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Rebecca Burgess's book Fibershed is reviewed here by Simon Fairlie.
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The UK fibre industry faces some key challenges. Thanks to industrialisation and globalisation our once thriving wool and flax textile industries have declined to the point where we now have no commercial processing facilities for plant fibres and very limited facilities for processing wool. Garments made in the UK from homegrown wool are available only to a niche luxury market.
Farmers looking to have their fleeces spun are restricted in options by the volume of fleece they shear from their herd each year. Mini-mills offer a traceable service for processing a single fleece into a ball of yarn, but at premium prices. At the other end of the scale our largest commercial facilities process eight ton lots as standard, and blend fibres aggregated from British Wool depots across the country to create homogenised, quality-consistent bales fit for mass production.
There are a few facilities that process volumes between these two extremes, and can tailor their service to deal with different kinds of wool, but they are in high demand. A one year lead time at these mills is not unusual and they have limited space for storing fleece, so farmers have to work out a system for shearing, storing and transporting their fleece to tie in with the mills' availability and their own agricultural calendar. Meanwhile sheep go on producing wool year after year and must be shorn regardless. An annually renewable natural resource becomes a frustrating burden without the systems in place to process it.
These problems are compounded by the low price of wool which is viewed only as a by-product of the sheep-meat industry. The second half of the 20th century saw a shift away from diverse breeds of dual-purpose sheep suited to regional landscapes, and fit for both meat and wool, to larger, heavier breeds focussed solely on meat production. Fibre quality tends to decline as meat productivity increases, so modern sheep breeds in most cases supply a coarse, white fibre that is excellent for carpet manufacture but no longer suited to the level of cloth and garment production for which UK fleece was once famed. Since this shift was happening in parallel with the boom in synthetic, petroleum-derived fibres, it's not hard to see how we've arrived at today's state of play.
Nevertheless, there are increasing examples of "flock-to-shop," or "farm-to-yarn" products developed by farmers and smallholders who are determined to do things differently, and supply viable woollen products as well as meat through regenerative farming systems. Successful products depend on clever marketing strategies, authentic story-telling and access to markets. Many of the highest profile homegrown products are supplied by first-generation farmers who arrived at fibre farming with design or marketing acumen developed elsewhere. Perhaps they also come with a naïve, positive outlook that values wool as more than a by-product. These farmers add value to their raw fleece by selecting for interesting characteristics — natural shades other than white, or interesting textures or lustre — and by making decisions during breeding, lambing and shearing that are focussed on continual improvement of these fibres.
Enabling homegrown garments to reach a wider market requires large-scale systems change. Fibershed supporters have been testing the waters in the UK over the last five years, through regional projects and case studies such as Bristol Cloth. A community is gathering, now formalised in the South West and South East of Britain, that includes fibre farmers, mills, textile and fashion designers and manufacturers, as well as retail stores and education providers, to assess how the Fibreshed concept is relevant here.
What is reassuring is that this conversation is already happening with regard to food production. For years the discussion around fibres has been a few steps behind. The strength of Fibreshed lies in its focus on regenerative farming, which provides a framework for considering food and fibre systems as one and the same.
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The South East England Fibreshed
The SE Fibreshed, established this year, works out of Plaw Hatch, a community owned biodynamic farm in West Sussex. Covering Surrey, Hampshire, Sussex and Kent, it is uniquely placed to connect sheep farmers and fibre growers with the fashion industry in London. The long-term goal is to disrupt the traditional hierarchical supply chain with designers at the top and the producers and makers at the bottom. We host visits of fashion designers to Plaw Hatch to learn about regenerative agriculture and local fibres. We are in the early stages of creating a fibre and maker/designer directory and are seeking funding to create a series of garments with regenerative fibre producers.
Deborah Barker www.southeastenglandfibreshed.org.uk
The South West England Fibreshed
Our Fibreshed began in 2015 with the launch of the Bristol Cloth, a collaboration between several producers that explored the possibility of building a bioregional production system for woven cloth in the South West. The Bristol Cloth project has since crowdfunded its first run of cloth. The recently launched SW England Fibreshed visual directory profiles a growing community of fibre farmers, processors, makers, brands and others who are aligned with the Fibreshed ethos of working locally and collaboratively with the native resources that we have available. This is a conversation that will unfold at key fashion and farming related events in 2020.
Emma Hague www.southwestenglandfibreshed.co.uk