INNOVATORS
Slow-Cooked Chic
Natalie Chanin created a sensational new design — a "slow design" fashion house that thrives on native art and community nurture.
By Nancy Mann Jackson
Fashion designer and entrepreneur Natalie Chanin has built a reputation among the fashion elite in New York and across Europe, but she says her hometown of Florence, Ala., is still the best place to operate her business, Alabama Chanin.
Chanin's story has been chronicled over and again in heaviest glossies — WWW, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire and In Style — and her products are racked in boutiques across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. But they are created in an unassuming warehouse and design center in north Alabama.
Operating from a smaller town with a slower pace is essential to the pattern Chanin chose for her business. Alabama Chanin is recognized as a leader in the slow design and sustainable industry movements — a new business model that also has global implications.
“We seek to be a sustainable company, one that creates beauty and meaning without creating excess waste or destroying natural resources,” Chanin says. “We do not live as though there is no tomorrow; rather, we live as though we know there will be.”
From Manhattan to Lovelace Crossroads
Chanin never set out to establish a company that would be a leader in sustainability. After spending a decade as a stylist and designer in Europe, Chanin found herself in New York City with a party to go to and nothing to wear. She deconstructed a t-shirt, then hand stitched it back together with the seams on the outside and appliqués on the front. The shirt was a hit, and Chanin began taking orders for similar designs from friends. When she could no longer keep up with demand, Chanin began searching for a New York manufacturer to produce the garments for her. Because every piece was a unique original, no factory could produce them cost-effectively.
“I had an epiphany moment,” Chanin says. “I had been sewing these shirts, thinking I had come up with something new, and then I realized [the stitch I was using] looked like a quilting stitch. I realized it wasn’t something new; it was the same type of stitching my grandmother had been doing all her life.”
Chanin returned to Lovelace Crossroads, on the outskirts of Florence, to talk to the women she knew would be quilting at the community center. Most of them were elderly and uninterested in a paying job, but they thought other area seamstresses could do the work. Chanin ran a simple ad in the local newspaper looking for "Part Time Hand Stitching and Quilting." She had 60 responses. About 20 of the women had the skills necessary to create Chanin’s designs, so the work began.
When Chanin took the first set of garments to a New York buyers’ show, she didn’t just sell the completed pieces; she also took orders for dozens more like them. The Alabama seamstresses agreed to fill the orders, and a company was born.
Beginning with those first 20 stitchers, Chanin’s company has always relied on the women of north Alabama and surrounding areas to create the handmade garments that are sold under her Alabama Chanin label. Many of the stitchers were formerly employed by the region’s once-thriving textile industry, and Chanin says one of the foundations of the company is a commitment to encouraging economic development in an area that has lost scores of textile jobs as a result of the NAFTA legislation. The company currently employs five full-time workers and a stream of up to 150 artisans who stitch garments from home.
“It has always been a part of our mission as a company to bring as much work as possible into our community and to our artisans,” Chanin says.
A New Kind of Business Model
While Alabama Chanin’s primary business is designing and making clothing, the process by which the work is done has led to the development of “a new kind of business model,” Chanin says. It’s a business that strives to use local, recycled materials; to make a positive impact on its community; and to leave its corner of the earth in better shape than which it was found.
For instance, the company uses lean method manufacturing; nothing is made until an order is confirmed and only needed materials are kept on hand. Nothing goes to waste in the manufacturing process: Scraps from clothing production are integrated into home furnishings products such as pillows, trims and bedding. Additional scraps are used to construct “upcycled” furniture such as farm chairs and wardrobes. Through ongoing recycling and up-cycling, Alabama Chanin is approaching its goal of becoming a zero waste office and manufacturer, Chanin says.
While building her company is a priority, Chanin is also interested in building more sustainable communities everywhere and in fostering an appreciation for domestic arts and handmade garments. She often holds lectures and workshops at universities, organizations and other businesses to share her story and techniques and encourage others in various industries to adopt a locally-reliant, sustainable approach to business.
Because each garment is handmade, some taking weeks to complete, Alabama Chanin clothing is expensive. But Chanin is committed to sharing the tradition of hand stitching with people of all economic backgrounds, so she’s finding other ways to make her designs accessible. She’s recently published her second book, "Alabama Studio Style" (Stewart Tabori Chang, March 2010), which offers instructions and clothing patterns for readers to make their own Alabama Chanin-style garments. She is currently developing workshops to be led by individuals trained to teach Alabama Chanin techniques in their own communities.
Nancy Mann Jackson is a freelance contributor to Business Alabama. She lives in Florence.
“Reprinted by permission of Business Alabama”