Monday, August 08, 2011
Alabama Chanin and Slow Design
Lately I have become fascinated by the work and philosophy of fashion designer, Alabama Chanin.
After a career in the fashion industry in both New York and Vienna, she returned to her childhood home in Alabama, to develop a clothing business there. With a background in environmental design, it is not surprising that she wanted to find a way to combine an environmentally sound approach to the making of clothing. She espouses the "Slow Design Movement" in fashion design. In the same way that the Slow Food Movement relies on locally produced foods, carefully prepared, so Natalie "Alabama" Chanin uses locally produced cotton fabrics to create her unique designs.
Each garment is hand-stitched by local stitchers who work together with Chanin in a collaborative process. Slow movement indeed: cotton grown locally and worked by hand by local carftspeople.
Alabama Chanin's designs are fresh and wearable, yet each piece is unique. A work of art.
She incorporates a variety of techniques by cutting the cotton fabric is such a way as to make it more malleable. Then she applies appliques, beads, and various embroidery techniques to make a highly textured, variable surface. The end result is a multi-layered fabric with depth and dimension, a richness like brocade, but still a lightness of hand.
We knitters know all about "Slow Design". We cannot rush our work and it is by embracing the process that we are able to create beauty. Just as Alabama Chanin and her hand stitches do.
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