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.

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Natalie Chanin releases the third book in her sewing trilogy.

It’s no secret we have a thing for Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin here on EcoSalon.

An entrepreneur, designer, author, lecturer and strong businesswoman who went back to her roots in Florence, Alabama to stimulate local economy (as well as her own quest for a little life/work fulfillment), Natalie is a one-woman rocket ship of sustainable goodness.

In her third book Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, we get to pick up on the “conversations and techniques begun with the Alabama Stitch Book and Alabama Studio Style.” With each book lending itself to the other as to the workings and lifestyle of the Alabama Chanin woman, readers of all three books will now have the tools to make anything they’ve ever seen on the Alabama Chanin site – minus the in-house Depression Era stitchers.

We caught up with Natalie this past week to tell us more about her new DIY masterpiece. Speaking of that book, did we mention that we’re also giving a copy away? It’s no lie. Just leave a comment at the bottom of this story and you are entered to win!

How is Alabama Studio Sewing + Design different from the Alabama Stitch Book and Alabama Studio Style?

Alabama Studio Sewing + Design is really the culmination of what was originally seen as a trilogy.  Each book builds on the other, but also stands on its own.  However, this book is more about the actual “fashion” of what we do… more intricate, more sophisticated, more patterns, more techniques…

With the compilation of the three books, you should be able to recreate any fabric and technique that we have ever designed at Alabama Chanin.

Talk about the importance of sharing “techniques that were once understood as essential survival skills?” Have we as a society lost touch with the importance of using our hands to create?

There is much talk at the moment about how being able to “do” or “make” for ourselves also makes us HAPPY.  I believe that this is a huge leap in understanding human behavior and a missing piece in our role as human beings today.  How simple: develop the capacity to do for yourself (in whatever small way) AND build neural pathways to happiness. I think back to my grandmother’s ever-moving hands and her pride in doing for her family and it makes me sigh… “Yes, I understand.”

I see the open-sourcing you offer in Alabama Studio Sewing + Design working for Alabama Chanin in two ways: 1., It gives people the opportunity to own Alabama Chanin by making and 2., it gives people an appreciation for what you do as a designer. Am I right?

The original thought in writing the books was to empower people to be able to make our garments.

I wrote in the introduction: “I have been asked many times why I choose to write books and, in the process, open-source (that is, freely share) instructions for making Alabama Chanin’s couture collections. The answer is not as straightforward as you might think. It is based on my belief that good design should be available to all and my desire to build a company that is sustainable in all of its practices. By sharing our skills in these books, I hope to shed light on not only how we can preserve precious natural resources but also how we can preserve and protect techniques that were once understood as essential survival skills.

 While Alabama Chanin dresses, skirts, tops, and coats have been beautifully featured in countless magazines and newspapers, and on television shows and websites, they have also been criticized for being “elitist,” and “inaccessible” because of their price. Truth be told, our clothing is extremely expensive. This is because it is made from domestic, organic, custom-dyed cotton jersey that is cut, painted, sewn, and embellished by hand in America by skilled artisans. And while we sell our collection to some of the most upscale stores and clients, we run our business in the most down-to-earth, simple way imaginable. In the beginning, we worked from a three-bedroom, brick, ranch-style house in rural Alabama, a home that my grandfather built. Today we work from a reclaimed textile factory built in the 1980s—when manufacturing was booming in the South. Our studio—which we call The Factory—has become a busy hub, where we concentrate on building a zero-waste company. Our employees earn a living wage, and while none of us is getting rich, at least in terms of our bank accounts, we are, indeed, rich in spirit, belief, passion, and friendship. “Elitist” is the antithesis of how the company works and who I am as a designer, entrepreneur, and citizen.”

 The piece I think you initially understood – better than I – is that the books have ALSO given a broader range of people an appreciation of the work we are doing. Thank you.

Do you see the DIY movement getting stronger? Is this maybe an entire generation of women ready to use their hands again to create their own clothing and be a little more self-sufficient?

I do see DIY as a very quickly growing movement – or should I say, a “remembering” of where we come from. And I find it very inspiring to see people – young and old, man and woman – searching for their voices in this conversation and using these tools as a form of sustainability – both cultural and physical. My interest in this conversation is to help find the intersection of DIY, Craft, Fashion and Design (all with capital letters).

Image: Abrams Books

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Women have innately basked their brains in feel good juices since time immemorial to get through tight economic and emotional times. Though dovetailed as woman’s work and not really discussed, for centuries women have enjoyed the calming properties of knitting, sewing, embroidering or even just rhythmically folding or ironing clothes.

When I came across this blog entry from sustainable designer and writer Natalie Chanin, it not only piqued my perception of the positive effects of “women’s work,” but it brought to light a real aspect of how using our hands to do meaningful tasks can benefit our overall health and well being.

Chanin cites neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, author of Lifting Depression:

“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.”

I asked Chanin myself, with all the women working for her, has she ever heard a remark about how working with their hands helped get them through hardships or that their disposition changed the moment they picked up needle and thread?

“We have had several stitchers remark that they just don’t ‘feel good’ when they don’t have a project to work on. I remarked in Alabama Stitch Book that I sometimes use sewing when I have a difficult decision to make or when I need to brainstorm and find ideas,” says Chanin.

So does the physical act of using your hands to “make,” increase some sort of chemical reaction that basks your brain in feel good, all-natural cocktails that can enhance your sense of well being?

I caught up with a few reliable sources to see what they thought about it.

Abigail Doan, Ecco Eco Founder and Textile Artist

I have always linked crafting with one’s hands to agricultural activities. Having grown up on a small family farm, I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with the soil, build fences, spin wool, and learn a variety of fiber-crafting skills. My mother was a self-taught hand spinner, and there is no doubt that the activities that we performed as a hands-on household curbed depression and day-to-day boredom.

I believe that people are currently drawn to these activities as they allow one to feel environmentally grounded and connected to a place, despite all of the uncertainty that presently surrounds us. Understanding the start-to-finish process of any craft-based activity mirrors life cycles and the rhythms of nature. For urban dwellers specifically, this is a great way to stave off the depression that comes from prolonged anxiety and a lack of centeredness. Keeping one’s hands moving also mimics activities like plowing, raking, weeding, or milking. We can lose ourselves in the patterns and textures created, and this for me is extremely therapeutic and restorative. It 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.

Jill Danyelle, Occupational Therapist and Founder of FiftyRX3

We are typically more motivated to engage in an activity that has some meaning, enjoyment, or purpose.

As a therapist, I work with children and tend to accomplish a lot under the guise of play, but I am also responsible for handwriting, which is often a dreaded task for my clients. I find the kids are most motivated to write if they can also draw and color pictures and tell a story. This year, I have had two boys collaborate on writing a story, which has motivated them to practice writing for the last two months, as they were excited to add a new phase to the story every session. We just ended it – although they keep trying to add more and more details – and now they are finishing all of the illustrations. They have a real sense of pride about the work, which I am going to publish in book form so they can share it with friends and family.

On the other end of the age spectrum, years ago I worked in a geriatric rehab facility every other Saturday. The clients were not motivated to do rote exercise, so I had to disguise it in activities. I would take all the neatly folded towels that were delivered from laundry and dump them in a pile on the table. Then I’d get two or three clients around the table and ask them to stand up and help me fold the towels. In the process they would start making small talk, so they were socializing, working on standing balance, bilateral coordination, upper extremity strengthening, etc.

In one of my internships with an Adult Mental Health Day Treatment program, I ran several groups including a kind of “talk therapy” group and a crafts group. Interestingly, nobody said too much in the “talk” group, but when they were busy crafting I think they felt less pressured and all sorts of things would come out.

Image: Mr T in DC

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It’s hard not to come across Natalie Chanin’s name in the sustainable design world. Founder of American couture line Alabama Chanin, the designer is noted for her clothing as much as home décor designs and entrepreneurial joie de vivre.

Huge fans, us.

Blame it on her pioneering ways as a designer and CEO of a sustainable American design house. From her home in Florence, Alabama, Chanin works with local artisans to hand quilt, stitch and sew garments into award-winning designs. As a finalist for the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Fashion (in 2005), and as a finalist for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund in 2009, Chanin continues to make the world know she’s here to leave her mark in the world of sustainability.

Now, with her second, recently released book Alabama Studio Style, Chanin gives us more ideas to bring forth from the pages of her carefully curated world.

(You can try winning your own copy of her book by leaving a comment here by noon on March 22, 2010.)

I caught up with Natalie over the weekend and she was kind enough to answer some questions.

What drives inspiration for you?

I believe that we all find inspiration in our lives each and every moment of every single day.  I once based an entire collection on a scrap of paper that I found lying on a street corner. Inspiration is all around when we open our eyes. I tend to have the opposite problem – sometimes it is hard to turn the distraction of inspiration off and to focus on what is before me.

I was reading an article where a writer said, “Foreseeing that the elevated cost of a couture garment could potentially isolate customers, Chanin produced her first book, Alabama Stitch Book, which made her techniques, instructions and patterns available to the public.” Are these books an outreach to those women who can’t afford to buy your clothing?

In one way, yes, but the answer to this is more complex and traverses a bit of ground.

The only complaint we have ever received as a company is about the cost of our garments. Everything that we make is completely made by hand and within about an hour-and-a-half radius from my studio in Florence, Alabama. So, not only is it made in America but hand-built – each and every stitch, seam and embellishment (and these embellishments can be very rich and detailed).

At the same time, early in my journey I realized that sewing traditions (and I would go so far as to say survival traditions – everything around food, clothing and shelter) were dying in my community – and communities all over. Very soon after coming home to begin my work with hand sewing, it became clear that it was important to begin to collect stories and techniques about these traditions and to work towards not only incorporating them in my work but using my work as a means towards cultural preservation.

Furthermore, I had just moved home from Europe where – at the time – there was a much greater respect for recycling, taking care of your environment, quality of food and quality of life. I was very surprised to come home to Alabama and find that our food and environmental systems were substantially remiss in looking at the details of our community and our relationship as a community to the greater world.

However, the most important revelation was the realization that making something with my own two hands added substantially to the value of that object in my life.  It had been so long since I had made – and taken care of – the objects that filled my life. In essence, I re-learned that making brings added meaning.

All of these complex factors combined made me embrace this notion of open-sourcing and supported the idea to write the first book (Alabama Stitch Book).

As you mention, our garments are hand-sewn in America and are very expensive. In fact, many of our garments wind up in museums and private collections. If people cannot afford to purchase our garments, we offer our best-selling patterns in our books so they can make the garments themselves – or pay someone in their own communities to make them. We openly sell the fabrics and the supplies to make those garments – the same resources that we use for our collections. And if a client wants to shorten the steps, we offer DIY
Kits that simplify the process.

This philosophy is unheard of in the global fashion industry.

I am proud that Alabama Chanin has chosen to take this route. And honestly, it was a very difficult (and scary) decision to make and was not met with positive feedback from my industry colleagues.

What is interesting is that after the publication of the two books and embracing this open-source philosophy, many people finally understood why our garments are worth so much. In the end, I am very happy to have trusted my instincts and have made that decision. Of course, since that time (6 years ago) the notion of open-sourcing has become very important and I am proud that Alabama Chanin is a part of that.

Did your mother craft with you?

There was always a project at both of my grandmother’s tables and one in the basket to come next. Both of my grandmothers raised three girls and I know from hearing it that they “sewed every dress those girls ever wore.” The next generation – my mother and aunts – did some crafting and sewing back then but are really much more respectful of these traditions today. That time – the 60s and 70s – was really the beginning of consumerism in America. I remember my mother talking about how she did not want to wear a “homemade” dress to school. She and her sisters saved their money from picking cotton in the summer or working at the 5 & Dime so that they had the money for a “store bought dress” to wear to school.

Your involvement with the Bureau of Friends involves modern day sewing circles with people not usually found doing that. These meetings are hugely successful. What is it that crafting does for our psyche and ability to communicate?

I mentioned above that my most important revelation was the realization that making something with my own two hands added substantially to the value of that object in my life.  The concept that “making brings added meaning” is at the core of these meetings with the Bureau of Friends. It is uncanny how deep and rich conversation becomes when men and women sit around a table together and “make” in unison.

What’s different in this book from Alabama Stitch Book?

Alabama Studio Style is a development from Alabama Stitch Book. When I look at the two books together, I can see the process of “growing up.” And while the books are thought of as individual books, they are also companions.  The inclusion of more recipes excites me and I love how these recipes mix and mingle with the way-of-life aspect of the book.

There’s a current trend of going back to things being done properly. Do you feel like your book is a small portal into reconnecting with what we wear or adorn our homes with?

This has certainly been an underlying theme in my work since the beginning. If you sense that in the books, then I am happy and feel proud.

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