SeriesPart 4: The fashion industry is emerging from its cocoon post-recession, a changed sector where consumers are more cautious, manufacturers are on their toes and designers are struggling to stay afloat doing business as usual. In this five-part series, we take a hard look at the fashion world, speaking with industry leaders, luminaries and experts. This week we ask: Did the recession birth new DIY designers tired of being branded with corporate logos?

In times of economic despair, there will always be a surge in the use of hands to quell the storm of financial uncertainty and to give meaning to otherwise challenging lives. During the Great Depression, people were advised to acquire “productive activities,” to make good use of idle time being out of work and to maintain solid work ethics that rewarded them with a sense of fulfillment and a feeling that they could still, in fact, be productive members of society.

Post recession, one has only to look at the number of DIY sites that have become popular and the micro trend of sewing and knitting groups to know that a cultural shift is happening. Within the confines of craft, there now lies an inherent rebelliousness that you usually only see in punk, indie music or street culture. Women working with their hands to teach others (or even alone in their own homes) are leading a movement against being branded, and taking how they dress themselves as a form of protest.

Juliana Sabinson, a freelance sewing teacher and artist, is one of those people.

Anne Wilson’s Local Industry

Sabinson says while her desire to create and teach the art of sewing is to promote empowerment. Her own story is inextricably linked to her dislike and distrust of contemporary clothing and the companies behind it.

“I try and think about all the socioeconomic systems behind my purchases and at a certain point buying clothes seemed no longer a sustainable option, not to mention the majority of it is so badly made,” says Sabinson. “So I make not only to fulfill a creative desire and to externally express myself, but also as a political act, a small and artistic protest against a largely unquestioned system.”

She’s not alone. Many people are coming out of the woodwork post-recession in protest that they are not a brand and refuse to be catered to as one. This rounded consciousness that applies to fashion, along with food and home, is burgeoning a sewing renaissance that professional women as well as homemakers are part of to take a stand against corporate forces that got us into the recession in the first place.

Sabinson says it’s not all rebellion, however. When people are sewing and using their hands they are not only building a level of muscle memory, they are quieting their brains and giving themselves a space in which to be a designer.

“They are designers simply because they’re creating,” says Sabinson, who teaches her students to first create in their heads then execute the design. She likens it to a “leap of faith,” which makes them feel at ease and able to think more creatively.

“For me, the most important goal in all my classes is to build one’s confidence and willingness to fail and start over.”

Though unemployment and economic uncertainty have helped fuel design growth, some say the economic downturn has in some ways been beneficial, because more consumers have turned to channeling the comforts of tradition.

Caroline Weaver, VP of North America Marketing for SVP Worldwide, the world’s largest sewing machine company and source of the SINGER®, HUSQVARNA VIKING® and PFAFF® sewing machine collections, says if you look at a brand like Singer’s 150-year history, during times of economic slowdown and depression, people will always gravitate towards hobbies and because of that, micro trends like sewing will flourish. In the case of the under-40 crowd, these sewers-cum-designers are just starting to realize that modern day sewing machines are not their grandmother’s gadgets.

“These machines are highly, highly automatic and that’s what’s appealing to the under 40 crowd. The machines make their own button holes, thread themselves, and provide constant tension. These are the machines with millions of lines of code. Nowadays, you’re not just paying for a sewing machine, you’re paying for a computer and having  a sewing mentor in your machine.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Anjali Athavaley reports that in the post-Project Runway world, sewing enthusiasts are finding the old-fashion craft comes with apps, Twitter and high-tech machines. This is a whole new generation used to smartphone technology and the simple push of a button to instantly gratify their every need for information.

BurdaStyle, an online social community using the web to bring the craft of sewing to a new generation of designers, hobbyists, DIYers and anyone looking to sew, is a popular part of this generation. BurdaStyle Creative Director and Editor Alison Kelly, who was also on Season 3 of Project Runway, says the current DIY movement was certainly proliferated by reality shows like Project Runway.

Alison Kelly, Season 3 of Project Runway

“Before them, I think fashion design was a mystery to many people, the face behind a fashion label often remained unknown (except of course by die hard fans), and now many fashion designers have become celebrities. It’s a wonderful thing, inspiring people to create, and these reality shows are so interesting because one can witness the creative process first-hand, while drama and competition fuel the fire,” says Kelly.

Nora Abousteit, co-founder of BurdaStyle, says when she and former partner Benedikta Karaisl von Karais – a fashion designer – came up with the BurdaStyle concept and thanks to what Fast Company calls “her love for interaction and innovative technology,” Nora reinvented an old Hubert Burda sewing magazine into an online icon in the sewing community.

BurdaStyle at Brooklyn’s Renegade Craft Fair

“We witnessed many people over the past four years that started sewing and now are proficient. It is so much fun to see when people improve their skills and take up harder challenges and simply produce more and better work,” says Abousteit.

In addition to budding designers worldwide utilizing the BurdaStyle community, lots of well-known designers have participated in their DIY community, including Wenlan Chia (Twinkle by Wenlan), Alabama Chanin, Samantha Pleet, and Mina Stone.

With over 530,ooo registered members, BurdaStyle is a growing force to be reckoned with.

While all women interviewed agree this post-recession “micro-trend” is all about a new and more aggressive DIY sewing community, they all also agree that it is empowering.

“Consumers are tired of living in a mass produced world,” says SVP Worldwide’s Weaver. “Women are deciding to put signs outside their homes that they do embroidery work for customizing team jerseys and hats to make extra money, our classes are filling up, we’re breaking sales records and people are just so inspired.”

Images: Kheel Center @ Cornell University, A Forest Frolic, Anne Wilson

The post The Post Recession Fashion Industry: Sewing Circle Rebellion appeared first on EcoSalon.

SeriesPart 3: The fashion industry is emerging from its cocoon post-recession, a changed sector where consumers are more cautious, manufacturers are on their toes and designers are struggling to stay afloat doing business as usual. In this five-part series, we take a hard look at the fashion world, speaking with industry leaders, luminaries and experts. This week we ask: Now more than ever, is eco-fashion inextricably linked to conscious connections with land and place?

We might attribute eco-fashion to ’60s youths, with their natural approach to style, but the official terminology came much later. The term “eco-fashion” came into the mainstream in the late ’90s, and 2005 was perhaps the most significant year. EcoSalon’s Louise Lagosi writes, “In 2005, it became a marketing tool which is why we suddenly knew about it. Capitalists needed to bank on a trend and this was something they couldn’t ignore. It became the tipping point for eco-fashion.”

While eco-fashion most certainly did become a focal point for all industry sectors circa 2005, if we take a look at why it has stuck, we might be surprised.

Textile Arts Center knitting group

A Consciousness We May Not Be Conscious Of

Owyn Ruck, General Manager of the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, says our green awareness has gone beyond being just “eco-friendly” to a deeper understanding of how things are made.

“Understanding not only reminds you of the impact of an object on the environment, but also allows for the true appreciation of the object. Things from our past are easily represented through physical objects, and by understanding more about the making, we pay more respect to our past – and thus ourselves and current environment,” says Ruck.

Permacouture Institute batch dyeing

Pioneering women have entered the sustainable scene, with many dropping the “eco” terminology altogether, introducing heritage craft with natural textiles and dyeing to further promote this awareness. These designers and entrepreneurs have taken our appreciation of what is eco to a new level, where natural materials are not only being used, but are being designed to biodegrade to leave virtually no footprint at all. But there’s something deeper yet at work – something bordering on the primitive.

Ruck says the growing desire to go past the surface of the eco label is a weighty subject.

“What does this even mean to the average person, who may know nothing about the production of the product? The more prevalent these words become, the more people want to understand them. People are not stupid,” says Ruck. “They want to understand what this movement is about, what do these words mean, why the large price tag on designers using natural and sustainable methods? Maybe it’s not to the point yet where the H&M’s of the world using such terms are ignored, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

She adds that education is key, as well as knowing the person or the story behind the brand.

A New Seasonality

Adie + George

Sasha Duerr, Founder and Co-Director of the Permacouture Institute in San Francisco, author of The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes and co-designer for Adie+George, is one of those pioneering women willing to educate and create in concert. Duerr says creating her line has been an experiment and a labor of love fusing natural textiles with a desire to test out a new seasonality.

Having just completed a full collection of Northern California artisan spun (fair trade), local and seasonal naturally-dyed knits, Adie + George hopes to broaden the topic of biodiversity for color, while also looking at connections to the physical source of materials. Duerr says she hopes her collection will ultimately finish in the compost pile after a very long and well-loved life to create more food, color and fiber for future fashion.

Adie + George co-designer, Permacouture Institute co-founder and author Sasha Duerr

She also asks us to consider something we’re not used to when it comes to fashion: seasonal colors based on what’s in season, as we do with food. Though she says it takes more care, thought, and common sense to understand the benefit of why we should use natural dyes, following what makes the most sense for nature is not always perfect, and it is not always commercial.

“Fashion seasonality in the industry is so far out of sync with actual seasons, that it is difficult to sync your samples to your production process with batch dyeing. So we choose some plant dyes that are always readily available in the urban environment (example: avocado pits). This created the mauves, grays, and pinks in our collection. For the other color [yellow], we derived a system to use two weed dye plants that bookend each other in wet and dry season so that we know if one is not available the other will be,” says Duerr.

Permacouture Institute

Can there be four seasons in fashion when designers are creating this way?

“I think there can absolutely be four local seasons of fashion in sync with what makes the most sense for nature and culture,” she says. “Refining the process is ongoing and creating a healthy and thriving life for ourselves as designers and human beings, also means saying ‘no’ to the insanity of how the industry currently functions on the expectations of  ‘fast fashion’ seasonality. Time after time, appreciating more with less is usually the most satisfying.”

Primitive Permaculture

Another design duo working closely with nature is designer John Patrick of John Patrick Organic, in collaboration with knitwear designer Amanda Henderson, for the A/W 2011 season. To document the story of the collection, Patrick collected video footage and provided visuals of his supply chain onto a Sourcemap to document the garments from fiber collection through manufacturing and production local to the Eastern United States. See the inspiring video here about the people behind his collection.

John Patrick Organic and Amanda Henderson’s A/W ’11 collection

The supply chain began with wool fibers sourced in upstate New York at Hudson Valley Sheep and Wool Company. After the wool was sorted and washed, it traveled to either a mill in Canton, Massachusetts, or directly to Queens, New York to be knit into hand crafted sweaters by Henderson. The fabric used in the collection was created at Draper Knitting in Massachusetts, then cut and sewn in NYC’s historic garment district and finally previewed and exhibited at New York Fashion Week in February 2011.

I asked Henderson if she thinks designers need to have a better connection to where they’re getting their materials. She believes it’s “a fundamental connection that greatly inspires the end result,” and adds that elements of story-telling and honor in fashion has been lost to the past and that perhaps we need to have more of it when considering clothing.

A John Patrick Organic knitting mill for the A/W ’11 knitwear collection

“Native Americans would worship the animals that brought to them necessities for survival. They adorned simple garments beautifully and meticulously in order to honor that animal and what was provided to that individual person and what it meant to them,” says Henderson. “That is the element of fashion I wish to resurrect, which is why this project with Organic meant so much to me. Why I felt that establishing a connection with my materials, and the story of those wools, was so important to both John and me.”

But with a hungry society enamored with fast fashion’s quick catering to trends and bargain basement pricing strategy, can this story really matter to the consumer? Do we as a society have the patience to hear it?

“Now is a perfect time for the consumer to cease spending on numerous new garments with short-lived spans, especially from designers who consider price over both human and clothing quality of life. Rather, to invest in few, very selective pieces, with great meaning to that person, at a higher material quality and technique level. Timeless clothing with hand-made history, and primal human meaning. After all, clothing has been around since the early beginnings of human existence, and can inspire a modern person to consider their roots. That ancestral element, to be passed through the generations,” says Henderson.

Fashioning Self In Relation To Environment

Abigail Doan, fashion writer for EcoSalon, textile artist and founder of Ecco Eco, says that while she is an “eternal optimist” regarding consumer’s connections to clothing, she isn’t so sure that we are closer to being significantly connected to what we wear as a result of a raised fashion consciousness.

Doan says cost and overall availability are things that still influence which items consumers select and incorporate into their wardrobes. Someone living a few hours from a major city is likely to either shop at a local mall, a local main street retailer, or hunt for bargains online when trying to locate new fashion acquisitions.

“This is why I feel that ‘conscious fashion’ also needs to incorporate ideas about fashioning self in relation to the environment as a complete approach to how clothes shopping relates to one’s ethical and environmental views,” says Doan. “Being connected to nature via our clothes must first come from an awareness that is generated by the individual in response to how to create or style an identity that reflects one’s awareness about conservation, materials, and craft.”

Doan, who grew up in a household where hand spinning and sheep shearing were regular activities, goes on to say, “From this platform one can build a wardrobe that reflects a connectedness that is meaningful and perhaps even sustainable.”

Abigail Doan photos

Designers will always have to make money and consumers will always want something new, but the psychology of fashion is changing.

Duerr-Fossel says it will all come down to our individual lifestyles – that this consciousness extends beyond fashion to many areas including food, transportation and even the way we love one another.

“It is an overall choice to do things that help the environment, in many aspects of your life, and when you start with one, it’s easier to keep going. Which we can see with this idea of homesteading very clearly. I think all these changes and movements feed off one another in a nice way that keeps our society changing to something more positive,” Duerr says.

Our hearts are set on it.

Image: sydigill, b3d, Dan Zen

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