Interview with Rebecca Burgess about her Vision for a Thriving Local Textile Economy

By Mae Colburn

Rebecca Burgess: What a Fibershed is, is taking responsibility for the biological context of your clothes. I’m interested in the revitalization of my community’s economy and green jobs, but I’m also interested in reconnecting to the plant and animal communities that are responsible for our clothes.  It’s quite a beautiful narrative, if we could support it.

It’s a beautiful narrative, and an imperative, according to Rebecca Burgess.  Burgess’ blog chronicles Fibershed-related events, projects, and the Fibershed Challenge: her quest to live for one year in clothes made from fibers sourced within a geographical region no larger than 150 miles from her front door. Her book, Harvesting Color, explains the dye potential of 36 plants, including pokeweed, elderberries, indigo, and coyote brush. Her restoration education curriculum gives children the opportunity to “investigate macro-environmental issues of our day” and “create solutions within their own landscape.”  Finally, the Fibershed Marketplace website, to be launched later this month, will provide resources for those interested in starting their own Fibershed Project.

Somehow, Burgess also finds time to work on her 45-acre organic farm in Northern California, where she grows and harvests over 4,500 natural dye plants.  She often does phone interviews from the farm: “I put my headset in, do my work, and answer calls.”  Burgess works hard, fueled both by sheer enthusiasm and by a distinct sense of urgency.  Her vision for a “thriving local textile economy” answers to a growing concern about the environmental, social, and economic impacts of the clothing industry.  Likewise, the Fibershed model serves as both a functional and symbolic antidote to the prevailing system.  Burgess’ commitment to local fiber reminds us of the physical labor involved in creating a garment from – as she puts it – “fiber to skin,” and forces us to reconsider the relationship between our bodies and our clothes.

RB: These little realities about living and working with plants and animals – it creates a difference in your body.  I know this because I observed the changes in myself.  You really learn how to work.  It’s like systems theory; you can get a system to start producing good results if you get the pendulum swinging in the right direction.  My body is different now; I’m sunburnt most of the time (even though I wear a lot of sunblock), but I’m strong, and I can endure long hours, and I have a much greater sense of confidence in what I can do physically because I see the product of my labor.

Tomorrow I’m driving up to the Capay Valley, where I have 2,000 indigo plants that I’m going to harvest.  I’m going to be harvesting from nine to nine at night, and I’ll have six or seven days like that in the summer.  Then once I harvest the indigo, I have to dry it all, stomp it, separate the stems, bag it, bring it back to the facility that I’m renting.  This summer has been a lot of maintenance; I have to do a lot of gopher trapping at the farm.  I’ve been dealing with irrigation problems, pressure valves, dripping stuff that’s not dripping the right way.  I’m getting tired, but I’m building capacity.

MC: Do you see this as a creative outlet as well as a manual, physical experience?

RB: Creativity is definitely expressed through the body, and I get to use my whole body while I’m farming.  I’m lifting.  I’m carrying.  I’m dragging.  I’m walking around.  I’m bending up and down.  All of that is a form of self-expression because you’re making all these small decisions for yourself.  You’re applying your own ideas and concepts second-to-second.  It sounds like mundane stuff, but oddly enough for the modern person, this is new terrain – at least for me – to have a total flow out on a land base, being out on 45 acres of organic farm, working.

MC: Do you see yourself as part of a movement of people interested in local textiles?

RB: I see myself as part of a continuum, a historical continuum, around textiles in this area.  In my region, a lot of retirees started raising sheep and alpaca, but not a lot of people were raising fiber for money.  When ‘fibershed’ became a useful word for people, and the community at large, some of those who’d been doing it a long time started to become recognized in a new way, and to feel the power behind what they were doing.

MC: On your website, you state that your mission is to “go beyond the one-year wardrobe and create a thriving local textile economy.”  What do you see this thriving local economy looking like?

RB: A thriving local textile economy would include current and existent land-owners working with young people, putting second housing on their land – for example, green modular trailers with solar panels.  If farmworker housing were a top priority, we could start training people who don’t yet have the skills, but have the energy [to begin farming].  The really important thing is continuity, and the only way to cultivate continuity is to put young people in proximity to people who have the skills.

But on a macro level, from a very specific supply chain perspective, we need to be able to take our wool, alpaca, mohair, then cotton, and eventually bast fibers (linen, hemp), and mill them at small-scale milling facilities that can be run off of solar technology.  There hasn’t been farm-based milling equipment designed for fibers except for wool, and there’s very little farm-based milling equipment for wool even, but for cotton it’s almost nonexistent, and for bast fibers – I have to put a call out there to anyone who understands how to engineer bast-fiber processing equipment and can scale it down to a farm size.

Pre-industrial revolution, we were relying on massive manpower, indentured servants, slaves.  Now we’re in a new era.  If we go back to a human-powered economy, this can’t be about indentured servants and slaves.  It has to be about cooperatively owned businesses, about people working for the common good – that’s how we’re going to inspire people to get involved in this.  We need equipment that honors our humanity; we’re not going to be slaves to technology, but we’re also not going to be slaves to each other.  We need this new human-scale technology combined with continuity of the generations.  We already have world-class fibers.  We have no lack of fiber, but there’s no processing equipment in my region, so all of those pieces – how to get the wool off the sheep, how to wash it, how to card it, how to blend it, spin it – all of this needs serious improvement.  To me, it’s about enhancing human infrastructure, technological infrastructure, and communication.  We’re talking about a revitalization of the whole economy when we talk about the revitalization of a Fibershed.

MC: Do you have any recommendations for people interested in learning more or starting a similar project?

RB: The website that we’re going to launch in the next week and a half will have a reading list and the protocol that we followed.  We started a one-year challenge, so we had a prototype wardrobe.  I started a Kickstarter campaign.  How did I organize farmers and artisans?  I used Google Docs.  I used Doodle Calendar.  I did community-building projects where instead of charging for workshops, I gave free classes for artisans and farmers, to bring them together.  You need to be able to build a network.  You also have to be in good health, because it takes a sound mind and body to create these networks and keep them alive.  It’s kind of like running a marathon in the beginning.

Mae Colburn is an independent textile researcher and writer and professional seamstress based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Rebecca Burgess is an ecological restoration educator, curricula developer, author, and textile artist and a fifth-generation resident of the watershed where she works in Northern California.

Nick Cave: Double Exhibition

Nick Cave, "Speak Louder," 2011 buttons, wire, bugle beads, upholstery, and mannequin Installed: (93 1/2 X 199 X 123 inches), currently at Jack Shainman Gallery.

As fashion week has come upon us, the most interesting event I have attended so far has been the opening of Nick Cave's double exhibition of his Soundsuits at Jack Shainman (the gallery where the artist is represented ) and at Mary Boone's downtown gallery.

The Chicago-based artist-—who is chair of fashion design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—has explored hybrid identities and liminal spaces throughout his career, which spans the gamut from experimental designer to artist, as well as in his work, which plays with and subverts fixed identities. I strongly recommend visiting both galleries (a few blocks from each other), to see Cave's Soundsuits in addition to videos of his performances, available both on Mary Boone's site and in Jack Shainman's physical space.

Installation view of Ever-After, Jack Shainman Gallery, NY

Francesca Granata

YIELD: Making Fashion Without Making Waste

Quick Update: The dress in the poster is by the incredibly talented designer Caroline Priebe of Uluru

Here at Fashion Projects, we had been waiting for this exhibition for quite some time, or precisely since we met Timo Rissanen, the innovative professor of fashion and sustainability at Parsons the New School of Design, who pioneered the zero-waste fashion "movement." And the fact that the exhibition is opening at the Textiles Arts Center—one of our favourite new spaces in New York—could only add to our excitiment. More on the exhibition and Prof. Rissanen is forthcoming, but this is a sign-post to let you know of an upcoming related workshops, for which sign-up is needed!

For more information on the exhibition, which is opening to the public September 10, please visit the Textiles Arts Center, as well as the exhibition's website

Survivors: Textiles in the Museum of International Folk Art Collection—An Interview with Bobbie Sumberg

by Mae Colburn A typewriter, two Kuba Masks from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a world map in the Museum of International Folk Art textile collection room

“It’s my version of a protective amulet,” said textile curator Bobbie Sumberg of a poster taped to the back of the door in the Museum of International Folk Art’s textile collection room. The poster features color images of thirty-five bat species known to occur in the western United States, among them the pallid bat, a downy creature with a pink snout, striated ears, and delicate wings. “Bats eat insects,” she continued, “and insects eat textiles. It’s apotropaic.”

When I initially approached Bobbie about an interview, I proposed a conversation about the nexus between curation, fashion, and sustainability. Bats weren’t originally part of the agenda, but when we entered the collection, our discussion turned to textile storage, then to insects, and then logically to bats. Bobbie heads a textile collection of over 20,000 objects, so the fact that pest control is a priority comes as no surprise. The collection is housed in an expansive room below the museum. On one side are flat textiles, rolled so as to avoid wrinkles. On the other are shoes, garments, and headgear organized in closets and plastic containers. Jewelry and various other pieces are stored in drawers in the center of the room. A world map hangs on the far wall directly opposite Bobbie’s bat poster.

On the day that I visited the collection, Bobbie was working with two volunteers to label and catalog new acquisitions: a set of colorful Mexican Saltillo blankets and a Lybian robe donated to the museum by a former Peace Corps volunteer. “Is it kiddywampus?” asked one of the volunteers as she began rolling a Saltillo blanket. Bobbie turned to me and explained that handwoven textiles, which constitute the vast majority of collection, are rarely straight or flat. The collection is composed of pieces that were worn and used, produced with the dual purpose of form and function. Most of the objects in the collection were at one point exposed to some combination of heat, moisture, aridity, insects, animals, extreme wear, and the relentless human impulse to recut and repurpose. In this sense, the collection is composed of ‘survivors,’ textiles that individuals considered significant enough to keep, textiles from closets around the world.

Volunteers sew tags onto newly acquired Mexican Saltillo Blankets

Bobbie Sumberg: When you ask somebody what [textiles] they have of their family, it’s often that people say “I’ve been carrying around my grandmother’s quilts for 30 years.” I ask, “Why do you carry those things around with you?” Because there’s a connection, a really strong connection with family, with tactile, with the idea of somebody creating something that literally keeps you warm, and figuratively keeps you warm. Not to make anything of this, but when I was a graduate student I did a proto-study with my family, which is a large family so I had a nice little focus group, and one of the questions was “What do you have that you keep and you don’t wear or don’t use?” And there are all kinds of reasons why people keep stuff, which I assumed was the case because when I looked at my own closet, it was the same thing. I had things that people made for me that I never wear. How could you get rid of something like that?

Mae Colburn: What you brought up about the closet, about keeping, is really interesting in the context of the museum because…

BS: Because we have 57 closets.

MC: There we were sitting amid one of the largest folk art collections in the United States discussing our closets, our personal collections. I asked Bobbie to provide some background on the museum collection, specifically on the distinction between ‘ethnic’ and ‘local’ dress versus ‘cosmopolitan’ fashion items, a distinction that Bobbie discussed in her most recent publication Textiles: Collection of the Museum of International Folk Art.

BS: The distinction comes from some work that I did as a graduate student with my major professor Joanne Eicher at the University of Minnesota. She was editing a volume called Dress and Ethnic Identity published by Berg publishers. There was a discussion in the field of clothing and textiles about terminology, and the use of ‘costume’ and the use of ‘western’ versus ‘nonwestern dress,’ and so it was her intention to create some terminology and some vocabulary that is both more accurate of the situation in the world and less pejorative.

To me the difference is that ‘ethnic’ or ‘local’ is really about what people wear that has developed in their specific context – environmental, geographical, cultural context – and usually has something to do with how they conceive of themselves both as an individual and as a member of a social cultural gender group. Cosmopolitan [dress] was produced much more by the fashion system. The other way that I characterize the collection is as things that people make for their own use.

A card file drawer labeled “pest control” in the textile collection room.

MC: I’d like to ask you about the collection as a whole – how it was formed – and about the exhibition that was mounted in 2003, Handmade Planet: Florence Dibell Bartlett’s Vision for the Museum of International Folk Art. I’m curious whether you could describe this vision.

BS: She was a fairly complex person from what I know about her and her life and her intentions. What she saw when she was traveling (she did a lot of traveling, she came from a very wealthy family) in the 1920s and 30s was that the artistry that people had to create what they used and needed in their lives was fast disappearing. So she collected what she thought of as disappearing arts in order to preserve them, and things that she perceived as being integral to the culture of wherever she was. Her idea in establishing the museum was that seeing and experiencing the art of the world would bring people together. How I kind of paraphrase it, and phrases that I’ve used a lot in conceptualizing things and talking to people is, ‘the particular in the universal.’ We all wear clothes. We all use an immense number of textiles in our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, and the urge to embellish is pretty universal, and yet it happens in a very particular context.

MC: I’m noticing an ongoing theme here: the Museum of International Folk Art, Handmade Planet, and then there’s Material World, the current exhibit. All of these have a global scope. To you, what are the distinct benefits of dealing with textiles and dress on this global context?

BS: I would go back to the idea of the particular in the universal because I think that people look at clothing and textiles, ‘dress’ as we call it, in really different ways. One of my goals is to help bring the idea of cloth to peoples’ consciousness. As I always say, we get dressed every day, but we don’t really think that much about the significance of what our choices are when it comes to the textiles that surround us. I think a lot of people don’t always see what surrounds them. It’s one of my goals to bring [textiles] up to a different level of consciousness.

MC: Just to tie up, do you have any closing thoughts about the topic that I approached you about initially – sustainability, curation, and fashion? How can a collection such as this be understood within the context of fashion and sustainability?

BS: Sometimes I think ‘why’? What are we doing? It’s so frivolous. It reaches so few people. And yet as a repository for techniques, for instance, that in two generations get lost – they can be recreated and relearned from the original pieces. That has been done in the past here at this museum particularly with northern New Mexico weavers, dyers, and embroiderers. The collection has been used to aid in the revival of some of the historic designs. And so there’s a lot of value in a collection like this just on that level: keeping things and keeping them available.

Mae Colburn is an independent textile researcher and writer and professional seamstress based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Bobbie Sumberg is curator of textiles and costume at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Previous exhibitions include Needles and Pins: Textiles and Tools and Power Dressing: Men's Fashion and Prestige in Africa. Her most recent exhibition, on view at the museum through August 2011, is titled Material World: Textiles and Dress from the Collection.

Recent Fashion Exhibitions in Paris

"Madame Grès, la couture à l'oeuvre,” at the Musée Bourdelle, photo by Laura McLaws Helms

by Laura McLaws Helms

While fashion is often viewed as a lesser art, used by museums to draw in a broader range of visitors, recent exhibitions in Paris have illustrated the vastly different ways costume can be looked at in regards to its place in society. Of them, the exhibition “Madame Grès, la couture à l'oeuvre,” at the Musée Bourdelle (till July 24th), covers the most traditional view of fashion history - a retrospective on a single couturier. Conversely, “L'Orient des femmes vu par Christian Lacroix” at the Musée du Quai Branly and “Les années 1990-2000” at the Musée de La Mode et du Textile in the Musée des Arts décoratifs are focused on aspects of dress history that are commonly overlooked, and when viewed together allow for a more varied understanding of costume.

The ongoing renovations of the Musée Galliera have left Paris without a museum expressly devoted to fashion, but provided its curators with the opportunity to stage a fashion exhibition amongst the sculpture of the Musée Bourdelle, the first time a multi-disciplinary show has been done there. The high quality work of Grès’ dresses, many of which can be closely analyzed, is a remnant from a past world - a fact which is further emphasized when compared with "Les années 1990-2000" organized by Musée de La Mode et du Textile (which closed May 8th). The second half of their ‘Histoire idéale de la mode contemporaine,’ the designers and looks chosen were the very apotheosis of Grès’ inimitable classicism.

Azzedine Alaia exhibited in “Les années 1990-2000” at the Musée de La Mode et du Textile in the Musée des Arts décoratifs, photo by Laura McLaws Helms

Opening with Margiela and the Belgians, the two floors of the exhibition were a rabbit warren of glass boxes filled with mostly prêt-a-porter outfits that bare little in common with the stately chic of Grès. The work of the thirty designers on view revealed the unquestionable influence of street style on contemporary fashion, with disparate ideas from grunge, punk and goth all making appearances. The diverseness of the looks on view (Lacroix’s gaudy couture vs. Miyake’s architectural pleated forms) made for an enjoyable exhibition, though one that at times seems too have been organized too soon — Lanvin RTW cocktail dresses two years out of the stores appear more ridiculous than prescient in the context of a museum. It is always difficult to truly analyze trends as they occur from a historical point of view, and the constructed tableaux often drew directly from the runway videos, emphasizing the seemingly unbreakable bonds between the garments and their mediated visions.

Prada exhibited in “Les années 1990-2000” at the Musée de La Mode et du Textile in the Musée des Arts décoratifs, photo by Laura McLaws Helms

In sharp contrast to the Parisian high fashion focus on those exhibitions (all of the designers at MAD primarily show there), “Women of the Orient” (February 8- May 15) was a woven and embroidered journey through the Middle East. Beginning with a map, this factual analysis of the traditional garments of Syria, Jordan, Palestine and the Sinai desert was concerned with form and the craftsmanship. Though curated by Hana Al Banna-Chidiac, an eminent scholar of Middle Eastern textiles, this exhibition was the idea of Christian Lacroix, who following the closure of his couture house has found himself able to indulge his other passions, including a fascination with ‘Oriental’ dress dating to childhood. The heavily embroidered garments, layered and topped with jangling beads and coins impacted his design work, and Lacroix saw these women as “both witnesses and actresses in a contemporary history, which they lived through with their rebellious elegance, their cuts, their shapes, their traditions, their motives, their embroidery.” Viewed as a celebration of disappearing art forms and cultures, this exhibition was peerless in drawing together truly exceptional examples of native cultural dress. At a time when France has banned the wearing of the burqa in public, a display case of intricately embellished versions is of cultural import. The problems with this show rest more on a lack of editing and a failure in the design — apparently faced with choosing between many fine pieces they went with all of them, placing one behind another on sloping platforms meant to represent the jagged topography of the region. Hung flat to draw attention to the lack of tailoring, it was often difficult to see the dimly lit robes in back.

"L'Orient des femmes vu par Christian Lacroix” at the Musée du Quai Branly, photo by Laura McLaws Helms

While the garments in these exhibitions are examples of three different types of manufacture — haute couture, high end ready-to-wear and traditional handcrafts — they can be seen as symbolic of the constantly ebbing flows of fashion in France and the rest of the world. The handwork that is a requirement of haute couture and of traditional ethnic clothes has increasingly become unnecessary, replaced by many of the same manufacturing processes found in prêt-a-porter, yet the continued interest in these types of work, through exhibitions such as these, aids in their continuing relevance and influence.