Nadine Manson鈥檚 journey to a career in slow fashion with her popular leggings鈥� business was an organic one. Which is perfectly in line with the philosophy of her business, and of slow fashion itself.
鈥淭he essence of slow fashion is slowing down long enough to figure out what you can do to be more ethical and sustainable. It doesn鈥檛 matter if you鈥檙e a big brand that鈥檚 well established or you鈥檙e a small brand just starting out,鈥� she says. And slow down is just what she did 鈥� or rather, was forced to do 鈥� when her first iteration of Bewildher collapsed into a pile of unsold product that sent her into a depression, then a rebirth of sorts. The birth of Bewildher coincided with the actual birth of her son, as well as an eviction notice from her Squamish trailer, which she and her husband had been racing to renovate as parenthood loomed.
Manson grappled with what fashion meant to her, and why she had started in the business in the first place. 鈥淵ou have to hit rock bottom a little bit in order to figure out what the world needs. In my case rock bottom was tons of inventory in bins in my living room,鈥� she said.聽
鈥淵ou spend a ton of money on product that you can鈥檛 move, then you spend more money on marketing trying to move it, and it just didn鈥檛 seem like the best way to be doing things. I got to a point where I couldn鈥檛 financially and feasibly continue, and it just seemed like I would be going more and more into debt, so I decided I was going to quit."
Which is where winter of 2017 found her, starting over and considering going back to designing for other people. But when her diehard customers offered to prepay for her leggings, she had a flash of brilliance and decided to flip her business model on its head. She found a local factory that pays its workers fair wages, and started to do fabric cutting herself so she could make smaller orders. 鈥淚t means more work for me and is probably not as profitable if you think of time as money, but it鈥檚 growing my brand in a much safer, less risky, less wasteful way.鈥� Manson makes her clothing from polyester spandex made from recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. She balances out the more expensive fabric by getting creative with cutting costs on the back end.鈥�
There鈥檚 a lot of things I put into my leggings to make them more ethical and sustainable, that make them cost more. In general, I鈥檝e decided to make a lesser profit in order to make those things happen.鈥�
Another local, woman-run slow fashion company is , which has been making bamboo and organic cotton blended 鈥渁thleisure鈥� wear for over a decade, selling their products at festivals and eco-conscious retailers around the world.
Co-owners Freyja Skye and Jules Marie Emmerson strive to find hard-working fabrics that have less chemical waste than fabrics made more traditionally. 鈥淲e work with a mill that breaks down the bamboo slowly, in a solution similar to acetic acid,鈥� Emmerson explains.
鈥淏ecause it takes longer to make our fabric and break down the fibre, it鈥檚 not 鈥榝ast fashion.鈥� The quality is really good, the clothes last a long time and it鈥檚 healthier.鈥� The bamboo for their fabrics is sourced, milled and sewn in a region of China traditionally known for silk production. Emmerson has visited the factory where their pieces are sewn to ensure the workers are earning fair wages in a healthy work environment, and the clothes are shipped in cardboard boxes rather than plastic bags. At the retail end, MahaDevi only deals with environmentally conscious vendors. 鈥淓verywhere along the line, we try to be as minimal and sustainable as we can,鈥� Emmerson says.
The 鈥渇ast fashion鈥� industry is one of the world鈥檚 top polluters; in fact it is second only to the oil industry. According to , it also employs some 40 billion people, many of them children, many of them in unhealthy or dangerous conditions, for wages that leave them under the poverty line.
The fashion industry is the second biggest contributor to child labour, after the tech industry. Companies like MahaDevi and Bewildher are slowly trying to make a dent in fast fashion, leading by example and being the change they want to see. And of course, by producing beautiful, high-quality clothing.
鈥淢y motto is, if it looks nice enough to wear out to dinner but it鈥檚 comfortable enough to sleep in, it鈥檚 okay,鈥� Emmerson says. 鈥淚n this day and age that鈥檚 what we need, we need clothes that can transfer across all different genres and just be comfortable. We went through generations of being corseted and tailored and fitted into things. These days, people want to move their bodies.
