Zara, Shein And Gymshark Can’t Call Themselves Sustainable While Running The Same System

Zara, Shein and Gymshark can’t call themselves sustainable while running the same system that is destroying everything. Sitting in the workshop with Vivi Rufino and David, the couple who run Freedom Ecowear together, Vivi, who left mass production herself, explains why a green side line on top of fast fashion is hypocrisy, why Gymshark sells the experience not the product, and why people are finally waking up.

Bamboo Is The Biggest Red Flag In Sustainable Fashion, And Freedom Ecowear Will Tell You Why

Bamboo is the biggest red flag in sustainable fashion, and a natural swimwear maker will tell you why. Bamboo is woody and tough, the stuff of mats and scaffolding, not thread. To turn it soft it has to be dissolved in carbon disulfide and rebuilt as viscose rayon, so bamboo viscose is not a natural fibre and not a natural process. Sitting in the workshop with Vivi Rufino and David, the couple who run Freedom Ecowear, Vivi names it as her number one greenwashing trap, plus the other red flags the two of them watch for.

Fixing La Raza

Colorism in the Dominican Republic compliments a black woman, then quietly asks her to be lighter. Angie, a black Dominican artist, on mejorar la raza, why Dominicans deny being black, and the Eurocentric beauty standard, with the historian behind Afro Historia on where the wound was engineered. I was there in her apartment for two days, and this is what she told me, in her own words.

Stop Calling It Relaxer, Call It Burner

Are hair relaxers dangerous? Yes. There is nothing relaxing about lye that burns the scalp, says Angie, a black Dominican artist, and the Dominican Republic is where this story lives, because almost every woman here straightens or relaxes her hair. Over two days I sat with the painter on the cancer study, the lawsuits, the school afro bans, the Dando Pelo documentary La Sirena backed, and where it all came from, and this is her in her own words.

The Antigua Man Who Grows His Own Breakfast, and Finds It by Feel

Mr Lionel grows most of what he eats at Lamblion in Antigua and finds his fruit by feel as his sight fades. A morning in his garden on food self sufficiency, food sovereignty and patience, in his own plain words, on a black owned self catering eco stay you can visit.

Yes, You Pick Your Own Breakfast at This Antigua Vacation Rental

Yes, you pick your own breakfast at this Antigua vacation rental. Lamblion is a black owned, Green Globe self catering stay in St John’s where Lionel, who is losing his sight and finds his fruit by feel, grew a food garden guests are free to eat from. I went ten days barely touching a shop. This is the place in his own words.

I Took a Solo Day on the Jamaican Farm That Feeds a Negril Hotel

The farm to table food at a Negril hotel starts an hour up in the hills, on a working Jamaican farm I had to myself for a morning. A farmer named Muffy walked me through the cabbage, the saved seed and a cedar tree he will never sit under, and taught me more about real food and patience than the whole rest of the week on the beach.

How a Jamaican Farmer Accidentally Built One of Negril’s Best Loved Hotels

How did a Jamaican farmer accidentally build one of Negril’s best loved hotels? Daniel Grizzle was growing food long before he was a hotelier, and his black owned, family run Charela Inn feels like a home because it grew out of a real life, not a brand deck. This is why the owner is the whole reason we stay, in his own words.