The vision

What would a sustainable textile industry look like? How would we shop? The sustainable textile rules are similar to sustainable food rules and I envision a similar system for textiles as is emerging for food.

Local farmers in your area grow fibers organically, without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. At your local farmer's market, you browse the soft, fluffy piles of wool and cotton, or smooth, lustrous linen or silk, or alpaca or angora rabbit or cashmere or whatever other fibers grow in your area. You select the best fiber for your current needs and take it home or to your local processor to spin or felt, weave or knit, sew or shape. The farmers might also sell ready-spun and -dyed yarn as well as finished fabric or garments. Many people also grow fibers in their gardens, along with their vegetables, or keep a few sheep or rabbits or alpaca in their yards along with the chickens.

Later, you stop in at your local fabric shop and check out the latest wool suitings, cotton shirtings, bedsheet percales, and gorgeous pattern-woven silk dress fabrics. All these textiles are made by regional textile mills or local craftspeople. They buy fiber from the same local sustainable farms and create all kinds of cloth. From fiber to fabric, all steps take place in one production center or complex, including cleaning the fibers, spinning, weaving or knitting, dyeing or printing, and finishing. The workers live in your town or area and make a living wage. The dyeing and finishing are done without any toxic and polluting chemicals. You take your fabric home or to a local seamstress to sew into simple clothes, bedsheets, curtains, or whatever else you need.

For more complicated or nicer garments, you take your fabric to your local tailor or dressmaker's shop to have your clothes made. You collaborate with the dressmaker on your garment design and in choosing your trimming and notions. She contributes expertise in fabric drapery and cut, suggestions on styles she has seen work before, and information on current fashion trends or historic styles as appropriate. You contribute your preferences on the style, cut, colors and fabrics that work for you. You might bring in pictures of clothes you've seen to be copied, with whatever adjustments you want, or your favorite old dress to be recreated in fresh fabric. All of your clothes fit you perfectly, are exactly the right length, height, and width in every place. The colors are always flattering to your complexion, the cuts always flattering to your figure, the style always exactly what you feel most comfortable and lovely wearing. What a dream!

Your local furnishing shop offers all the custom upholstery, drapery, and household linens that are too complicated for you to make at home. You buy your fabric at the fabric store or browse the furnisher's selection, and she applies it to your furniture, makes your curtains or rugs or bedskirts or quilts, as well as your sheets and towels and kitchen towels if you prefer not to hem these at home. Your home is filled with colors and fabrics you love, and you can always get new pieces to fill out your collection. Your pattern is never discontinued.

Also, the milliners! Bring back the hat.

All of these beautiful, natural fibers, fabrics, clothes and soft furnishings are more expensive than the old industrial, synthetic, polluting, sweatshop-produced textiles, because they are produced sustainably by people living near us. Therefore most of us cannot afford the large amounts of clothing and household textiles people were accustomed to in the dirty times. However, the quality is so much better, and everything is custom-made exactly as we prefer, so the fewer items we do have are so much more satisfying than the piles of never-quite-exactly-right things we used to make do with. Plus, we have gained extra space in our homes by turning those gargantuan walk-in closets in late-twentieth-century houses into nurseries, offices, storage rooms, craft rooms, and other uses.

You carefully care for, store, and mend your expensive clothes and linens to make them last as long as possible. You launder your clothes and linens at home in your machine or by hand, and dry on the line in the sunshine or in the machine. You resew buttons and hems, mend holes, let out or take in seams based on your changing shape, remove stains, and store your freshly cleaned clothes in cedar and lavender to prevent pests. For specialty items or the time-pressed, professional cleaners offer hand washing, sustainable dry-cleaning, and mending. When the clothes and furnishings are beyond repair, you or the dressmaker or furnisher salvage the remaining usable fabric for a child's garment, a smaller chair or window curtain, or a bag or other smaller item. As the smaller items wear out, eventually the fabric becomes cleaning rags.

Or, instead of wearing your clothes and furnishings out or reusing the fabric, you sell them at the consignment shop, where you can also browse for pre-worn clothes and furnishings you might like.

Finally when only useless scraps are left, you sell them to the regional textile mills to be recycled into shoddy fabric, insulation, paper, or some other product. Or, you simply throw the scraps on the compost heap to biodegrade along with the rest of the organic material that feeds your garden.

The rules

for a truly sustainable textile industry.

1) Buy organically and sustainably produced natural fibers. No matter how recyclable a synthetic fiber is, or how fast-growing the raw material for a regenerated fiber, these will still always require petroleum extraction, solvents, factories, and industrial waste to manufacture. Avoid chemical finishes, which also pollute the environment and you.

2) Buy textile items produced as close to home as possible. Most natural fibers have a growing range and are produced with the least negative environmental impact in those areas for which the plant or animal is best adapted. So if you live in a cotton-growing area, it makes sense to wear cotton. If you don't, textiles are a less-heinous import than some other types of consumer goods. Textiles are one of the oldest trade items (since at least 3000 BC), because they are generally lightweight, not breakable or perishable, easy to pack, and highly valuable. So buy your cotton from an area which is suited to that plant. But bear in mind that every mile your item travels involves fossil fuels. Use a local tailor or dressmaker. Your clothes purchases will support the local economy, and will also fit you perfectly and be the exact styles, fabrics, and colors you prefer. You can also much more easily evaluate the working conditions in a local shop than in a factory half a world away.

3) Learn to make textiles. You can sew, knit, weave, crochet, embroider, spin, dye, and/or grow and process fibers. The more steps in the production of a textile item you can perform yourself, the more you can control the materials, style, fit, labor conditions, and waste.

4) Develop a personal style based on flattering styles for your body shape, flattering colors for your skin tone and hair color, and appropriate fabrics, patterns, and garments for your lifestyle. Then buy the best quality clothes you can afford. They will last for years if properly laundered, stored, and mended. It costs the same amount to wear a $300 skirt once a week for 6 years during its season (~$1/wear) as to wear a $30 skirt once a week that falls apart or pills up or looks awful after a single season (~$1/wear). Plus you will always look great and feel confident because you are wearing flattering clothes, and have a sense of style.

5) Develop a personal style for your home in the same way, based on coordinating styles for the architecture of your house and appropriate items for your lifestyle. Then again, buy the best quality home furnishings you can afford and maintain them properly for longest use.

6) Learn to launder textiles correctly. You need soap, agitation, and plenty of water, as well as heat to disinfect items that have direct bodily contact. Use a washing machine in which you can control the amount of water, as well as the temperature of the water for each part of the cycle. To whiten and remove stains, use an oxidizing bleach or sunlight. Hang clothes to dry or tumble dry on low heat until just dry- no longer. Iron with steam. Launder clothes only when truly soiled, or before storage for any length of time. Washing destroys fibers and dyes, so the less you wash an item the longer it will last.

7) Learn to maintain textiles. Sew on missing buttons, catch up hems, mend tears or holes, add embellishments, alter garments to accommodate changing body shape or styles, and so on. Launder garments and furnishings before storage, use lavender or cedar to deter bugs, use proper padding and ventilation and darkness to avoid fiber and dye degradation. This extends the useful life of your items.

8) Use textiles until they are literally rags. After a garment is no longer useful, donate it to someone less fortunate, or use the fabric that is still good to make a smaller garment for a child or a doll. Or cut up the garment and use the pieces in a quilt or as patches. Or use the pieces as rags to wash dishes, the house, the car, wipe up spills, wipe your bottom, and so on. When the pieces of cloth are no longer usable even as cleaning rags, compost them or donate them to be recycled into shoddy cloth.

9) Recognize that the entire giant multi-billion-dollar global textile and fashion industry is completely dependent on YOU, the consumer, to buy its products. If the products don't sell, the companies will stop making them. YOU have the power to change the system.