Material Witness – EcoSalon

Natalie Chanin: Sewing for Humankind

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:12:51 +0000

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.

Natalie Chanin: Punks & Pirates

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:30:03 +0000

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?

Image: Hakan Dahlstrom

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

Natalie Chanin: Board by Board

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:34:04 +0000

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.

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

Natalie Chanin: Building Family

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:50:29 +0000

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:

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

Natalie Chanin: A Trip of One’s Own

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:12:41 +0000

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.

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

Natalie Chanin: Pound For Pound

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:42:44 +0000

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?”

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

Natalie Chanin: There’s No Place Like Gnome

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:45:06 +0000

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.

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

Natalie Chanin: Getting Undressed

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:33:08 +0000

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 weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to Berlin and speak at the Hello Etsy conference. Every speaker was incredible and the amount of information and energy that was present during each presentation was astounding. I think that it will take me weeks to process the incredible passion that fueled those days (and nights) in Berlin. It is almost impossible, at present, to string together a cohesive thought as the ideas are still swirling in my mind; however, I keep coming back, over and over again to Charty Durant’s talk and the images she used to illustrate her ideas.

Charty is a former fashion editor of the Sunday Times, The Observer, and British Vogue and a lecturer at the London College of Fashion. Early in her talk, she reminded us that “Our love of adornment and artistry is uniquely human. Other animals don’t do it– you don’t see tigers walking around wearing earrings. It is as natural and necessary to us as breathing. It really is. How can this joyful human expression be driving our destruction?”

She goes on to talk about two photographs that were taken around the turn of the last century: “I love this picture. This is by Henri Lartigue, the great master who documented the last century. It is a picture of his family members. So, this was the beginning of the 19th century. And you can see here that women are wearing corsets, full gowns, very, very complicated stuff. It was the Victorian era.”

“But, you know twenty years later, they looked like this.”

Charty goes on to explain that in this twenty-year span, women went from the extreme constrictions of Victorian purity to “no underwear, suntans, and short hair.” She correctly states, “That is an extraordinary expression of how fast society went in a
twenty year period.”

Around the turn of this new century, I find the promise of such a leap heartening as I think about the throngs of samples now being presented globally in the name of seasonal fashion. The funny thing about seasons now is that there are so many of
them! We went from the four seasons we all know: spring, summer, winter and fall to additional fashion seasons with names like Holiday 1, Holiday 2, Cruise 1, Cruise 2, Pre-Fall, Spring 1, Spring 2, etc.

How encouraging to think that something that was so ingrained – the Victorian-era vision of the perfect woman – melted away in twenty short years into women’s freedom of living a more undressed life. The thought of that sweeping change gives me
incredible hope that the rapidly growing fashion industry will evolve one day soon, too.

Charty also pointed out that our fashion has changed so little in the last twenty years. It feels to me that we are caught up in a Victorian-like cycle of ever-developing seasons (with ever growing closets) that could possibly evolve any moment into a more humane, beautiful and forward-thinking fashion perspective. During her presentation, Charty talked about the joy of longing as she saved her money to purchase a beautiful chandelier from an antique store. She explained that she was not able to afford the piece but went back to the store over and over again to admire its beauty. The shop keeper saw her longing and agreed to sell it to her over time. During the months that she put away funds to buy it, she built a story, a relationship, a conversation with that product and she still loves that piece today. So it could be with fashion as well: we could long and want and save to get that piece that we will be proud to wear in 20 years.

I see our society moving towards a period of undressing. Charty’s comparison between the austere Victorian woman and the freedom of the modern woman is relevant in today’s world. I am beginning to witness such an undressing, a peeling away of cheap layers and transitional garments coupled with a return to the idea that quality clothing can last a lifetime. This undressing also includes the principles of sustainability and slow design. I see the undressing as a sexy and beautiful act, one that truly represents who we are as women today.

My grandmother had two dresses as she was growing up: one for every day of the week and one for Sunday. I am not suggesting that this is practical in our modern lives. My love for clothes could never survive such austerity in my closet. I prefer the thought of longing, saving, receiving and then savoring. As part of her Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin recently sent out this Bertrand Russell quote: “He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

Charty said at the beginning of her speech, “I spent 25 years in the fashion industry. I love fashion. I love creativity. I love the beauty and the passion of the industry. The thing I love most about fashion is that it’s a haven for eccentrics and mavericks – and long remained so.” I feel the same way.

Someone recently told me that they wanted to be buried in an Alabama Chanin garment. And, I can’t tell you how proud that makes me – but I hope that she will also wear the piece while she is alive. Wear it a lot. Because the true beauty of our garments lies in the fact that they grow more beautiful with each wearing.

Top Image: Pennyspitter

The post Natalie Chanin: Getting Undressed appeared first on EcoSalon.

Natalie Chanin: Life Demands an Ice Skating Fee

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:00:40 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Natalie Chanin: Life Demands an Ice Skating Fee appeared first on EcoSalon.

Natalie Chanin: One Woman’s Testament to Thread and Needle

Natalie Chanin — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 18:44:18 +0000

ColumnEditor’s note: This is the first installment of Natalie Chanin’s new bi-weekly fashion column at EcoSalon. Material Witness will offer a seasoned designer’s perspective on the fashion industry, textile history and what happens when love for community trumps all.

As a designer and entrepreneur in the fashion industry, it is a bit uncommon that I am also an author. A few weeks ago I turned in the very last edits to my third book, Alabama Studio Sewing + Design. Truth be told, in my younger, bolder, high school days, I fancied myself an aspiring writer. I imagined traveling the globe with pen in hand, creating change at every turn. I fantasized leisurely lunches at Paris cafés. I subscribed to magazines; I was an avid reader. My only hindrance in achieving my dreams was that I was a rather lazy student and proper usage of English grammar and punctuation escaped me. Even today, the comma splice can present problems. So, it is a bit exciting, humbling, and, frankly, scary that I have been so graciously asked to contribute as a bi-weekly columnist at EcoSalon.

While I have had the opportunity to lunch in places like Paris over the years, I haven’t quite traveled the globe with pen in hand yet, though circumstances always change. These books I have written aren’t the next great American novel, they’re craft books. They’re books that teach the time-honored, hand-sewing techniques that are the basis of my fashion company, Alabama Chanin. The books are simply guides that speak to a sustainable lifestyle that is at the core of my work. I want to make that lifestyle available to all.

The decision to open-source Alabama Chanin for individuals through our books is not common in the fashion world, in an industry that is more accustomed to secrecy. However, you have to look at the whole of the picture to understand why sustainable designers do what we do.

My personal work is expensive because it is organic, custom-dyed cotton jersey that is cut, painted, sewn, and embellished completely by hand in America with skilled artisans who set a fair price for their work. Over the years, I heard rumblings in the media of my work being “elitist,” and “inaccessible” because of its price. And while our collections have been deemed “couture,” we run our business in the most down-to-earth way from a small community in North Alabama. Sustainability – both ecological and cultural – has defined our growth from the very beginning and “elitist” would actually be the antithesis of who we are.

When the thought of sharing our techniques and patterns to individual users arose, I understood that this could both sustain the needlework traditions that our company celebrates while making our work available to many more people. The concept of open-sourcing seemed a way to make our products more accessible.

Timing is everything and to understand my decision it’s important to understand the period in which I was working. As all of this was unfolding in 2003, open-sourcing was a new idea. Wired Magazine wrote about and provided music tracks for sampling that were free reign for anyone who had the desire to use them. The internet was spreading like fire and for the first time, vast amounts of information was, almost literally, at our fingertips. Books like The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson (on my required reading list), about the concept of selling less of more were being heatedly discussed. The world of business was changing and it seemed to me that sharing traditions that I did not invent was not only the right thing to do but the modern way to approach my business.

Of course, there were naysayers who firmly believed that, by openly sharing, I was putting the nails in my own coffin. They thought that once our “trade secrets” were common knowledge, no one would purchase our couture garments. Honestly, I was fearful when Alabama Stitch Book landed on the shelves around February 2008. However, the book sold well and, more importantly, interest in our couture collections continued to grow. My fears proved groundless. But then, isn’t that the way it usually goes?

Readers who work with the techniques described in the books now tell us that they understand not only why our garments cost so much but why they are worth so much. At the same time, a completely new part of our business has burgeoned. We now sell the supplies needed to make our designs (organic cotton jersey, thread, stencils, fabric paint, beads, and project kits) via the internet and host hands-on workshops both in our studio in Florence, Alabama, and around the country.

So, all of this information is the story of how a feeling to do what is right – not perhaps what was right for my industry – changed my business and my life. I am not sitting in too many Paris cafes these days. But then, I have a five year old daughter and I imagine that she and I will have plenty of time for that together. I do write a lot these days – revisiting my younger, bolder, high school dreams – and, it seems that I am traveling the world, pen (or computer and camera) in hand and trying to make a difference. On this journey, I find it inspiring to start conversations about life, living and, of course, fashion.

The thing about fashion is this: I want to OWN my clothing on all levels – just like I want to own my life. I want to cut it up, sew it back, and make it MINE. I want a skirt I buy to make it through the first wash and a hundred more. I want to take the time to make decisions about what I choose to put on my body with the same care that I decide what I put in my body. I’m hopeful that you feel the same way. In fact, I want to know more about you and hope to start a conversation next time by answering ten reader inspired questions – fashion industry or otherwise.

Got a question? Submit it here.

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: One Woman’s Testament to Thread and Needle appeared first on EcoSalon.