I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Part 2 of an interview with Andrea Sanabria.
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It sounds to me like something personal in that way. As an aside, you would know better than I would, have you looked at the amount of carbon footprint from synthetic fibres compared to natural fibres?
Right, I think at the end I do take it personally because of what I have seen. What pushed me is that Latin America produces a lot of raw material that is high quality. I think the first article I wrote for Trusted Clothes was about farming in Latin America because we are changing our ways to become better.
What I think is silly is that we produce high quality coffee, food, and textiles, and it all goes abroad. All of the footprint you’re reducing by changing your ways of production, it needs to be transported to the other side of the world. All your savings went out, again! Actually, we aren’t producing it for us. We’re producing it for them (developed countries). You hardly find those in the local market. Then we get really low quality products imported from Asia, and so on, we follow trends. We follow the American look.
Low quality products from these far away countries coming all the way to Peru… In my logic, this doesn’t make any sense. You’re making high quality fibres and not even using them. You’re sending them far, far away. So, though my idea, initially, was to produce high quality clothing to sell in Europe where people actually care about manufacture… seeing the situation in my country. I figured this was impossible, something had to be done.
In my eyes, we have full potential. We’re just not seeing it. At the end, it’s a matter of misinformation. It’s not a matter of money. The price is not even that high.
You founded La Petite Mort, organic streetwear company, where “la petite mort” is translated as “little death” or as a popular reference to a sexual orgasm. How do these two relate to one another?
The inspiration for the company is, first, to develop an alternative to streetwear, common streetwear, that we wear every day… but in organic cotton. Farther than organic, I’ve chosen to work with Pima cotton. You have several types of cotton. The pima one is the cotton that has a longer fiber. So, when you do the textiles, it’s going to be softer. You notice that immediately when touching a t-shirt. I really want people to relate the brand to the substance. I decided to work with the best that I could find to make these pieces. If you look at the brand, it’s not really about statement pieces. It’s a regular t-shirt, so it better be a good one! I also try to make it very approachable.
The second is also that it’s environmentally friendly. I wanted to develop the brand with a lower impact, of course.
Then, the inspiration for the name brand… la petite mort is, of course, the orgasm. It is actually the moment of the orgasm that lasts maybe half a second. As if you were dead for an instant. It goes farther than orgasm itself. It is the feeling of emptiness – total, ultimate freedom, it is what people look for when they do yoga or meditation, or reach nirvana. It’s just another way to put it.
I chose it because when I learned the meaning of it. I thought, “Wow! This is so true, we all look for this” Even before I had the brand, I had this concept in my mind, back of my mind. So, I decided that when the time came to grab it. I am having trouble with it because the new generations of French do not really understand or make the connection with la petite mort. It’s kind of sad as a name.
Once they get it, they connect to it, some of them. (Laughs) And once you do, it’s hard to forget, right? I don’t do the whole la petite mort when working in Latin America, because French is hard! In Spanish I use the short La P.M. standing for la puta madre, which means something super cool. It’s slang, urban slang.
To me, La Petite Mort, is the ultimate nirvana. There’s no other name to call it. I don’t want to use a yogi name! (Laughs)
Any concluding feelings or thoughts about sustainable fashion?
I’m going to say it is a lot of work. Sometimes, I feel like the brand, if I didn’t mention “sustainable,” it would run even better because when you take this approach people immediately back away. I think there is a lot of clichés around it. That’s why when I try to communicate I try to be very soft, very positive, and not to make people feel guilty. To this point, I think fashion has been sold in the wrong way.
I wish there was more of this movement in Latin America. I know there are organizations working on it over there, but the road is still long. So, I take it personally to help raise consciousness. It’s crazy. We are the ones that get affected the most in the developing countries. That’s all that.
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Original publication on www.trustedclothes.com.
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Image Credit: Getty Images.