Oi minha gente! Desculpa por faltar de
escrever! Excuse the delay! It’s been a whirlwind of a year already, and if you’re connected through our Facebook, you know why!
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So to update you, last month, I had the
incredible honor of being accepted as one of the new designers of the Brooklyn
Fashion League, a shared designer studio based in South Brooklyn dedicated to
supporting local manufacturing and community.
One aspect of sustainability that I have
not had an opportunity to speak about was the importance of supporting local
production and local economies, or what Kate Fletcher, in her seminal ethical
fashion text, Sustainable Fashion &
Textiles: Design Journeys, refers to as localism.
Some of you may be familiar with the
locavore culture, the movement of locally grown food that has come in the form
of street farmer’s market’s such as the Union Square Farmer’s market and “Made
Locally” sections in our Whole Foods and other wellness-conscious supermarkets.
For some of you reading outside of this New York context, locavore culture may
be the farmer’s markets that you’ve had in your community for ages. For some of
us here in the bedrock of New York’s more urbanized areas, we have had to make
a conscious effort to set of entities from which we can buy our vegetables from
say, Jane, the local farmer from Upstate New York instead of the super posh,
internationally certified food company from several miles…and continents away.
Well, food that is grown and consumed is
not unlike the fibers, fabrics, and clothing grown, created and consumed. How
often do we seek to replicate these locavore practices within
our…fashion….consumption?
Well, that’s where localism, the Made in
New York movement, and the Brooklyn Fashion League come in.
(Photos Source: Brooklynfashionleague.com)
(Photo source: manufactureny.org)
(Photo Source: jackyblue.com | More info: savethegarmentcenter.org)
Localism, as described in Kate Fletcher’s
book and in the practices of those designers who have taken this aspect of
sustainability under their wing, is the conscious decision that designers make to
bring as many aspects as possible of their production processes of their
clothing manufacturing to their local environment. This may include designers
manufacturing themselves or utilizing seamstresses/sewing contractors within the local garment
district, purchasing cast-off fabrics from locally based fabric stores and
suppliers, or utilizing specialized fabric treatment techniques that were
developed and culturally sustained within the community (like that pleating
company that’s been pleating for AGES).
(Photo source: savethegarmentcenter.org)
The sustainability
benefits of this are many-fold. They include ensuring that that fashion item
you just purchased was not created unethically through sweatshop labor
practices, that that amazing t-shirt was not using enough petroleum gas in its
transport from cotton field to fiber fabric to textile mill to clothing factory
to start a small war, as and through your locally created garment, you are helping
us as humanity get back in touch with our natural way of living that supports
local economies and the sustenance of the local environment.
“…it’s really important for me as a
designer to have my clothing made in a socially responsible way. And having it
made here, we can assure that that is the case. [If] it is made in Brooklyn or
in Manhattan…you can go and visit the factory and you can see the conditions
that the workers are in. And you can see who’s making your clothes. It ‘s a
direct relationship between the person that makes the garment and the person
that wears it at the end,” reflects Nathalie Kraynina, fellow designer of the
Brooklyn Fashion League.
“By supporting local retailers and local
designers, you are also supporting the local manufacturers and the local fabric
suppliers, the local tool fabricators, machine makers and it’s a giant process.
But if every step along the way is made locally and made within the United
States with proper working conditions, we’re making a much larger step than just
that one garment that you’ve purchased,” asserts Kaci Head, founder of the
Brooklyn Fashion League.
(Brooklyn Fashion League designers themselves,
hard at work during New York Fashion Week.
Photo source: BFL's Facebook)
But more than supporting the local economy,
this brings us back to nature. Kate Fletcher, in also quoting biomimicry
maverick Janine Benyus, posits, “If we look to parallels in the
natural world we see that most biological systems operate locally, or as Benyus
puts it, ‘nature doesn’t commute to work’. Nature- with the exception of
migrant species- ‘shops’ locally, using local expertise to produce the resources
it needs and process its waste.” (Fletcher, 140).
But in addition to sustaining local
economies and local environments, the Brooklyn Fashion League is also deeply
invested in sustaining that local community sense. That soul-nourishing type of
fashion that “sustain[s] communities- providing people with meaningful work and
a sense of connection with the place and the people with whom they live”
(Fletcher, 140).
Beyond that feeling of community you
intuitively understand, that community sense also has a place in academia. “Community as a moral phenomenon seems
to involve a sense of identity and unity with one’s group and a feeling of
involvement and wholeness, on the part of the individual. In short, community has been used to refer to a
condition in which human beings find themselves enmeshed in a tight-knit web of
meaningful relationships with their human beings. In contrast to this ‘sense of
community’ are the conditions that supposedly prevail in modern society,”
writes Dr. Dennis E. Poplin in his 1979 text Communities: A Survey of Theories and Methods in Research (Poplin, 5)
Thus it has been an honor to call the
Brooklyn Fashion League ReciclaGEM’s new home. We are amongst a League of
designers dedicated to the sustainability practice of economic and
environmental localism while also working towards creating that community space
that is supportive, fulfilling, and culturally nourishing. Nonetheless, while
fashion in itself can be quite an insular system, we are members of a fashion
organization that seeks to extend that membership to the community…and to you.
As David W. McMillan and David M. Chavis reflect on this
essay, “Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory,” “Membership is a feeling
that one has invested part of oneself to become a member and therefore has a
right to belong.”
What has the Brooklyn Fashion League meant
to me? A league of talented fashion designers who have given me a place to
belong, given the community a fashion partner dedicating to sustaining and
extending this feeling of belonging, and has become an activist vehicle for
supporting sustainable, locally created fashion. Locally based but
internationally inspired, that’s what dreams are made of.
We are in the midst of a fundraising
campaign, because, as ironic as our current world order is the most
unsustainable fashion institutions are, ironically enough the most economically
supported while those institutions which seek to promote sustainability need
the support of the community in our current world order to sustain itself. If
you are able, we would love to have you join our localist fashion movement creatively
as well as economically.
T*
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