Walking the talk in sustainable fashion.

Last week, the Alabama Chanin team, along with our friends Lisa and Jimmy, took to the organic cotton field  we share with the team from Billy Reid. With rubber boots, loppers, and gloves in hand, we were there helping our organic cotton bolls survive after a long summer of drought and heat followed by excessive rain and weed growth.

We walked the rows, hoed, chopped, and pulled until the sun and heat forced us out of the field. Hard to imagine the days in Alabama heat where people were not allowed out of the field. Makes me think about how things were, how things are, and how things will be.
Nine of us barely made a dent in the work that needs to be done. As we documented the day with black and white images, it looked so romantic and felt like a moment from a Willa Cather novel. But the reality behind the black and white is a sordid, ugly history. I can’t pretend that I didn’t think about those that did this work because they had no choice. But I live TODAY and I WANT to grow organic cotton in the state of Alabama TODAY.

Chapter 1 in the Alabama Stitch Book is about the history of cotton in our community and it was my goal to embrace that history with open arms, understanding the ugly past while hopeful for a more beautiful future. The beauty of the outdoors, the detailed shots of our cotton bolls make me proud. This is not glamorous work; it is hard work, and for some people, it once was the difference between life or death – without which, their families may have starved. My family worked cotton, grew small plots of cotton, and lived next to people who made their entire livelihood from this white fiber.

In an age where technology and convenience rule, our trip to the field served as a great reminder of the importance of creating things that last, leaving a legacy for families and communities, alongside our environment.
This community has a strong heritage in farming fields – by machine, by hand, by any means necessary. Images of the “Old South” come to mind as I re-read that sentence, but as I have come to learn, those stylized movie images didn’t reflect the reality of the south.

In the real “Old South,” my family and their neighbors were busy “scraping out a living.” My mother’s father worked a “good job” at the Tennessee Valley Authority AND farmed. My father’s father built houses AND farmed AND raised cattle.

As our group made its way through this beautiful new cotton field, many parts of that heritage came up in conversation. Stories, personal accounts of our parents and grandparents growing up in the fields and working with bloodied hands were shared as we, ourselves, walked rows of weed-ridden cotton. This work, these stories are a part of our souls; they are also part of our company.
At Alabama Chanin, we strive to connect the past with the present. Our company is based on age-old techniques; history is woven into every garment we create. It’s important that we understand the significance found in “modern old-fashioned” ways of doing things, from sewing to farming.

By putting ourselves in the cotton field, we found a deeper understanding of the entire manufacturing process, from planting to production. Sustainability begins with the soil in which we plant those tiny cotton seeds and continues through the dying process of our garments.
Lisa tells us that the local farmers thought we were crazy for planting organic cotton. They think we are especially crazy for working the field by hand. What they didn’t see in the beginning is that IF this works (and it appears that it will), when this works, we will be one of the first to grow organic cotton in the state of Alabama. It’s not about succeeding or failing, it’s about learning, trying, connecting, and believing. Lisa says that a few of the farmers are talking about putting in 100 acres next year to try that “organic” for themselves. Now that is success.

xoNatalie

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.

The post Alabama Chanin’s Natalie Chanin on Working Her Own Organic Cotton Fields appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.

There was a time not so long ago on humanity’s calendar that sewing was not considered “women’s work,” but rather a tool for survival.
Hunter/gatherers looking for food on a cold winter’s day, some miles from their camp, might have a shoe wear through and break, and their ability to sew that shoe back together in a simple repair stitch might have meant the difference between safe return to the camp, the loss of a foot to frostbite – or an even worse fate, death.
It is thought that healers began to sew human wounds back together in ancient Egypt – formed as a unified state around 3150 BC, and most likely before.  Over 5000 years ago, sewing was taught, not as craft, but as a survival skill necessary to human life. In fact, a heavy-duty needle and thread for repairing clothing and equipment (and sewing one’s own flesh) is still included in first aid and survival kits today.
Sewing was an invention that greatly aided our advancement as a people and it is believed that needle and thread existed as early as 15,000 years ago.

History World writes:

A long slow sequence of invention and discovery has made possible the familiar details of our everyday lives. Mankind’s programme of improvements has been erratic and unpredictable. But good ideas are rarely forgotten. They are borrowed and copied and spread more widely, in an accelerating process which makes the luxuries of one age the necessities of the next.”

In districts where warm clothing is necessary, Stone Age people stitch skins together with threads of tendon or leather thongs. For each stitch they bore a hole and then hook the thread through it.

The development of a bone or ivory needle with an eye speeds up the process immeasurably. The hole is now created by the same implement which then pulls the thread through, in an almost continuous movement. Needles of this kind have been found in caves in Europe from the late palaeolithic period, about 15,000 years ago. Several are so thin as to imply the use of materials such as horsehair for the thread.

How is it that 15,000 years later, a survival skill of the highest order and an important invention for humanity has come to be classified as “women’s work” and, at the same time, declassified as a life skill? In our Alabama Chanin sewing workshops and group or corporate meetings around a sewing table, it is ALWAYS the men and boys that seem to enjoy the sewing the most.  Perhaps it feels like they have been given permission to try something that they have been culturally banned from, without fear of judgment.

A friend recently sent me an email that her son’s math teacher was using sewing in math class to demonstrate themes of geometry and symmetry.  What a great lesson for life: Life Skill (Math) + Life Skill (Sewing) = Sustainable Life + Learning. Although the students most likely do not recognize this at this point in their lives, they will most certainly look back one day with understanding.

Neuroscientists today agree that using our hands also affects the way our brains function. More proof is uncovered every year that simple survival skills like gardening, cooking, and sewing cause the neurotransmitters in our brains to send out signals of happiness.  (I understand that this is a grossly over-simplified explanation of the brain’s complex workings, but research like Kelly Lambert’s Lifting Depression are changing the way the neuroscience community thinks about action and happiness and the power of the brain.)

I say we as the greater humankind (women AND men) take back our skills and our happiness. I say that we occupy our hands; we democratize sewing (cooking, gardening, making) and restore these useful, and sustainable, life skills back to their honored place in our everyday lives. Through reestablishing these abilities to create our food, clothing, and shelter, we will begin to intimately connect with  our beloved communities and, in the process, begin sewing this beautiful nation of ours back together again – one simple stitch at a time.

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.

The post Natalie Chanin: Sewing for Humankind appeared first on EcoSalon.

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 never really thought much about what punks, pirates, and the Spanish Armada had to do with farmers markets or sustainable life until I saw Richard McCarthy – a pirate of the very best order – speak. He has quite an amazing story to tell, made palatable by his charming humor, an easy-to-understand presentation, and, more importantly, good work.

I have thought so much about Richard, his work in the farmers markets – and relating his work to the Spanish Armada – since hearing him speak at the SFA Symposium in Oxford, Mississippi. We will have to trust Richard’s accounts of naval history to be true. But, correct or not, I have thought about this presentation countless times and wrote to Richard on New Year’s Day.

I told him that working to change a fast-fashion industry feels like swimming upstream backwards – on a good day. His talk, with its simple illustrations, some good punk analogies, and the account of the sinking of the Spanish Armada give me hope and make my swim seem a little easier.

Watch his talk here and follow my rough summary of his talk and illustrations below. I have pulled out the core that relates to all cultural assets (food, clothing, shelter) but please watch the entire presentation for more literal workings of punks and pirates.
Richard begins his presentation: “I want to start where, I am sure all SFA talks begin, obscure 16th Century Naval Military History.”

In the late 16th Century, when Spain was at its Imperial peak, it had the world’s leading naval fleet, with the largest ships in the known world. It was impressive and intimidating and Spain felt that they had reached the pinnacle and had to knock out their competition – the Dutch – with their fleet, the Armada.

The Armada seemed too big to fail. But, Richard points out that their SCALE might actually have been the problem. In order to take out the Dutch, they had to sail past England – that small island in northern Europe with no organized navy.

They sailed through English waters and discovered that Queen Elizabeth had organized merchant seamen, rag-tag groups known as “Elizabeth’s Pirates,” with small and nimble ships, able to sail circles around the Spanish Armada and sink the fleet. Richard points out that this is a great example of asymmetrical warfare: where small was GOOD because it was able to out-maneuver the large (and flabby) Spanish Armada.

Richard reminds us that, aside from dashing clothing, pirates have been known for two really important themes: 1) Plunder, creating incredible mischief for the empire and, of course, 2) trying to get as much booty as they could from the empire.

In recent accounts of pirates, Richard notes that there were fulcrums of democratic organization in the way that the plunder was shared and the way decisions were made. There were seeds of democracy.
But what does this mean for us today?

Today we have cultural assets – treasures – like food and music (I am including fashion and architecture, too) that we have to attend to in order to keep them growing, as there are forces that want to homogenize them.

There are large corporations who want to make these cultural assets part of the “system” by homogenizing them, giving them a branding or corporate identity. The potential by-product of this is that the cutting-edge cultural assets are being dulled down, their sharp edges rounded by removing the regional taste and place and sound.
This is the struggle that we face – the battle between commercialization of our culture and our desire to protect the parts which are authentic.

In the music scene of the 1970s, we saw punks – social pirates – having an angry reaction to this homogenization of culture. There was benefit to creating mischief and social anxiety within the system. One of the results of this mischief was a democratization of music culture. If “official media” had nothing to offer you, this meant opening your own label, starting your own club, or writing a fanzine.
Bottom Line: It was an incredible DIY impulse. Sound familiar?

According to Richard, this has a parallel today in the food industry where we see large-scale homogenization of food threatening to remove the “complex, authentic textures and tastes that we want to treasure.”  The big-box scale of retail diminishes the importance of direct human contact with those who produce our food.

There is no room for human scale in the big box Stalinism that has become our food culture today (insert the cultural asset of your choice ____).

But, Richard asserts, there are certainly people and organizations that create mischief and plunder. This mischief is present in the independent films and guerrilla journalism emerging around food and in the lawsuits against fast food companies.

In the turbulent waters of industry today, we are beginning to see a rise of the democratic impulse. “We see lots of other pirate’s ships like our pirate ships.” They are ships that we may touch, we may see, we may work with – all similar pirate ships working in the high seas to try and be fulcrums for change.

And there has been quite a lot of success in retaking some of our local cultural assets; farmers markets abound; people (the pirates) are making a difference.

And in this success, we have to resist the call to become larger in scale because that larger scale, the Armada, may not be sustainable. As Richard said, “I think that we need to be really focused at being BETTER at what we are doing and not necessarily LARGER with what we are doing.”

Looking at the state of the corporate world, the system appears to be in crisis. And, Richard says, there are those up in the system looking out at the pirate ships and saying “Why are they having all the fun?” This large corporate “Armada” and those who work in it, see that smaller pirates are out there innovating. And, in seeing this, they begin to reach out to the pirates. And, with this, the pirates have to decide how to move forward.

Maybe instead of reforming it, maybe we can begin to sail in formation, creating communities and cultivating relationships. Because, in the end, we may sail alone but we have to find ways to anchor together on this big, beautiful sea.

What if we did this for fashion – what would it look like?

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.

Image: Hakan Dahlstrom

The post Natalie Chanin: Punks & Pirates appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.

The post Natalie Chanin: Board by Board appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.

The post Natalie Chanin: Building Family appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.

The post Natalie Chanin: A Trip of One’s Own appeared first on EcoSalon.

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 have always believed that as human beings, we are all born designers. We decorate our notebooks in grade school and our lockers in high school; we carefully select and arrange products for our first apartment, select an outfit for a special date, make a wedding dress, or prepare a nursery.  We work at our job – and whether we work in a grocery store or run a high fashion boutique, we look for ways to make our job easier, to facilitate customer experience, or just to make our desk a little more “ours.” We are born designers.

As a designer, I always thought that making our garments was very simple and straightforward – that is, until I started writing instructions for our Alabama Studio Book Series.  I was pouring over texts for hours and hours, trying to describe and outline the steps in producing one of our garments when I realized that the amount of steps to doing anything well are many.

What I learned from writing those books is that over the years, my design and manufacturing process had become second nature which was the reason why the books were so difficult to write. What seemed nothing to me – like selecting a fabric or a color, became intricate tasks when asked to reproduce them with words.

I’ve been asked many times to describe my own creative processes, so I will attempt to describe them here:

MATERIAL
At Alabama Chanin, we work solely with 100% organic cotton jersey. Over the years, we have tried to incorporate other types of fabric but our clients keep coming back to the cotton jersey over and over again.
The cotton fiber that we are using this year went into the ground as a seed in the spring of last year. In a best case scenario (which was not the case last year), we are able to purchase fiber that is grown in Texas. Cotton has a relatively long growing season and is harvested in the fall of the year.  Farmers who make the commitment to organic are modern day heroes in my opinion.
From the field (wherever that might be), our fiber goes for ginning, then on to spinning in North Carolina, knitting in South Carolina, and back to North Carolina for dying. After dying, the finished fabric arrives in our studio where we keep about 52+ colors of medium-weight jersey in stock and a growing array of colors of light-weight jersey.

INSPIRATION
I use travel, books, exhibitions, newspaper articles, interesting philosophies and people to inspire a theme for each season. I cut out pictures, mix colors, paste them together and let them sit. I may totally rearrange and start over. Over the years, I have learned that sitting quietly and listening to what the images have to say is the best way to start a collection. A simple color swatch or an intricate process may determine the first step in my creative decision making, but the whole process that follows determines the end result.

COLOR + TEXTURE
Looking at my inspiration board, I choose colors that reflect my thoughts and feelings. However, I also consider what I want to wear, what color I want to see on our clients, and what colors look good on the skin. I normally sit very still for a morning and play with swatches of colored fabric and paper to narrow it down to 10 colors that I love. The end result may contain only a small part of what I started with.
The same process goes for texture. Do I want to create texture for a particular collection or would I prefer that the designs are sleek and smooth? Again, this is not based on scientific measure but on what I want to wear, what I feel our clients would look good wearing, and what suits the theme of the collection.

PATTERN
At Alabama Chanin, we work primarily with stenciling techniques to apply patterns to our fabrics. These stencils are developed in our studio and the first ones are cut by hand with an X-Acto Knife and Pennant Felt. We use these prototypes to test how any given design will work with our fabric, the colors that we have chosen and the texture we want to achieve.

FABRIC DEVELOPMENT
Pattern, color and texture are combined in this step to create our final fabric designs. This is where the incredible talent of our Alabama Chanin team comes into play. Swatch after swatch is sewn both in our studio and by our artisans working in search of the best combinations of threads, embroidery flosses, stitches and beads and sequins for every collection. Our artisans help me determine what works best for each piece and each design.

GARMENTS + FABRICS TOGETHER
Our studio team then takes my sketches and translates those into finished patterns and garments. We often create several versions of each garment in order to work out the kinks and arrive at a final piece that we all adore.
After this collection of garments is completed, we start to combine our favorite fabric designs with our favorite garments for a finished collection.

ARTISANS
Once we have found the perfect combinations of garments and fabrics, the collection is cut, painted-by-hand and sent out to our artisans for embroidery and garment construction.

MERCHANDISING + SALES
All of the completed garments are then hung together on a rack to see what looks good together, what we would want to wear and/or photograph together. After fully merchandising what we want to include in a collection, the individual garments are priced and taken to market where we write orders for the stores.

MANUFACTURING + STORE
After orders have been taken, it’s our job to come back home and manufacture all of the orders. This is the bulk of our work and where our team excels. Zac Posen once said, “It takes 5 minutes of designing and 5 months of selling and manufacturing.” He is right. It can take months to complete an order. And after that wonderful order is completed, we package and ship.

CONSUMER
This is the best part of the process. The part where people get to try, take home and enjoy the garments that we make. Knowing they have purchased something that was made with heart and soul makes people happy.

Interested in knowing more about the design or manufacturing process? Click HERE to join us today, November 17th from 12:30 – 1:30 pm CST on the Alabama Chanin Facebook Page for a chat about Design Process + Manufacturing.  See you there!

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.

The post Natalie Chanin: From Field to Fashion appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.

The post Natalie Chanin: Pound For Pound appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.

The post Natalie Chanin: Give the Story Time to Unfold appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.

The post Natalie Chanin: There’s No Place Like Gnome appeared first on EcoSalon.