For more than two decades, artisan fashion brand Alabama Chanin has been deeply committed to the ideas of sustainable design, preserving craft traditions, and producing locally and ethically with the highest possible quality standards.
Founder Natalie Chanin is passionate about working with artisans, makers, creators, and storytellers to produce and share handmade garments and products that forge relationships — from the farm to the factory to the end user, who infuses the product or garment with her own story throughout its life.
A native Alabaman, Chanin believes the power of storytelling can connect us to the past and help us create a better future, an idea she finds especially relevant working in the shadow of the complex and brutal legacy of the textile industry in the American South. Chanin interweaves her passion for creating and history with the power of storytelling through Project Threadways, a nonprofit organization with a mission to document, study, and interpret history, community, and power through the lens of fashion and textiles.
“From raw material to finished goods, we seek to understand the impact of textiles on our community, nation, and world,” states the Project Threadways website. “Project Threadways connects people, places, and materials through design, making, and education — with cultural heritage, craft preservation, and creative placemaking at the core of our work.”
That conviction around the power of connection comes to life in Chanin’s local community in Florence, a creative town in the northwest corner of Alabama known as the Shoals. There, Chanin’s The School of Making® acts as a community hub where makers share an open exchange of ideas and creativity through workshops, experiences, and the shared exploration of materials, tools, and supply chains.
“We believe that good things take time — and last a lifetime,” Chanin says.
In this interview, Natalie Chanin speaks with Fibershed about preserving cultural histories, the important role of research and scholarship, and her vision of the future of the textile industry.
Fibershed: Project Threadways strongly emphasizes documenting and preserving the cultural stories & oral histories behind textiles. What are some of the stories you’ve encountered, and how do they shape your vision of a thriving future for the textile industry?
Natalie Chanin: So much of it is about making visible what is usually invisible. I love this line that Dr. Carrie Barske-Crawford (a collaborator, board member, and scholar) wrote:
We are surrounded by textiles — the clothes we wear, the linens we sleep on, the rugs under our feet — but we do not think much about them. However, if we stop and think for a moment, we see a story that involves wars, mass enslavement, small-town economics, huge trends in agriculture and architecture, and more. So, just for a moment — while you have some free time — think about what you are wearing. Who made it? Where did it come from? What material is it? What will happen to it when you no longer want it? You may be surprised by the answers to some of those questions.
Rosanne Cash also made the point that every dress or shirt — especially a woman’s — tells a rich story. It’s a story about people, and place, and culture. When we begin to see textiles as a cultural product tied to people and place rather than “things,” we will think more deliberately about how those things are made (and where and by whom).
Some of my favorite stories: Katie Knowles, one of our Project Threadways Symposium presenters, through her research about Sarah Tate’s Things, and Janneken Smucker and the TVA roots of the Black Power movement. In our oral histories, I think of Jimmy Shaw, a one-time dye-tub operator at the local factory Tee-Jays, now superintendent at Florence City Schools; Earnest Mendoza, who immigrated from Mexico and works in the cotton gin at Red Land Cotton down the road; and Loretta Pettway Bennett, a second-generation Gee’s Bend quilter who is keeping that community’s traditions alive.
Fibershed: How does Project Threadways’ focus on creative placemaking contribute to your vision of an ideal future for communities involved in textile production? What changes do you hope to see in these communities?
NC: This is an example of a placemaking story we’ve worked on:
The Shoals’ long history of textiles begins with the Native Chickasaw and Cherokee nations, who grew cotton and produced textiles in the 1700s. By 1856, three textile factories operated in Lauderdale County, processing cotton grown by enslaved people. The Civil War ended slavery, but sharecropping ensured that cotton production continued. In the early 1900s, local cotton buyer Homer L. Reeder located his warehouse in downtown Florence on Seminary Street, creating a Cotton District. East Florence mills fostered a thriving industrial community, and in the 1970s, Florence became known as the “T-shirt capital of the world.” Following NAFTA, factories that once employed thousands shuttered as manufacturing was outsourced overseas. Today, not a single marker or wayside in the Shoals speaks to this important, complicated history. —Project Threadways research overseen by Dr. Carrie Barske-Crawford
Creative placemaking helps us see our community more clearly. It makes a whole industry that has been mostly erased from the local consciousness present. Investment in work as an integral part of community life, as outlined in A Pattern Language, includes the sharing of spaces among people who are living, working, and making that build more vibrant and secure communities, where children and community members can see themselves — and the products — within the work. Through this, we see new possibilities for ourselves. And the work of oral history and storytelling is replicable in many communities.
Fibershed: What does it feel like to be part of your ideal fiber and textile future?
NC: This is a BIG question with no easy answer. My hope (and work) is that we have great quality, clean and collaborative processes, prosperous work that is inclusive for all, and long-lasting products that are filled with beauty.
Fibershed: Imagine everything goes right — what does the future of Project Threadways look like in the next decade? How do you see its impact growing?
NC: This is a multi-pronged response:
- A downtown location that tells a full-circle story of textiles. Expanded learning opportunities for diverse populations (students, low-income, detention centers, etc.). Reconnection in our society to making, to slow processes, to the people and places that have paved the way for this work.
- Fibershed Southeast is a robust platform that connects sustainable farmers/producers and end consumers of our region — at all sizes — throughout the supply chain.
- A restorative cotton project that joins all of the above into one cohesive whole.
- On a larger scale: I hope to see advancements in the science of natural dyes to mid-range to large vat quantities in the very near future.
Fibershed: What role do you believe research and scholarship should play in shaping the future of textile and fashion industries? How can these efforts drive systemic change?
NC: I think of the word “power” in our mission statement and what that means. Research and scholarship can elucidate systems and dynamics that get obscured because of the vast, global, capitalist landscape in which textiles operate. When you can see clearly what happened before, you have more appreciation for how we got here. And a clearer sense of what change needs to look like.
Of course, research can also be seen as the science of progressing the industry forward — like with the natural dyes I mentioned.
Fibershed: Where do you see the most critical need for funding and support in your ideal future? How would this support help realize the full potential of your vision?
NC: Building, Operations!, and People. There are so many good funding opportunities out there, but few for the fundamental work of (small, nonprofit) manufacturing in America.
This article is the fourth in a series in which we interview textile-system leaders about their ideal fiber futures. Read the first three articles in this series: