Regenerative Fashion, Wildlife and Fibres

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Regenerative fashion is emerging out of regenerative farming. It’s nothing new of course, as we’ve been regenerating soils, wildlife, crops and livestock together out in the fields for an age, whether that’s been through our efforts to produce crops for food and fibre, or rearing sheep, cattle and other animals for meat, milk, wool and leather.

We’ve harvested food and clothes from fields by cycling nutrients through soil, grain crops, fibre crops, animals and pasture. All this, held in a delicate balance. Then we turned it upside down with industrialised farming and clothing production. How can we return?

From Degenerative to Regenerative Fashion and Farming

Soil to Soil Fashion

The regenerative fashion movement sees the link between fashion and farming. We’ve degenerated both, but, we can come out the other side and not treat fashion and farming like extractive industries. Our clothes ultimately come from the soil, and can return to soil. Fibres like linen, hemp and cotton, wool, alpaca fibre, and leather too, have a long history. These all comes from the fields.

Yet, we’ve separated animals and crops, replacing dung and other organic matter in soils with chemicals. Let’s have more dung/compost and fewer chemicals! More people too, as they care for animals and weed crops. Let wildlife live again amongst a flux and flow of sheep, goats, cattle, grain, flax, and hemp (in cooler climes) through our fields. Pests struggle to get a foothold in these conditions.

More of the same isn’t good for us, whether that’s food or fabric. Cotton is useful, but there are other fibres (and there always have been). Region-appropriate fibres, indigenous crop varieties and native breeds are better than endless monocultures of GM cotton. Cotton is a water-hungry crop. We sucked the Aral sea dry in central Asia by growing cotton. Elsewhere, cotton is also one of the crops exhausting underground aquifers.

How Much is Too Much?

J B MacKinnon in The Day the World Stops Shopping says that in the past 20 years the number of garments made per person has increased by more than 60%, yet the lifespan of those garments has halved. To give some perspective, the average American throws away around 70 pounds of clothing a year (in UK money, that’s about 5 stone).

Yet, we can produce clothing, amongst the vegetables, grain, trees, bees and hares, just like we always did in the past. To some this might seem like a pipe dream, but the past isn’t dead. Farming that works along with cycles of nature is zero waste, cyclical and more productive. In the long run, it’s far better than modern chemical-driven extractive farming. To understand all this, we need to mentally get right in there – in the fields, and scratch around in the dirt along with the animals.

Wildlife and Fibres

Fibres, thickening and maturing in flax stems, which stand shoulder high, are ready to be spun into flax yarn, then woven into cool, soft linen. Amongst those flax stems, drying out in the heat of summer, seeds and seed heads come toppling to the ground from weeds threaded through the crop. Nipplewort seeds, and their dry yellow flower heads, fall from high up in the flax sward; dark brown corncockle seeds shatter from deep pink flowers; knotweed, self-heal, cornsalad and chickweed seeds join them. The flax mostly hangs on to its seed, but a few capsules pop open, spilling their oil-rich seeds to the ground.

An army is now at work, feeding on them. Field voles, harvest mice, pygmy shrews and corn crakes emerge from the tall, grassy border; corn bunting alight from a hedgerow behind and peck at seeds in the dirt. At dusk, a barn owl picks off a few field voles.

Soon harvesters come in: they reap and process the flax, then spinning wheels and weaving looms are in action again. The field lies fallow, and once green with grass and herbs, a shepherd lets in a herd of local, native Ryeland sheep. They browse new growth, dropping dung and urine as they go. Dung beetles scuttle around, rolling up balls of dung and burrow with them into the ground. Organic matter and nutrients are replenished, the fibres and humus swelling up and holding in water.

At shearing time, farmers round up sheep and relieve them of their fleeces for warmer weather ahead. They harvest wool and flax from the field, in rotation with rye and wheat. For this is the produce suited to local light, but not particularly fertile soils: produce which feeds the native industry of medieval Leominster, on the borders of England and Wales.

An Organic Waste Stream

In 1994, an archaeologist squeezed himself into a small hole in the ground, beneath the Hop Pole Inn in Leominster, Herefordshire, in advance of repair work (underpinning) to the building. No wonder, as the boggy, sulphurus smell came from peat beneath. Later, an archaeobotanist (me) found well-preserved remains of flax capsules with seeds intact in these soggy deposits of medieval date. I think they were the waste from soaking bundles of flax in a stream to release fibres from the flax stems several hundred years ago. Or, from combing (rippling) off the seed capsules. Weed seeds, trapped amongst the flax, told a story about that field. As did the single seed of dyer’s rocket from a plant which was a medieval go-to for yellow dye.

In those peaty, boggy, building-sinking deposits were horncores, probably from a hornworking site. Fragments of leather shoe sole and heel – a cobbler’s waste – all mingled with the waste from flax brought in from the field over which the barn owl flew. All are reported on here.

Organic pollution. Yes there was some, as soaking (retting) flax releases compounds which can make water stagnant. But, compared to chemical pollution from modern fabric processing and chemical dyes, it’s benign. The organic waste is biodegradable, and so is the linen fabric. It came from soil, and can return to soil. That’s soil to soil fashion – the slow turning of the carbon cycle.

Slowing the Hamster Wheel of Fast Fashion With Regenerative Fashion

We must slow the hamster wheel of fast fashion, though, to match the slow carbon cycle. This brings a new meaning to ‘cyclical fashion’. It’s a cycling of nutrients through soil, animals and plants, rather than, necessarily a cyclical return of fashion styles (although it could be).

There’s a rising interest in place-based fibres, and in clothing communities from local resources. I think there’s a growing appreciation of traditional knowledge and evergreen skills. It’s not just a hankering for the past, but a realisation that these skills provide us with so much, whether we’re people using the skills, or we’re buying from skilled artisans, makers and small businesses. So, where can you find some regenerative fashion?

If you love wool, see my post on Ryeland sheep who grazed the fallow flax field near Leominster: What’s the Softest British wool? Could it Be Ryeland? I’ve listed a few small businesses using Herdwick and Swaledale wool in northern England in Herdwick and Swaledale Yarn, Local cloth, Local Landscape. Search your local area, and you may be surprised at what turns up. In the UK, rare breed woollen yarn sourced from small-scale farmers, who care for their animals, has been rising in popularity for some time, as has alpaca fibre. Crafters are returning to fibres like nettles too; swapping tips through online communities like Nettles for Textiles, and experimenting with natural plant dyes

Fibershed, based in Northern California are regenerating natural fibre and dye systems, rebuilding regional manufacturing, and reconnecting the wearer to where their clothes come from. Listen to their podcast. South West England Fibreshed are a UK affiliate, who have a producer map of businesses and individuals from Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire.

Is Regenerative Fashion Affordable?

Can our fibres come from the ground beneath our feet? It’s looking increasingly likely – especially if you’re prepared to make your own clothes. This, combined with mending, upcycling and swapping can make regenerative fashion affordable. Fibres compete with our food, so long-live the fibres through mending and wearing clothes that age well…