This week's contributors: Lydia, Dore Fasolati, this week's subjects: Sustainable fashion, , supplements, Wagyu meat, Andrew Wyeth black paintngs

Sustainable fashion tips for everyone

As the world starts to make an effort to heal itself from mankind’s constant and ongoing destruction, recycling has become the norm. And though fast fashion is on the rise, the best ways for fashion brands to reduce their environmental impact is by using sustainable materials.

Sustainable products are things that come from renewable resources and which don’t cause damage to the environment when being produced or disposed off.

We all need to put in a collective effort by

o   Shopping vintage- and second-hand items, not because we cannot afford a brand new fast fashion item but because we want to lower our impact on the environment. Also, second-hand often has unique and rare fashion items which you will cherish. Just look in the streets of Accra and you will see water hawkers dressed like celebrities

o   Choosing organic clothing which are made from natural and degradable materials which have less impact on the environment. Garments made from organic cotton have become mainstream in the fashion industry. The cotton needs to be produced without the use of synthetic agrochemicals. And there is organic linen as well, a great luxurious option.

o   Investing in quality and not quantity. Most young people jump on trends without thinking about the long-term impact it will have on their daily lives. Let’s take a break from fast fashion by repairing and upcycling clothes and shoes. Purchasing trans-seasonal clothes also will do the world a great deal of good. Price wise you will pay more for sustainable clothing than for fast fashion but you know what’s behind those low cost fast fashion clothings.

o   Buying clothes from sustainable brands which are transparent about their manufacturing process, where they buy and from who.

o   Only washing clothes when you need to, so less soap and less wear-off clothing particles into the environment and less water used.

o   Organize your wardrobe, exchange clothes with friends and family or even donate the ones you don’t need.

With these few ideas on sustainability, I hope I am making you more conscious of what you buy, what you wear and to maintain and repair your clothes.

Supplements

I recently asked my doctor if he knew of any good vitamin and mineral supplement, and all he did was shaking his head. But i beg to differ with him, supplements are good for the manufacturer and  highly profitable.  And good for the branding guys. Vita plus, Mineral boost, Fresh and Fit, Top Up, Power Cocktail, Be on Top, Vitismile, Lastlonger, Brain Booster, Sky Limit. The best brand is called Keep your Money.

Wagyu meat

Wagyu meat is a type of Japanese beef meat completely interspersed with fat, which makes it a very tender and tasty meat. It is difficult to produce and can fetch 300 US$ per kg retail. Of course people are trying to copy this, and somehow similar meat can now be bought in the USA for half that money.

Arby's, a big American fast food chain also started selling a Wagyu burger at 6 $, they claim 50% is American Wagyu and 50% unspecified beef....  The reception is not very good, fake is fake after all. And, recently I had a small Wagyu starter in a supposedly upscale  restaurant in Labone,  and that was a mistake. It was served still half frozen and it was tasteless, it must have been frozen and unfrozen umpty times. This is one of the current problems in Accra, plenty upscale restaurants are springing up but most in fact are not worth the money they are charging, and apart from that most are not even worth talking about anyway. Buying the tools does not make you a good carpenter.

So I made my own Wagyu burgers, friend of mine was so kind to bring 100 gms from UK, which made us 2 small but size wise ok burgers. Warm bread bums from Shoprite Osu (they have some surprisingly good bread), lightly fried onions (just to get rid of the sharp taste) and tomato ketchup, and wamm, it was nice indeed. Unfortunately definitely outside of my budget.

Recently the Andrew Wyeth Foundation showed hundreds of his paintings, some of them paintings of blacks...

Andrew Newell Wyeth, a white, (1917 –2009) was one of America's best-known painters of the mid 20th century. He mainly painted what he saw, what he experienced, in daily life around him. Wyeth's art has long been controversial. He developed technically beautiful works, had a large following and became rich as a result. Yet critics, curators and historians have offered conflicting views about the importance of his work. Art historian Robert Rosenblum was asked in 1977 to identify the “most overrated and underrated” artists of the 20th century. He provided one name for both categories: Andrew Wyeth.

One of his feats was that he not only painted subjects very realistically, but he had light make them come alive and show a deeper, hidden, often controversial and emotional meaning. Many of his paintings were never really shown to the public, but now the Andrew Wyeth Foundation showed lots of them, and, here comes the hitch, many of his subjects were black. Painted before America cancelled segregation in 1964, segregation that held that blacks sat in the back of the bus, and whites in the front. The irony was that both were poor, if you were not poor you had a car and no need to sit in a bus.

day of the fair, 1963

Inter racial sex was also forbidden in many American states till 1967, and this makes me wonder what relationship Wyeth had with this lady

1964

So Wyeth painted blacks, and he painted lots of them. But this was not really known to his big crowd of fans. Was he afraid to show this side of his world in a world where many, till today think of blacks as second hand citizens? Was he afraid it would damage his career? Or was this his way to protest, to alert, to make the public aware of what was wrong?

Lydia...

do not forget to hit subscribe button and confirm in your email inbox to get notified about our post.

I have received requests about leaving comments/replies. For security and privacy reasons my blog is not associated with the major media giants like Facebook or Twitter. I am talking with the host about a solution, for the time being you can mail me on wunimi@proton.me

I accept invitations and payments to write about certain products or events, things, people, but I may refuse to accept and if my comments are negative then that's what I will publish, despite your payment. This is not a political newsletter. I do not discriminate on any basis whatsoever.