Fibershed: Forget Direct-To-Consumer. Try Soil-To-Soil
As fashion reckons with its bad habits, many interested in a more sustainable way to get dressed are reckoning with their own, striving to buy less—and better. In 2010, Rebecca Burgess founded Fibershed, a system of regional and regenerative fiber systems that seeks to build the wardrobe by hand (via regionally grown fibers, natural dyes, and local talent). Here, Burgess speaks with Cameron Russell on how Fibershed has gone from a personal project to something of an industrial revolution.
If you weren’t a farmer you could only afford blue if you were extremely elite because it was so tenuous to get. So I think about how we treat material now, and I think about what would be different if those who do the work to make something, if they got to wear it—and they were some of the only ones who got to. I question why we need everything to be ubiquitous. What does equity mean? Does equity mean we all have access to things even when it undermines the ability of communities of producers to have things? Even if we’re undermining our position on the planet? I think: What if the people who toiled the hardest got to wear that color? And if you want to wear that color, you gotta put the work in!
It’s funny how the fashion industry works; elitist and ultimately exclusive, yet at the same time preaching inclusivity and accessibility (depending on who you’re talking to).
The fashion brands that garner my hatred the most are those that tell you to shop sustainably yet source and manufacture all their workers and materials in foreign countries that they exploit in an attempt to avoid paying the people of their own country a fair salary.
Fast fashion; a fucking farce. Not only because it’s full of questionable ethics, but also -- should fashion really be fast and accessible at all? How does one justify plundering the Earth’s resources just so everyone gets to wear the same shitty y2k crop top? Should we really all be allowed to have access to beautiful things other people create, seeing as we destroy nature in the process?
Yes, money is the root of all evil.
And wouldn’t the world be a lot nicer, a lot better, if those who worked in the fashion industry weren’t so preoccupied with fame and wealth and Instagram likes, but instead tried to give back to the Earth the amount they take from it?