Global Labels

I've been curious lately about the origins of the products and items I use every day. For example, the clothing I wear. I don't know whether I'll keep track every day, but this morning, I did a quick global inventory of the clothes I'm wearing. And the results were intriguing:

• Boxers -- made in Cambodia using fabric from China (Fruit of the Loom)
  
• T-shirt -- made in Haiti (Hanes)
  
• Khakis -- made in Jordan (Gap)
  
• Shirt -- made in China (Uniqlo)
  
• Jacket -- made in the United States (Hart, Schaffner & Marx)
  
• Shoes -- made in China (Vans)
  

Where are the clothes you wear from? It's an interesting question.

Products I Love XXIII

I used to be a religious -- as in, frequent -- customer of Northern Sun, a progressive mail-order retailer based in Minnesota. I was especially fond of their "recycle this envelope" labels, which you could affix onto a business-reply envelope in order to address it and use it. For years, I just reused business-reply envelopes. Now, I'm not so picky, and the labels appear to be discontinued, so go figure.

But I recently dropped $20 their way in order to get some T-shirts I could work out in at the Greenpoint YMCA. We joined the Y in early February, and I've been hard pressed to single out T-shirts -- and I have too many -- that are worthy of sweating in... and then still wearing in other settings. So far, I've pegged a ratty Septophilia Records T-shirt as one that's not nice enough for everyday wear, but otherwise, it's Threadless and other shirts too nice to sully.

Northern Sun has this deal where you can get discontinued T-shirts for $5 a pop. You can't choose them, but you can buy them. I just got four -- and they're awesome.