Lucile will share our motivation and insights related to Misogi Dogi at the upcoming tele-summit “Aikido At The Leading Edge” along with an impressive line-up of 40 aikido teachers. You are all invited to join this free online event and get inspired by collective wisdom about aikido, practice and life with practitioners from around the world.
Tele-summit with Misogi Dogi
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Crowdfunding Campaign ends successfully
We are thrilled to announce that our crowdfunding campaign for sustainable aikidogi has ended successfully! We have collected 128 pre-orders within the last three months. Many aikido fellows gave us such a supportive feedback that we are super motivated to continue with our project. Thank you very much! The present financial situation allows us to carry on with our first production order. This means, the count-down to the delivery of the first sustainable gi has started! 🎉🎉🎉
This campaign would not have been possible without the contribution of many people: 1000 thanks go to all who pre-ordered and supported this campaign! Many thanks to all dojochos and aikido fellows who helped us to spread the message and gave us the opportunity to present our prototypes to their fellows and students. Special thanks to Urs José, Julia, Urs K., Helena and Jan, Martin, Ute and Christoph. Best thanks to the campaign production team David and his team, Jonas, Amber, Rene, Corine, Anton, Björn and Stefan. Our deep gratitude to Maïa Barouh for allowing us to use her beautiful song “soran bushi” for our campaign film. Thank you very much to Bernhard, Noel, Emir, Aida, and the team of slowFASHIONfast for their wonderful support and quality service and for believing in us. The project wouldn’t have been successful so far without the expertise and friendly support of the Berlin fair fashion community including interloom, Anna, Rabea, Marte, Sandra, Sylvie, Upcycling Fashion Store and many more. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my dear family and friends for their great support. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!
By the way, our online shop stays open and we are looking forward to receiving further pre-orders in the coming weeks.
Cotton textiles – context and facts
Our gi is made from organic cotton and fair-trade.
A brief introduction.
Organic cotton
Natural & healthy
Organic cotton
Natural & healthy
Only 2% of cotton production is organic so far, mostly made in India and Turkey. It is grown with natural plant protecting agents and mainly rainwater, preserving soils, waters, biodiversity and climate. Farmers usually have better revenues. Our organic cotton is GOTS certified and GMO-free.
Fair-trade
made in Bosnia
Fair-trade
made in Bosnia
We work with a small manufacture in Bosnia. Their clients are fashion designers from Switzerland, Netherlands and Scandinavia. We have visited it and discussed a lot with the director. We are absolutely convinced of the good working conditions for the ladies who assemble the gis and the high quality they deliver.
This is an exception!
Most cotton clothes are made like this:
Conventional cotton
An inconvenient truth
Conventional cotton
An inconvenient truth
Cultivated on 2,5% of the world’s arable land, mostly China, USA and India, with about 16% of the world’s pesticides: cotton is a most polluting crop. It is very thirsty. Soils are heavily damaged. Most conventional cotton is genetically modified.
cotton & water
the thirsty fibre
cotton & water
the thirsty fibre
Three quarters of cotton comes from irrigated land, drying out entire regions (i.e. Aral lake tragedy). During the production process of a conventional cotton uniform, a staggering 30.000-50.000 liters of water are used. Organic cotton farming needs 90% less water than conventional cotton.
textile workers
working-poor women
textile workers
working-poor women
The garment sector is most labour-intense. Millions of women work at lowest wages that don’t cover their living costs. Countless over-hours, physical and verbal abuse, unsanitary and unsafe working conditions and child labour are their sad conditions.
Further reading
General information on cotton by organiccotton.org
Life-cycle analysis of organic cotton fibre – a global average, summary of findings by TextileExchange, 2014
The true costs of cotton: cotton production and water insecurity, report by the Environmental Justice Foundation, London 2012
Clothing sector by the International Labour Organization
About our campaign film
Misogi-Dogi – Preorder Now from SICHTFELD on Vimeo.
Soundtrack: The wonderful version of the japanese traditional fishermen song SORAN BUSHI by French-Japanese singer and flautist Maïa Barouh. Our deep gratitude to Maïa for her courtesy.
Our deep gratitude also to the Dutch aikido models Rene, Anton and Corinne who contributed to a wonderful shooting weekend in Ticino, Switzerland.
© by Misogi Dogi / Sichtfeld.
Prototypes – Pictures & Learnings
The prototypes’ tour has been a real pleasure so far: it’s very rewarding to finally see the result of such a long development process: uniforms fitting well to very different aikidoka.
While with a serial production, we will never be able to satisfy everyone, the feedback was mostly very positive. Some even didn’t want to give the prototypes back!
We got important feedback and adapted our offer accordingly. For example, we were going to offer only one model with a jacket made of traditional rice grain fabric (judogi style). As this fabric is not available on the fabric market, we used a light waffle fabric for the prototypes. However, quite a few fellows loved this super soft and light fabric and asked for no other. Waffle fabric is soft but robust, very absorbent and drying quickly, and quite resistant to tearing and rubbing. It will certainly be most convenient for hot summer days or travelling to seminars. So, we will start with two jacket types: one made of rice grain canvas and one made of light waffle fabric.
Other fellows asked for an elastic waistband instead of drawstrings waistband and for shorter or longer sleeves. Fortunately, our manufacture is very flexible and service oriented and we can also meet these requests.
Now, we are in the final steps of preparing the webshop and will launch pre-orders in exactly one week. Are you ready?