Source4Style: The New Sustainable Fabric Marketplace

by Kimberly Burgas

Summer Rayne Oakes at a recent event for Source4Style.

Source4Style is the new venture of eco-friendly model and sustainability strategist Summer Rayne Oakes. An online marketplace for sustainable fabric to be launched in September, it will surely make significant waves in the sea of fabric sourcing. Filling the dearth of online eco-friendly sourcing options available to fashion designers, Source4Style allows both the seasoned eco-designer and those merely looking to dabble the ability to make socially and environmentally conscious decisions without the blink of an eye.

Oakes took the time to explain us how Source4Style works:

Once launched (anticipated for this September), designers or buyers will need to register to use the site, free of charge. There will be a small fee for suppliers. As a designer or buyer you are presented with several options when you log on to the site. The browse feature allows you to do just that: browse through the current and expanding collection of over 1,000 fabrics from over 25 suppliers; the best option if you have not yet honed exactly what you are looking to purchase. If you are entering the site with a particular fabric in mind, say an organic cotton from Turkey, Source4Style allows you to perform an advanced search specific to your needs. Queries can be narrowed based on fiber, country of origin, price, and weight. The Source4Style team is looking at expanding its query options to include certifications as well.

Each fabric, presented in both drape and flat formats, includes a detailed 300 dpi image, recreating the trade show experience online by allowing the buyer to “feel” the fabric’s texture through macro magnification. The “Swatchbook” feature is incredibly useful, similar in affect to Amazon’s “wish list” or for the library nerds out there, EndNote, creating a record of fabric of interest to the buyer. Within the Swatchbook you can add notes to fabrics for your future reference, purchase yardage, and purchase a swatch. This option provides a seamless browsing experience to the user and as Oakes describes it, encourages “a sense of discovery” that is often lost in the sourcing process.

The company refrains from making overall claims as to how eco-friendly a fabric is - a largely subject and personal decision - and instead champions company transparency. As Oakes notes, “it is less about creating a scorecard,” but noted that the company may take on the evaluative role in the future. Presently, sellers on Source4Style must first complete an in-depth questionnaire on topics of business and production practices, environmental processes, and for those handicraft sellers, cultural preservation.

Stay tuned for more updates on the September launch of Source4Style.

A Textile Arts Community Grows in Brooklyn

Summer Camp at the Textile Arts Center

I first heard about the Textile Arts Center (TAC) from my friend Isa Rodrigues, a textile conservator and fiber enthusiast who works there as the studio manager. She kept telling me I needed to meet the "TAC girls" because not only were they young and cool, they were doing something that nobody else in the city was doing - singlehandedly crafting together a vibrant community of like-minded people interested in textiles and fiber arts. I stopped by one of their free open-house weaving sessions that they have every last Friday of the month, and I was thrilled with the beauty of the space, the incredible looms, the colorful spools of yarn and the welcoming feeling that greeted me. Once I met Visnja Popovic and Owyn Ruck, the co-founders of TAC, I was instantly swept up by their enthusiasm and commitment towards forging a place where textile experts, novices, enthusiasts, and artists can learn and practice this most ancient of arts. Owyn took a moment out of her busy schedule to talk to Fashion Projects about their work and vision for the Textile Arts Center.

Fashion Projects: Recently TAC has gotten a lot of people in the local fashion and textile
 fields buzzing, even though it seems like you popped out of nowhere.
 Can you give us a little information on the backstory of the center 
and tell us about your gorgeous new space in Brooklyn?


Textile Arts Center: Buzzing?! Are they? That’s good to hear…I feel like we have our noses to the ground, pounding work out without taking a second to stop and see how much we’ve changed in the past year.

Textile Arts Center started just over a year ago in a small weaving studio in Park Slope. Visnja and I really wanted to expand to offer other programs, especially for adults, and create the “center” we envisioned. I think the main thrill was in bringing together everyone with a love for fibers, or even slightest interest, and creating the environment that was comfortable, fun and really conducive to making great work. The feeling of art school, without going back to art school.

We went through a long process of finding the right space, kind of with haste at one point… But we found this one after a few mishaps! And that’s what’s important. It felt like home immediately. Our move to Carroll St was in April and since then we’ve just sort of grown. I think a big part of that growth was feeling secure in what we were presenting to the public. The space speaks a lot for itself and we’ve been working hard to reach the right audiences with the confidence that we are doing something people could really love.


What is the overarching goal of TAC? How do you see the center fitting 
into the existing fashion and textile community in Brooklyn and New
 York City?


The whole DIY and fashion scene here is…intense. Growing up here (Brooklyn) I didn’t really ever imagine this happening, it hardly seems like the same place. But Brooklyn, and NYC in general, is amazing that way. There is always something new and exciting. People are constantly pushing boundaries here, and it’s really exciting to be a part of.

Fiber and textile arts have a stodgy stigma and one of our goals is to change that. Textiles are not only beautiful and fun to create, but also really important in our human history. Textiles touch practically everything in our lives and every industry. It’s frustrating, for example, that even those most knowledgeable in current fashion could not know the technical difference between a knit and a woven fabric! It’s important to understand how things are made, where they are coming from. We want to acknowledge that people can do it themselves, too. It’s not for a set of elite talent. Textiles are inherently social and community oriented and that should always be the attitude about textile appreciation in any form.


What are some of the classes you offer, and who is your intended 
audience? What are some of the classes, services and events that you 
hope to offer in the future?

We now offer quite a bit. In addition to the continuous Intro Weaving and Intro Screen Printing courses, the Fall courses include paper and book arts, sewing, knitting, dyeing, embroidery, quilting… We’ve really enjoyed shifting our focus to an adult audience, while finessing and perfecting our kids programs (Summer Camp and Afterschool). We want to reach anyone with interest in learning new skills, sharing their work, and being part of a larger community.

In the future, we want to keep the momentum going by consistently offering new class topics and more advanced courses. However, once that is going, our focus can come back a bit to the Gallery and fiber artists. We really have some great shows planned, as well as a textile artists residency program in the works. In addition, we’ll hopefully be adding a product line and a free program for underserved teens in portfolio development for art and vocational schools. I could go through the ideas constantly spewed out daily, but we’d be here awhile…



Brooklyn Mini-Skills: Natural Dyeing from tom hayes on Vimeo.

You have a very small team of people working at the Center, so it
 seems to really be a labor of love. How do you find that it’s working 
out? Are you looking for interns and volunteers? (something that I’m
 sure many Fashion Projects readers would like to know)

Boy is it a labor of love… Endless hours, but also endless fun. We’ve really created our ideal working life. There is never a shortage of people who want to be involved, and we love meeting new people. Some of our greatest advice and help has been 100% free. We really love this part of the community – textile lovers will do whatever they can for it and to be involved.

It’s hard when you are starting out to want to give up some dough to have hired help. But when we embarked upon the new space, growing rapidly, we quickly saw we needed real, solid help. We were drowning a bit! Both Isa (studio manager) and Kim (marketing assistant) started as free interns, devoting so much time, and are both now on staff. You don’t necessarily need a lot of people to run something like this, but you do need devotion and love for it. We’ve been lucky to have so many people around with this attitude.

We are always looking for interns and volunteers! Particularly coming up in the fall. We are aiming to be open 7 days a week, with late hours for artists, and need studio monitors we can trust in exchange for use of the studio. 



You’re participating in Fashion’s Night Out on September 10th, with an
 emphasis on Slow Fashion. In a way, this seems to be subverting FNO’s
 original purpose of spurring consumption by restoring consumer
 confidence and boosting the economy. (“Shop. For Something Good.” is 
their tagline.) What are you trying to gain and what message are you
 intending to spread by participating in this event?


I really thought hard about this when planning the event. The event started out as a small thing, since our Opening Party is the week after. But the feedback we were receiving from people was really positive so it kind of turned into something else entirely.

This positive feedback seemed to tell us there was a real place for this type of appreciation in fashion, that there are a lot of people that want to participate in FNO but not necessarily in the sense of pure consumerism.

I think FNO is great in many ways. The industry should not die out, designers need to be supported, and the economy does need a boost. There is no doubt about that. However, we didn’t feel right promoting blind consumerism. We are doing an event about the direction we think fashion should be taking, and IS taking, as we speak. Eco-fashion is the new thing…”green is the new black”, right?

As with all of our programs, the main objective is to educate. We wanted to support local Brooklyn/NYC designers that are making things by hand, with fabrics made in sustainable ways, with versatile, classic design sense. At the same time we wanted to make sure that people were walking away from the event with the understanding that “Sustainable Fashion” is not only about buying from designers who use organic fabrics. Yes, that is important, but the responsibility is on the consumer as well as the designer. “Slow Fashion” is buying what you need, what you love, buying locally, reusing and repurposing materials, learning about and knowing how to do-it-yourself…It’s imperative to understand the industry you are buying from and having the knowledge to make the right decisions of what and who you want to support with your well-earned cash.


As part of your commitment to Slow Fashion, you are also participating 
in the 6 Things challenge that was recently profiled in the NYT. Your 
blog about the challenge is
 fascinating as it reveals a lot of the anxiety, frustration, but
 ultimately liberation that you all are going through. Do you think 
that once you have finished the challenge your approach to your
 wardrobe will be radically altered?


I think so…I hope so! It’s hard to tell as in week one it still feels fine and relatively normal. Week 3 or 4 might be a different story.

I came across the 6 Items or Less project on Ecouterre.com and thought what Heidi and Stella had started was great, I was happy to see the coverage they’ve been receiving. It’s yet another good point to fashion lovers: to pay attention to what we buy and wear, and why we do. Fashion is an important part of self-expression, and has a psychological effect on most, but we need to be more aware of it. Why do we feel bad about ourselves if you don’t have the perfect outfit? Why should getting dressed in the morning be hard? Why do we feel we have “nothing to wear” with a closet of 100+ items. It’s just a great way to challenge yourself and dig a little deeper into your own psyche.

There have been a lot of complaints so far! But I think that doing it as a staff, a group, we are able to support each other and stay on track. I must admit, I felt like I was pulling teeth a bit, but I’m glad everyone agreed to do it. I love waking up and not thinking about it. I think we’ll all learn to be a bit more creative with what we already own, and appreciate the quality of what we buy.


Where do you envision TAC to be in 5 years? 10 years?

Hopefully it will still exist! It’s a little hard to imagine, but I can only hope that our classes and programs are always full, we have the grant funding to run the free programs we would like, we have a product line of beautiful woven and printed goods, and we never have to advertise ever again!

No, but really, we have a lot of ideas. We have huge goals, and we have the energy while we are young to take ideas and (attempt to) turn them into reality.

The ultimate goal is to be an accredited institution where students come to receive credit (so many fashion and textile programs in NYC don’t even have a weaving course!), where we can offer multiple free programs so everyone can join the community, and be a staple in the art world representing textile and fiber artists. ----------------- Textile Arts Center 505 Carroll Street Brooklyn, NY 11215 Phone: 718.369.0222 info@textileartscenter.com

Hours: Mon - Sat : 10am - 6pm Sunday: Closed

Sarah Scaturro

Natalie Chanin to Give Talk Tonight

Natalie Chanin, founder and designer of Alabama Chanin, will give a talk tonight at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Chanin's company is an integral part of the burgeoning slow fashion movement. I had the opportunity to help out with the recent teen Design Directions stitching workshop here at the museum that she taught - rather than being at "work", I found myself lulled into a peaceful state as I stiched my own fabric while listening to her kind, insightful words. I can say with certainty that this talk is not to be missed!

Details: Alabama Chanin: American Fashion Wednesday, May 19, 2010 | 6:30 – 8:00pm Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street Students are FREE, others: $10 Register HERE Galleries will be open before hand for a private viewing of the new Triennial exhibition.

Sarah Scaturro

Eco Chic: Towards Sustainable Swedish Fashion

Julian Red. Photo: Mikael Schultz @ Swedish Institute

by Francesca Granata

The Eco-Chic: Towards Sustainable Swedish Fashion Exhibition at the Scandinavia House opened with an interesting panel discussion including Marcus Bergman (managing director of Ecocotton, a pioneer in organic cotton production), Sass Brown (a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology whose research focuses on women’s cooperatives in Latin America) and Karin Stenmar (a founder of the Swedish eco-fashion company Dem Collective). It was moderated by Hazel Clark, Dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons, who has a longstanding interest in slow fashion and the secondhand clothing trade.

Organized as a roundtable discussion, it covered the difficulty in sourcing sustainable material, partially attributed to the lack of innovation in the textiles industry, the need for living wages and the development of women’s cooperatives. Bodkin tied her interest in eco-fashion to her interest in Swedish Modernism and a drive towards functionality in clothing. However, it was interesting to hear how, according to Bergman, the ethos of Swedish design “of functionality and honesty in design” did not sufficiently enter the realm of fashion, due to the fact that fashion/textiles studies developed separately from other branches of design, at least in Sweden. The need for a new fashion design education was thus addressed to allow for the development of more aware designers. Also mentioned was the need for mass-market companies to join the conversation. According to Brown, this is actually occurring: As an example she mentioned Wal-Mart’s commitment to transitional cotton—a company which seemed odd to bring up due to their long-standing history of labour exploitation.

Clark asked about the creation of memories and narratives through clothes, something that Stenmar’s company, Dem Collective, addressed by having buyers record the life of their clothes in a project called One in a Thousand Jeans. This reminded me of an evocative and inspiring project I had been meaning to write about by a Dutch designer Ruby Hoette—Worn Relics—which involves the recording of the life story of one’s favourite piece of clothes.

The exhibition, shows the diversity of design comprising Swedish eco fashion, and proves a real commitment on the part of Sweden and the Swedish design community to the search for sustainable solutions for the fashion industry. It remains open through August 21.

Entangled Global Patterns of Cultural Identity

by Patty Chang

Yinka Shonibare, Three Graces.

Textile patterns and dress provide a rich visual vocabulary of encoded information and aesthetic expression. They have the ability to exploit or subvert the commercial allure of the “exotic”, and how it is called upon to reference cultural or national identities or even recast the vernacular. The exhibition Pattern ID, which is currently on view at the Akron Art Museum, queries just how straight forward patterns and dress inform our understanding of cultural identities. The multimedia exhibition entitled, Pattern ID, features the works of Mark Bradford, iona rozeal brown, Nick Cave, Willie Cole, Lalla Essaydi, Samuel Fosso, James Gobel, Brian Jungen, Bharti Kher, Takashi Murakami, Grace Ndiritu, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Mickalene Thomas, Aya Uekawa, and Kehinde Wiley. Many of these contemporary artists have migrated from one culture to another, be it national, ethnic, racial, socioeconomic, political or religious. Rather than trade one identity for another, the artists reveal ways in which identity can be cumulative, employing a patchwork of textile patterns and dress as meaningful vehicles to locate one’s place in society against a backdrop of globalization. Taking a range of approaches from humor to irony and formal beauty, these artists borrow from popular culture, world history, and art history to transform and redefine the cultural meanings of patterns.

For instance, the use of African textiles as props and backdrops in the works of Yinka Shonibare, Samuel Fosso, and Grace Ndiritu play not only on traditional and modern forms of representation, but also on cultural myths, politics, and ideas of post-colonialism, reclamation, and subjugation. The headless mannequins in Shonibare’s Three Graces fashioned in elaborate Victorian garb made out of atypical ‘African’ fabrics and arranged as a tableau satirizes the notions of authenticity and identity. The installation relies as much on the Dutch wax-print cloth ‘ethnicizing’ the space as on the references to 18th and 19th century masterpieces of European art. However, it is the textile that is a testament to cross-cultural interactions brought about by mercantile trade, having undergone a series of replication, transformations, redefinitions, and repackaging for different markets and tastes. Although linked by ideas of post-colonialism and identity, his works are not necessarily contained by them.

Grace Ndiritu, Still Life

Similarly, Samuel Fosso’s photograph Le Chef: celui qui a vendu l’Afrique aux colons (The Chief: The One Who Sold Africa to the Colonizers) is part of a series of self-portraits created in 1997 for the Parisian department store Tati, that depict the photographer in little else other than leopard skins, holding sunflowers, and draped in gold jewelry seated against a backdrop and foreground of Dutch wax-print fabrics. The contrasting patterns form a subversive portrait of corrupt African leadership and the regalia of indigenous kingship. The camp imagery deliberately projects an ‘exotic' Africa as the world sees it. Moreover, Grace Ndiritu’s Still Life depicts four video installations inspired by Matisse and his love for the female nudes and African textiles. Inverting the colonial gaze, she transforms the female nude from a passive decorative object into an active subject. The African textiles wrapped and draped around her models are used to elicit countervailing emotional stereotypes of repression and sexual freedom.

Samuel Fosso, Le Chef: celui qui a vendu l’Afrique aux colons

Elsewhere in the exhibit Aya Uekawa and Kehinde Wiley incorporate highly stylized decorative pattern motifs within their portraits, while also referencing the realism of Dutch and Flemish 16th and 17th century painters, and the styles of European portraitists such as Reynolds, Gainsborough and Titian, respectively. Although Wiley has used models in the past from West Africa, he mainly works with African-American models as a symbol of hybridization and globalization through the African diaspora. In many instances, cultural identity is lifted out of its traditional anchoring in a particular locality and redefined in a hybrid context that is still coherent and intensely beautiful. One of my personal favorites is the variation of Soundsuits by Nick Cave, who created elaborate costumes out of fiber textiles and found objects to be worn by dancers as a vehicle for sound and movement. The suits have an ethereal quality reminiscent of a fusion of Leigh Bowery’s performance pieces and certain body-hiding masks and ceremonial costumes from African, South Pacific, and Caribbean cultures.

Nick Cave, Soundsuits, Installation View, Akron Art Museum.

One of the major divides on globalization today is whether the increased speed, scale and volume of international trade is imposing cultural homogenization or in fact, working to enrich and preserve culture through expanded access to the internet and increased cross-cultural contact. Interestingly, many of the works featured in this exhibition assert a more complex, multivalent understanding of our contemporary condition, namely one that takes into account hybrid forms of cultural expressions that are not entirely global or local, indigenous or imported, or Western or non-Western. As historian Benedict Anderson suggests, a passport may come to signify permission to work someplace more than a connection to any essential collective identity or pledge of national allegiance.

Nick Cave, Soundsuits

*Pattern ID: International Artists Fashion their Global Identities is on view at the Akron Art Museum through May 9, 2010.