By Amy Donovan , Staff Contributor
Halifax fashion designer Laura Chenoweth says with assurance that there is no “hocus-pocus” in her organic cotton clothing line. She can trace the clothing she sells both to the farmer who grew the crop and to the guy in India who did the sewing.
That’s a big part of what being sustainable means to her.
“When I think of the word sustainability, I find the word misleading,” says Chenoweth in her airy Agricola Street office. “You have to be able to highlight what it means because it’s overused so much.”
“I like to break it down, thinking (about) what is involved in making beautiful clothing in say, a ‘sustainable’ way. Then I break it down even more. What are the ingredients used? Who’s involved? What’s the whole sphere involved? Rather than saying, ‘Oh, that’s sustainable.’ I mean, what does that mean?”
In Chenoweth’s fashion line – a collection of cotton clothing in simple, classic cuts and colours, with bold prints and sassy patterns thrown in – ‘sustainability’ is about being conscious of all the ingredients involved in each piece’s production.
So, the Ontario native flies to India once a year or so to work with several tailors (one is the son of longtime friends in a “block printing family”) who sew all of her clothing. The certified organic cotton she uses exclusively in her clothing comes from India too. Recently, Chenoweth has also started selling organic cotton to anyone in Halifax who sews and wants it.
She stresses that here in Canada, it’s especially important to think about where cotton is coming from and what’s being done to it. Canada, unlike the United States and other countries, can’t grow cotton, so all of our cotton is imported.
Organic cotton costs about 25 per cent more than conventional sprayed cotton, but Chenoweth is adamant that it’s worth it to pay more.
“You have to get in touch with what the clothing ingredients are,” she says. “Cotton is the most heavily-sprayed crop in the world.”
Cotton accounts for 16 per cent of the world’s pesticide consumption, she says.
“And the people who pick the cotton? They’re really sick, like very sick. They all have nerve damage. Women are mostly infertile.”
It is obvious that Chenoweth puts a lot of thought into the ethics of her clothing designs. “The companies that are growing the cotton are not educating the farmers who are working with this genetically modified seed with the fact that what they’re spraying on the plants is highly poisonous,” she says.
Chenoweth had no idea of the consequences of spraying cotton until she read the Environmental Justice Foundation’s 2007 report, “The Deadly Chemicals in Cotton”.
“It changed my life, reading that.”
That was when Chenoweth decided she would work only in organic cotton. It was also the time she started working on her business, Laura Chenoweth Organic Apparel, now a year old.
Chenoweth’s clothing can be purchased at P’Lovers in Park Lane Mall on Spring Garden Road and at Love, Me Boutique on Birmingham Street. She tries to avoid competition between the stores. Her more bohemian pieces go to Love, Me, and the “conservative who is still interested in conscious consumerism” can find Chenoweth’s basic corduroy skirts, available in a range of fall colours and priced at $120 at P’Lovers.
So far, Chenoweth says response from the Halifax market has been great. Price is a challenge, but Chenoweth is both confident and determined.
“I feel very artistic,” she says, choosing the word carefully. “One wants to look for a bargain but when you buy something new, I feel you have to be willing to put out a bit more money,” she smiles. “But yeah, Halifax has been great. I feel like I’m in the right place.”
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