Social Impact in Fashion

This evening Bahar and I spoke (for the first time as co-founders of GUILDED) to a very inquisitive audience at Impact Sessions #6: Social Impact in Fashion.  Have you heard of these?  They’re amazing, if you haven’t been to one, definitely try to make it a priority.  While I think this type of information sharing and presentation is done quite regularly in the business development and venture capital worlds, it’s rare to see it in design, much less so in sustainable design, and that’s precisely where it’s needed most.  The sharing of information and ideas is the cornerstone of GUILDED, and so important to the growth of our community.  The four presenters tonight are listed below.  You may recognize a name or two already, you may discover someone new, you never know what you’ll discover!

Benita Singh, Co-Founder & COO, Source 4 Style

Source 4 Style is an online marketplace that allows fashion designers to search for, compare, and purchase sustainable materials from a curated network of global suppliers.  Benita Singh brings her experience as a fair trade entrepreneur to her role as COO at Source 4 Style.  Previously she founded Mercado Global, a non-profit organization that currently connects 300+ entrepreneurial women artisans in Guatemala to mainstream markets abroad.

Bahar Shapar and Tara St James, Co-Founders GUILDED

GUILDED is the brainchild of fashion designers Bahar Shahpar and Tara St James.  GUILDED offers education, consulting and a platform for collaborative community. It is where artists access information and industry perfects its craft. GUILDED is committed to social and environmental responsibility in every aspect of our company. We work exclusively with vendors, suppliers and partners whose business practices are in line with our principles.

Anne McClain, Founder, MCMC Fragrances

MCMC Fragrances is a Brooklyn-based perfume company dedicated to creating perfumes with the highest quality natural ingredients in an environmentally responsible way.  To make a perfume with meaning, we start with inspiration.   Anne was recenlty featured in the Best of New York Magazine.  She generously gives back to community projects, proceeds from the Garden fragrance have gone towards supporting the Ananda Harvest project.  Anne McClain founded MCMC Fragrances in 2009 after studying natural perfumery and aromatherapy in Grasse, the “perfume capital” of France.

Anthony Thomas, Co-Founder, KNO Clothing

KNO Clothing is a fashion line founded to end homelessness.  Each time you make a purchase, KNO donates an article of clothing to those in need and funds organizations that help those experiencing homelessness.

Thanks to Eden, our gracious host who offered up her amazing space for this event (and when I say amazing I mean A-M-A-Z-I-N-G, Martha would be jealous!)… can’t wait to watch Eating With Eden on channel 51 next week!

Meet Etwas Bags, a Brooklyn-based company that makes some of the most insanely beautiful leather bags I have ever seen (if only I were shopping this year!).  I came across their bags in a shop a while back, but only recently realized that even more beautiful than their bags, is their manifesto, their raison-d’etre…

Consider not only the things we are making,
but the things we are destroying.

It is annoying to us that when we buy a pleasing object, the company may use our money to buy five very unpleasing objects, things that we may not believe in at all, maybe even things we are against. ETWAS works against ugly and excessive structures and systems of production and distribution; we have washed our hands of industrial parks, transformers, storerooms, offices, generators, and janitorial closets. This lack of driving to work, this lack of plastic carpeting and insipid factory lights, this is our beauty.

ETWAS the company, like a bicycle, requires nothing
but the human hand to function.

We apply modern reductionist functionality to a craft system. Our bags are made using a portable workbox that contains all the supplies and tools needed for the bag. This system is halfway between bespoke and mass production, and has many of the benefits of each.

We have no buildings and no offices.
We use neither electricity nor water nor plastic.

We are light. We are mobile. All of our materials are durable, natural and low impact. From our wooden benches, to our steel tools, to our copper rivets- the patina of age and the scars of use will only add richness, texture, and the comfort of familiarity and use. We design everything to be repairable- because things that get ruined are no good. That said, we also believe objects should fade gracefully. The truly well designed thing will last forever if cared for, but if left in the field will rot away quietly and respectfully. That mix of robustness and sensitivity is pleasing. There is poetry in the act of caring for or fixing a thing that you know will be with you forever, if only you love it enough.

and equally importantly is how they stand behind their product:

We stand behind all we produce with free repairs for life.

Have a look at their blog, it is insightful and inspirational.  And a great video on the brand’s process and product. Nothing but love for you, Etwas!

GUILDED!

I haven’t been giving my blog the attention it deserves lately (sorry Jordo!).  The reason for that is that I’ve been busy setting up a new business called GUILDED, which I’ve just launched with fellow designer and sustainability expert Bahar Shahpar.  If you’ve read my blog before, you already know that I believe transparency and sustainability to be a fundamental component of  good design.  Over the years Bahar and I have encountered time and again the difficulty in navigating the newly defined landscape of sustainability, both with our own endeavours as well as those of friends, colleagues and acquaintances in the industry.  As a reaction to this problem, we have founded GUILDED.  I’ll talk more about it as time goes on and we become more established.  For now, I wanted to share the experience of one of our first series of seminars, hosted in our studio space located in Nolita.

Tonight was part two of our very first Seminar Series: Sourcing & Producing in Ghana, taught by Meghan Sebold (Afia) and Elizabeth Cloyd (Source4Style).  We invited Meghan and Elizabeth to teach this class because of their expertise on the subject.  Both women recently returned from a trip to Ghana to source and produce the first Afia collection (which we launched at the GUILDED space in May).  Navigating the complications of sourcing and producing in developing countries can be extremely intimidating for young (and old) designers.  And while there are very similar stories from one place to the next (“there was no electricity”, “it took 5 hours to get anywhere”, “I was sick for the first 3 days of my trip!”), the intricacies of working with each country vary tremendously and it’s incredibly valuable to have a first-hand account from someone who has worked in the field.

The seminar series covered everything from textile sourcing and development to patternmaking, sewing, working with women’s co-ops, price negotiation, trade commissions, and travel within the country.  It was incredibly comprehensive and packed with information that you just can’t get without knowing someone.

So how much is this information worth?

That’s the question we’ve been investigating with GUILDED.  After years of informal consulting, mentoring, supporting and guiding emerging designers, Bahar and I decided it was time to format the information we’ve meticulously gathered over the years into a more tangible and comprehensive package.  That’s what we’re working on now and I’m beyond excited about it.  And in the meantime we’ll be hosting classes such as this one, and I’ll be attending and broadening my own scope of knowledge at the same time.  Sign up for the GUILDED newsletter on our site for upcoming classes and news from the studio!

The New Fashion Manifesto

Sofia Hedström and Anna Schori (Foreword by Vivienne Westwood)

*and guess who’s in the book.  That’s right, me!

We consume clothes like fast food, stuffing our groaning wardrobes like sartorial gluttons, but with every trendy new garment that ends up hanging unused at the back of the closet, we lose some clothing common sense. In August 2009, fashion personality Sofia Hedström subjected her overweight wardrobe to a detox and stopped clothes shopping for one year. Her mission was to become fashion fit and, together with well-known photographer Anna Schori, she found a thriving frugal fashion movement and discovered the secrets of both young fashionistas and old masters of style from all over the world. Equal parts memoir, manifesto and how-to, this book chronicles Sofia Hedström’s non-shopping journey through New York, Paris and Milan’s Fashion Weeks and in everyday life. It also articulates 7 principles or essential rules to become fashion fit. Finally, the book provides 50 simple and playful “recipes” for reinventing garments. Based on Sofia’s and Anna’s travel from Reykjavik to Brooklyn, the book shows readers how to bury t-shirts in the ground, transform a button down shirt into a pair of pants, and cover stains with embroidery. We can all be “style smart.” Promising to transform readers’ relationship to fashion forever, the book proves that while clothes are an indispensable tool for personal expression and social change, shopping isn’t the solution. An exclusive foreword by world famous designer Vivienne Westwood sets the tone. In Sweden, the nation’s oldest publisher, Norstedts, published the book in April 2011 and in Norway The New Fashion Manifest will be published by Aschehoug in October 2011.

Join the style smart movement. Don’t allow your wardrobe to gain the staggering average of 60 pounds per year. Make use of the clothes you already have and accept the biggest fashion challenge of the year; sign up for The Style Smart Shopping Detox – 30 days without shopping, on Facebook.

The exhibition at FIKA’s flagship store and café on 66 Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York, includes portraits from The New Fashion Manifesto by Anna Schori. It will be on display throughout the summer.

For more info please contact:

sofia.hedstrom@svd.se or info@annaschori.com

Pleats Thank You!

We’re starting to work on Spring 12 pretty intensely in the back room at Guilded.  No rest for the Summer, although I have decided to take regular museum and concert breaks to keep motivation levels high.  After a particularly inspiring visit to the McQueen exhibit (which I’ve seen twice so far) I decided I wanted to play with fabrics more this season and develop some custom textiles for the collection.  This is a good season for it too, since I happen to have THREE interns throughout the course of the Summer who are studying textile design! The first of these textiles is being developed by Denize Sofia Maaloe, a textile student from Denmark who I met when I spoke at an FIT Sustainability Club meeting.  And as first in a series of guest posts, I’ll let her describe the process in her own words:

Fusing Pleats

For her SS12 collection Tara wants a plaid fabric created by playing with transparent fabrics and fusing (as oposed to the traditional printed or woven kind). To get this effect we pleated a semi-transparent fabric experimenting with widths and distances. Afterwards strips of white fusing was ironed on the back, holding the pleats in place and creating a plaid effect on the fabric. First part was with torn uneven edges giving them a more organic look. Second part was all tailored, even sized and the third part was a mix of black and white fusing in a variety of widths. The black fusing showed up much less than the white (surprisingly). Perhaps the white fusing could be more opaque? Or the pleated fabric more transparent?