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.

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Nicole Mackinlay Hahn knows there’s an artistry and ethic behind how your clothes, shelter and food get to you, and she wants to show you.

While base operations are at her site Reap What You Sew, her recent video book at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World’s exhibit titled “Fashion Footprints: Sustainable Approaches,” is one of many collaborations she’s been active in when it comes to African artisans.

Her Mirror/Africa launch in Barney’s New York in 2008, as an interactive public art installation (see the Mirror/Africa video below), is an exhibit she hopes to grow in order to educate the public about African communities who are banding together to put products on many store shelves.

She’s also had high profile clients like sustainable label Edun, Clif Bar and several other organizations, including Product (RED), Earth Pledge, The Breast Cancer Fund and the ONE Campaign – through which she’s been able to channel her creative juices when it comes to inspiration, ethics and respect – not just for products, but for the people and the innate integrity imbued in everything we consume.

I finally caught up with Nicole and got her to answer some questions for EcoSalon.

She rocks as well as reaps and sews and is about to embark on another top secret project in Ghana. Stay tuned…

Filmmaker Nicole Mackinlay Hahn

How much time do you spend in the country you’re filming putting together a project like Mirror/Africa? I imagine it takes quite a bit of time to do the interviews and get just the right footage?

Mirror/Africa is the first project I’ve created that needs a lot of time and travel. I’ve been to nine countries in Africa for the project, and three more for other client work, totaling 12. I’ve spent most of the time in Madagascar and Lesotho. My process is slow, and I follow my Reap What You Sew® Manifesto, which honors the ethics of documentary film making. I try not to travel with a crew and hire locals to help with logistics, translation, and teach some film making on the fly. One needs to have a lot of patience to do this work, and that has always been my strength. I know when there is trust between me and the subjects. Sometimes filming one person/location takes a whole day and three meals, and other times it takes a week and doing chores around their house. If I don’t get to connect with my subjects, I get super grumpy. Each location can take from two days to three weeks, or even more. I spent a whole month in Madagascar for very little footage, but it was the right footage. This process applies to my own projects. Client work doesn’t usually allow for so much time, and is more of a traveling circus. I bring a lot of Clif Bars on those trips.

How do you make “lyrical and poetic” the journey of how clothing gets to us?

Reap What You Sew is the poetry behind the purchase. In the Mirror/Africa project summary, “lyrical and poetic” means the video reflections are emotional, celebratory, ambiguous, rhythmic. They are not data driven. I like to call the videos “anecdotes” because they are all under one minute in length and there are about 200 videos in the piece. They are meant to build upon each other. If a consumer scans the same merchandise more than once, a different video appears each time, and these multiple anecdotes build verses. For example, if a silk hat is scanned, the video could be a Malagasy man teasing his friend with a silk worm on a stick, or one may see a woman climbing through her window to lock the front door after a long day of weaving. One video may feel abstract. When more than one item is scanned, a poem is starting to build.

What designers have you collaborated with for this project. Are the designers from Africa or a stateside designer?

I have not collaborated with any designers for Mirror/Africa yet. The Barneys New York staff and buyers were very helpful in researching the merchandise for spring 2008. We had very little time and found 18 items linked to the African supply chain, and I’m sure there were more. I had a head start with brands like Edun and I was happy they had merchandise in Barneys. Retailers are seasonal, so the merchandise sold in the spring will not be there in the fall. For this project, I’m not focused on where the designers/brands are from, it’s more important that the brand is sourcing from Africa. I had already filmed most of the footage before I decided to launch a public exhibit in Barneys, the next step was to curate the video anecdotes with the merchandise selected. So for the brand Lemlem, most of the videos are focused on African children reciting Earth Day poems, making art, riding bikes, and schoolwork. Most of the brands used in the exhibit probably don’t even know they were a part of Mirror/Africa. The piece is more a collaboration between the Africans and the consumers and their interactions. And documenting that is a key element to the project.

Were the RFID tags in the Barney’s exhibit in the clothing or on reels that one could put in front of the installation to see?

The RFID tags were meant to be on the merchandise. At the eleventh hour, we decided it was not a good idea for so many people to be handling expensive items, and we fabricated the bamboo tokens to scan. This was a self-funded art project, so I did not have the support to insure so much merchandise.There was a token to represent each item. Those tokens had the RFID tags embedded. RFID can be applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. There is also a log entering how many times the merchandise is scanned and exactly when, but this is not visible. So we know what item is scanned the most and when. In London, I tagged hangers, and the next site will have all merchandise and people tagged. I look forward to tapping into the social media network more, it was not as evolved when I launched, and I want to design a Reap What You Sew APP!

With the interactive exhibit at Barney’s, did you feel like their customers had a better understanding or new appreciation for the connection between themselves and their clothing?

Yes, I observed a lot of consumer participation. It’s artwork and it’s subjective, so everyone brings a mood and attention span to the piece. I got the sense that people really related to the everyday things in the video footage, because we have so many similarities. I have video documentation of one woman saying she didn’t know horses were in Africa! And another woman stating, “We could really learn a lot from them, you know with everything we’re going through.” Some got emotional, and others are simply enamored with the optics and sculptural component. It’s an ethical bubble, and one can see their reflection in the mirror. It’s important to see ourselves in the piece, because we have to love and care ourselves before we can really care about others. And if we truly want to be environmental, restorative, sustainable, we need to have a lot more tolerance and care for other cultures.

Why take this kind of project on? Do you think people want to know more and is video an effective medium for them to digest it all better?

I’ve been working with video since the first Pixelvision camera was on the market. It was a big deal to move up to VHS! Video is very effective and affordable. I think all the elements of moving picture, sound, light, animation, are quite emotive. I felt the need to start the Mirror/Africa project because in 2005 the branding trend was to put the story on the tag. I wanted to do something that took the stories way beyond the tag. At the same time, I was in Africa seeing how many lives are affected by clothing manufacturing, and all the cultural capital there. I would return and share everything with my friends about the supply chain and I could not believe how little we all knew. It’s sad how hard it is to find out where things come from. So I started designing the interactive sculptures to seduce the consumer. Retailers have been using video and projection for years, but mostly as wallpaper and architecturally. I wanted to make something that actually engaged and documented the consumer. So the Mirror/Africa tripods are protagonists within a larger feature documentary film project in development. Mirror/Africa also has dance and music tokens where one can connect their style based on the music genre they choose. Hip Hop, Karaoke, Folk, Club, Rock, etc”¦at the next exhibit one can learn the dance.

Image: Barney’s Mirror Africa Exhibit

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“An unremarkable house can become a beautiful, sustainable shelter,” says Leslie Hoffman, President and Executive Director of  Earth Pledge.

She’s proving it with her own island development. The project is described on Hoffman’s Gimme Shelter blog as “a showcase for environmentally responsible building practices, sustainable products and brands and creative talents.“

What else makes this house sustainable? “Community,” she says.

I caught up with Hoffman recently and asked her a few questions about the project. Here’s what she had to say:

How did you find the Shelter Island property?

I have had the place for close to 10 years. It has served me well, I have become part of the community, I established my garden and grew it over the years, and have shared the house with friends. During this time I have thought a lot about how it could be improved, without making it substantially bigger, reusing as much of the old building as possible, and addressing issues, such as the fragile local aquifer, that are important in the community.

If sustainably designed, then why demolish the building and start anew?

The original structure was 2×4 framing on an uninsulated slab. The decision to re-frame the main section of the house addressed the need for insulation under the floor and also increased increased insulation in the walls and roof. The old section that remains is principally the garage and two guest bedrooms.

Will you have monitoring systems for people to see how your home is doing?

I am not installing monitoring equipment per se, but will certainly be monitoring fuel and electricity usage. My work on green roofs at Earth Pledge has included building three monitoring stations, so the results can now be applied without replicating the scientific work, which is costly.

What are some parts of the project you’re really excited about and why? Are you using your house as a testing ground for anything?

Each project that I have done has been a learning experience, so I know that Gimme Shelter will “teach” me – and hopefully others. I am super excited about the indoor/outdoor integration of this project. In summer, when most people want to come and visit, the house can be opened up to literally become part of the outdoor living spaces, and vice versa. The new product developments – including advanced green features such as water and energy saving – are amazing. I am also looking forward to having solar thermal panels to heat my hot water and radiant heating (I have had PV generating 5 kW of electricity for almost 7 years) and I am also really keen to explore cooking with an induction stove.

Tell me why you picked Steve Hoffman as the architect?

Steve, who is no relation to me, is married to a friend. They visited me on Shelter Island a number of times, and he became interested in the project. I had been grappling with some issues about the project, most notably the roof lines. Steve came up with the concept of the shape of the house, and reorganized some of the interior space use. When I saw the shape, it screamed “water catchment device” to me. This became central as we developed the garden integration and considered the impact of storm water runoff on a coastal site.

Talk about home being one of the basic necessities for living. How is your home that and more?

For me – beyond providing shelter – this place represents an opportunity to share what I know and how I live – with my friends, my community and the millions of Americans who live in typical mid 20th century housing who might want to upgrade their homes while integrating new (and more sustainable) principles into their lifestyles. As an example, I believe that more gardeners in the world will make the world a better place. When you experience the pleasures of the process and product of living with a garden, you are more likely to actually do it. This house and its renovation are providing me with a vehicle for sharing with what is hopefully a broad reach.

Top image: Computer generated image of Hoffman’s Gimme Shelter Project

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