ColumnNatalie Chanin’s bi-weekly column, Material Witness, offers a seasoned designer’s perspective on the fashion industry, textile history and what happens when love for community trumps all.

This is a conversation that played out in my head countless times this last week:
“I need to sit down and write the EcoSalon column.”
“The laundry really needs to get done.”
“I NEED to sit down and write the EcoSalon column.”
“Maybe, I should go weed the garden.”
“I NEED to SIT DOWN NOW and write the EcoSalon column.”
“There is that bird pecking around in the yard, I could go stare at it for a while.”

It is Thursday afternoon and the post is not done. We have ALL been in this situation before. It’s the story where the work ahead seems daunting, or maybe we have done so much work recently that we don’t have the mental capacity to think, or maybe it’s just that our children are away and the house is silent – something that happens very rarely. For whatever reason, we pause, sit, stare at the wall, and then go make a tea.

As I sit and drink my tea, my mind wanders back to a day eleven years ago when I arrived in the city of my childhood, Florence, Alabama, to start the “project” that has become Alabama Chanin. As many of you my already know, years ago, I had a dream to create 2000 one-of-a-kind t-shirts. I wrote a proposal, raised the money (thank you Lisa), and prepared to come home, and arrived on December 23rd, 2000.

My mother’s sister had just purchased a home that was built by my father’s father, next to one she was living in that was built by  their father. She phoned me in New York a week before I was to arrive and asked: “Would you like to rent the old McCorkle place?” “YES,” I replied.  So, I rented the house – sight unseen – and headed home to the Shoals Community for what I thought was to be four weeks. Eleven years later, I am still here.

The house my aunt had just purchased had been empty for quite some time as the former owner had moved to a nursing home. In the south, an entire town can disappear in two years or less when left unattended. Vegetation thrives, animals root, and anything left for abandoned soon begins to melt back into the earth. This is the power of nature.

Days before I arrived, my aunt and her husband had cut their way into the backdoor with a chain saw. They opened up the house, took a quick order of affairs, and provided a mattress for my first night.  On that cold December day, sometime around dark, I arrived in a New York City rental car to a house that smelled like a combination of old fried chicken bones, a family of cats, and something vaguely reptilian. (In Alabama, when you catch that whiff, you automatically assume snakes.)

While I was grateful for this opportunity to be able to realize my dream project, I laid down that night in the middle of an empty room, and cried.  It seemed I had made a very bad mistake. My dream wasn’t quite so dreamy after all.

My mind raced around the fact that I had ABSOLUTELY no idea how I was ever going to make this project come together. I had been winging it all along and was not competent enough to pull this off. I had a film crew arriving from Austria in ten days to shoot a documentary film about old-time quilting circles, and I didn’t have a place to make them a cup of coffee. If I were to realize my plan of presenting 200 one-of-a-kind t-shirts during New York Fashion Week in six weeks, I was going to have to start working the very next morning to get them done. Lying on a borrowed mattress, I sobbed, whined, and beat myself up, while I constantly kept watch for the movement of anything wild – be it bug, reptile, or otherwise.

I am not sure when I fell asleep but I did finally sleep a few winks and woke up without snakes (who are known to seek out human warmth). I sat up, red-eyed, and assessed the situation. The sun was shining. I was sleeping in a heart-pine paneled room circa 1950s style that was a kitchen/open living room. Bright yellow and green vinyl tile a la 1970s crossed the space to the back door that looked out to a scrub forest which was really just an over-grown back yard. I don’t remember a sound.

I sat there in the silence as my mind continued to race:
“I really should get up and make some coffee.”
“I should just lie back down and stare at the ceiling.”
“I really should get up and get started.”
“Well, there is that bird pecking around in the yard, I could go stare at it for a while.”
Sound familiar?

To make a long story short, I got up that morning – Christmas Eve – and made some tea in a borrowed pot. And after the tea was done, I filled the kitchen sink with water and took one of the rags my aunt had so generously left and started to clean.  My thought was to clean a section of the kitchen counter that I would have a place to sit back down.
I proceeded to clean the whole kitchen.

When the kitchen was finished, I looked around. The room – and my life – felt completely overwhelming; however, I decided that I could clean just one of those heart-pine boards. As I began to wash that first board, underneath its black patina, a beautiful pattern emerged. I looked at that 300 year old piece of wood, and I cleaned, and I stopped thinking. When the first board was finished, I realized that every board in that room must be just as beautiful, and I cleaned a second one. By the time the sun started to go down behind that overgrown backyard, I had washed every board in that room – one board at a time. Finally sitting down, I realized that I had the stamina to do anything that needed to be done to realize my dream. In that moment, I knew in my heart that board-by-board is the way we get things done in life.  All we need is the focus to see one board at a time.

In this New Year, when I think of running my business, raising my daughter, writing a post for EcoSalon, or that really overwhelming thought of making a difference in a fast-fashion world, I will remind myself that we are assured a better place – and real change – if we keep at it board-by-board.

P.S. With the Vienna film crew who did have coffee in my kitchen after all.

Natalie Chanin is owner and designer of the American couture line Alabama Chanin and author of three books including Alabama Stitch Book  (2008), Alabama Studio Style (2010) and the upcoming Alabama Studio Sewing + Design which comes out spring 2012. Look for her bi-weekly column, Material Witness here and follow her on Facebook and her own blog at Alabama Chanin.

ColumnNatalie Chanin’s bi-weekly column, Material Witness, offers a seasoned designer’s perspective on the fashion industry, textile history and what happens when love for community trumps all.

Last year, Alabama Chanin was included in the Starbucks campaign: Stories are Gifts – Share. See the video below. We met some lovely new friends – Jamie, David, and Luke – who traveled to Alabama to tell our story and celebrate with us.

A year later, it is nice to be reminded that home is a special place; your home and the people around you help create who you are. A home can be anywhere and your family can be made up of so many people, regardless of their biological relationship to you. Alabama Chanin was born out of my own “coming home,” of the distinct sense of place that is my community.

We often say that we at Alabama Chanin are a family. In fact, we say it so often that I fear it is beginning to sound a bit trite. But, please know that there is no underlying falseness in this sentiment. This family that we have created is the heart and soul of our company. We hope that you can feel it in everything that we do.

Embrace your family, whether they are yours by blood or by choice. Reach out to those who mean the most to you. To paraphrase my grandfather, a truly wise man: alone we can be weak and subject to the harshness of the world, to those who wish to hurt us or circumstances that may fracture our spirits; as a family, we can stand strong against those things that might wish to injure us. We are protected and supported, celebrated and loved.

Happy Holidays.

The Heart and Soul:

Natalie Chanin is owner and designer of the American couture line Alabama Chanin and author of three books including Alabama Stitch Book  (2008), Alabama Studio Style (2010) and the upcoming Alabama Studio Sewing + Design which comes out spring 2012. Look for her bi-weekly column, Material Witness here and follow her on Facebook and her own blog at Alabama Chanin.

ColumnNatalie Chanin’s bi-weekly column, Material Witness, offers a seasoned designer’s perspective on the fashion industry, textile history and what happens when love for community trumps all.

“I can’t believe that I am doing this.” Wait. Laugh. Repeat. These were the words I kept echoing over and over again as I sat at Gate B27 in the Atlanta Airport. My girlfriend, Jennifer Venditti, is sitting across from me, looking like a vision of New York City chic. I stare at her in amazement. We are waiting to board a flight to Albuquerque, New Mexico, with plans to catch up on the last six months of one another’s lives.

The thing is, while I am an adventurer at heart, I am also a mother and can’t impulsively jump on planes to go in search of truth in the New Mexico desert – or perhaps I should I say that I haven’t done something like this since the summer of 2005 when I learned of my daughter Maggie’s imminent approach. However, the subject of just such a trip came up during a recent phone conversation with Jennifer. Before we hung up the phone, I’d already made my decision, logged onto my computer, and searched for a flight. I interrupted Jennifer to say, “I just bought my ticket. I can’t believe I am doing this.”

In the few weeks before the trip, we lightly perused the internet, were sent many tips by friends, and talked about some of our options. But, truth be told, we didn’t really make a detailed plan. Our agenda was to meet at the Atlanta airport, board the plane to New Mexico, and travel the back roads through Santa Fe to the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos.

Neither of us had ever heard of Mabel Dodge and neither of us will ever be the same.

There are plenty of books about Mabel Dodge, but the Mabel Dodge Luhan House website describes her as this: “She was a woman of profound contradictions. She was generous. She was petty. Domineering and endearing. She was Mabel Gansen Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan – salon hostess, art patroness, writer and self-appointed savior of humanity.”

Mabel Dodge Luhan portrait

The pictures and the papers held by Yale University are fascinating.

A supporter of the arts, Mable changed lives, including – but not limited to – Georgia O’Keefe’s, whose room we stayed in and whose portrait you see above.

In researching, I found several accounts that Dennis Hopper wrote the script for Easy Rider at Mabel Dodge Luhan House and that he also edited parts of the film in those rooms. In fact, he owned the house for a time in the 1960s.

From the website: “Today as you approach the house of Mabel Dodge Luhan, it’s easy to see why some of the greatest minds of the 20th century were inspired here. Situated at the end of a quiet road not far from the center of town, the house appears much as it did in the days when Mabel admired her views of the sacred Taos Mountains from the third-story solarium. One can only imagine the tantalizing conversations that must have taken place within these walls. After all, Georgia O’Keeffe stayed here. So did D.H. Lawrence, Ansel Adams, Martha Graham and Carl Jung, among many other notables.”

In fact, D.H. Lawrence painted her bathroom windows so that she could exercise a bit of privacy in her own home.

I find it astounding that almost 40 years after her death, her presence and the space she built to foster creativity continues. Her passion is alive in those walls. I can hardly walk through the sitting room without the desire to sit down in front of the ever-blazing fire and start to write (paint, sketch, sew, fill in the blank ____). But, I don’t sit down and write; I sit down and dream.

When I tire of dreaming, I take walks in the clear mountain air. I feel like I can think for the first time in years.

I visit Mabel Dodge Luhan’s grave to say thank you. Others have been there before me. It is Thanksgiving Day.

I have had the luxury – through my work – to travel to many places and meet many people over the years. But I have seldom come upon a place where the desire to stay was quite so strong.

The trip did more than reinforce my perspective as a designer. Much more than that, it fostered my desire to share the process – even more than we do now in our Workshop Series. I sat on that couch and dreamed of a place – a space – where people could come to be inspired, to sit, to dream, and to heal from modern stresses. I dreamed of a place to nurture the creative spirit as Mabel Dodge Luhan nurtured mine – even from the grave. I returned home recharged, thankful, and ready to start looking for a space where this vision for learning and nurturing creativity can grow. And we will definitely be booking the Mabel Dodge Luhan House for a workshop sometime in the next year. I can’t wait to sit in front of that roaring fire again.

Coming home is truly the best part of adventure; however, a little piece of my soul is still at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House. And I keep a little part of that house with me each day – I remember to sit down in my own home and dream, if just for a minute. Sometimes the best gift we can give is one we give to ourselves. I know this may sound trite, but sometimes a woman (a mother, a designer, an entrepreneur, a girl) just needs a trip of one’s own.

Natalie Chanin is owner and designer of the American couture line Alabama Chanin and author of three books including Alabama Stitch Book  (2008), Alabama Studio Style (2010) and the upcoming Alabama Studio Sewing + Design which comes out spring 2012. Look for her bi-weekly column, Material Witness here and follow her on Facebook and her own blog at Alabama Chanin.

Revisiting a series that launched a knitwear line, became required reading in some knitting groups, and even got a few off their meds.

When we launched Using Your Hands to Soothe the Brain last January, it was with the goal of educating people about the simple mental health value of keeping their hands moving. Whether knitting, sewing or weaving, chemical changes can in fact occur in the brain to alleviate mood maladies and in some cases, mental illness like depression. The more people we interviewed, the more we discovered. But before it even launched, this series was inspired by two women: A dear friend who overcame depression and anxiety (and consequently two powerful medications for it) with daily knitting, and a blog post by Alabama Chanin designer, Natalie Chanin.

Chanin, a sustainable designer and now gratefully a bi-weekly columnist for EcoSalon, had caught my attention when she cited neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, author of Lifting Depression on the Alabama Chanin blog:

“Lambert shows how when you knit a sweater or plant a garden, when you prepare a meal or simply repair a lamp, you are bathing your brain in feel-good chemicals and creating a kind of mental vitamin. Our grandparents and great grandparents, who had to work hard for basic resources, developed more resilience against depression; even those who suffered great hardships had much lower rates of this mood disorder. But with today’s overly-mechanized lifestyle we have forgotten that our brains crave the well-being that comes from meaningful effort.”

That meaningful effort was explored from two angles in Part 1 with textile artist and sustainable fashion writer Abigail Doan of Ecco Eco and Occupational Therapist and Founder of FiftyRX3 Jill Danyelle. Doan, who was “fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with the soil, build fences, spin wool, and learn a variety of fiber-crafting skills,” growing up on a farm says working with one’s hands creates a “one-to-one relationship that makes everything else simply fade away. It’s a healthy sort of addiction that replaces other forms of disease.”

Part 2 affirmed Doan and Danyelle’s own finds but explored another aspect of hand work: how using our hands not only enhances our sense of well being, but how it also creates a sense of self-sufficiency. Owyn Ruck, one of the founders of Brooklyn’s widely respected Textile Arts Center says “Even in a sense of finances, we are taught to feel that money equals freedom, but what if you didn’t even to need to buy half the things you did, you could make them or simply make something last longer? That’s freedom.”

Designer Titania Inglis enjoys her own fashion freedom by creating a sustainably produced, eponymous clothing line. Having begun her career in the hopes of being a successful graphic designer, Inglis also agrees the positive effects of using our hands to do meaningful tasks can benefit our overall health and well being.

In Part 3, of Using Your Hands to Soothe the Brain, Inglis says “I love clothing design for its communicative and aesthetic possibilities, but also very much for the craft of it. Many designers prefer to simply hand off sketches to a pattern maker, but for me, the process is the design. It feels a bit pompous to talk about the integrity of the piece and purity of form, but those are qualities I strive for, and I really can only get there with my own two hands.”

What can we learn from this sustainable stretching out of the fashion movement that harks back to the glory of heritage and craft? One might say that perhaps we have lost much in the translation of living fast paced lives filled with convenience. That rethinking the use of our hands to create and mend and touch is a missing part of our successful life equation. That, simply put, strands of fiber and our ability to know how to do something with them might ultimately hold the key to our spiritual happiness. At the very least, it’s fun to create our own wardrobe.

Image: Bruce Turner

ColumnNatalie Chanin’s bi-weekly column, Material Witness, offers a seasoned designer’s perspective on the fashion industry, textile history and what happens when love for community trumps all.

I am pissed. It doesn’t happen often, but, it does happen.
I grew up in cotton country. My mother and her sisters picked cotton every summer to make money for new school clothes, as they didn’t want to head back in “handmade.” My aunts and uncles raised this cotton. I slept under blankets made from scrap cotton that grows after the harvest has taken place – the dregs that are left over.  I made a film about cotton and rural quilting. For better or for worse, cotton is part of the vernacular of my community, my childhood, and my life. I would venture that cotton plays a large role in your life as well.

Since this fiber is so prevalent in our lives, I think that there are 10 things you should know about it.

1. There are many varieties of cotton along with nine known colors of wild cotton. 90% of the cotton grown today is Gossypium hirsutum making it a monoculture.

2. There are three main farming methods used to harvest cotton:
Traditional Cotton – about a pound of chemical pesticides, fertilizers and defoliants are required to produce a pound of cotton.
Transitional Cotton – grown without chemical pesticides, fertilizers and defoliants but in a field where they were previously used. In these conditions, it takes a minimum of three years for traces of poison to subside – some say seven years for the field to be clean.
Certified Organic Cotton – Certified organic cotton is grown from seeds that have not been genetically modified and the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and defoliants are prohibited.

3. The pesticides most often used for cotton are derived from WWII nerve gases. According to the World Health organization, 20,000 deaths occur each year as a result of pesticide usage, as well as one million long-term acute poisonings. Many of these poisonings and deaths occur in third-world countries and away from watchful eyes.

4. The cotton seed extracted from the fiber is used in a variety of ways and often pressed into oils that are included in many processed foods found in your local supermarket or the seed itself is fed to cows for its rich oils. The seeds from traditionally grown cotton are high in chemical residue and infiltrate our food chain.

5. It takes approximately one pound of chemical pesticides and fertilizers to grow one pound of traditionally grown cotton. That long-sleeve t-shirt you just bought to support your favorite team and have thrown on your body has about one pound of cotton and has used about one pound of chemicals from seed to skin.

6. That lovely designer t-shirt is the most desirable object of the season and you HAVE to have one. Let’s say that in a very small company, school or organization, there could be approximately 12 dozen of the shirts made in a variety of sizes. A typical run might be 12 dozen.
Bad at math?  Let’s break it down:
12 dozen = 144 t-shirts = 144 pounds of chemicals
For a mid-size company, school or organization, the production quantities might be x 100:
1,440 t-shirts = 1,440 pounds of chemicals
For a larger company, school or organization, production quantities might be x 1000:
14,400 t-shirts = 14,000 pounds of chemicals

You don’t need to be good at math to see where this is going. Multiply these numbers by the numbers of companies, schools and organizations that print t-shirts, the number of styles of t-shirts available, and the size ranges from XXS to XXL for each style of t-shirt. It will make your head spin.

7. Skin is the largest organ of the human body.  Everything you layer on your skin is absorbed into your blood. That’s right: the traditionally grown cotton t-shirt with its chemical residues is directly in contact with your largest organ.

8. Organic cotton production promotes biodiversity in every part of the world it is grown. In Africa and other third-world countries, farmers growing organic cotton increase their revenue 50% because of a 40% savings on fertilizers, pesticides, and defoliants. Add to this a 20% premium for organic cotton fiber and organics can determine whether a family will survive or perish. Economic strength has been proven crucial in stopping the spread of HIV. The switch to organic cotton farming benefits entire communities and nations.

9. The fashion industry has been very slow to embrace change on a global scale. We are taught to believe that organic cotton is too expensive. Let’s look at the difference in one small example:

American Apparel
Fine Jersey Short Sleeve T
$18.00 Made in the USA

American Apparel
Organic Fine Jersey Short Sleeve T
$18.00 Made in the USA

A 0% price difference.
This is an unusual situation but there is little difference in the short run and a major difference in the long run.

10. Why would we NOT buy transitional or organic? As consumers, we are not insisting on transitional or organic because we are simply not informed and suppliers have grown lazy.
Given cotton’s ugly past in the south, we have a chance to make a beautiful story from a shameful history -to grow beauty from cruelty, to grow peace from strife by producing organic cotton.  As a country, we are learning to eliminate harmful chemicals from our food. Why are we so slow to demand the same of our clothing?

In the United States, we grow the cotton when we are not being paid not to grow it. Yet, we insist on producing it using harmful chemical means. Why aren’t we thinking of the supply chain down the road or river? What about the run-off that winds up in our streams? What about the animals that drink that water?

It reminds me of the children’s song “The House that Jack Built.” In this case, the house that we are building for our children is based upon chemicals and pesticides; our hastily crafted house may poison our children and destroy the land upon which it was built. This being the case, why would any designer or company today choose anything other than transitional or organic cotton? Katharine Hamnett presents it brilliantly, “Only pressure from the consumer in the form of boycott” can make a change. “By insisting on organic cotton and fair pay for garment workers and by paying 1% more for a t-shirt, you can change the world and make it a better and safer place.”

In the last two months, my daughter has been given a t-shirt supporting a local sports team, one for Breast Cancer awareness month, a Thanksgiving themed shirt, a pair of pants and gift shirt from an airline. And to I am willing to bet that every student in her school and across this nation has been offered a similar array of items. We make t-shirts to promote coffee and sell products, for anniversaries and 10K Runs. We make t-shirts for just about everything. You do the math.

The next time you are offered a t-shirt, think about a pound of harmful chemicals in the ground. Think about those harmful chemicals in the water that you are drinking, and more importantly, think about the residue on the largest organ of your body, your skin. Think about you and your children drinking up the residue of these chemicals into your entire system. Think about this residing in your liver for years – or a lifetime.

Then, the next time someone offers you a t-shirt that isn’t organically grown, don’t accept it, get pissed, and ask, “Why would I want that?”

Natalie Chanin is owner and designer of the American couture line Alabama Chanin and author of three books including Alabama Stitch Book  (2008), Alabama Studio Style (2010) and the upcoming Alabama Studio Sewing + Design which comes out spring 2012. Look for her bi-weekly column, Material Witness here and follow her on Facebook and her own blog at Alabama Chanin.

ColumnNatalie Chanin’s bi-weekly column, Material Witness, offers a seasoned designer’s perspective on the fashion industry, textile history and what happens when love for community trumps all.

I found a letter that I wrote some years ago.  It starts like this:

First, I will start with my apology: I am really a terrible friend. I have been ‘absent.’ I have made many people feel as though I did not care. I am sorry; however, if I am really honest, it is not so much that I am sorry as much as I have missed you and missed so many important things in my life.
It has been FULL time. And it will be hard for me to begin to tell all of the laughter, tears, frustrations, joys, moments, days, weeks, years that have happened. I try to find the beginning and the only thing I find is my wish to have you here with me in this moment…

Isn’t that just how life is?  It gets all full and messy and good at the same time.
And isn’t that the story of a really good friend – one who is willing to wait for the story to unfold?

Southerners are renowned storytellers. I don’t know if that is because it gets so hot that we have to slow down and consequently hear more, or if the porch just provides the best venue for recounting tales. Perhaps we’ve just lived so close to the land for so many generations that the stories naturally grew. Whatever the reason, there are libraries filled with sections with titles that cover a “Southern Sense of Place,” “Southern Gothic,” and “Southern Short Story.”

And while many of us are born storytellers, our stories do take time to unfold. We are slow, methodical, practiced in our pace. My father and my son – following in his grandfather’s very slow footsteps – are masters in this art. They take the right breaths, they slowly move from one part of the room to the other. My father can take three days to answer a particular question. I will unexpectedly get a call and find my father simply replying to a question asked days earlier. Sometimes, I have to stop and think back to what actually prompted the question. This was infuriating as a child, “Daddy, can I go to the movie this afternoon with my friends?”

Silence.  It would be like he didn’t even hear me. Perhaps an hour later, he would call me in from outside, “Are you ready to go to the movie?” My heart would skip and it was like a present, wrapped up in a slowly unfolding package that had just been delivered. I would grab my things and go savor the movie.

The writer George Dawes Green provided the best storytelling platform EVER with the founding of The Moth. He started The Moth because he “wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda’s porch.”

I once wrote a blog post about his story “The House that Sherman Didn’t Burn.” This is one of the best Southern Gothic tales I have ever heard. (Keep in mind that all the stories told at The Moth are true.)

My friend, writer, and folklorist, Fred Fussell loved this story but thinks that the audience laughs in all the wrong places – which made me laugh as well. But the thing about stories is this, they are personal: personal for the teller and personal for listener as we are constantly searching for our own humanity within the story. We need that connection from teller to self.  We need to FEEL our friend’s life in and around their words. The beauty of The Moth is that each storyteller feels like a friend once their story is told.  And in the telling, like my father, they take their time. Their stories are not told, they unfold. Yes, good stories – like good friends take time.

Shouldn’t this be the same with good design? In a world that seems to spin faster and faster out of control, shouldn’t we be looking for products that take time to unfold? Or products whose usefulness we savor? Shouldn’t we demand products that have stories to tell? Like good wine, a good design needs time to be a part of our lives, time to reach its full maturity. If we could stop the ever spinning merry-go-round of fashion to see the consequences of our fast fashion choices, we might begin to appreciate the tales that our garments tell. Some items would tell tales of sorrow; others would tell beautiful tales of how they found their way to the wearer. I think that we would start to breathe and listen to the stories of our clothes and their makers – because there are great people out there telling beautiful stories.

American designer Sister Parish said, “Even the simplest wicker basket can become priceless when it is loved and cared for through the generations of a family.” The next time we purchase a single item, perhaps we should exercise patience and think back to this idea. Can this product I am about to buy be cared for and loved through the generations? What story does this item tell? Isn’t buying a product with a long life the same as exercising patience for a good story?

Patience has never been at the top of my list of virtues. I have been told that I have a calm, patient appearance on the outside, but my inner life is much less composed. You might even go so far as to say that my inner life and outer life were disconnected in my youth. This was the cause of much consternation and drama in my earlier days. But what I understand today is that I needed time. I needed time to grow up and to grow into my own story. If I can give my daughter one piece of advice, I will tell her to slow down, be calm, and wait.

Good things – like good design – take time and good friends are worth waiting for.

Natalie Chanin is owner and designer of the American couture line Alabama Chanin and author of three books including Alabama Stitch Book  (2008), Alabama Studio Style (2010) and the upcoming Alabama Studio Sewing + Design which comes out spring 2012. Look for her bi-weekly column, Material Witness here and follow her on Facebook and her own blog at Alabama Chanin.

ColumnNatalie Chanin’s bi-weekly column, Material Witness, offers a seasoned designer’s perspective on the fashion industry, textile history and what happens when love for community trumps all.

I planted my fall garden last weekend – perhaps about a month late but nevertheless, it is in the ground. My daughter has finally reached the age where she is a willing participant most of the time. In fact, she planted about half a row of garlic before scurrying off to uncover the peas I had just planted and to bury the little ceramic garden gnome that keeps watch on the birds who are eating our carefully planted seeds. That little antique gnome, a gift I received 20+ years ago while living in Vienna, has traveled the world with me, gone to every new home, and overseen each new incarnation of my life. He has always reminded me that a garden was waiting in my future.

The morning I decided to plant, I woke up in my own bed after returning home the day before from a trip that included three stops in two and a half weeks. I arrived home with a head cold and the desire to lie still for another two weeks. But, my daughter and I got up that morning and raked and hoed and planted. It felt good. I sighed, and relaxed and smiled as we settled into an afternoon of working and playing side-by-side.

I admit that I am not the best gardener in the world. This fall garden should have been planted a month ago; my rows are a bit wobbly as they move down the length of my backyard plot. I am certain that when the lettuce and spinach begin to sprout, there will be sections of the rows where too many seeds were strewn too closely together, and other sections where nothing will come up.
This is much like the story of my life and business.

A business owner recently said to me, “You are so successful, you wouldn’t know about the difficulties we have had in trying to build our business.” I couldn’t help but laugh. There are beautiful aspects to what we do at Alabama Chanin every day but there are also carefully planted rows that don’t come up, sales that don’t happen, frustrations and disappointments.

I recently came across an essay I had written in 2006 for Leslie Hoffman at Earth Pledge titled, “What Does Planting Tomatoes Have to Do With Fashion?”  It seems at first blush that the two would have little to do with one another. The gist of the essay was how coming home and re-learning how to plant a garden had connected me to my community, my business, the greater art of sustaining life and, consequently, to the fashion industry at large. As I look back over the essay, it feels like such a long time since I wrote those words. Our first book had not yet hit the shelves. My separation from my former company was still new and the wounds were fresh. When I re-read that essay, I could sense my fear, my hopes and my determination between the lines.

What that essay also reminded me was that while my rows today might still be wobbly, the birds-eye view of the garden is straight as an arrow. My path has been crooked, but the mission that I set for myself so many years ago is alive and growing.
So, what I really wanted to communicate to the business owner that day was not laughter – as if it were a silly question. I meant that laughter to mean: I am in the same garden! As a business, we experience the same ups-and-downs, the same excitements and the same disappointments, and in spite of it all, we are still here and we are still gardening.

Today, as I sit and look at my wobbly rows, my garden feels like my business. I realize that the wobbly row is a perfect analogy for my own process. We plant rows that flourish; we plant rows that putter along. We water, we nurture, we pick, we grow. But the real beauty of it all is not in the harvesting but this moment of sitting in the sun waiting for the first sprouts to poke through the earth.

The point is to watch the little plants grow and to savor the laughter that will come when I finally discover the buried garden gnome that my daughter has left for me as a present.

Natalie Chanin is owner and designer of the American couture line Alabama Chanin and author of three books including Alabama Stitch Book  (2008), Alabama Studio Style (2010) and the upcoming Alabama Studio Sewing + Design which comes out spring 2012. Look for her bi-weekly column, Material Witness here and follow her on Facebook and her own blog at Alabama Chanin.

Berlin, Germany has become the world’s contemporary creative capital not in spite, but as a direct consequence, of its post-Apocalyptic legacy. In the humiliating and fragile aftermath of World War II, the Soviet construction of the Berlin Wall effectively calcified the society’s healing process, and the city remained a willy nilly bastion of still recent blood-let and stark economic inequity. Officially, the Wall fell over 20 years ago, but its first cracks were but symbols. Its physical dismantling was hard-won, and this is to say nothing of the intervening, painstaking gains toward cultural reunification.

View of Berlin from Hello Etsy conference center rooftop

In the wake of the global financial crisis, Germany’s export driven industry has emerged as an economic powerhouse and finds itself in the awkward position of propping up the entire euro-zone from financial collapse; yet Berlin, a city of artists and ex-pats, remains poor, with unemployment rates hovering around 12 percent. It’s Berlin’s ongoing monetary malaise that has over the past twenty years evolved this locale into a destination spot for creatives the world over – visionaries attracted by the city’s ever diversifying internationalism, cheap rent, and abiding sense of emergence. Berlin is, if anything, a city that is still coming into being and lacks a singular, unified cultural definition – in this marvelous metropolis there is nobody telling you what to do.

These reasons make Germany’s capital the ideal location for last weekend’s Hello Etsy: A Summit on Small Business and Sustainability. A wildly successful, 2005 founded online marketplace for handmade and reclaimed goods, Etsy is even more so an alternative economic template that relies on interdependence and human scale sustainability rather than competitive, winner-takes-all free-market capitalism. The conference in fact wasn’t an occasion for the transaction of wares and currency at all, but rather an international convergence of creatives sharing skills and exchanging ideas about community based initiatives.

ewerk dining hall – note industrial hook in upper-right panel

Hosted in ewerk, the oldest preserved commercial power plant in Germany (constructed in 1885), Hello Etsy held court in this building surviving two world wars, enduring destructive Communist rule, and eventually emerging as one of the world’s most influential techno music clubs. Against this storied backdrop, Etsy was in full form, ratcheting up the DIY factor with all manner of artisanal accents – from bright hued bricks of handmade soap and homespun towels by the bathroom sinks to conference dining hall tables decorated with reclaimed milk cartons repurposed into planters for potted herbs and other green flora.

The line-up of approximately 40 speakers addressed over 500 attendees and delegates from the United States and Europe, and included a broad spectrum of thought-leaders – from Facebook’s Head of Commerce Partnerships, Google’s Conversion Specialist and Twitter’s European Communications Manager, to an urban farmer, filmmaker, and author. Panels and lectures ranged from practical education (nuts and bolts of running a small business, for example) to the theoretical (corporate globalization is unsustainable, unethical and Etsy’s word, “unfun“).

Attendees at Hello Etsy listen and learn

Main Room speaker Judy Wicks, a spitfire social activist in her retirement years with no intention of slowing down, delivered a talk about what she calls the Local Living Economies Movement. This theoretical framework emphasizes an alternative business model in which growth is measured not in terms of market expansion, but rather through maximized relationships-businesses reinvesting profits right back into the community generating its revenue to develop deeper networks of solidarity, belonging and, Judy’s word, “fun.”

Hello Etsy conference organizers also published an event specific compendium of essays penned by the summit’s panelists and speakers, with a wellspring of advice, abstracts, and inspiration from figures like Alabama Chanin founder and designer, whose contributing essay “The Commandments” offered ethical business entrepreneurs advice such as: Quality is its own testament. Run toward fear. Share and play well with others. Get a good accountant (and an understanding of QuickBooks).

Do bricks of handmade soap really hold the answer to our future? Etsy thinks so

At its core, Hello Etsy was a celebration of business, a critical examination of capitalism’s current un-sustainability as well as ideas about harnessing and transforming the existing system to grow a sane, compassionate future. Judy Wicks in her lecture put it well:  The heart of business doesn’t have to be an engine of greed, but rather sharing love within your community to yield a ‘living’ return on investment.

Business, at its core, is about relationships; money is but a tool for building them.

ColumnNatalie Chanin’s bi-weekly column, Material Witness, offers a seasoned designer’s perspective on the fashion industry, textile history and what happens when love for community trumps all.

My work in my hometown of Florence, Alabama, began as a project to make two-hundred, one-of-a-kind, hand-sewn t-shirts. My initial concept was simple: go home to Alabama, find quilters who could sew the simple embroideries I wanted to use, make a film about old quilting circles, and show the whole project during New York Fashion Week.

I arrived in Alabama in late December 2000 and the adventure began. During February 2001 Fashion Week, the embroideries of our Alabama artisans found supporters in people like Julie Gilhart – at that time with Barneys New York – and a slew of other fashion journalists and specialty stores. As those first deliveries sold, we made a second round of t-shirt samples to satisfy buyer’s requests and a company was born.

After these first two seasons, I envisioned the t-shirt line growing into a full-scale collection for women that included skirts, jackets, tops and accessories. Exactly a decade ago today I arrived in New York with my first full-scale collection, thinking I was ready for everything New York Fashion Week had to throw at me.
The world changed just two days later.

I was in New York’s Meat-Packing District when the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. By the time I made it back to my hotel, the second tower was on fire. We all know how the horror progressed. So many friends and colleagues lost loved ones and friends on that day. Sitting here, 10 years later, I think that I’m only now beginning to fully understand the impact that 9/11has had on my work and life.

While I was already on the path to slow design and to building a sustainable company, I believe the experience of 9/11 made me cling even stronger to sustainability as a way of work and life. It made the need to create with meaning stronger. It cemented my path with desire for a different kind of business, a different kind of world, a different kind of message – a message that started, for me, with fabric and thread.

Working with needle and thread automatically connects you to the moment. It is a methodical work that physically ties you with thread to your hands. It calms the mind. It gives room for the soul to expand. Over the last decade, we have built a community of sewers, artisans and now an ever growing DIY community that understands the value of making.
Maybe this is a place for people to come together.

Think about this idea as it relates to food. My home in the South is peppered with an ugly past and things that happened not so long ago. My friend, food writer, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, (and hero) John T. Edge once said this about the possibility to heal our differences and deal with our past: “We have this burden of the past upon us. We’ll deal with that history. But we’re looking for opportunities; we’re looking for places to deal with that history. And I think one great place to deal with that, to sit across from our fellow man, is at a barbecue restaurant…I think there’s hope in barbecue.”

In our sewing workshops in Alabama and across the nation, I have seen legions of people – men and women – from many backgrounds, businesses and differing pathways in life, sit together in peace, laughter, genuine interest and support. Differences have been aired, backgrounds have been shared, and problems have been resolved. Each person leaves this time of living in the moment with needle and thread with a better understanding for themselves, the other and with a sense of calm that was not present before. Watching this process evolve has cemented the fact for me that making together creates a place for conversations to grow.

What if communities of makers could come together over needle and thread (insert cooking, building, any work that requires hands and mind)?  What if, by doing so, we could focus on those basic needs that we all share – food, shelter, and clothing – and begin to appreciate our sameness? Could needle and thread, this making, provide a place where civil discourse trumps civil acts of violence? Could we use this as a place to meet and begin to heal the past while creating a future together?
I think just as John T. Edge believes that “there’s hope in barbecue,” there’s just as much in the power of making.

Natalie Chanin is owner and designer of the American couture line Alabama Chanin and author of three books including Alabama Stitch Book  (2008), Alabama Studio Style (2010) and the upcoming Alabama Studio Sewing + Design which comes out spring 2012. Look for her bi-weekly column, Material Witness here and follow her on Facebook and her own blog at Alabama Chanin.

ColumnNatalie Chanin’s bi-weekly column, Material Witness, offers a seasoned designer’s perspective on the fashion industry, textile history and what happens when love for community trumps all.

Two Fridays ago, we asked for reader questions for this week’s column.  I am grateful for all the thoughtful questions that were submitted.  We had lots of emails and phone calls; even long-time friends posed questions that surprised me. As I began to answer each one, I realized that some of the questions were really BIG queries.  They are the searching, life-changing kinds of questions that take time to understand and a great deal of thought to answer.

Many of the questions that came our way have to do with what a day in my life looks like and how I balance home and work with motherhood. So, for this week I will start here, since it is a question that I also ask myself more and more: “What do I WANT a day in my life to look like?”

I think that as humans, we have the tendency to feel like the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and that there is so much that we just don’t have the time to get done. I forget so much (thank you cards and phone calls I should have made) and, right now, my To-Do List still contains things that I should have done last year. So, it feels funny when I am asked how I “do it all.”

I will confess that all the women in my family tend to stand more than sit.  We have two speeds: on and off. Keeping this in mind, I pay attention to the list below as I set my priorities each day:

1. Time is Everything
When I first started my business here in Alabama, my father watched me running myself ragged, working 18-20 hour days, never catching up, never sleeping. He said to me over and over again, “Be careful with your time.  It is the only thing you really own.”  I would roll my eyes each time he repeated it and it is only ten years (and a five year old daughter) later, that I really understand what he was trying to tell me: “Be careful with the commitments you make.”

As an individual, there are a thousand opportunities that come your way each year; as an entrepreneur you have these options each day. The number of choices you will face grows exponentially as the internet, smart phones, and other technologies move into our businesses, lives, and homes. Each opportunity requires a commitment of time – be it small or large.  My job in managing my company and life is to choose those commitments wisely. Consequently, I have come to say “no” much more often than I used to. It is hard at first, but lifesaving after you get the hang of it.

2. Have a Vision
My dear friend Cathy – owner and creative director of HEATH Ceramics – visited recently and we spoke at length about creating a vision for your company (insert life, work).  She and her husband, Robin, attended a seminar at Zingerman’s which they found extremely helpful in setting a vision for what they wanted HEATH to be as a company. I was fascinated by their process and was prompted to ponder my own vision. I realized that while I may not have been good at setting a long-term vision these last years, I have been very good about setting short-term goals: for my company, for my daughter, for my everyday life. Martha Beck’s Steering by Starlight explains it, Growing a Business by Paul Hawkins suggests it, Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain walks you through the process: slow down, concentrate, visualize, and move forward deliberately. My lawyer said it to me this way, “Make a plan and work your plan.”

While I have certainly not completed my To-Do List, I have made some plans and executed them. I make time for clothing and textiles, I make time for my daughter, I make time for writing, and I have started making time for an old love, photography. Don’t get me wrong, there is still SO MUCH that falls through the cracks.  But when I start to get overwhelmed by what I am not getting done, I try to focus on what I am doing in THIS MOMENT.

3. Start Small, Grow Slowly
Start out by doing what you can and work towards doing what you want to do.  It has taken me a decade to build the sort of company I truly want to have.  Read books like Small is the New Big by Seth Godin and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  Research shows that it takes approximately 10 years to do anything well. Don’t be hard on yourself and just do what you can each day. (Again, focusing on the moment.) You might be surprised to learn that my small business today makes much more actual profit – what we really want to have – than my larger company did a decade ago because we have chosen to set and achieve smaller goals on the road to larger aspirations.

4. Produce Locally
I came back home to Alabama a decade ago to start what I thought was going to be a little “project.”  That little project has grown into a decade of work that I would never have dreamed possible.  By producing locally, I have been able to work “close to the bone.” By reducing the time required for manufacturing, reducing overheads (in comparison to a big city studio), and enlisting the help of my community, I unknowingly built a system and structure that has allowed me to do much, much more in a shorter period of time.

5. Expect Bumps in the Road
Nothing, and I mean nothing, is ever exactly as you envision it – ever.  Sometimes it is better.

6. Build a Great Team
Invest in people; you will not regret it. This is one of the most important points to remember in the process of “getting it done.”  Were it not for our fantastic team of employees, friends, and artisans working locally, I would not have the company that I have today. Period.

7. Have an Ice Skating Fee
Several years back, when I had just started doing lectures and public speaking, I agreed to participate in a multi-day event for a very small fee. One of the afternoons, I was standing outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and I received a photograph on my phone from my daughter and my partner. It was my daughter’s first time ice skating, with daddy close behind. In that moment, I wanted to transport myself directly to them and I felt tears welling in my eyes. I sat down and started thinking about how many hours I had invested in this – very worthy – conference and realized that I was making about $2.00 per hour. So, for $2.00 an hour I was missing my daughter’s first time ice skating. I resolved that from that moment forward, I would always calculate an “ice skating fee.”

I would only agree to do jobs and projects where I could make enough money to put away something for my daughter’s future, otherwise I would be at home ice skating with her.  My life changed that day.  I can’t say that it works 100% of the time.  But it is good to have a measure to help you make decisions: “Will this _____ (fill in the blank) bring value to my life and/or my family’s life?” The decision making process becomes much easier. Everybody needs an ice skating fee.

Which leads us to another most often asked question:
“Your daughter seems a priority in your life, and yet you do such amazing work. How?”
You know, sometimes in life we are our own worst enemy.  Here’s an example: before my daughter started Pre-Kindergarten, I had a full-time nanny.  Most days I left our home early and didn’t get home from work until time for dinner. I was frustrated as I saw my daughter growing up without me. And although she was very young, she was also frustrated with me. I felt that I was losing control of my own life. So, I sat down and envisioned what my day would look like if I could do all of the things that I felt I needed to do – for me and for my daughter. My vision at that moment was to take my daughter to school each morning, work a full and creative day and leave the office in time to pick her up each afternoon from school at 3pm.

It felt scary.  My inner dragon screamed “HOW WILL YOU GET ALL THIS WORK DONE? THE COMPANY WILL CLOSE.  YOU WILL FAIL.” And, honestly, I was unsure how I was going to get all of the work done. But I made my plan and followed through, starting with her first day of school.
What happened was this: my daughter and I LOVED this time together; I became more prudent with my time and what I would agree to do (an ice skating fee works in this situation too). I followed our schedule and it seemed that I actually got more done in less time. Our overall profit as a company increased – however small, but an increase – and we were both happier people.

I wrote in the last post that fears often prove groundless – case in point.
This year, I am working on balance and realizing that I can ask for help with my daughter, home and business. A couple of afternoons a week, I have scheduled time for myself. My daughter and I still have the majority of our time together and I am creatively visualizing two mile walks in the woods, dreaming and building more long-term entrepreneurial goals, a visit with a girlfriend, or a simple solo trip to the farmer’s market where I can stop and smell the produce.
Yes, that’s me, making a plan – or vision – for the long-term.

Natalie Chanin is owner and designer of the American couture line Alabama Chanin and author of three books including Alabama Stitch Book  (2008), Alabama Studio Style (2010) and the upcoming Alabama Studio Sewing + Design which comes out spring 2012. Look for her bi-weekly column, Material Witness here and follow her on Facebook and her own blog at Alabama Chanin.