SUSTAINABILITY + REGENERATION + CIRCULAR ECONOMY
FOLDE
During lockdown and following the birth of my second child, I lived out the vision of developing a truly sustainable and future facing clothing brand. Together with my business partner, we laid the foundations for a purpose-led sustainable womenswear brand, including product design & development, website build, branding, photography, communication, press and marketing approach. Through our crowdfunding campaign video shown here, you can learn more about the dream.
Although I’ve put a pin in it for personal reasons, it has been an incredible opportunity to re-align my values and true-purpose within the industry. It has empowered me with an expanded toolkit for approaching design and how we can aim to marry the often apposing forces the industry is currently facing.
“Our goal is to go beyond the status quo of sustainable fashion. By tracing our materials back to their agricultural roots and collaborating with climate conscious farmers and textile producers we will radically reduce our brands impact on the planet. Our edited collections of carefully considered pieces will draw inspiration from superior fibres and visionary producers. Through creative story-telling we will connect the dots between the land and our clothes and celebrate the many skilled hands that bring them to life.”
FOLDE Co-Founders Sally Graveling and Louise Petranca
PRESS
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Green Heroes: Sally Graveling, Co-Founder FOLDE
Both founders were originally from fashion backgrounds but it was the pandemic’s time for reflection which offered an ultimatum: either walk away from fashion completely or build a brand that aligned with their values. They chose the latter. Touching on soil’s own renaissance, why fashion should be borne from the rhythms of nature, and how we can reconnect with the environment again, Sally Graveling gives us an insight into what could be fashion’s sustainable future.
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Interview with co-founders of sustainable startup Folde
The brand, which seeks to find the best possible way to produce environmentally conscious clothing, chose crowdfunding over corporate investment in order to avoid a goal for profit overshadowing its sustainable mission. Placing style over trend, the brand’s focus on craftsmanship and reducing unnecessary waste hopes to provide customers with long lasting and treasured pieces.
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Farm to Wardrobe: This could change how we shop
Folde, which was set up by two veterans from the fashion industry who worked for Jigsaw and Paul Smith, and is backed by Arizona Muse and Livia Firth, is another quietly radical enterprise that’s currently crowdfunding. Its regenerative cotton is from a collective in India and its wool is from Herd.
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Two sustainable fashion gurus on a mission to make soil sexy in London
Much like the farm to table movement in the food industry, the label’s founders Sally Gravellng (pictured left) and Louise Petranca, believe that connecting the origins of raw materials, will create a mutually beneficial relationship between farmers and producers themselves.
I N S P I R E D B Y :
Regenerative Agriculture:
A solution to our Global crisis?
“Changing Paradigms” explores the power of regenerative agriculture in improving the natural environment, human health, and reliable profit in sheep farming. We, as humans, have an innate attraction to the natural world. But, the way we currently interact with the environment is unsustainable and causing a disconnect with nature. We have one generation, our generation, to take action and change the paradigm.
Charles Massy (author of “Call of the Reed Warbler”) and Norm Smith both take a sustainable, systems thinking approach to sheep farming. They have moved away from industrial practices of land clearing and using chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Now they work with nature rather than against it, in turn, reviving the once over-grazed land. The power of regenerative agriculture is even greater than improving the profitability and resilience of family farms, the implications on planetary and human health are tremendously positive.
Text quoted from Toms Outdoors intro to the film ABOVE.
R E C E N T L Y A T T E N D E D :
Inside the Circular Economy
March 2022
I recently participated in the Ellen MacArthur Foundations interactive online seven-week learning programme — Inside the Circular Economy. Every week we discussed a different topic, ranging from food, policy and design, to finance, plastics, and fashion. Participants were given a weekly challenge to complete and were be able to debate and engage with others taking part in the programme.
R E C E N T L Y A T T E N D E D :
For years the Sustainable Fashion Forum has hosted hundreds of like-minded conscious fashion advocates and industry leaders to share ideas and discuss the intersection of fashion and sustainability.
Sustainability is a hot topic among brands and consumers alike, and for a good reason. The fashion industry's environmental and social impact — from greenhouse gas emissions to biodiversity loss and microplastics, to the mistreatment of garment workers and systematic racial injustices — can no longer be swept under the rug. Across the industry everyone is talking about sustainability — but talk isn't enough.
R E C E N T L Y A T T E N D E D :
The Sustainable Angle is a not-for-profit organisation and founders of #FutureFabricsExpo. They initiate and support projects with a focus on sustainability in Fashion and Textiles and related industries such as food and agriculture.
JUNE 2021
R E C E N T READ :
The Earth Logic Fashion Action Research Plan is a visionary and radical invitation to fashion researchers, practitioners, business leaders and decision makers to: call out as fiction the idea that sustainability can be achieved within economic growth logic; and instead to ‘stay with the trouble’ of envisioning fashion connected with nature, people and long term healthy futures.
R E C E N T R E A D:
In Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massy explores regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health.
It is the story of how a grassroots revolution—a true underground insurgency—can save the planet, help reduce and reverse climate change, and build healthy people and healthy communities, pivoting significantly on our relationship with growing and consuming food.
Using his personal experience as a touchstone—from an unknowing, chemical-using farmer with dead soils to a radical ecologist farmer carefully regenerating a 2000-hectare property to a state of natural health—Massy tells the real story behind industrial agriculture and the global profit-obsessed corporations driving it. With evocative stories, he shows how other innovative and courageous farmers are finding a new way.
At stake is not only a revolution in human health and in our communities, but the very survival of the planet. For farmers, backyard gardeners, food buyers, health workers, policy makers, and public leaders alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a tangible path forward and a powerful and moving paean of hope.
It’s not too late to regenerate the earth. Call of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward for the future of our food supply, our planet, and our health.
R E C E N T C O N N E C T I O N :
The Cotton Diaries is a global community of people passionate about cotton and committed to making cotton supply chains more sustainable.
Led by MARZIA LANFRANCHI &
SIMON FERRIGNO
This community is a recent connection I have made to give me further insights on the cotton industry and how we can make an impact through our supply chain partners.
R E C E N T C O N N E C T I O N :
Fibershed is a non-profit organization that develops equity-focused regional and land regenerating natural fiber and dye systems. Their work expands opportunities to implement climate beneficial agriculture, rebuild regional manufacturing, and connect end-users to the source of our fiber through direct educational offerings. They are transforming the economic and ecologic systems that clothe us to generate equitable and climate change ameliorating textile cultures.
I N S P I R E D B Y :
Fashion Revolution was founded in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, Fashion Revolution has become the world’s largest fashion activism movement, mobilising citizens, industry and policymakers through our research, education and advocacy work.
‘We are a global movement of people who make the fashion industry work. We are the people who wear clothes. And we are the people who make them’.
We are designers, academics, writers, business leaders, policymakers, brands, retailers, marketers, producers, makers, workers and fashion lovers. We are the industry and we are the public. We are world citizens. We are Fashion Revolution.
P E R S O N A L C O N N E C T I O N :
“The Right Project is a personal and professional development space. We’re here to help you navigate sustainability with clarity and confidence.”
I am blessed to be connected with one of the key members of this consultancy, Jossy, a longtime friend, who has helped me in recent projects with sound and expert advice way beyond my capacity. In such a complex space, getting advice and guidance from those who have lived, breathed and steered this world for the last 20 years+ is priceless.