Thursday, April 4, 2019
Lubaba Abbas Kazmi
Fashion and Culture
Reflection
We visited FABSCRAP last week with Timo Rissanen who was our substitute professor. He is well respected in the sustainable fashion industry and I felt so inspired to have him around.
It was his first time visiting FABSCRAP, so it was a learning experience for all of us. FABSCARP is a non-profit organization that recycles fabric. We were told that 10% of the commercial waste is textile material. It hasn’t been long since the company has been set up, I think it’s been a year or two but they’re growing. They work with companies like J. Crew, Marc Jacobs, Express and Mara Hoffman to name a few. From big brands to smaller ones, they have all kinds of companies sending in their excess fabric to recycle. Bigger brands send their waste almost weekly and smaller companies would send monthly or even yearly. At the end of the year, FABSCRAP send in a detailed account of the waste to those companies. In the beginning, FABSCRAP would send their cars with drivers to pick up the waste but now these com companies understand their responsibility and send it themselves which means that there is progress and acknowledgment.
After briefing about how FABSCRAP works and what it is, we were explained what we had to do. I got a box of mixed fabric and had to remove the stickers and put them in the bags where they belonged. It was fairly a tiring job, but I enjoyed it as it gave me satisfaction.
The reading for this week caught my attention right in beginning. “For some women, sewing was an art or means of personal expression, for others a detestable chore. Women sewed for money, for love, or simply because they had to.” The entire reading takes us through different time periods and talks about how fabric was reused or recycles but it’s all done by women. Women sew for themselves, for their children and husbands. The ones who were rich would get it done but knew the basics at least. It was a feminine activity. What surprised me was that even today, an organization like FABSCRAP only had female workers. It is owned by woman and had 3 full time female workers. For the two hours that we were there for, only women came to purchase fabric.
