When I think of the fashion industry, I can’t help reminiscing on my middle school addiction to Project Runway, the quintessential 2000s reality TV competition show that placed emerging designers in a creative vacuum, tasking them with designing garments under wildly difficult material and time constraints. Host Heidi Klum’s iconic catchphrase echoes in my mind: “In fashion, one day you’re in, the next you’re out.” While in the show she was addressing the heartbroken designer being sent home after (probably) spending 14 hours hot gluing coffee stirrers to muslin just to get demolished in critique by Michael Kors, she was also speaking frankly about the ephemerality of the fashion industry. What’s hot in fashion has forever been in a state of flux. Trends are constantly changing, calculated by runways and magazines touting new looks to buy, with customers’ taste evolving in parallel. Trends dictate the industry on the show too; challenges were refreshed each season and new materials bought from the almost gratuitously packed shelves at Mood, the fabric depot contestants shop at each episode. Athleisure one season, furs the next, designers and showrunners alike were sure to keep within the confines of whatever the fashion zeitgeist was at the time — lasting only so long as that trend was “in.”
The transience of trends has only gotten shorter. The digital domination of TikTok, a digital juggernaut trained to shorten our attention spans, has accelerated this exchange to make “microtrends.” Flashes of certain patterns, brands or accessories now last a month or a week instead of a season, and new style personas that define a substyle of trendy clothing appear daily. From coastal grandma to mob wife to ballet-core, tomato girl or rat boyfriend, Gen Z’s knack for style taxonomy has disrupted the entire life cycle of clothing. Influencers now decide what’s in, exponentially inflating demand for new designs to be created all at once. In response, behemothic fast fashion retailers like SHEIN or ASOS exacerbate already-unethical labor to replicate these new styles as quickly as possible using the cheapest materials available (often synthetic fossil fuel-based fibers) to swiftly get it into store, all in the hopes of capitalizing on the microtrend that is likely already on the way out by the time it hits the hanger. There are problems in nearly every stage of this process, but perhaps greatest among them is just how bad it is for the Earth. Overconsumption, at an all-time high in the fashion industry, is generating millions of tons of textile waste and millions more unwanted products landing in landfills while also accounting for 10% of the global carbon dioxide output and one-fifth of the 300 million tons of plastic produced globally each year.
Like the overstuffed aisles of Mood on Project Runway, the fashion industry has been operating in a trend-driven surplus. Too many clothes are being made too quickly with too many shortcuts, resulting in lower quality garments selling for cheap at the environment’s expense. Luckily, folks have started to catch on, and the call to disrupt this system has been growing more vocal than ever. In the last few years alone, hundreds of global brands have pledged vows of sustainability, beginning to mend the infrastructure of their supply chain to be more eco-conscious as a direct result of the growing public outcry. While some of these motions have been panned by critics for greenwashing (making misleading or virtue signaling sustainability claims to consumers without actual significant progress), the desire for sustainable fashion seems to be a trend that is not going away anytime soon.
And at West Virginia University, the flagship institution of a state far more often associated with coal mines than catwalks, eco-conscious fashion is taking root where it matters most: the classroom.
(Left to Right) REAGAN SCOTCHEL, MARY ANNA BLAINE and SANAHJI MONIQUE
While most fashion programs focus on garment construction using mass-produced synthetic blends, WVU’s fashion program has sown new seeds for the industry, including the newly-forged Farm to Fashion class. This years-in-the-making curriculum is revolutionizing the way student designers understand the industry by partnering with the University’s agriculture program and letting them get their hands dirty. Directly addressing the often-neglected conversations about where fibers originate and the immensely laborious processes involved in creating textiles, designers are granted the opportunity to learn the rarely-taught process of harvesting fibers and creating textiles with hands-on laboratory work in soil management, animal welfare, and plant science, effectively creating a living classroom. Working in tandem with existing textiles and sustainability courses, students are leaving the program with a regenerative, ecosystemic lens adept for ‘slow fashion’ — a distinctly different point of view than many of their peers across the globe.
Chelsea LaReina Hidalgo is one such designer. She graduated in May 2024 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Fashion, Dress and Merchandising. Her senior collection and other design work serve as a case study for the type of designer leaving the program. Chelsea made her three looks using fully biodegradable textiles, natural dyes and recycled wool. It took months just to produce usable materials to construct with, and much more of her time was spent in the lab or on her grandma’s farm than it was behind a sewing machine. But according to Chelsea, the long and slow process was well worth it in the fight against fast fashion.
I sat down with Chelsea after a photoshoot in the WVU Evansdale Greenhouse to learn more about her, her process, her inspiration and her education.
Tell me about Chelsea!
“I was born and raised in West Virginia. My mom’s family is from a little town called Farmington. We grew up in Mannington, right next door. I spent a lot of my childhood on my grandma’s family farm called Davys Run. It was a holler, and my whole family on my mom’s side lived on the same road. So, I’d just walk around and be at my uncle’s house and at my grandma’s. That was my childhood — playing outside, gardening with Gram. That’s definitely where a lot of inspiration for this work came from.”
How does someone who grew up in a holler on a farm in West Virginia get the fashion bug?
“My mom was very much a fashionista. She always had trendy clothing and was always dressing up. And us being from a small town, that was hard for me when I was a kid. She was always dressing so out-there compared to everyone else in their farm-core boots and plaid. My mom was the opposite. I definitely played around and experimented with fashion having access to her closet. She was always super encouraging of me being my own person. She let me style myself from the time I could walk. She let me do my own hair for my pictures in kindergarten — it looked crazy, but I was loving it! That definitely shaped me to not be afraid to do something. Plus, we had like every single issue of Vogue. Anytime we’d get a new one, I’d be obsessed, flipping through and just dreaming that could be me.”
Before entering the fashion program, you started out studying animal nutritional sciences, then switched to business before landing on fashion design. What you’ve done now feels like the perfect marriage of your interests in animals, business, design and craft — can you talk more about that?
“You’re absolutely right. When I started in the program, I couldn’t have even imagined it being such a marriage of everything that I’ve ever wanted to do and saw myself doing until I found Farm to Fashion. I have never been happier because I love being involved in the entire process. The one thing that I didn’t love about the design program is that we’re using a lot of already made fabrics with a lot of microplastics. Garments that are not biodegradable and not good for the environment, like polyester or rayon — things that I don’t love and don’t want to put into the world. So I was like, how can I make something that will go back to the earth? When I found Farm to Fashion, I realized that that was a possibility and I could actually make my own textiles and they’d be completely natural and go back to the earth someday.”
What actually went into making these three looks?
“On my grandma’s farm we have a walnut tree. I found out that you can use black walnut hulls to dye fabric. You can use all sorts of things — avocado skins or onion skins — all sorts of natural things that grow and things that we eat. I knew I wanted to use something native to Appalachia, and when I found out about black walnuts I thought, ‘how perfect.’ That was a special connection — to collect them with my grandma, and then bring them here to the school to process them. I used the walnut hull and created a dye bath for all my fibers and fabrics. I used that as a base layer. And then I just need some texture, or I’m not happy. So I was like, I’ve got the walnuts, how can I make it more tree? I used a solution of baking flour and water to add the white birch tree fabric. Really, anything that I do is just playing. I’m playing around and experimenting and literally using beakers and wearing a lab coat in the textile lab. It’s just so fun for me.
My main inspiration was definitely being in nature. I love trees in general, because of the way they’re all connected underneath with the roots. I feel like it speaks volumes for how we’re all interconnected in the world — plants, humans, everybody on earth. And so that was the big overarching theme for the collection, interconnectedness and honoring the land better and how we can make a change to have a positive impact with fashion.
It saddens me how much we’ve gotten away from being slow, and going back to actually creating things with our hands. Taking a break from all the buzz and all the technology and going back to a simpler way of living. The main goal is that I wanted to slow down and be intentional. It’s also a super meditative process. You’re just sitting there with these garments, needle felting or dyeing, quiet by yourself. It’s a nice journey — a lot better than the bustle and stress and chaos.”
The process feels uniquely Appalachian with its connection to slower, complex hands-on craft. The fact that this is happening here feels like an apt fit.
“I think that anybody that lives in West Virginia or was raised around here can look back generations and there’s somebody in your family that was creating garments out of rice sacks or creating fashion and doing this artisanal work in some way, shape or form. At some point, it stopped carrying from one generation to the next. I would love to revive that in all of Appalachia. And it’s so community based as well! Like quilting, it is such a community thing. You do it with your friends over tea –— I love that. I’m just so granny-core in that way. And, you know, I think that’s special and something special about Appalachia.”
It surprised me that there’s so much more science involved. You picture mannequins and sewing machines, but so much of what you were doing was scientific?
“I didn’t start getting into learning that side of fashion, until I was in Textiles with Beth [Shorrock]. You learn all about fibers, and all the different things that go into creating a textile. I gained a lot of knowledge there. With creating a textile I also learned how horrible for the environment dyeing fabrics is. It gets in the waterways, the water runoff is terrible. There’s a documentary out there about Zara specifically. They show the waterways near where the factory is and everything — all the plant life, all the aquatic life — completely died off. It’s horrible. And just think about that on a major scale! There are so many textile and fast-fashion factories all over the world. And not only are we polluting in waterways and natural ecosystems, but also landfills. It’s just not good that the clothing stays forever. Microplastics are getting into our water and environment. We all have microplastics in our bodies whether we want to believe it or not.”
Why was it important for you to go through this process rather than taking the much easier route?
“I think it’s just really important to be conscious. Conscious of everything that we consume, and everything that we create, and everything that we’re putting out into the world. What’s special about what we’re doing here is that we’re involved in every process of creating the garment. Back to taking care of the animals and animal husbandry, because you don’t get good wool unless you treat that animal well. I think it’s really honoring the land and everything we have here on earth.”
This agriculture and fashion fusion has been brewing in the school’s textile lab over the last couple of years, but Farm to Fashion just launched as an official course in the 2023-24 school year due in large part to the innovation of researcher and now adjunct professor Jordon Masters.
Jordon didn’t start in the fashion world. With his passion forged on farms in Greenbrier County, Jordon came to WVU to study horticulture and launched a specialty produce company post-grad. In the thick of 2020, he closed the door on his business and dove into his pandemic-era hobby of sewing his own clothes. It wasn’t until a “you two need to meet” prearranged Zoom meeting that Jordon met his future collaborator, WVU Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Merchandising Beth Shorrock. He mentioned a newfound love of sewing and a desire to go back to school for his master’s in agriculture. She told him about the wonders of natural dyes and invited him to pick indigo in her backyard. It was a match made in heaven.
What started as an interest in natural dyes quickly evolved into a focus on fiber production. Having raised sheep as a rancher, he knew firsthand the grueling and expensive process of turning raw fiber into clothing, and the lack of resources for farmers to participate, especially in West Virginia. The vast majority of farmers in the state raise sheep for meat, forming heaps of “waste wool” as a byproduct after shearing. From there, farmers that opt not to discard it have to ship their fibers cross-country for milling or drive to a regional wool pool, and wait between eight months to a year in hopes of obtaining 20 cents on the pound. Most don’t even bother, because it’s not worth the gas or postage.
Fast forward four years, Jordon completed his master’s and is well on his way to mastering a new innovation aimed at changing this grueling process by transforming waste wool into secondary income for farmers. Partnered with Beth, Jordon utilized an open-source digital design software to create micro mills that farmers can manage themselves. Combining his knowledge of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and the design file for the original spinning machine from HILO, a German design studio specializing in open-source hardware for textiles, Jordon has catapulted the free technology into an international movement rooted with small farmers in mind. Now, the technology is not only primed to help farmers, but it’s also become a foundational tool for teaching student designers the inner workings of regenerative, ecocentric design in the classroom for his Farm to Fashion class.
I hopped on a phone call with the WVU research assistant and instructor in-between a one-on-one milling lesson with one of his students to learn more about his work. Here’s the ‘shear’ truth of what Jordon had to say.
Photo courtesy of Paige Green
Walk me through developing the micro mill technology and where you are in the process now.
“I met with different people around the world who are working on open-source fiber processing technologies. And this group of us have been kind of just working tirelessly on implementing, designing, inventing, everything we can for open source fiber processing technologies. So, I’m working on wool and cotton, and my colleagues in the UK are working on flax for linen. We’re at the point now with our technology where we are taking raw fiber from farmers and converting it to yarn. Right now, we’re still in R&D mode. We are producing yarn, but right now what we’re really focused on is testing as many different breeds as we possibly can and finding all the limitations on the equipment.”
When I was in school at WVU, the fashion program was in the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources & Design. That was a combo I always thought was funny. Agriculture and fashion feel like separate worlds in a lot of people’s minds.
(Editor’s Note: the program is now moving into the College of Creative Arts as a part of WVU’s controversial ‘academic transformation’)
“My research is more ag [agriculture] related. I like making dresses and garments and cool things, but I am way more invested in the ag side. If there’s no benefit to the farmer, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing … For me, the class is bringing awareness and educating people on the relationship and interconnectedness between agriculture and fashion. It’s always been there, it’s just become very, very removed. Cotton’s always been and always will be an agricultural crop. Wool will always be an agricultural crop. But that relationship has been so far removed from one another. That’s what we’re trying to build back.”
Have you had any standout student successes? And in your personal work, any standout moments for you?
“One of them was a student who had went to a different university and started in fashion and dropped out of it because they learned just how terrible it is for the environment. So they came here and started studying environmental, soil and water sciences. They took this class as an elective, and it re-sparked their love for fashion! She realized that there is an alternative way to do it that’s not synthetic or disastrous. As for personal stuff, I’ll be honest, I get elated almost every day with what I’m working on with the micromill stuff. I get to talk about it with farmers, and I get to see their level of excitement for it. And that’s what gets me to keep doing it.”
I don’t know if it’s a generational aspect or educational settings like these, but it seems like a lot of young designers have a clear focus on sustainability in their work.
“They can’t really afford not to now. We’re at this point where sustainability isn’t a theoretical thing. It’s not something we can talk about and say, ‘You know, this would be great.’ We have to do this. There won’t be a future. I was reading a book recently called The Great Regeneration by Dorn Cox. It’s about open source technology and agriculture, and he made a really good point basically talking crap about the word ‘sustainability.’ Because like, is this what we want to sustain? That’s kind of the way I feel about this. What we have now is not something we want to sustain. We need to move past what we have now to something that’s more regenerative.”
Earlier this year, the fashion program capped off the spring semester with its annual fashion show. This year’s theme, “Fashioning A New Era,” speaks directly to changing tides. Ideologies from both the next generation of designers and the programming at the university level have sights set on the future with students encouraged to construct a seasonless, genderless capsule collection that utilizes sustainable techniques and technology. Models took to the runway in upcycled denim or salvaged deadstock fabric, hand-dyed natural linens and biodegradable cotton gowns — looks that have become more and more common with each of the program’s shows.
Long before the term “sustainable fashion” existed, Professor Beth Shorrock’s instincts about the adverse effects of synthetics in fashion laid the groundwork for the ecocentric work of the next generation of designers. From her own sustainable retail stores and the creative reuse of materials in collaboration with United Airlines to teaching eco-fashion classes at a multitude of universities, Beth is well-versed in the last two decades of sustainable fashion. As she found her place at WVU, she ventured to a conference in Boulder, Colorado, where she met Rebecca Burgess, the founder of Fibershed. “Fibershed was essentially looking at a regional approach to textile production,” Beth said. “Instead of growing your cotton in Texas and shipping it to India or China … why can’t it all stay within a 300-mile radius for instance?” And why can’t Fibershed find its place in West Virginia?
Beth set out to establish a sustainable textile industry that she didn’t see exist in the state yet. She constructed this dream with a handful of dedicated individuals who were striving to find the fashion industry’s niche in West Virginia. The agricultural history of the state made for a unique concoction of passion and resources with which to build sustainable infrastructure for the next generation of West Virginian designers. With more than 20 years of experience, her perplexity about the current exploitative and destructive state of the industry remains. She said, “If I can change even just a couple of people into thinking more about being ecocentric, I’ve done my job.”
Talk to me about your relationship with ecocentric design. Why has it always been such a big inspiration for you?
“Synthetics. Even before we knew how bad synthetics were, I think that I innately understood that natural fibers were better for our bodies and better for the environment, because you can just wash them. My big thing is, because I was in the clothing industry, I saw how much waste was just tossed. It’s still perfectly good, they’re just smaller pieces, there’s gotta be a way to piece them together.
I was asked to teach a course on quilt making when I was at the University of Rhode Island, and it wasn’t about just sitting down and quilting, it was about the history and the culture of quilting. I did a lot of research and discovered that during the Depression, when people didn’t have a lot of resources, they would use whatever they had, and flour sacks were kind of pretty. So, they would print little designs on them [flour sacks] and the women would save their flour sacks and then upcycle them into garments. When they couldn’t wear the garments anymore, they would cut them all up and use them for coverlets or quilts. The flour companies figured out that the prettier their bags were, the better they would sell, because they knew that eventually they were going to be made into something.
I was just always fascinated by the idea of taking something that’s for one purpose, but reusing it for another.”
Going off of that, how have you seen the impact on your students since starting the Farm to Fashion class?
“The impact is really understanding the amount of time and effort that goes into producing a fiber or textile. The design students are more aware of the global impact of the industry, but also understand what they can do to contribute in a more positive way by becoming maybe slow fashion designers or creating textiles from fibers that they’re processing themselves.
I think the little light bulb goes off when you see how many steps are involved and you’re looking at a t-shirt that’s $3, and you’re like, how can this be $3 when you have to go through all of these processes? A lot of humans are involved in all of those steps, too. I think it helps make things real and that was really the point. The biggest thing was trying to figure out the value. Once you understand how much time it takes, how could you possibly get paid enough to make a living doing this? That was kind of a wake-up call too.
There’s just a better way of doing things, but the lasting impact, I don’t know. My fear is that they’re just going to go back … It’s just really hard. I don’t know what the lasting impact is, but you have little gems like Chelsea [Hidalgo] who really do get it and are so passionate about it that that’s gonna be their focus no matter what.”
While the Farm to Fashion initiative is the first of its kind at the university, professors throughout WVU’s fashion program use their classes to highlight the essentiality of sustainable and ecocentric design. WVU Associate Professor of Fashion Design & Merchandising, Dr. Katie Baker Jones, specializes in fashion history with an emphasis on the portrayal of sustainable fashion in the media.
History has demonstrated that catastrophic events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the Rana Plaza Factory collapse in Bangladesh encourage the greater population to explore the exploitation behind the production of our garments. “The trick is to keep that conscientiousness always at the front of mind and … then it is fashion media’s job to tell consumers what to do about that,” Katie said about her research.
While these events are occurring in the world around us, West Virginia is taking steps to create a fashion industry that is cyclical, local and regenerative. By paying attention to the transition from farmer to garment, the state is rewriting the fashion industry as we know it.
“We want people to thrive, not only people who wear beautiful fashion things, but those who make them, those who dream them up, everyone from the farmer who’s growing the fiber or the chemist who’s developing the new materials, all the way through the chain, and then how do we get them back into a circular system,” Katie said.
With this discourse comes the hope for a regenerative global fashion industry in which change isn’t sparked by disasters, but is instead embedded into the fabric of the industry.
It seems that more and more students we’ve talked to are walking away with this appreciation for sustainability and a real focus on it. How is the program setting them up for it?
“A lot of that came from the mission to be of service to the state. You have to be relevant to the state, and that really shapes how we think about what fashion is in West Virginia. A lot of us who teach within the program are not from West Virginia, so some of the learning was about the agricultural history of the state. How has the state contributed to fashion in its past, and what could it be in the future? All of the faculty have sustainability as part of their practice in whatever way, whether it’s our design faculty, our merchandising faculty or me in the middle, we’re all thinking about sustainability because it’s something we are personally passionate about. We’ve put in our 10,000 hours observing the industry, working in the industry and studying the industry, so we know how bad it can be. We take it upon ourselves to be part of the solution by integrating it into the curriculum all the way through. There isn’t a class within FDM that doesn’t talk about sustainability in some way.
We were in the Ag College, which is not typical for a fashion program. It was unique in a way that allowed us to kind of tap into resources and conversations that fashion programs typically don’t get invited into. Using the relationships with our agricultural colleagues, we were able to get access to the farms to be able to do more funded research on the actual agricultural experiences within West Virginia. We also, of course, have some amazing donors who are also passionate about this. All of those things combined to make this amazing Farm to Fashion program, getting students into spaces where we’re not just talking about the theory of understanding materiality, or the theory of farmer relationships, but how we help add value to the goods that they’re producing or show even potentially new products that might be valuable in West Virginia agricultural lands.
It’s a lot of context-based decisions, and now that we’re moving into this art and design space, it’s something that has become part of our DNA, and we’re not going to let go of it. It’s going to be in a different context, but it’s still going to be a part of us. We are figuring out what that means. To your point, we don’t have to convince too many students anymore that sustainability is important. They’re all coming in already having seen either footage of these disasters or hearing influencers talking about doing things differently. Vintage fashion, secondhand fashion, is having its renaissance as well, so we don’t have to do as much convincing anymore, but we do have to give tools of what do you do with that passion. Passion without direction often just burns out.”
Have you seen a push in other colleges towards sustainability? What is driving that push?
“I think it would be unethical at this point to have a fashion program that doesn’t talk about sustainability. I know a lot of different people at different fashion programs, and I do not know any program that doesn’t talk about it. You can’t not talk about it. Where you are seeing the movement towards this kind of holistic approach, the Farm to Fashion idea is at colleges like WVU, these land grant institutions that have agriculture as one of their core elements. That component really grounds it. It makes it more tangible, and you can have an immediate impact in those spaces.
Art and design colleges like Parsons, FIT and other big name-brand fashion schools are also heavily involved in sustainability, but that’s the component that they’re missing. They can’t walk down the hall and speak to a specialist in sheep farming to understand how to get higher quality wool from the sheep that are providing these beautiful woolen garments.
The spaces where you will see this Farm to Fashion approach, this holistic approach, will be at your land grant schools, because that’s who they are. They have to be grounded in whatever the state economy and the state philosophy and ethos are.”
This fall, the fashion program is set to open a student-run shop at 201 High Street in Morgantown, WV, called The Retail Lab. The shop is just the next step in the program’s clear attention to ecocentric fashion. The storefront will feature student, faculty and community member’s sustainably-produced art, jewelry and garments, and will offer high-quality, second-hand or repurposed items. The Retail Lab will offer the skills and technology needed to produce and repair textiles while providing a tangible retail experience for students of the program to implement what they’ve learned and receive valuable customer feedback. Shoot an email for more information, or to support this initiative. Contact: Professor Elizabeth Shorrock at elizabeth.shorrock@mail.wvu.edu
Additional research & writing: Payton Mandell
Designer: Chelsea LaReina Hidalgo
Photos: Joseph Lucey
Models: Reagan Scotchel, Mary Anna Blaine, Sanahji Monique
