Reflecting on the first years
So it’s 2020, I just made the decision to finally dive into the knitwear company I always dreamed of and the pandemic starts a month later. I thought that surely all I needed was six months, maybe one year to get the new business off the ground. Boy was I wrong. I had to do A LOT of soul searching and research to get to where I am today.
Knowing the havoc the fashion industry wreaks on the earth everyday while also significantly contributing to climate change, I knew that whatever I decided to do with this company, it had to do its best to combat these problems and try to provide an alternative road map to the way most textiles and clothing are produced and consumed.
There were three details I knew for sure from the beginning. My garments would be made with (1) 100% natural fibers, (2) 100% natural dyes and (3) made in the USA. I decided on natural fibers because they are in so many ways superior to synthetic, but primarily because they don’t involve the use of petrochemicals to fabricate. Without the inclusion of petrochemicals, natural fibers can eventually breakdown and return to the earth without causing harm. I chose natural dyes for this same reason - synthetic dyes are made with petrochemicals - and because they are so magical. Keeping the production in the US is important to me for many reasons, but primarily the following two: first to further encourage the re-shoring of the clothing manufacturing industry that abruptly left the country in the 1980s and secondly to stop Command Knitwear from contributing to the systemic abuse of garment industry workers around the globe. Although there are certainly factories outside of the US that treat their employees fairly (and ones inside that don’t), I was unsure if I could easily assess the working conditions of factories abroad versus the relatively easy access I could have here in the US.
I thought about it in the same way that processed food is bad for our bodies, so is ‘processed clothing’. The less manipulation you have to do to arrive at the final product the better it is for everyone.
These details were the backbone of the mission I set for Command Knitwear and promised I would not compromise them. Easy I thought…I will just find sources for naturally dyed American yarn that is suitable for machine knitting. Again, my assumptions were very wrong, as this type of material doesn’t really exist at the scale for which I was searching. I guess if it did, there might by more clothing options out there with these exact details. I realized I will have to take it one step further to source the individual materials and find a dyer with experience utilizing natural dyes.
As I began the lengthy process of determining how to source the materials I would need, I was introduced to the Fibershed organization and Rebecca Burgess’s book, by the same name, which subsequently became my adopted manifesto. Through this research I discovered that there was already a large community of people trying to figure out how to do exactly what I was trying to accomplish - more responsible, small batch, LOCAL clothing production. Fibershed also furthered my convictions regarding the mission I set for Command Knitwear and made me more confident that they could be achieved.
Through the Fibershed resources I went on to discover Climate Beneficial Fiber and began to reach out directly to the ranchers in northern California utilizing regenerative agriculture to take carbon out of the atmosphere. It also took time, classes and a lot of trial and error to teach myself the subtle techniques required to achieve a broad spectrum of successful naturally dyed colors. In the end, I felt good about the yarn and dye ingredients I had finally found and chosen to move forward with.