Slow Food…Slow Fashion

Soil represents the largest carbon sink that we have access to and in many cases directly manage via agriculture. We have been investigating regenerative agriculture for a few years now - but always through the lens of food. We recently came across the book Fibershed by Rebecca Burgess (thanks @Caitin Dorward) that broadened that lens to include fiber farming.

A fibershed (not unlike a watershed) "is focused on the source of the raw material, the transparency with which it is converted into clothing, and the connectivity amongst all parts, from soil to skin and back to soil." Burgess shares her story of embarking on sourcing a one year wardrobe - where she would acquire all of her clothing for all seasons from within a 150 mile radius of her home. A warrior against the toxicity and waste of the current global textile industry, she builds a strong case for the importance of a local material base, one that is ethically balanced with regenerative agricultural practices.

The Slow Food movement has inspired the concept of Slow Fashion - where we buy less and ensure that the material that we put next to our skin is as carefully considered as the food we put in our mouth... where we value longevity and compost our fibres when they can no longer be repaired or revamped into new formats. 

Her detailing of farming fibre includes cotton, hemp, flax, milkweed and nettle to name a few plant-based fibres while also detailing the wool of sheep, llama, alpaca, goats, yaks and rabbits and the traditional practices of processing, dyeing and weaving/felting/knitting garments. The need to build mill infrastructure within our communities and a suggestion that new currencies might be possible that support an economy that reflects real-time biological and human social factors are some of the larger topical boundaries contained by the covers of this book. It closes out with the comment "it is well known what happens when we leave the business of feeding and dressing ourselves to global scale agribusiness. We lose touch with the inputs, the impacts, and the land itself". Powerful words to motivate us to take a good look at the label the next time we buy a t-shirt.

Local fibresheds for more inspiration:

https://sunshinecoastfibreshed.ca/

https://vancouverislandfibreshed.ca/