Tara St. James is a sustainable design strategy and responsible supply chain consultant. Read our interview with her below!
Can you tell us about yourself? What led you to focus on sustainability in fashion?
My background is in fashion design and product development. I started my career by studying fashion, and then worked in the industry as a designer and product developer for several years. Then I started my own line with a company that I was working for.
While I was researching materials for my collection, I started to realize that there were alternatives on the market. This was in 2004, when there was not a lot of information about sustainability in the industry. We were just starting to learn about alternatives like organic cotton. So I started changing the materials in the collection to more responsible materials like organic cotton, and hemp, and Tencell and linen, and a few others. And I noticed that when I started talking to customers about it, they were really very intrigued. So I continued doing research and continued looking for those materials and sharing them with others. And that began an almost 20 year span of research into those materials and into sustainability!
Slowly the industry started catching up, and other people were having the same conversations. I started networking with people who are already doing that work, and I started my own brand in 2009, called Study New York, and that one focused on zero waste and local production in New York. I also started teaching on sustainable textile sourcing and that really allowed me to continue that research into materials and how they can be measured against one another. It gave me some insight into the next generation of materials as well. One of the questions I get most often from new designers and students is, “What is the most sustainable material?” And to be honest with you, I don't really believe in that statement. Because I think that there's not one material that will save the industry. I think there is a need for diversity in materials, otherwise, we would just have the problem of growth that we do now, basically.
Okay, so that basically answers my question about which textile you believe is the most sustainable! But which material is your favorite, if you had to pick one?
I've always gravitated towards menswear oriented fabrics, because I studied menswear, so it gives me a little bit more of a preference in that direction. But even within that category, there's so much diversity. I've always gravitated towards the shirting and the outerwear and the heavier fabrics. And then the more heritage oriented fabrics, the traditional ones, like woven shirts, or suiting, or woolen coats, things like that. I think the more important thing, what I really fall in love with, is the story behind the fabric. The farmers who are making it, the way it's made, the journey versus the material itself.
How do you define sustainability? And what are some ways we can be more sustainable?
How I define sustainability, specifically in fashion, is using production and extraction methods that don’t compromise our future ability to survive. Future generations, future animals, future people on the planet. However, I think there's many more definitions in the industry.
As individual consumers, not as business people, I think asking questions is really important. Probably some of the same advice that I would give to other designers would be quite similar; knowing where your things came from before buying them. I think that's really important and quite hard to do–asking questions of the brands that you support and trying to understand where products were made, and then aligning with a set of values that are personal to you. Not everybody is going to have the same definition of sustainability or the same sort of passion about certain things. Some people may really care about animal welfare. Some people may really care about human welfare and social justice. Others may just exclusively want to focus on the environment. I think all of those causes are really important, and actually, it's quite difficult for brands to tackle all of them. It's also quite difficult for individual people to care about all of them. I'm not saying that we can't focus on more than one, but I do think it's important to pick a direction and then go from there, before trying to tackle everything. As consumers, I think, also, we're faced with choices that sometimes can be challenging and contradictory. But we have to make a choice, and that's not easy to do, but it's important.
Can you talk more about the difference between how consumers and business people can approach sustainability?
There's sustainable ways of approaching business, and sustainable ways to live your life, and those are quite different. Buying organic food, for example, or not buying as much, or trying to buy second-hand clothing and furniture before buying new, all of those are fairly easy and recognizable tips that would be given to individuals. But when it comes to business, it's a whole different world, you know, I would tackle it in a very different way.
As a consumer, I often feel like we have to choose between sustainability and affordability. What do you think about this issue? And how could we solve it?
Yeah, it's a good question, and it's a really tough one to tackle. We've been conditioned to think of clothes as being readily cheap and affordable, and now we see these alternatives that are being made in a responsible way, and all of a sudden, they seem much more expensive. In fact, in most cases, I wouldn't say that that stigma is true: sustainable products are actually more fairly costed, because ou're paying the true price of what it costs to make something.
The flip side of that is that it generally tends to be smaller brands or designers, who are making less products, so they don't benefit from the huge scale of production that say, Target or H&M would. We have to get away from the stigma of having clothes having artificially low prices. That's going to take a really long time and a lot of education, which is why websites like yours, and people, especially younger people, need to be educated and start to think differently about how they curate their closet and tackle these issues in the industry, and think twice before buying things at all.
What are some ways you think we can help prevent or move away from overconsumption?
It's a really hard one, because I think humans are prone to just wanting to consume!It's a really hard cycle to get out of, even for myself, and I'm very knowledgeable. I think about all of the issues in the industry, and I still find myself wanting to consume. I don't envy us in the future. But I do think it's absolutely necessary for us to do that in order to create a planet that is livable with resources that are manageable. Just thinking twice before you buy anything, and asking questions about how and where it was made, and seeing if there's alternatives, you know? It doesn't mean we have to stop consuming altogether. I think we can find the resale, and the secondhand, and the more ethically made products, or swap with friends, or find alternatives that are available to us without curbing our need to consume.
You mentioned the fashion industry has several issues, which is something I agree with, but which issue is the biggest that you think that the fashion industry needs to face and deal with right now?
That's the toughest question. It’s so interconnected. If we solve all of the problems with human welfare, and start to pay better wages to the people who work in the industry, it's not going to fix all of the environmental problems. Ultimately, if we're not solving for climate change, then we're not going to have fashion. We’ll have a dead planet. Same with biodiversity. And same with animal welfare. So everything is very, very interconnected. It's not just one simple tackle that we can make. It’s what I was talking about before, about choosing a path. I think that that can be done by different companies and different people, because there is still diversity in the approach and the solutions. But I don't think that one of those problems is the one that we need to focus on. I think, unfortunately, we have to do everything all at once!
Which path do you, as a person, primarily focus on?
I try to tackle waste. I'm very passionate about the way things are made–I really care about the fabric and the people who made it and the land it was made on. Because I feel that way, because I'm so passionate about the fabric itself, I think that to waste it is really problematic. I don't want to see more waste happening in the fashion industry, not in making the fabric, not selling it, or in cultivating fibers and having them go to waste, making the clothes and having them sit in a warehouse, or even making the clothes and selling them and then having them go to landfill. I think all of that is considered waste and needs to be eliminated.
I agree! Thank you again for taking the time to talk to me!
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