Fashion: It had a life before you
For the past month and a half, I have been living a new life beyond what I could have imagined. Every day I learn something new about myself and the world around me. Today, I learned how much it takes to create one of my favorite things – fabric.
Located just about 30 minutes outside of Florence’s city center, Prato, the second largest city in Tuscany. Prato is home to the textile company Nova Fides, which focuses on sustainable textile manufacturing. Since 1964, they have been creating and supplying fabrics for top brands like Indigo Textiles, Burberry, and many more. Accompanied by my classmates, I was able to visit Nova Fides and learn about their factories and the process of fabric making. Our tour started with a visit to their materials center, which housed natural sheep wools, fibers, and old clothing that would all be used to produce new textiles. My attention was caught immediately by the colorful mounds of old pieces. One of the owners explained to us that the factory was given old clothing that they then created into new threads and then new fabrics.
Fabrics are created from thread, which is spun from natural or synthetic fibers that come from wool, cotton, linen, and so on. To start, the natural fibers need to be sourced from animals, plants, or synthetics and then spun into fine threads. From there, the threads can be dyed more or used naturally. Next, the threads are put into large machines called looms, which hold 1,000 to 10,000 threads that are each meticulously hand placed (for large machines, it can take up to two weeks to thread). The threads are loomed together to create fabric. That is just the beginning of a piece of clothing being created.
At the end of the tour, we had the amazing opportunity of visiting their inventory building and picking out a few of our fabrics to use for our final term projects. I picked a few wools, cottons, and linens and will be creating a few pieces for our end-of-year fashion show that I am so excited for.
So far, this was one of the most important experiences I have had during my time abroad. Clothing lives a life before it even makes it to your hands. It takes time to create fabric, and then to create that clothing, and then to make it into your closet. Along with time, it takes craft, labor, and energy to create each individual piece of clothing. Now, imagine how much time and energy it takes for one piece of clothing in the mounds at Nova Fide to be reused again into a new fabric.
Nova Fide is doing what very few in the fashion industry are doing: caring about what they are creating and where it is going.
Visiting this factory and learning their process made me appreciate where my clothing is coming from and how important it is to take time to consider what I am consuming on this earth.
I can’t pretend like I don’t want to buy a new piece of clothing every week or that the new styles at Zara don’t catch my eye. But I have made an effort to practice what I believe in and really think before I buy another pretty top or sparkly heels. My favorite outfits are the ones that have the unique accessory I thrifted or the beloved piece I’ve cherished for many years. Fashion doesn’t have to come from the latest style or the hottest trends – it comes from the love of the clothing and the care you give it.
<3 Taylor
Learn more about Nova Fides' sustainable efforts in textile making: Sustainable Process
