The Leftovers

This pile of fabric (which I should add is almost two feet high) represents some of my fabric waste for the months of Mar – May (Jan and Feb not included because I was on vacation). I folded the pieces that were willing to fold and the rest I stuffed in to two large garbage bags.

Ordinarily, all of this would have gone into the trash but sometime late last year I became concerned about the amount of waste leaving my studio and going to the landfill. At the end of last year I got two cardboard boxes and decided to put the fabric ends in there to reuse later. Exactly what I was gonna use them for remained a mystery until earlier this week. But before we get into that let’s talk about sustainability, specifically sustainability as it relates to the fashion industry.

If you read my last blog post, you know that fashion is one of the most polluted industries in the world,second only to oil. Now, if I’m being completely honest, I thought the sustainability/eco friendly movement was some kinda hoboboho trend that would blow over just as quickly as it blew up. The clothes were boring, the colours were bland and the shapes were unflattering; like who buys that stuff anyway?

Well it turns out that I was wrong (not about the bland, boring clothes) and it didn’t take a lot of research for me to realize that this movement was one that was not just serious but absolutely necessary. What I wasn’t sure of was how I would be able to get involved.

Our business model is based solely on the profits we make from our custom orders. We have no investors or business loans and therefore we do not yet import bolts of fabric for our collections. Our local fabric stores are already very limited in their offering and ethically produced fabrics are definitely NOT at the top of that list.

In the studio, we use the patternmaking process exclusively. What we started doing was improving our lay plans. This enabled us to use less fabric; reducing the environmental impact we would usually make by dumping our ends and in turn saving our clients money.

We’re taking that a step further by repurposing the ends we would usually throw away and making new pieces. These pieces (not limited to clothing) would of course be limited edition but made using the same high quality design and craftsmanship that we employ in our regular work. We will give you exclusive access to our process from design to execution, and I believe this will get interesting based solely on the diverse nature of the fabrics we have. This project will run until we utilized all of the ends and will be sold exclusively at our Barbados based showroom as well as in our Etsy store. In a few months when the boxes fill up again we will recommence the project introducing new designs and of course new fabrics.

We will also be taking this time to educate you about sustainability in the fashion industry via a series of blog posts and recommending small changes that you can make to reduce your carbon footprint and the overall environmental impact of the fashion industry.

Let’s get started!


xx

Kat

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *