Botanical Colors founder Kathy Hattori was recently interviewed by the New York City based apparel production and ethical design facility, Brooklyn Fashion+Design Accelerator on natural dyes and color in the fashion industry.
BF+DA writer Kelly Drennan writes: “Taking transparency to the next level is traceability – a system that provides information on the farming, production, packing, distribution, transportation, and sales processes of a particular item of clothing. By reducing the difficulty of accessing this information on a product’s life cycle, traceability has the potential to increase conscious consumption.”
If in fact, consumers are wanting to know more about where their clothing comes from, then surely they will want to know more about where the color in their clothing comes from, after all, neon surely doesn’t grow on trees.
Drennan writes: “This month, The North Face launched the Backyard Hoodie – an effort to source a piece of clothing from within 150 miles of the brand’s California headquarters. Given that their supply chain is global – with cotton grown in the U.S or India, and cut and sewn in Asia or Central America – this was no small feat. But in 2012, the North Face teamed up with Fibershed, a project that brings together local artisans, growers, spinners, knitters, ginners and manufacturers to make homegrown production easier, to make this hoodie as close to home as possible. The only glitch was finding knitters within the Bay area, which resulted in having to source a mill in North Carolina. But overall The North Face succeeded in both local production and traceability.”
“Kathy Hattori, founder of natural dye site Botanical Colors, who consulted on the Backyard Hoodie by providing the natural dye ingredients necessary to change the color-grown cotton into a darker shade suitable for fashion says “Customers are requesting Made in the USA products, and if they perceive the value, they will spend more.”