apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Becky: I agree with the "if it were $520, I'd make it" comment! It reminds me of a sign I saw at a craft fair once: "Sure you can make it yourself, but will you?" I always see so many things that I just know I could make but our 21st Century disposable ecomomy has ingrained in me the idea that cost and value aren't always the same - and we value oue own time and effort in different ways. I am making an effort to look at more ways to use what's laready out there than to buy new...but sometimes the new is just soooo tempting!

Perhaps a bamboo skewer would work.

I definitely give it a shot.

I'd much rather say "I made that" than "I bought that"

please share the rumors... the suspense is killing me!

Probably the rumor that they (oh the horror of it all ;->) donated money to campaign funds for some Republican candidates.

Yup. Richard Hayne (the owner of UO, Anthropologie, etc) has given thousands of dollars to Sen. Rick Santorum's campaigns, both personally, and through UO. Santorum is anti-gay (he recently equated gay sex with bestiality and incest), anti-abortion and generally very right-wing.

The company also manufactures nearly all of their clothing in Third World countries.

Everybody makes most of their clothing products in third world countries. If they didn't nobody could afford it.

AT - please stop posting political crap.

Keith, why is it "political crap" to know the politics of the manufacturers from whom we choose to buy things?

As far as I understand, it is not the "corporate entity" that has donated money to the Republican party. It is the CEO himself, as a private citizen. You may disagree with his beliefs, which is fine, but I don't think it's realistic to expect the CEOs of major companies in the US to all be Democrats. I mean, really! And even if they were, don't even try to tell me that being Democrats makes people virtuous. Monsanto, for instance, has donated to Democratic and Republican politicians alike in its quest to make as much money as possible by peddling its pesticides. Too bad if they are ruining agriculture in this country and abroad in the process.

Becky, I haven't seen where UO as a company has made such donations, but I could be wrong...can you point out documentation for this? If they did, did they also make donations to the Democratic party (many companies make donations to both sides)?

While I understand people's objections, I think that much of the hoopla surrounding this is silly, and for the most part I think it's an example of people just enjoying getting on their high horses. Let's be real here--you probably would have to stop shopping at most stores owned by large companies if the concern is what political party the CEO supports. Why single out UO? I'm all for supporting small, local stores, buying secondhand, and such. Why not just do that and stop harping on this issue?

Because this is shouldn't be a political site. All most people want is links to cool products. Period. I don't give a rat's butt what anyone does in their private life, corporate or otherwise.

Wouldn't it be great, instead of posting where to buy it, you could post how to make it?

we've all got magazine's lying around.

AT: I very much appreciate knowing about issues like these, as I believe it makes me a more informed consumer, and I do care how and where and in what working conditions something I buy was made (my own, non-design, business is focused on certifying the harvest labor as made by "freepersons" rather than slave labor... as a step toward ending slavery in that market). Far from politicizing the site I think it makes us better consumers! While I have heard rumors about UO/Anthropologie I haven't gone searching for the info (I don't shop through them and have only looked at their offerings for design inspiration).

I too would like to know how to 'roll' my own magazines like that, I love the idea, and would love to recreate that mirror myself.

i think that mirror was made by rolling up sheets from magazines and then someway fastening them together - could use garden/flower/whatever-it's-called to do so if you didn't mind seeing it. i would assume that it is fastened to a piece of cardboard - or something thick enough to hold the whole thing togehter -with everything stuck to it. maybe? i don't know. worth a try.

Ana and Rucy - did you ever make those necklaces when you were in junior high using magazine pages? We used to cut very long strips of the magazine in an elongated triangle shape, use a toothpick to get a tight, consistent roll, and put a tiny dot of glue on the underside of the very tip of the triangle when we got to the end to hold it in place. Then we would string up a whole bunch to make necklaces. One very industrious friend of mine made bead curtains out of them.
I think this is definitely something you could DIY. The trick would be in getting the pieces to be a consistent size. The elongated triangle shape we used for making necklace beads resulted in a shape that was thick in the center and thinned out toward the edges. The pieces on this mirror are one thickness throughout, so I think a rectangle shaped piece of magazine would work, rolled around a thin chopstick or maybe a knitting needle?

(((Thanks Erin!))) No, I never made those, but your description gives me some good ideas. I'm sure with a little experimentation I could recover a mirror I'd just thought of Freecycling... THANKS!

You could also put glue on toothpicks and roll them over the magazine strips so you don't have to roll so much and it would make it easier to maintain the shape. Their picture frames would be easier to make though.

$52!!!! If you have a stash of mags like I do, the only cost would be Elmer's glue and a box of toothpicks, definitely cheaper than $52!!!!

Hmmm, I'd factor in the hours and hours it would take me to make, plus how crappy mine would look into trading off for $52. If it were $520, maybe I'd try to make it myself. Time is money.

Becky

P.S. I had not heard that about those companies before - interesting, as UO seems like such a hipster friendly too-cool-for-school company.

to Ruth and Keith, and everyone:

Thank you for the political commentary. I like to know the background of where I choose to shop, and hope other readers find campaign contributions and other things informative.

All the formula stores are often such as 'steal' and 'too good to be true prices'... that, yes they really are that.

I appreciate that this is an open commentary design blog.

Hi CL.

First, a disclaimer for my post: Though I've heard lots of things about Urban Outfitters and Hayne supporting ultra right-wing political candidates (which I don't like), I haven't stopped shopping there. Nor have I uniformly stopped shopping at retailers that use underpaid third world laborers (most chains) or buying cosmetics that have (at some point) used animal testing, etc, etc. But I DO like to be conscious of things like this and am slooooowwwly shifting my buying habits to support companies that support my ideals (I agree, btw, that what a CEO contributes to is not material, though I do like knowing what the actualy company gives money to). But I'm no saint, so no high horse here. Just info for people who are trying to do the same.

Here's the 'graph from the article I referenced (full article if you click on my name).

"When PW asks Hayne about his financial support of Santorum, he initially denies it. And when presented with a computer printout of Santorum's campaign donors from the Center for Responsive Politics website--which cites a $4,650 contribution from Urban Outfitters--he responds: "I'll have to look into this. I don't think this is right."


If you're interested in this kind of thing, you can check out responsibleshopper.com. It's a non-profit deali-o that has information on all sorts of products/shops/companies, including ethical labor practices, employee treatment, polution, complaints against them, etc, etc. (They used to have more companies--they may have scrapped the old info and be starting from scratch--but it's still interesting to check out)

Best to all.

yes teh Santorum connection is truer. Hayne has moved from his hippy past bigtime. That being said I'm with Becky: I like to informed and make my shopping decisions accordingly. Hence, I don't shop at any of the Urban ooutfitters /Anthropologie stores. I also no onlger patronize the Gap for the same reason. Ditto on Walmart. That's my choice . Your mileage may vary.

Yes the Santorum connection is true. Hayne has moved from his hippy past bigtime. That being said I'm with Becky: I like to be informed and make my shopping decisions accordingly. Hence, I don't shop at any of the Urban outfitters /Anthropologie stores. I also no onlger patronize the Gap for the same reason. Ditto on Walmart. That's my choice . Your mileage may vary.

Here's a source for a similar product -- not a mirror, but a picture frame made of recycled newspaper: http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/catalog/product.detail.php?product_id=7478

The shop that sells it -- Ten Thousand Villages -- offers products made by artisans and craftsmen/women living in developing nations.

But perhaps this, too, qualifies as "political crap," since the initiative behind this retail venue is to better the lives of the people who make the products that are for sale.

I'm always intrigued when some forms of information are welcome (like, where to find nifty stuff for our homes) but other forms of information are unwelcome -- like, the political color of a company or its CEO. I may still buy from that company, but at least I'm better informed.

Keith, you don't give a rat's butt about what a corporation or its officers are up to. Yeah, so? When "political" conversations emerge, why not just scroll past? This kind of information -- that is, "political" information -- does matter to some AT readers. I, for one, want a lot more than just links to cool products, which is why I'm an avid AT reader and not so much a reader of other design sites.

I just think it seems silly to paint all AT readers into one political camp.

You'd be surprised.

If you're going to paint one side of the political spectrum as 'Bad' you risk alienating the other side.

This IS America you know.

If anyone wants to claim to be on the same side as Rick Santorum, then they aren't company I would want to keep anyway. To Santorum, I, a pro-choice gay woman, am less than human. If my money were going to line the pockets of Santorum or his supporters I would want to know and would put my money elsewhere.

I welcome information about "green" products that help lessen our impact on the environment. I also think caring about the impact our purchases may have on other human beings is equally important.

I don't think AT has ever set itself to be just a list of products, lest we just simply become an online catalog. Perhaps that is actually some of our readers appreciates and approaches the site, but I know from a personal standpoint and from my own discussions with our editors here at AT, we really want to inform and help foster discussion of topics, whether purely aesthetic, or personal or even political when appropriate. As long as we can keep it civil, having those differences voiced can be a benefit to all, because making informed purchasing decisions is surely a good thing.

Personally, I have no interest in purchasing anything from a company with direct and active ties to discrimination of any sort, whether racial, sexual, political or religious. Hayne has every right to support and vote for whomever he pleases. I should have the informed choice to avoid his businesses. I'm glad someone did take the time to tell me about his political motivations while ago, so I could make the decision whether I wanted my dollars going to his profits and political donations.

Like noted above, we all make compromises and decisions, but I believe there's a great many readers who do appreciate being informed. If not, you can always skip over to the eyecandy :)

Hey all,
I saw this on the Urban site and made my own. SUPER easy!
It cost about 7$ although I made a smaller on. All you need is a mirror (I used a circle) and a floral mold (also a circle) I got an old LUCKY magazine and measured how think I wanted the rolls and lay the ruler down and just cut through as many pages as I could then I rolled them (I got a pretty exact size) and glued them to the mold. Its pretty cool although I think I will have to do it again for a "wall worthy" version. VERY EASY.

thank grignack.

I was thinking the floral ring would work, just a matter of matching up the ring to a mirror.

While working in a politically charged job dealing with many different human rights and equality issues several years ago , Urban Outfitters/Anthropologie and Free People came up constantly, the article that Becky references is from 2003, Rick Santourum is no longer in the Senate and this argument while VERY important is a little dated.

I think while we all look for great design inspiration and ideas from Apartment Therapy (or I should speak for myself here) its also very important to know where your hard earned money eventually will go. Its part of being an educated consumer.

Its hardly new information for many that the personal predjudices of the business owner of an inpiring retail model might not mesh with our own, but one has to agree the aesthetic is appealing and that is why we like to shop or spy ideas there.

Nothing wrong with that either way.

Thanks to all those who posted how-to's also!