Connecting to craftivism, which I wrote about in my last blogpost, is the topic of craftwashing. After crafting became a political movement in the 2000s, a rapid increase of crafts as part of marketing and consumer goods emerged. “Handmade” was branded as an ethical consumption practice. The term craftwashing is used to describe the phenomenon where the handmade/crafted aesthetic is used to perform political and social engagement whilst ignoring environmental and ethical labour issues in the chain of production.
Big marketing campaigns exploit the political connotations of crafts by channeling the power they hold into the market. This gives consumers the opportunity to obtain the moral value of crafted products whilst also enabling them to perform political activism through showing them off. It capitalizes on the customers wish to do good. It’s the myth that buying craft is a form of progressive political action. Like the term greenwashing, craftwashing indicates to the customer that the product isn’t worsening the environment or current economic system. “By marketing affectively charged handmade objects (or their lookalikes) as solutions to pressing environmental, social and economic injustice issues, craft aesthetics are twinned with notions of individual political agency and morality, while leaving existing power systems largely unquestioned and intact.”
One example of craftwashing is a duvet cover by the brand snurks. They promoted this with the following description: “take one crochet pattern from grandmother’s time, one pile of colorful yarn and a bunch of lovely ladies from the local craft club. Stir in some cookies, tea, and bottles of prosecco and before you know it, you’ve all crocheted the most cheerful looking bedspread.” The product they were selling is a common duvet cover with a high-resolution print of a crocheted blanket printed on it. Similarly to this, knitted textures are featured in advertisements for all different kinds of products like milk, coffee, or smoothies.
https://www.adsoftheworld.com/campaigns/the-knitted-coffee-of-christmas-doers
The global companies that use these advertisements are not necessarily aligning their practices with the ethical associations of the craft aesthetic. This can be seen as an exploitation of the once charitable connotations of crafts, whilst encouraging consumerism at the same time. As to indicate buying a product is a solution to economic and social inequalities.
source: https://books.google.at/books?hl=de&lr=&id=XZEFEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=handmade+design+advertising&ots=1i7oF-pop5&sig=fAJHZ39cTCZacJz2u-Att4CtSvM&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=handmade%20design%20advertising&f=false
