Barndiva Gardens, Sunday August 11, 2024
Ah the youth of it all: four gorgeous Ask Me What I’m Wearing models, above, rocking it in great thrifting outfits. We also saw original crocheted creations, lots of classic tees and pretty summer frocks, Stella McCartney, and head to toe prima alpaca from a cradle to cradle company a stone’s throw from where we all gathered on Sunday. When we asked everyone to ‘dress in your happy’ for our third Conversations Worth Having, The Future of Fashion, we had no idea what to expect. How delightful that style and comfort merged into an elegant insouciance - If a chorus of 'I feel pretty" had spontaneously started up in the gardens, no one would have been surprised.
Clothing is performative on so many levels, but for anyone who remembers early childhood dress-up it can be a simple reflection of joy, and that's what most of us felt on Sunday. Clothes are our second skin, after all. The interest in this event would seem to indicate that many of us are curious how to continue to feel at home in that skin, without doing harm to the planet through our clothing choices.
Conversations Worth Having is the brain child of four friends who have deep ties to this community: Jil Hales, Dawnelise Rosen, Susan Preston and Amber McInnis. It is a labor of love for the four of us, and it is with love we would like to thank Near Future Summit’s brilliant Zem Joaquin for choosing and moderating our panel of game changing speakers. We’d also like to thank three artists who generously shared their talents and time: Maya Eshom, who brought her fascinating Textiles on Fire to the garden; Naomi Mcleod, who carved the large rubber stamp for our ‘Animal, Vegetable, Oil’ game, (without which our clothesline would have looked like a slightly psychotic garage sale), and Manok Cohen, who ‘dressed’ our mannequin in antique handkerchiefs (remember those?). And thank you to prima alpaca designer Sandra Jordan for bringing multiple samples from her showroom on Eastside Road to give away. Jennifer & Jeanne Marie - cheers for donating an entire case of your Rue de Réve Rose Apéritif for our cocktail.
And most of all, Thank You, gorgeously turned out community! So many beautiful mothers and daughters! Not all our ‘green room’ images made it into this blog but please contact us if you posed for Chad - we will send you photographs!
Barndiva weddings are the norm in the gardens this time of year; we have built our business around and love hosting celebrations of all kinds. But gatherings like Conversation Worth Having strengthen our mojo in a most crucial way because they build community. Future of Fashion has been quite a journey, so it was especially gratifying to see that all the time and research we spent wrapping our heads around how best to engage with that community played out so beautifully on Sunday. There is a nominal ticket price for CWH, but no one is ever turned away.
Above: Zem Joaquin with Marci Zaroff of EcoFashion Corp; Lewis Perkins of The Apparel Impact Institute; Garrett Gerson of Varient3D, and Liam Berryman of Nelumbo.
Lewis Perkins, above right, is the president and CEO of the Apparel Impact Institute whose mission is to verify, fund and scale new fashion programs that can help decrease carbon emissions.
Marci Zaroff, above left, has been a leader in supporting regenerative farming practices in the production of clothing with a lazer focus on understanding the impacts of chemically grown cotton. Though less than 3% of the world’s agriculture is cotton, over 20% of the world’s harmful carcinogenic chemicals are used by the cotton industry producting them. Her numerous organic, toxic-free fabric and clothing companies produce beautiful, durable, zero waste fashion. Above, she is previewing a Tee Shirt she developed in creative partnership with Billie Ellish for Target. Next up for Marci is seeking funding to turn pineapple waste from Costa Rico into fabric.
Garrett Gerson, center, is founder of LOOP, a flat bed knitting softwear-driven production system that is hyper-local, zero-waste, and customizable, making it a financially viable option for new designer start-ups. Among his many projects with LOOP are 100% post waste trainers which I can attest - as I was wearing a pair - are beyond comfortable. Next up for Garrett is exploring how to use LOOP fabrics on furniture, with the hope of bringing zero waste furniture production currently off-shored back to the US.
Liam Berryman, above right, is Founder of Nelumbo, a locally based start up that relies on a platform technology that applies morphology, shape, and structure to surfaces. Nelumbo’s use of materials science - Metamaterials - uses only ‘clean ingredients’ to design ‘coatings’ for a variety of different materials - metals, textiles, fabrics. This micro nano texture surface acts as water or oil repellency, has anti microbial properties, and contains NO PFAS or ‘forever chemicals, which shed into the environment and onto anyone wearing clothing that has been sprayed with them.
The range of ideas and projects our panel shared were by turns mystifying, exciting, technologically complex. In thanking Marci, Lewis, Garrett and Liam on linkedin and IG for making the journey to Healdsburg, Zem wrote: “While there is still clearly never-ending work to be done in materials, textiles, and the manufacturing industries, the four bad asses from last night’s illuminating discussion give us hope.”
Continue the conversation by following them: @nearfuturesummit; @ecofashion.corp; @varient3D; @nelumbo.us; @apparelimpactinstitute. We also highly recommend @ellenmacarthurfoundation.
CWH is about engaging with information in ways that make them memorable and hopefully habit changing. We presented two interactive installations for Future of Fashion that focused on touch and smell for their impact. The Animal, Vegetable, Oil game was about testing one’s fabric knowledge through touch. We know from having emptied out the furtherest reaches of our closets for this ‘game’ that all our wardrobes hit the oil bleeper more often than we had thought possible. Which means if we can’t pass those items on someday they are destined to end up in landfill or incinerated, contributing to all our Co2 nightmares. This game was to address how obtuse labels can be, as well as misleading. Even if accurate, the fabric content label will say nothing about the labor used to make an item of clothing or the use of resources - think water - needed in its fabrication. And don’t get us started on synthetic color, or PFAS’s sprayed on to finish any item that needs to combat weather or water.
Our other interactive experience by local artist Maya Eshom was called “textiles on fire.” What a gift this woman is to this community! Maya is fabric obsessed - but the object of her interest is not making or wearing clothing but setting it on fire, one small piece of it at a time. In learning how different materials smell when they are incinerated, we were curious if it might affect the way we think about what we put on our bodies so close to our skin. We know….we don’t shop with our noses any more than we make clothing decisions based solely on touch but both installations brought physical sensation and memory into play. What do you base your clothing purchase decisions upon?
Above, left: On the bar with Buck a mannequin ‘Dressed’ by local artist Manok Cohen in handkerchiefs from the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s found shortly after the death of a beloved aunt years ago, neatly folded into a small satin covered box ready to be lifted out one by one and carried with her into the world. Handkerchiefs have a long cultural history of use by men and women. Knights tied their lady’s handkerchief on their helmets before jousting or going into battle, ladies used them to assess romantic intent, for hundreds of years they served humankind mopping up sweat, staunching blood, absorbing tears. Whether elegantly embroidered or simply made they were a useful, reusable part of everyday life. Within one decade they were gone.
The mannequin and the feather and fedora hat display on the bar made the same nostalgic point: styles change, as they should, but our currant race to the bottom in producing clothing and fashion accessories cheaply, with no thought to how their production may affect the health of the planet, doesn’t reflect craft, durability, or personal style the way it once did.
Above, right : the Susan Preston painting ‘Woman as Verb,’ graced the wild grasses behind the panel.
Dawnelise Rosen, Jil Hales, Amber Mcinnis, and Susan Preston thanking the panel, contributing artists, and last but never least, the community who came our for CWH3.
All Images in this Eat the View, Chad Surmick
