Ididit Designs

A hood with a scarf and pockets!
Great for all seasons.
Make of pure cotton and comes in 3 sizes
Kids
Medium
XL

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Once a person discovers the beauty of hemp fabrics and their design potential there can be no return to ordinary cotton or synthetic fabrics. Due to recent breakthroughs in fabric technology, what many people remember as a rough unyielding fabric has become soft, supple and versatile. Hemp needs to be re-introduced to the public as a luxurious fabric and dust off its image of canvas sacks and saggy tee-shirts.This is the aim of a new contemporary hemp clothing label called Ididit.

Ididit is a creative hemp clothing label launched in 2004 by Brighton based fashion designer Ididit McPherson, her business philosophy is to design and create fashionable, beautiful, contemporary clothing from a wide variety of hemp based fabrics and recycled materials.

“When I first started sewing I would re-create second hand clothes and curtains and make new new shapes from old 50’s and 60’s patterns which I collected from flea markets and bootsales. I taught myself a lot of sewing and pattern cutting from vintage books.”

Ididits studio is chock full of finished/half finished and in production garments.” after leaving college in 2003 I wanted to find a way of incorporating my creative skills with my personal beliefs about the clothing industry and our culture of wearing things a few times and throwing them away. I knew this would be difficult to achieve if I were to seek employment within the fashion industry so I decided to work on my own business idea. I received funding from both The Prince’s Trust and the Fredericks Foundation to get started and set up my studio and I also have the support from The High-land Company in Scotland.” Ididits clothing range consists of inspiring timeless shapes which celebrate the female form without overwhelming the woman who wears it.

“Hemp is the design choice as it is a varied, durable and longlasting organic fibre grown without the use of any chemical pesticides.”

Ididit designs the garments to stand on their own in the way of style. The business hopes to promote change in the way we look at ecologically sound clothing. Ididit takes a view on clothing as something one should be able to wear each year without looking out of date. The aim of Ididit is to become a part of the growing network of fashion labels and businesses supporting hemp and organic farming around the world.

Ididit sells the Ididit clothing range directly from it’s studio based in Johannesburg and will soon be available from various independent retail outlets in South Africa. including The Hemp Shop in Sandton. The business is seeking support from the network of existing hemp/organic clothing shops and distributors as well as support from within the fashion industry.

Hemp clothing has received a lot of negative press over the years and the time has come to give this amazing fibre a serious style makeover. Hemp is one our planet’s most ancient crops grown all over the world.

This great versatile fibre is currently going through a revival and it’s market potential is being pushed further all the time. The industrial hemp textile market is expanding rapidly with new interesting fabrics being developed every year. More versatile than other natural textiles, hemp can be woven in a variety of weights from linen-like to canvas, and in a wide array of colours and finishes. The fabrics are luxurious and blended with other natural fibres such as silk, wool, yak hair and cotton, they feel great on the skin. Hemp fabrics are great for people with sensitive skin because of the lack of bleaching agents used in the processing.

Copyright © 2011, Ididit. All rights reserved.

Of all the pesticides used in the US, 25% of them are applied to cotton. Some of these chemicals can harm you [are the clothes you wear harming you?] A lot of synthetic material available on the market, like polyester, is petroleum based and it takes almost a third of a pound of fertilisers and pesticides to grow enough cotton for one t-shirt![carewhatyouwear]

Aside from the obvious side-effects of the use of chemicals in the clothing industry, there’s also the ethical aspect to fashion. Most fashion statements are transient – they’re fleeting follies that come and go, leaving a litany of ‘can’t wears’ in the average wardrobe. Suddenly the standard advice to ‘buy classic’ makes a lot of sense – if you’re buying clothes that will last and won’t go out of fashion then you’ve got what today is called ‘eco-savvy’.

Buying clothing as a conscious consumer is not just about the type of material used in the production. It’s about how the crops used to make the clothing were grown and whether the production was ethical or fair trade. It’s about shopping smart and asking questions to reduce the load going into landfill and the waste generated in the production of clothing.

What you can do:

Be fussy
Some would call this being discerning. Buy something only if you absolutely LOVE it. In this way, you cut down on spontaneous shopping and shopping for the sake of it. Finally, ask yourself whether or not you REALLY need to buy the garment that you’ve spontaneously plucked off the rack on your way to the food section? Are you buying because you can, or because you really need another t-shirt?

Buy organic and hemp
Cotton, despite the years of marketing as a clean and natural fabric, uses no less than a third of a pound of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the production of one t-shirt. [are the clothes you wear harming you?] Organic cotton and other fashion alternatives aremaking an appearance on the South African market. Woolies is the obvious place to start – they’ve introduced a green range, some of which is 5% organic, but others are 100%. Then local designers such as fundudzi, lunar and eco trend collection all offer organic alternatives. The hemporium and house of hemp are heavily behind the promotion of hemp as an alternative green fibre for clothing and both offer some wonderful hemp fashion options.

Buy vintage
The new term for used clothing is pretty trendy right now, particularly in places like the UK where charity shops are a wonderful source of cheap recycled clothing. Whilst they’re not big in South Africa, there is the odd charity shop worth a visit or get together with a group of friends and each bring 5 garments for a big ‘swop’ session.

Recycle
Instead of throwing away, recycle your old clothes. Some recycling organisations have a section for old clothes, and if they don’t then get your clothes back into circulation by donating them to a community, or resell them from your garage, sell them on the community exchange system or freecycle them.

Tweak it
Is there anything in your wardrobe worth salvaging? Get creative, transform old clothes and find new life for them. Now called ‘a re-purposed garment’ the trend to convert old clothing into new is fast replacing the need to buy new every season.

Look after it
Once you’ve bought a quality organic item, look after it – wash it carefully – turn it inside out when it’s drying in the hot sun, use the lowest temperature when washing and use biodegradable detergents – sun-dry it and try not to dry-clean, as it’s so environmentally unfriendly!

A bit of fun: if you’re really concerned about going green and want to go the extra mile, wash your clothes in this pedal powered washing spin dryer machine

Fair trade
Any clothing that bears the label ‘fair trade’ is produced ethically, using ecologically sound and sustainable practices. And everyone involved gets a fair wage. Fair trade doesn’t just apply to bananas and coffee, it plays a very important part in the clothing and textile industry. [more on fair trade in the clothing industry] Although there isn’t much (if any) available yet in South Africa, there is jewellery and locally produced accessories made by local communities that is worth investing your money in, so look out for these.

Shop local
By supporting locally made clothing there is a lot less chance that your item entailed child labour or unethical labour practices, and it supports a vulnerable industry in South Africa.

Hemp (from Old English hænep) is the name of the soft, durable fiber that is cultivated from plants of the Cannabis genus.

“Hemp” is also a name for the Cannabis plant. Some use it to mean only the low tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) strains of the plant, of fiber and/or oilseed varieties. In modern times, hemp has been used for industrial purposes including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, construction, health food and fuel^[1]with modest commercial success.^[2][3] Since 2007, commercial success of hemp food products has grown considerably.^[4][5]

Hemp is one of the faster growing biomasses known,^[6] producing up to 25 tonnes of dry matter per hectare per year.^[7] A normal average yield in large scale modern agriculture is about 2.5–3.5 t/ac (air dry stem yields of dry, retted stalks per acre at 12% moisture). Approximately, one tonne of bast fiber and 2–3 tonnes of core material can be decorticated from 3–4 tonnes of good quality, dry retted straw.^[8][9]

For a crop, hemp is very environmentally friendly as it requires few pesticides, when not grown industrially^[10] and no herbicides.^[11] Results indicate that high yield of hemp may require high total nutrient levels (field plus fertilizer nutrients) similar to a high yielding wheat crop.^[12]

Hemp is one of the earliest domesticated plants known.^[13