An interview and visit with Kelly Drennan, founder of Fashion Takes Action.

I recently headed north to Toronto and had the opportunity to meet up with Fashion Takes Action’s Kelly Drennan who is hands down, the most connected women in Canadian sustainable fashion. From her Distillery District showroom, Drennan runs part education/retail for the public and base operations for the eco fashion industry grooming designers to be better at what they do, and raising public awareness for the benefits of sustainable fashion and responsible consumerism.

Busy as she may be, we nailed Drennan to her seat to ask her some questions. Here’s what she had to say.

FTA seems to do everything for designers including helping them be more sustainable to selling from your showroom. Are there many places in Canada doing what you’re doing?
FTA is the only organization that does this kind of work in Canada – both from working with designers and retailers in helping them along their sustainability journey, and also with respect to raising consumer awareness. We provide our members with the tools and resources to help them become more successful. To us, this means helping them gain a genuine understanding of sustainability and how it relates to their business, being transparent with their branding and messaging, accessing eco friendly fabric, certifications and other services, as well as getting their product in front of the media and general public.

Sole Rebels footwear

Tell us how the showroom came to be.
We poll our members regularly to ensure that we are on the right track and are delivering the kind of services that they need – that are both timely and that will help them achieve more success. We would continually hear, from our more established members, that they needed help with sales. These are, for the most part, the designers who already had a solid grasp on their sustainability plan, and who had a credible product on the market, but who needed help reaching the media and the consumer.

As a non profit organization, finding the most affordable space was a bit tricky, until the opportunity to move into the Distillery District came about. We share the space with one of our members, Lara Bazant which has enabled us to deliver even further on our mission to support our members. The showroom is currently focused on retail sales, however we have plans to grow our relationship with buyers. Our goal is to soon be supporting our members on the wholesale side of their business as well.

Miik founder and designer Michael Gaughan

How hard is it for designers today to produce sustainably? Do they need to pick a niche within the eco-fashion realm or can they do it all?
We realize perfection doesn’t exist, but that even the smallest steps can make a huge difference. We encourage our members to do whatever they can. In order to help out with their increasing costs, we provide various discounts with preferred suppliers ranging from eco friendly fabric to FSC certified business cards. We are seeing more creativity and diversity with emerging designers who are taking the term “sustainable” and making it their own. The past year or so has seen a boom in reclaimed, rescued and upcycled collections and some more established designers who were using only organics or closed loop fabrics, are now also adding in reclaimed pieces. We love to see experimentation as this movement is constantly growing and changing. What was considered to be sustainable 5 years ago is quite different today. Certification is also one of the biggest challenges that our members face, and we hope to address this in the coming 12-18 months by making it both more accessible and more affordable.

Anne Pringle of Local Buttons and Fashion Takes Action founder, Kelly Drennan

Can fashion be a portal for people to think differently about how they consume?
Absolutely. Our tagline is “Changing the way we create and consume fashion,” so we spend a great deal of our time trying to make this shift happen. It has to be about more than just the fashion alone. We rely heavily on the support of the media to continue to spread the word. We also believe that designers also have a responsibility to provide more information to their customers about why sustainable is better. It isn’t good enough to just say that it is organic or recycled, but why that is important. What are the conventional alternatives, and how are they negatively impacting our planet and its people.

When consumers are empowered with the knowledge that something fashionable was made from something else and thus saved from its otherwise destined landfill, or that a stylish dress was made from quality eco friendly fabric and not mass produced in a sweatshop, then it is that very knowledge that can help people change the way they consume. I at least like to think this is true.

Monica Mei of AIME and Melanie Ferrara of Device

What is the #1 bit of advice you’d give a designer just getting out of design school?
It’s hard to think of just one bit of advice, but I do think that if a young designer can secure an internship with a small independent designer, then they will learn so much from that experience. It will provide a huge learning opportunity, and with a the right kind of leadership and mentoring, can prove to be invaluable.

Another very important bit of advice would be to focus. I see too many young designers who lack focus – their collections are not cohesive and they are clearly still experimenting. I have also seen collections drastically change form season to season so that they in no way appear to be made by the same brand (but they are). Finally I think young designers need to just slow it down and take the time to really understand who their demographic is and thus how to properly price their work. Research and testing is one way to do it. It will save time and money in the long run, instead of learning through trial and error, which is not only expensive but often results in an excess of dead stock – this is a problem both financially and environmentally!

Images: Amy DuFault

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Getting acquainted with bamboo’s true environmental impact.

When sustainable fashion first burst onto the scene, we were introduced to a number of “eco-friendly” fabrics, such as organic cotton, tencel, hemp and bamboo. Each carried sustainable properties, whether that meant being free of pesticides or fertilizers, produced in a closed-loop system, or made from durable and renewable materials.

At first, bamboo fabric made a lot of sense. Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants on earth, with one species recorded growing three feet in a single day. Bamboo does not use or rely on chemicals, fertilizers or insecticides to grow. Nor does it require as much water as alternatives such as cotton, where one t-shirt requires 400 gallons of water to produce from start to finish.

In comparison to cotton, bamboo is known to improve watersheds, purify air quality, and remove toxins from contaminated soil, all with less water consumption and no harmful environmental impact. Bamboo is often planted to prevent soil erosion, it can absorb up to 12 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare and it produces 30% more oxygen than any hardwood forest of similar size. It can also be selectively harvested annually, and it naturally regenerates without replanting.

Bamboo seemed like a miracle fiber – and in a sense, it is. It’s turning it into fabric that’s the more complicated issue.

Bamboo fabric can be made in one of two ways – chemically or mechanically. The chemical process has been met with much resistance from sustainable fashion experts because this process requires toxic chemicals. These chemicals, sodium hydroxide and carbon disulfide, change the genetic structure of natural bamboo, turning it into rayon. But the disposal of these chemicals can lead to soil and water contamination.

The bigger issue is how bamboo is being marketed and sold – both to the fashion industry and the consumer. Both groups are drawn to its (questionable) claims of biodegradability, its softness, and let’s face it, its price point. Yet without knowing the facts about how that fabric was processed, or understanding its real positive attributes, how can one really be sure of the impact? Some marketers will rely on the fact that we immediately think it’s good because it comes from a plant that carries many good properties. They stick a panda bear or bamboo shoots on the label, and that seems to be enough to convince everyone of its sustainability.

You may be familiar with the Lyocell process, more commonly known as Tencel – a process that also requires various chemicals. However, Tencel is made in a closed-loop system that allows for the chemical effluent to be treated and recycled, thus making it a more sustainable option than rayon. Those of us in the sustainable fashion business have been waiting years for the bamboo industry to adopt this style of processing.

A Canadian brand, Miik, is challenging the status quo by using bamboo processed in a closed-loop system. In addition to tracking the bamboo used from the source, Miik has also earned a bevvy of certifications including USDA organic, Oeko-Tex Standard 100, and OCIA (Organic Crops Improvement Association). Even better is their processing method.

Miik

According to Bamboo Tex (the company that develops Miik’s bamboo yarn ), the bamboo is processed in a hermetic container where 100% of the chemicals used are trapped and contained rather than being released into their factory, environment or atmosphere. Miik also claims that each step of the process is supervised for adherence to company policy, brand commitment and China’s environmental ethical standards.

Within one week, I discovered yet another great example in Five Bamboo, which I recommend you check out for a more comprehensive explanation of the process (including diagrams).

Five Bamboo

Mechanically processed bamboo is also considered sustainable. Rather than extracting fiber, as in the case with regenerated cellulose, mechanical processing involves the separation and extraction of fibers directly from the bamboo shoots. However, it is a multi-step process that is more costly, and therefore is not commonly practiced.

The net situation is that bamboo fabric still poses some difficult issues for both the ethical fashion designer and the consumer. The use of bamboo plants in the textile industry is still relatively new, and too few companies are using the more sustainably processed fibers, although that is changing.

Regardless of how it is processed, some experts believe it is more important to be able to make an informed decision about environmental impact before ruling any fabric out. According to sustainability expert Lorraine Smith, we should all be taking an impact approach, rather than a prescriptive one. She believes it is more important for designers to be measuring, managing and demonstrating impact. Without data, aren’t we all just guessing?

Smith also feels that the real problem lies in making false claims or claims that don’t make any sense – whether it is about bamboo, cotton or any other fabric. “If they have certification to demonstrate that they are making a difference along the way,” says Smith, “Then it isn’t greenwash. It’s not about the fiber, it’s about the whole product life cycle.”

For more on Smith’s position on bamboo, read her article “To Be or Not To Be Biodegradable.”

Main image: odonoata98

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