fashionistas vs fashion guerillas
With Christmas coming up it’s a good time to think about those clothing gifts we’ll be giving to loved ones.
I was the youngest of 3 boys growing up in a family that didn’t have a lot. Consequently, I wore a lot of hand-me-down clothing from my two older brothers. Mom was a home seamstress and made clothes for our extended family. The patches she put on the jeans and shirts I wore usually outlasted the original material. She never threw out any scrap pieces of material because she was also a quilter - she almost always had several quilts she was stitching together with needle and thread and she often had one in the quilting frame in the basement.
I guess it comes as no surprise that by the mid ’70’s my hippie friends disdain for the materialistic status quo of cheap, foreign made, fast fashion, had me appreciating their love for creatively patched, recycled clothes. That trend soon led to thrift stores popping up everywhere selling old clothing. For the most part, I’ve shunned new clothes ever since. This wasn’t done because I don’t appreciate well made clothes. I do.
Annie, a hippie friend who co-founded The Weaving Center in Santa Fe New Mexico, made some of the most beautiful hand made woolen clothing I’ve ever seen. She spun and dyed some of her own yarn and wove it into her own creations. Some of that yarn was made with wool from flocks of sheep tended by local farmers in northern New Mexico. She became so successful that she was featured on the cover of Fiber Arts magazine. That accomplishment is to fiber artists what getting on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine is to rock and roll bands.
True, hand crafted labors of love like that aren’t cheap. However, before textile industrialization, all clothing was made in a similar process. Today, slow fashion of that type has become so highly valued that few of those articles of clothing ever get thrown away. Like any coveted work of art, some of those older items are worth more now than they were when they were first made (most of moms quilts fall into that category). Like most treasured items, clothing like that often gets passed from one generation to the next.
That’s the way it used to be. That’s what we need to get back to.
The ‘textile industry’ has not only killed one-of-a-kind clothing, like most crafts that have become industrialized (like home building), the textile industry has also killed the incomes of millions of people who previously hand crafted clothing and other textiles and sold them locally. Many of those were farmers who produced the raw fiber and turned it into finished products.
Today, those who toil over monotonous, repetitive jobs in textile mills are, in many respects, slaves. Too many are children. We think nothing about any of that when we buy new clothes at Walmart or JC Penny.
The textile industry has many other issues, beginning with the throw away clothes that the elite, who run the fashion industry, have been foisting upon us for the past 75 years. Hyping some fashion designers latest creation to the public for the sake of generating ever more profits for the 1% has wrought nothing but millions of tons of waste, untold turmoil, death and destruction across the globe. The idea that we must be wearing the latest fashion is a marketing illusion. That so many people fell for, and still fall for the fashionistas ploy to make us feel stupid if we fail to buy their most recent, most heavily hyped products, says a lot about the misplaced values of our culture.
The good news is, practicality is making a come back. Ancestral clothing - slow fashion - is becoming a trend.
We need to throw off the yoke of the fashionistas and become fashion guerrillas. This begins with choosing appropriate fiber to put next to our skin.
For starters, for the same reason we avoid toxins in out food and homes, we should be avoiding synthetic fibers derived from petrochemical products. Cheap fibers like nylon, polyester, acrylic and polyolefin dominate the synthetic fiber market. All are polymers derived from petrochemicals. All polymers are endocrine disrupters, which means they mess with our hormones, causing all kinds of health issues.
The BAERSkin Hoodie, now being widely promoted for Christmas by clueless alternative, internet news channels, is a good example of a toxic, polymer outerwear garment.
side bar
I have a friend who had hormonal issues as a teenager. Doctors put her on birth control pills, which she took for years until she was about 21. I met her when she was 22. She was still having hormonal issues. I noticed she almost always wore synthetic clothing, so I told her about the hormonal disruption that polymers cause. I asked about her bed sheets. Turns out she was also sleeping on polyester bed sheets. She soon cleaned out her closet of all synthetic fiber clothing and replaced the polyester bed sheets on her bed with organic cotton sheets. I also gave her some dietary tips. Within a few months her hormonal issues resolved for the first time since she was a young teenager.
natural fibers
Natural fibers come in two primary forms.
From plants; cotton, linen (from flax), jute (Chorchorus), hemp (Cannabis) and sisal (Agave).
From animals; wool (sheep), cashmere (goats), mohair (goats) fleece (llamas, alpacas). Camels also produce a fine coat that is used in higher end clothing. Vicuñas, from the Andes, are a wild animal that are often rounded up and shorn for their fleece. It’s super fine and… super expensive. Guanacos are another wild animal native to the Andes that produce a fine fleece. Llamas, alpacas, vicuñas and guanacos are all members of the Camelid family.
There are also the heavily processed, semi-synthetic fibers like model, a type of rayon fiber made from regenerated beech tree pulp and rayon made from regenerated bamboo pulp and other woody, cellulose rich plants. Rayon is also known as viscose.
Yes, there are a few other are things used for clothing, like animal skins (a whole ‘nuther article) but these fibers represent the biggest share of the natural fibers used today.
Except for the exceedingly rare fiber from the two wild Camelids, all of these fibers are produced by farmers. These are the fibers that have been worn by our ancestors since earliest recorded history. Like ancestral food, we are very well adapted to them.
Because the industrialized production of synthetic fibers stole a huge percentage of the overall production of American farmers, abandoning synthetic fibers in favor of natural fibers not only helps with health issues, it can help bring back American farmers.
Unfortunately, we also have to deal with Big Ag.
I live in the desert state of Arizona, a big cotton producer. 75% of the water in this state goes to irrigate cotton and other thirsty crops.
The mono-cropping of cotton has resulted in the destruction of some of the most productive native habitat in this state. Most cotton here is grown on former riparian habitat, bottom land that once supported vast groves of cottonwood, ash, black walnut (densely nutritious nuts), hackberry (edible fruit used by Indians to make pemmican) and mesquite trees (nutritious seed pods). Wild asparagus, onions, catail (edible rhizomes), opuntia (a cactus with a delicious fruit) and other wild root crops often grew under those trees. Those areas were home to elk, javelina, turkey, rabbit, possum, deer and numerous other game species. That diverse habitat and those diverse food sources got bulldozed into oblivion in favor of growing a mono-crop of cotton.
There were a number of factors that came together to enable this wholesale rape of the landscape, but the primary forces were fueled by the USDA. Yup, subsidies; subsidized fuel, subsidized loans, subsidized pesticides, subsidized farm equipment, subsidized irrigation projects and so on.
All of this amounts to welfare capitalism for the predatory elite. It’s also known as fascism = the merger of the state and big business. These are your tax dollars. Did you consent to any of this?
To add insult to injury, cotton is one of the most heavily sprayed crops in the world. 93% of cotton grown in the US has been genetically modified to tolerate being sprayed with the highly toxic herbicide known as glyphosate. After many years of cotton mono cropping, no nutrients remain in the soil. Cotton is not only heavily sprayed, it’s heavily fertilized. That’s because the soil in which cotton is grown is dead. As one cotton farm told me, “All the soil does is hold up the plant”.
This is the legacy of Big Ag. Like the military industrial complex, the medical industrial complex and the housing industrial complex, the agricultural industrial complex is a just another means of death and destruction.
Agriculture in Arizona goes back 5,000 years. Along with chapalote corn, another early crop was Pima cotton, introduced around the time of Christ by the early Hohokum people. It was grown by diverting irrigation water from the Santa Cruz and Gila rivers. The Hohokam grew cotton here for over a thousand years.
In Arizona Pima (named after the Pima tribes) cotton has long been known as King Cotton. The results of making cotton king are numerous, none of them good. One of them is that none of those previously mentioned rivers now reach the sea. Another cog in King Cotton’s misguided wheel is that most of the cotton grown in the US gets shipped overseas to be made into textiles that are then shipped back to your local Walmart and Gap stores. In other words, the cotton growing in a cotton field next to a Walmart store here in Arizona may have traveled all the way around the world to be sold in that same Walmart store as clothing. And we think 1,500 miles is a long way for our food to travel! All of this means that the cotton industry in the US employs very few people.
Even more disconcerting is the fact that many of these problems also apply to organic cotton production. You do the earth and the Arizona economy little favor by buying organic cotton textiles that were made from cotton grown in bulldozed riparian habitats (subsidized), irrigated by dwindling water resources (thanks to subsidies), farmed by fuel guzzling farm equipment (both subsidized).
We are now all of 75 years into the making of King Cotton and many believe its viability is fading fast. Let’s see… 1,000 years for the Hohokhum, 75 years for people of European decent... Because the downside of industrial cotton production has left us morally, spiritually, environmentally and economically bereft, it seems that reconsidering how we produce fiber is a topic whose time has come.
a few words about hemp
Hemp is becoming just another commodity mono-crop. As the photo above shows, the industrialization of hemp is well under way. How long before we have genetically modified hemp that needs to be sprayed with glyphosate?
enter alpacas
For many years I focused on what I believe to be the most regenerative fiber solution available - alpaca fiber.
How does alpaca fiber compare to cotton? The short answer is: Alpaca fiber is stronger, warmer and finer that cotton. It also has a better hand (softer to the touch).
Perhaps the more important question is: How does the production of alpaca fiber compare to the production of cotton in the deserts of Arizona?
Let’s get into that.
Feeding alpacas a mono diet of imported hay is analogous to someone eating a mono diet of imported broccoli. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, food is genetic information. Over eons our metabolic processes have evolved to recognize and make good use of certain foods. We now call those ancestral foods. Part of the reason why 60% of Americans now suffer from chronic illness is because we’re eating modern processed food that has no relationship with the ancient bodily knowledge we inherited from our ancestors. It’s the same for cattle, chickens, hogs and… alpacas. They do best when foraging on pasture or intact ecosystems that closely resemble their native habitat.
Unlike the cotton in the previous photos, my alpacas are making fiber from intact, native habitat. This fiber has none of the negative production issues that cotton has.
The era of artificially cheap fuel that has allowed us to raise cotton and livestock without any consideration for the natural order of things is now running its course. The chickens are coming home to roost. To regain our health and the health of our livestock, we must go back to the ways of our ancestors - the way God intended. We must raise our livestock on pastures and native ecosystems. This time honored regime has many benefits, not the least of which is the total absence of feed costs. From the livestock point of view, a significant benefit is the reduction of parasite loads and diseases when compared to animals kept in pens. For the native forage based alpaca farmer this means fewer health issues, lower or no vet bills, higher pregnancy rates and easier birthing.
how not to do it
Some of my original alpacas came from a sizable pen based operation. These folks were very good friends with their vet. I would estimate they were spending over $100,000 per year on vet bills. In spite of that, or more likely because of it, they were plagued with breeding and birthing problems and lost numerous valuable animals to disease.
The last time I asked, they told me they were spending $160,000 per year on hay. Not only is none of this sustainable, it’s just bad animal husbandry. From a business perspective, it’s also financially untenable. As the recession of 2008 approached, the handwriting was being writ large on the wall. They ignored it and soon went out of business.
Long story short, the 2008 recession caused the alpaca market to collapse. Over the course of a year the value of my alpaca herd went from upwards of $300,000 to less than $10,000. Eventually, I too had to sell all of my animals.
Fortunately, I never had any reason to spend any money on a vet. I never administered antibiotic or vitamin shots to any of my livestock (including my goats) nor did I ever give them any other form of medication. How did I manage to pull this off? I provide all of my livestock what they most desire - plenty of native pasture from which they derive forage that can never be matched nutritionally by any form of grains or hay - forage their ancestral metabolic system recognizes and makes very good use of.
That also saved me a small fortune in hay costs.
Next time we’ll delve into why alpaca fleece is becoming recognized for its many numerous advantages over all other natural fibers.
I’ll also point you to some sources of alpaca textile products for Christmas.
Great Article. Thanks Kyle.
Fascinating and vibrant. I have been hearing more about how chemicals in clothing can be transferred through contact with the skin and even by breathing them in. This is something most people never think twice about...I never did.
I am older and retired and don't care much about fashion. Most of the new designs and fashions are downright horrid. I want practical comfort. I hadn't heard of clothes from alpaca fibers. Hemp yes, but not that. With most clothes being imported, who knows how they are really made?