LA Textile at CMC DTLA

September 25 - 27, 2024

Southern California Fibershed participated in this Fall’s LA Textile trade show event at Brookfield Properties’ California Market Center in DTLA. On Wednesday we delivered a talk, entitled New Paradigms and Enchantment: Why Textiles Matter.

Over the course of three days our booth was visited by artisan designers sourcing local and natural fibers, consultants supporting emerging brands, educators from several of Southern California’s colleges and universities, and a heartening number of the curious and the soon-to-be-converted! Our friends at California Product Stewardship Council were also in attendance.

Thank you to the So Cal Fibershed team, including costume designer Morgan DeGroff for invaluable support and MacGyver-esque creativity setting up our booth (we truly made something our of nothing!), fashion and environmental sustainability consultant Nicholas Brown for introducing us to contacts and colleagues, Akintunde Ahmad of Ade Dehye (based in West Africa and Inglewood, CA) for sharing hand-spun, hand-dyed, hand-woven pieces from his collection, and Margy Sankey for shipping us her striking Osage Orange hand-dyed, felted wool jacket (details below). In sum, we showcased not only the local fibers in our ecosystem: wool, alpaca, cashmere, and cotton, and our local artisans, but also the depth and range of the Fibershed ethos and how our shared principles are practiced throughout the country and the world.

We fielded loads of questions about sourcing, capacity, natural dyeing, and even basic material questions about where and how wool and cotton, for example, are raised / farmed and turned into fiber.