Actress Sophia Bush from tv show 'One Tree Hill' accessorizes her red carpet look with the signature Gahaya Links Ethnic Clutch I designed for them while working for the company in Rwanda. All components are hand made by women in Rwanda and sewn by foot powered sewing machines. The company is in the process of getting industrial sewing machines, imagine what they will be able to accomplish in the coming years. Very exciting!
The Concept
Cherry Blossom is a clothing collection designed by Ryeson University Fashion Design graduates Courtney Munden and myself (Sasha Hamilton). This collection is designed to inspire a new approach to the fashion industry. With the hopes of stimulating creativity in design and specifically within the textile industry by looking at new ways of making materials so that they are nourishing to our environment. We created a collection that does not involve being less bad it involves creating products that aren’t bad to begin with. By removing the concept of waste and instead create a product that will be a nutrient to our earth as part of a continuous cycle.
Both Courtney and I are big fans of the book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, after a lecture I attended by Micheal Braungart I couldn't stop thinking that I needed to do something. Courtney and I agreed that the fashion industry needs to be careful in the way it's proceeding with sustainable design. Designers and companies use organic cotton but then the fabric is dyed with harmful chemicals and the majority of the time ethical production methods are overseen. We decided to make a collection that rather than just using renewable or recycled fabrics, its production considers the entire process from the collection of the raw materials to the disposal or reuse of all components of the product. As well as promoting social responsibility, local industries and the use of new, innovative technologies and textiles, we wanted to prove that you can make a really cool, fun, wearable collection 100% the right way. We sketched our outfits and applied to show our collection at Toronto Alternative Fashion Week.
Some examples of the sketches for the Cherry Blossom Collection
drawn by Sasha Hamilton
Being inspired by the C2C philosophy we decided to do as much research as possible. This meant finding the best possible fabrics that currently exist and to learn as much about how C2C is influencing change in industries around the world. Over the Christmas holidays I was in Europe visiting my parents so I decided to hop on a plane to The Netherlands to meet with some people I had contacted in the C2C community and conduct a little research field trip. My first destination was Venlo a little town which has adopted the cradle to cradle concept. I had set up a meeting in Venlo with some members of Qreamteam and Koekoek including CEO Marcel who started the whole movement in Venlo. It was great to find out how interested they were in my project and happy to exchange information. I learn't how Qreamteam and Koekoek were implementing C2C in their projects and the challenges faced producing these 100% cradle to cradle products.
Next I ventured down to Maastricht where I met up with Marjolein a student at Maastricht University whom I found on the C2C community. We went and checked out the exhibition Cradle to Cradle: Hype or Future at the Centre Ceramique where I got to see in person all the products that I had been researching. Marjolein had been giving tours of the C2C exhibit when it first opened and kindly offered to give me a personal guided tour which ended up being very helpful since it was in Dutch. Overall I learn't that implementing 100% C2C philosophy is very challenging it takes a lot of creativity, patience, imagination and can definitely be frustrating but these are the qualities that bring so much excitement and interest to C2C products that are shaping a more promising future.
Marjolein at the Cradle to Cradle: Hype or Future exhibit in Maastricht. The exhibit was designed by Qreamteam.
The Fabrics
Coming back to Canada Courtney and I had a lot of work ahead of us. Sourcing fabrics, notions and dyes for this kind of project takes a lot of research and patience. We decided to produce two types of garments. The first being 100% biodegradable. This means NO MIXING types of material for example organic cotton and polyester thread, the fabric, dye, thread and most importantly the closure (no zippers or plastic buttons) have to be environmentally sound.
The second type of garment is 100% recyclable. This means using polyester, we couldn't use conventional recycled polyester due to the fact that when recycled the toxic chemicals (antimony) that's used as a catalyst in making polyester is released into the air and water. Importantly the polyester can only be recycled a limited number of times before it degrades and becomes useless ending up in a land fill. Victor Innovatex a Canadian textiles company teamed up with Micheal Braungart and William Mcdonough company MBDC and produced a new polyester fabric called Eco-Intelligent Polyester it is free from harmful heavy metals. This type of polyester is designed to be safely broken down into raw materials for their indefinite reuse, creating a product that will never reach a landfill. Using antimony free polyester posed a slight problem. First it is not readily available as a fashion textile it's mainly used for upholstery fabric. We ordered swatches from Victor Innovatex and chose the fabrics that could best be used for our garments. But it was important to the concept of our collection that this fabric could be purchased in fashion textiles to prove that it is possible to make sellable clothing from this material and be produced at a larger scale. I managed to locate a manufacturer with an antimony-free polyester line but having little to no money for our project buying fabric at wholesale quantities would be completely out of the question. I had to find the fabric some other way. I managed to find a large outdoor clothing and equipment supplier that had started integrating antimony-free polyester into their production line. Excited I called up head office in hopes that I could get my hands on some yardage of their polyester. After being bounced around head office for a couple of weeks I was finally able to convince them to let me purchase some of their fabric and have it sent to us in Toronto. Next was the closures, we decided that using polyester zippers would be the best option for a recycable garment. I was successful in locating a zipper company in India and have them send several of their Oeko-Tex certified zippers that use azo-dyes and heavy metal free materials to use in our collection.
The Garments
Photo by Peter Balinski
Photo by Peter Balinski
Photo by Peter Balinski
Photo by Peter Balinski
Photo by Peter Balinski
Photo by Peter Balinski
[FAT] 2009 Runway - Cherry Blossom from Graeme Mislan on Vimeo.
Press
" There was an interesting use of fabrics used throughout the entire collection making it one of the most visually interesting collections of the week." - Experience Toronto
" Most notable legwear awards go to Cherry Blossom, whose eye-catching tattered-and-torns made us want to break out razors and shred up our own tights on the spot." - Mondo Magazine
Sponsors
TerraSkin is a Cradle to Cradle silver certified paper made from stone that is waterproof, tear free and biodegrades in sunlight.
Aurora silks sells natural dyes, fabrics and Fibers
click on picture to see hand detailing
