It's just an idea at this point, really, but Crispin Argento (designer of PINO and networker/idea man/talker/doer extraordinaire) just might be on to something. Long an advocate and agitator for sustainable reform in the apparel industry—the only consumer sector without a clear path into the future, ironically—Argento has been floating the idea of something he calls The Cascadia Sustainable Apparel Initiative. Basically, it would unite the Pacific Northwest's three major cities (Vancouver, Seattle, Portland) with a semiannual sustainable fashion week and, ideally, a joint education program for design students specifically interested in sustainable innovation in apparel design (which our region is already kicking ass at in an athletic/performance context).

Unlike every other major consumer sector, there is no clear road map for apparel to transition into the future. It's not that nothing is changing—it is, but it's decentralized. Given the size of the talent pool in the three major Cascadian cities combined, and their governments' and communities' commitments to sustainable achievements, Argento makes the argument that we should assert and invest ourselves as a destination for this movement.

"There's no global home for sustainable fashion," he says, likening it to New York as a capital of high fashion and Tokyo as the standard-bearer of street fashion. The Pacific Northwest boasts companies like Lululemon, Nike, Adidas, and Columbia Sportswear, who are already leading the innovations that fashion needs—they're just doing it in the context of athletic and performance wear.

Read the whole thing here.

The new Portland Fashion Week—not the one that former producer Tito Chowdhury built up before starting his own FASHIONxt alternative event, but a new beast being helmed by original founder Tod Foulk and his new partners (yes this is all terribly confusing indeed)—has finally announced its location.

Its website has long touted that it was bringing PFW back to the heart of the city "where it belongs"—presumably a dig at the previous incarnation and FASHIONxt's longtime home on the shipyards. For a while the talk was that it would be located somewhere on the waterfront, but today the announced that it will be... at the convention center, where, as a certain colleague put it, "fun goes to die." Burn! But really, if they dress it up enough, this could be okay. It certainly is in the heart of the city, positioned near the confluence of its quadrants.

All in all, though, PFW 2.0 is still a mystery. The application process to show at the event is still open, so it's anybody's guess whose talent is actually going to be showcased. PFWs of the past sometimes struggled to fill its time slots with qualified designers, bringing down overall standards of curatorial quality control, and now that, with FASHIONxt and PFW, there are two large fall fashion events, it raises the question of how many good designers there will be to go around. It may help that PFW is not charging designers a production fee. They are also inviting retailers to participate, which—while my pride in Portland retail is well documented—seems a less vital thing to showcase. Either way, the proof will be in the pudding.

• Facebook

If you swung by the 811 E Burnside hub over the weekend, you may have noticed something different. Multidisciplinary designer/artist/perfumer/performer Julia Barbee's tiny studio/shop had its last day on Saturday, a move Barbee describes as "a quick decision."

The closure comes hot on the heels of an artist's residency at the Sou'wester Lodge on the southern Washington coast, where, among other things, she developed a signature room fragrance for them. Now that she's back she's still active as always, if a little less accessible than I prefer. Her hidden little shop was always a reliably fascinating jumble of sculpture, eccentrically selected vintage, crystals, and mind blowingly unique designs.

• Julia Barbee
• She's also pretty good at Instagram.

Luckily she's not holing up entirely, though. "I'm going to be treating the Portland Flea like a pop-up shop once a month (third Sundays), and I have spaces in Stars & Splendid and also in Monticello Antique mall in Montavilla," she says. "I'm selling jewelry and perfume through Haunt and Backtalk, and I have jewelry at Demimonde also. I'll keep updates about designs online and Instagram, (julia_barbee) and I'll certainly let you know if/when I open a new location of my own!"

H&M recently published its sustainability report, and more importantly, its supplier list, in an attempt to be more transparent and negate the negative press it has received. Highlights from the sustainability report include that H&M is the first fashion company to collect and recycle clothing from any brand in any condition, they are the world's number one user of organic cotton, they saved 450 million liters of water by applying water-saving production techniques, and their use of recycled polyester in 2012 rescued 7.9 million plastic bottles from ending up in landfills. They are also working to raise wages in factories in Bangladesh, as well as teach sustainability practices to the factories they work with. This is all fine and good, but they are still clearly lacking in humane treatment of their workers, as shown in the Unconscious Collapses from Clean Clothes Campaign, highlighting that workers in H&M's Asian factories often faint from malnourishment due to poverty wages.

I like that H&M is at least trying to be more socially responsible, but it seems they are more focused on the environmental aspect than the human aspect, which should both be paid equal attention, NOW. With the company making over 2 billion Euros in 2012, I think they can afford to pay their factory workers living wages, even if their prices have to go up just a little. Again, I applaud their transparency, but until factory standards improve, I will continue to not shop there.

Source: Ecouterre

Not long ago there was speculation that Anna Wintour—the editor of American Vogue and probably the most widely recognizable person in the fashion world—might become the president's ambassador to the UK (where she is originally from). That didn't quite pan out, but her new gig, announced last night, is arguably even more influential. Conde Nast created her the position of Creative Director for the entire company (that's not only Vogue but Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, so many more) in order to prevent her from ditching the company. Basically virtually any mainstream glossy you pick up will bear her influence, which is kind of awesome. I'm not a big fan of American Vogue (it's boring), but Wintour is a genius (some might say an evil one), and it certainly is successful. It will be interesting to see how her power plays out across the CN catalog. This could be a cush way to pad out her path to retirement, or it could signal a sea change. Then again, Wintour has already basically set the tone for the modern lifestyle magazine, so it could also end up being business as usual. After having read her biography and watching the excellent September Issue, though, I'm gonna bet that kicking back isn't on the agenda.

Yesterday the HQ of Fashion's Night Out—a global event founded in 2009 by Vogue editor Anna Wintour in order to bolster flagging retail sales in the wake of the economic crash—announced it was shuttering, or at least on hiatus, until further notice "in order to enable retailers to channel their resources towards strategies more in keeping with their current priorities," (read: becoming more trouble than it's worth) saying that the event will still take place in some of its locations outside the US. Portland had been participating in FNO since 2010, with retail happenings and runway shows in Director Park. I've got a call in to Lisa Frisch of the Portland Business Alliance to find out what this means for plans in Portland this year, but it's very likely that, if there is a retail-related happening in the works, it will be flying under a different flag.

Alright, I finally caved and decided to take on the responsibility of a second Twitter feed outside of my personal one (baby Twitters being somewhat like rambunctious young puppies, requiring a certain degree of supervision) just for MOD. This way you won't have to look for your local style-related news in between photos of my pet cats and late-night musings. Just straight, unadulterated daily updates on all the sales, fashion shows, store openings, and lookbooks, and gossip you could need, plus live commentary from the shows and the streets. Follow @MercuryFashion, and fly on, little birdie.

• Dunderdon

With the recent news of Blackbird closing its doors, we were sad to hear neighboring shop Dunderdon is moving out as well. Specializing in high-end menswear, outdoorsy type gear, small goods, and a small run of women's clothing, Dunderdon was a great addition to the ever expanding West End shopping district. I chatted with store manager Jessie DeSue yesterday, who told me Dunderdon's last day will be March 31st—or when all of the merchandise is gone. Stop by to save with 50-70% off current items. No official word on who will be filling Dunderdon's space, but I have spied Reveille's peeps workin' hard to get their new home ready.

UPDATE:

Here's what longtime sales associate Philippe Bronchtein had to say about the situation:

It's sad to see the store close due to such unfortunate circumstances. There was a really special and enthusiastic community that evolved around our shop and the design of the clothes seemed to lend themselves particularly well to the city of Portland. It's been a joy working for Dunderdon and I'll miss standing beneath that awesome Corey Arnold print every weekend.

As for the future tenent of the Blackbox space, it's rumored that Portland's own Poler is set to take over. With remaining neighbors Tanner Goods, Yo Vintage!, and Solestruck, only time will tell how the new kids in Blackbox shake out.

It's always heartening to see people working in different areas of design in Portland join forces, and there seems to be some promise in the air of that happening with increasing frequency thanks to energizing forces like Design Week Portland. I'm mostly stumping for the apparel/jewelry crowd here, who seems to have less muscle behind them in terms of community organizing and networking than, say, the legion of sundry "creatives" filling the offices of agencies throughout the city, but are their natural brethren.

The latest coupling is a collaboration between branding/design firm OMFG Co. and apparel company Bridge & Burn. The full collection is set to drop "soon," but OMFG Co. dropped a few sneak peeks on their blog yesterday.

• Chris Hornbecker

I'm going to make the assumption that everything worn here is part of the collaboration, which means a foray into shop gear in the form of Fritz's apron, which should be a hit with the ADX crowd (Is it just me or is shop gear having kind of a moment? PINO x Hand-Eye Supply, anyone?), but the other sneak photo provided is in familiar Bridge & Burn territory: a button up:

• OMFG Co.

This week in Sold Out, I tackle the sticky icky situation that the name "Portland Fashion Week" is in. It's under new management, which, curiously, is the old management. It's complicated. Portland Fashion Week has made the news in other countries, and to any reasonable outsider that name should by all rights represent the best of what this town's disproportionately active, ground breakingly progressive, economically relevant, attention-deserving apparel industry has to offer. And let's just say that I fear it may not.

That is all.

• Hal Harrison
• A look from Viktor Luna at FASHIONxt, the OTHER Portland Fashion Week.

You are probably already familiar with Supportland (if not you can read up here—don't skip the comments, which both raise and answer questions that didn't make it into the main article). Up until now it has largely functioned as a local business-specific rewards card, but its potential has always held more. In the next few months the first phase of Portland Made will launch, a joint effort between Supportland and ADX, who aim to create what Supportland's Katrina Scotto di Carlo describes as an "ecosystem" for products manufactured in Portland, from clothing to beer to mattresses and beyond. This will take shape at first in small ways: a new edition of the Supportland card branded with the Portland Made logo, a search function on the Supportland site that allows users to find businesses that sell locally produced products, small business-building workshops and classes, and so forth. But ultimately there are goals like creating a collective online shopping site where users can shop locally made products, see which stores have them, and buy it from the location of their choosing. Even better, and something that Supportland already does with its retail clients, is the ability to create metrics, which really don't exist for micro-manufacturers. As Scotto di Carlo points out, in the political world you can't get anywhere without numbers to back you up. By generating useful numbers (read: accountable job creation), Portland Made will have the power to begin political lobbying on behalf of the wide but relatively disparate community of small manufacturers.

I'll be keeping a close eye on this as it develops because it's pretty damn exciting, so stay tuned for more as things roll out.

Remember how last year Portland Fashion Week re-branded itself as FASHIONxt? And how everyone everyone kept forgetting and calling it PFW anyway and/or mispronouncing it as "Fashion X.T." instead of the intended "Fashion Next" because creative spelling and capitalization ruin everything? Well shit just got even more confusing. Ye olde Portland Fashion Week has risen from the grave, sold [Correction: No money was exchanged. into the hands that brought you highly questionable events such as the Portland Fashion and Style Awards. This makes me... a little consterned.

PFW has had a rough go of it. Helmed primarily by Tito Chowdhury, he's faced a long, uphill battle to gain the trust of Portland designers, who seemed to perceive him as coming out of nowhere with a proposal that they spend hundreds of dollars to participate in his slick, professionally produced shows. And while some of them were never in the game for that sort of thing, a measure of peace has been achieved over the past years, with PFW and now FASHIONxt finding the designers who see the value in it. It's never been perfect, of course, and many still regard it with suspicion and distaste, but it's finding its groove.

Now that PFW has been sold into new management—including Tod Foulk of Semper Fashion, who was involved in the early incarnations of PFW, along with plus size style blogger Jessica Kane and Saffrona designer Sarabeth Chambers, both of whom appear to be more closely associated with Vancouver than Portland—there will essentially be two PFWs fishing out of the same shallow pool of talented Portland designers interested in participating. This is not good for quality. According to the site PFW is preparing for a five-day affair (Sept 25-29), and assuming FASHIONxt maintains itself at four nights, that's a grand total of nine days. To understate things, that's spreading it too thin.

Now maybe I'm paranoid, but I maintain my position that anyone involved in Portland's fashion industry should be concerned about PFW. To an outsider looking in, it appears by virtue of title and prominence to be the standard bearer of what's happening in the city. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but the fact remains that it's representing you, us… the entire metro area, arguably. And this comes right on the heels of a Time magazine shout out that placed Portland's fashion week atop a list of non-NYC fashion weeks. In fact all the progress PFW made with the outside press was included in the purchase price restructuring.

So please be careful with what you do with it, PFW 2.0. Please.