asked if their goodies are “made in sweatshops, or by other children who put their lives in danger and miss out on school to make fun toys for the lucky children”. No reply came. I was tempted to tell her I was sure her beloved BAB’s were ethically produced, but it would have been a lie.

    At other times, I know I have steamrolled people who have raised objections to my ethical clothing commitment. I oscillate between outrage and heartbreak when I feel like my fellow humans are being inhumane.

    “But all those people would have NO work if they didn’t have sweatshop work” – No, they could have the same work, they could just do it in a safe work environment and earn enough money to live on.

    “They’re used to living and working like that” – They’re people! They’re human! And even if they are used to it, that doesn’t make it ok. Some sexually abused children are probably used to being abused… doesn’t make it ok!!

    “Why don’t they do something about it themselves?” – Because they are unimaginably poor, powerless, vulnerable and fearful. If we don’t speak up for them, nobody will.

    “I can’t afford it” – this one breaks my heart. Of course, there are people whose financial situation dictates that they can only buy the very cheapest clothing available, but generally speaking it’s an easy euphemism for “I’d rather spend my money on something else”. There I said it. Hang me out to dry, but it is a matter of priorities, not money. I just can’t imagine justifying “I can’t afford it” to a sweatshop worker. Imagine a woman, just like you and me, who works 18 hour days, who is bullied and most likely subjected to physical, verbal or sexual abuse by her employer, who is exposed to toxic chemicals and made to use dangerous machinery, who is forbidden from drink or toilet breaks, who is fined if production quotas aren’t reached and has no recourse to improve her conditions… and at the end of the day goes home to her slum with meagre rations of food for her children, who have been looking after themselves all day. Imagine telling this woman, “I can’t afford it”.

    But the absolute worst – and increasingly common – response I get if I try to discuss ethical clothing is smiling, head-nodding apathy. You can’t combat apathy.

    Just when I was beginning to wonder whether campaigning for ethical clothing would ever be anything more than pointless, I stumbled across an article on ThreadGently: This is the real cost of fast fashion. Never again? The article featured a close up image of a parent and child clinging together – dead – in the rubble of the Rana Plaza. The memory of the image still prickles my skin. If I’d known it was there I wouldn’t have looked. But I saw it and it gave me what I needed: impetus.

    There may not be universal outrage over sweatshops yet, but there are like minds, a conversation has started and progress is being made. These are the small mercies, and I am grateful for them.

    There are other things to be grateful for too, like the moments of relief – almost triumph!- when friends have said they support ethical shopping too, or proudly showed me an item of clothing they chose after reading something on my website.

    I was grateful after I piped up in our school committee meeting, hoping I could introduce the idea of ethically produced school uniforms, only to discover that we already have them! Yay! I was grateful having asked about including a commitment to an ethically produced uniform for my daughter’s netball club and the idea was met with enthusiasm! Yippee!

    I’ve had the fun of discovering brands who deliver delicious, original clothing and whose integrity in their dealings all along their supply chains is humbling. That’s something to be grateful for. And of course I am always grateful to our lovely readers who read, leave comments and email their support to me. Seriously, three cheers to you guys…

    And in becoming acquainted with sweatshop-free brands, I have learned that many also promote their environmental credentials and use real life models. This is fashion that is eco-friendly, ethically made and free from gender stereotyping. HOOFUCKINGRAY!

    So, if you, like me have been touched in any way by the plight of the people who died in Rana Plaza or by the knowledge that there are hundreds of thousands of other nameless, faceless workers still being abused on our behalf, I urge you too to keep talking and keep shopping (ethically!). Don’t give up.

    x Kate

    PS I will never knowingly buy clothing that is made in sweatshops again. Again.

    Originally published on diamondsanddaisychains.com

  • Going to Brussells

    Going to Brussells

    This is the first update on the progress of our petition calling for mandatory clothing labels which indicate the working conditions of the people who made them.

    If you’d like to sign the petition, it’s here: ***No it’s not any more! PETITION NOW CLOSED

    Exciting news! Our voices have been heard!

    I have been invited to go to Brussels to attend The Hands That Sew Your Shirt and propose working condition clothing labels to the European Commission.

    This would not have happened without your early support of this petition. THANK YOU.

    The next step is to start a European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI) which I will start work on when I get back from Brussels. This is a massive task and involves setting up a committee with representatives from 7 EU states, then getting 1 million signatures on the petition. Yes, 1 million!! And we can do it.

    Green MEP Keith Taylor has offered his support with this campaign following his successful involvement with the ECI calling for an eight hour limit on live animal transport. I will also be building a network of non-government organizations such as the Clean Clothes Campaign, Labout Behind the Label and Care International, to help drive the campaign forward through their own channels.

    In the meantime, we need to keep spreading the word. It’s truly outrageous that the fashion industry won’t come clean about their use of sweatshop slavery. 8 million people in Bangladesh alone work in garment manufacture. And while the European Commission’s own 2013 study revealed that 84% of EU consumers care about how their clothes are made, fashion retailers are under no legal obligation to provide this information.

    We know about the conditions of the chickens that lay our eggs, it’s time we knew about the working conditions of the people who make our clothes.

    Thank you again for your involvement. Please continue to share the petition on all your social networks and via email. Invite people to sign. We’ve had success already with 300 signatures, imagine if we each got just one more person to sign and had double the signatories by next week.

    This is just the beginning of a long campaign and there’s a big job ahead. But together we are being the change we want to see in the world… and it’s very exciting.

    Kate

    This was originally published on diamondsanddaisychains.com