"People are sick of that tech look—nylon, overly masculine," says Jason Gregory, owner and designer of Makr Carry Goods.*
The Duluth-Pack-inspired Farm Ruck bag (above) is, like all Makr Carry Goods, hand-sewn and made in the USA in a workshop with with low-waste microproduction methods. Every element of the company's products is hand-crafted in small batches, on-site, by local Florida artisans. The bag's design is strongly bound to production methods that purposefully diverge from mass production methods, from non-organic material, and from outsourcing conventions.
Conventionally, many apparel and accessory designers from other companies that employ an "alternative" or otherwise "anti-civilized" ideal (as in the early slogan of The Territory Ahead, borrowed from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn) stop at the design level while production is outsourced abroad for conventional, mass manufacturing. Such are the current normative constraints of cost control. But perhaps these companies have lessening reasons for fearing low sales on products with a higher retail price.
Does a downturn in "the tech look" echo growing consumer malaise over other things technological, or even over other ripples of modern life? If so, there may be a widening opportunity to marry design to responsible production and, by extension, to more responsible marketing and consumer trends.
The Fall 2010 apparel collection seems to have reflected this. According to Fast Company, other apparel brands including Marc Jacobs and Chanel launched similar rucksacks in the Fall 2010 collection, and at higher prices than Makr's US$150 bag. In so doing, they tapped into the 60% of accessory buyers who are willing to spend US$300 or less as a simple investment—a large market willing to spend on quality craft over inexpensive manufacturing.
Perhaps then, a growing number of designer-manufacturers may find greater reasons to launch product lines, if even signature lines, based on domestic artisanal production across apparel, accessories, textiles and footwear. Consumers might just be ready to embrace this on an increased scale. After all, if we are what we eat, are we not also, in body, mind and soul, what we consume in general? While spending $150 for a bag may appear to be piggish to some, it's arguably less piggish than buying a $30 bag whose low-cost manufacture is essentially subsidized by high-waste mass production, among other high-cost by-products.
Here's one for the well-made, locally-crafted, simply designed things.
* Excerpt from Fast Company at: http://bit.ly/bVsDgV