Duncan & Prudence Our Blog

We had a feeling we weren’t going to win the Green Gold Award. Still, it doesn’t stop us from crying into our pillow at night about it. Well done Resene Paints. You deserve it. In fact, we were so confident we didn’t have a chance, I told Duncan to spend the team-building budget on tickets to Dylan Moran instead. That man is so spot on with what he says sometimes I found myself not laughing at all, simply nodding my head vigorously, as if he could see me up in the back row. I wonder if Wellington is a good comedy audience. I bet you as far as they go, we’re not. We try to laugh out loud, but if the joke is really funny enough, that’s precisely when most of us get quiet and approving instead. Capital city audiences are probably like that all around the world for comedians. Too smart and knowledgeable about the current affairs being joked about and touched upon, we almost feel obliged to stick up our hand and voice an opinion of our own, rather than simply let go and guffaw. Let me assure you though, I did laugh heartily, and it was as good as a fire going in the middle of winter for my heart. Thank goodness for comedy! We all need a laugh more often.
We sent a video of ourselves to the Business Gold Awards, and I’ve been trying to convince Duncan to put it on Utube so you can all see it. He’s very shy about Utube. We’ve done two videos before for various events- a Design conference we presented at, and of course, our Thistle Hall fundraiser event. The video we made for that was very slow and arty, and we captured all the industrial processes it takes between a customer order and the screenprinted product. For the Green Gold Award we simply sped that up into 30 seconds, put a snazzy still of our website and address on the end, and jazzed it up with music. It’s very cool and Duncan is very clever to be able to do it himself. But as you know, he’s a perfectionist, and film isn’t what he’s confident about, so I endeavour to have it posted for your sake, but don’t get your hopes up.

We couldn’t go ourselves to the swanky event (a) because we couldn’t afford four tickets in a recession, and there’s no way we could justify buying only two tickets, and (b) I was booked in at the Sustainable Style Seminar Series for the same night. I presented my case study of Duncan & Prudence as an example of ethical capitalism, introducing the 42Collective to the theories of Marx surrounding commodity production and the circulation of capital. It was very much a university lecture, but if we are going to talk about consumer practice and social responsibility in fashion, then we all need to know a little more about what Marx said. I apologised in advance to the crowd in case my presentation turned out to be the boring one of the night, but told them that that’s what they get when I take them – as a capitalist talking to potential customers – for intelligent. By the way, if you’re holding an event on something similar and you’re looking for a visiting lecturer, I would be very keen to make the presentation again. Be in touch.
There are some sustainable style projects always running in Newtown. Please visit the Pixel Ink Gallery next door to People Coffee. These guys are creating their own community of artists and designers. We are chuffed to be included. And the Great Mindy of Juniper holds her regular workshops around once a month, inspiring and encouraging her community to get sewing and designing. And most recently at 162 Riddiford St, ReDunn Fashion are offering sustainable style with ready to wear refashioned clothing, creative alterations to pieces of your wardrobe you bring along, classes on refashioning, costume design and hire for theatre, and selling artworks by Kazz Funky Blue. Salons are running each of the next three Saturdays from 11am, featuring live entertainment and refreshments, or else they’re open Tuesday to Sunday, our business hours.
I’ve got involved in the momentum gathering for a Skate Park above the upper carpark of the hospital at the end of Owen St. Next time you’re walking the Town Belt, go venturing in that direction and take a look for yourself at the potential of this site for skaters. I’m drafting the proposal to send to the Council, and contacting Friends of the Town Belt and members of Parks and Gardens, getting people’s support as I go. Please be in touch with me if you have ideas or know of people who can help. It’s high time our kids had a space in their own part of the city to go to skate. I’m getting sick of having to go with them every time they need to get their wheels off. I’d rather send them up the road with a cell phone and a timelimit, and let them go wild with their own local posse. Who’s with me?
This is our fabulous intern Kate, from the Fashion Institute. I wish she was coming every day. She and Tessa are getting the production shelves full of stock to sew for Winter. She’s also developed an offcut denim fabric bag design, a first sample for Duncan to think about. I hope she’s getting a great experience with us. We’ve really worked her hard and have gotten so much benefit from having her. Love that longterm relationship with the Fashion Institute!

That’s right, Duncan & Prudence gulped when it found out this month that we made it into the Finals of the Green Gold Business Award. I was up in Auckland for the week, staying with friends and going to my brother Charles’ wedding, and so Duncan went all by himself to the afternoon announcement last Tuesday. Poor dude, I’m usually the one that speaks the sustainable language, so he must have felt lonely without me, but he said he loved the speech given by the guy from PriceWaterHouseCoopers. One of our category’s finalists – Meridian – is also a principle sponsor of the whole thing, so I figure it might seem crass awarding themselves, which leaves the other three of us in the category a better chance. We’re proud to use Meridian for our electricity.
Regrettably we’ve had to take a year off our subscription to the Sustainable Business Network, however. We fought about it, but in the end it was one of our expenses we’ve decided to cut down on: our memberships to just about everything has become a burden, so not really sustainable. Our commitment to reducing everyone’s carbon footprint through our independent industry in Newtown has become, I hope, hallmark enough of our identity without having to keep proving it, somehow, to our customers this way. And anyway, what’s better proof than to be recognized by the Gold Awards? Gold! I like Gold!
While we’re discussing sustainability I feel I must put my opinion in writing regarding NZ Defence’s gutting the heart of NZ Textiles and manufacturing with its outsourcing of its uniforms. What makes me so angry is that I’m sure the National Government has decided the way to make jobs for New Zealand that could save it from the recession is Roadworks. So, hundreds of women lose their jobs in factories sewing uniforms, and hundreds of men are offered jobs constructing new roads…hmmm, what’s wrong with this scenario? Shame on you NZ Defence, and don’t give me that Designed Here argument: load of intellectual property gobbledygook.
As Gareth Morgan says in his brilliant interview with Black in The Listener, the government cuts an expense here, it ultimately becomes a new expense somewhere else – ie, the dole payments – within its vast bureacratic brain matter, a bigger expense even. It’s not plain stupid economy, it’s sick.
For me and everyone I have talked to – customers, friends, family – the consensus is that this recession has been a breath of fresh air. A purging of excess lifestyle and its stresses. But I guess I don’t know a lot of people who had really major and silly investments. Us little people are merely talking about things like less plastic, in our household hardware, in our kitchen cupboards, hey, in our wallets. Yes, Duncan cut up both our credit cards this month (although we haven’t severed some of our automatic payments out of it, LOVE online banking). Less waste, more garden. Perhaps we’ll talk less about “sustainability” – awful word, Duncan never knew what it meant anyway. We go back to plain old “resourceful”. Now that’s a word we can act upon, rather than a benchmark we all feel obliged to achieve.
Ultimately we work on both words, as principles of our post-holocaust lifestyle. And I’m not using that word lightly, either. While everybody in media keeps comparing our times to that of the Great Depression, let us never forget World War Two directly after, for what it was: a genocidal and nuclear holocaust. It’s about time we started accepting and thinking post-modernly about how we’re living. By that I mean more relatively: who are we kidding and who are we stepping on continuing and carrying on like American consumers? Us New World Whities in America, Australia, Africa and New Zealand, what a bain we’ve been to the rest of humanity. Where do we get off thinking the world can keep affording us to live the highlife like we are? Time to get real. High Time we thought seriously about moving to the dark side. Aren’t we All Blacks? Which reminds me, Go Obama! LOVE that Stimulus Package. And Hip Hop Hooray for Our Helen! From Labour to Global Poverty and Aid in Development! I’m so proud to have shaken her hand as I’m sure most NZers had a chance at least once to in the last decade.
Did I mention it’s a golden age for New Zealand? Gold!