📺 LIVE BROADCAST: A Conversation with Marcella Echavarria and Kavita Parmar

Events
#1

THE KINDCRAFT hosted a three-part conversation LIVE with Marcella Echavarria and Kavita Parmar. All the episodes are collected here and you can ask them questions below!

Session One: Where Do We Come From? was a 30 minute discussion of the PAST on Thursday, April 23rd.

Session Two: What Are We? was a 30 minute discussion of the PRESENT on Tuesday, April 28th.

Session Three: Where Are We Going? was a 30 minute discussion of the FUTURE on Thursday, April 30th.

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Marcella Echavarría (@marcella) is currently living in Mexico City running a branding consulting firm focused on sustainable luxury. Marcella has been a consultant for UNESCO, the United Nations, IDB, the OAS, and many leading brands related to textiles, tourism and sustainability. Together with Kavita Parmar, she created XTANT.IO, a global platform for content and commerce for the handmade. Her work with artisanal communities has been the subject of hundreds of articles and recognitions including the prestigious “Architect of the Future 2012” award. She recently co-edited Selvedge Mexico. She is also a photojournalist specializing in textiles.

Kavita Parmar (@Kavita_Parmar) is a recognized activist and speaker from India living in Spain. Kavita uses design as a tool to express her point of view on the current situation of the fashion system, where individuals have lost their identity as creators in the midst of the unbridled race towards mass production and consumerism. The IOU Project stands out among her multiple ventures, a platform dedicated to representing and giving a voice to more than 250 weavers of the 200,000 members of the cooperative of Madras, India. She is a consultant for companies like Nike, Ikea and Levis, as well as the Government of India. Kavita has received countless awards such as UNSCC Leadership Award, Luxury Briefing Award for Innovation, SOURCE Award from Ethical Fashion Forum London, Sustainable Luxury Award Latin America, etc.

The conversation was moderated by Lauren K Lancy (@Lauren), a design consultant and founder of THE KINDCRAFT who lives in Los Angeles, California.

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Editor’s Note: XTANT is a separate organization from TEXTO and neither it, nor its owners, are affiliated with TEXTO, Cesar Cervantes, or Fundacion Cultural Tetetlan, AC.

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#2

Looking forward to it! Please join the conversation and post questions and comments here. x x

#4

Hope you liked Session One! What would you like for me to ask Marcella and Kavita in Session 2 (PRESENT) and Session 3 (FUTURE)? x x

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#5

Hi Lauren,

I would like to hear about the impact of seasonality in the world of fashion; that even upcoming designers working with local artisans finally fall back on to promote their designs; where a piece of garment though made to last for a longer period (maybe even passed on through generations) is presented to be “in style” for a season. How will breaking away from this sensibility help sustain the slow fashion mantra?

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#6

Great question, thanks! We’ll be sure to talk about the fashion calendar during tomorrow’s session. On a personal note, I fully support slow-made season-less collections! x x

#7

Hi and thank you for the talk! I would like to know if there is anything that I can do as a consumer, aside from where I choose to shop or not shop, to encourage companies to have an ethical and sustainable supply chain?

Also, considering our current crisis and the impact it is having on retail if you could create the ideal fashion industry from the ground up what would that look like?

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#8

Hope we answered your question in the talk, Sara!

Apologies for the technical difficulties, everyone. We’ll hope to hear more from Marcella on Thursday. Thank you for a great conversation today, Kavita. Hope you all enjoyed it. x x

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#10

It was sheer inertia that made everyone follow the absurd fashion calender where we ended up flimsy summer dresses in the midst of winter and padded wool parkas in July at retail. This parenthesis has put a big wrench into that season cycle without doubt. Most wholesale shows have been post poned indefinitely if not cancelled and most brands will have no choice but to skip a season due to supply chain disruptions. So I do think most of us will see that emperor has no clothes, the ¨in style¨ for a season myth just busted in our faces and we don´t need to follow that broken logic anymore. This should give a big boost to the demand for quality and made to last pieces that can be passed on, we just need to be careful that we don´t buy into all the green washing and gaslighting ( manipulation) that is going to come our way by most major brands.

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#11

This is a time to reconsider what are the real needs for trends, what is quality and how to recognize it. It is also a time to understand the real implications of words such as circular, sustainable, biodegradable, recyclable etc etc.
I strongly recommend this interview:

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#12

Hi Lauren - great discussions here! You touched on how people are realizing right now more than ever that our resources are finite (and I am also seeing this discussion emerge more and more around me). Kavita echoed the impact of our daily consumption, and how people are being more intentional about who they support and how they spend their money when it comes to crafts and textiles.

She also mentioned that in the near future, many more large companies will attempt to gaslight us into purchasing from them – so how might we be careful and weed through companies like that, so we can best support the artisans making heritage craft and textiles? Do you think the future will see more collectives, or smaller partnerships with artisans form?

Thank you for this talk!

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#13

HI @laurawheatley,

Hopefully some of the points we touched upon in our broadcast answered your question but yes that is one of the things that most worries me about what lies ahead in the short term.

There is going to be lot of dead stock dumped into the market by the major industrial producers and they will try and seduce you with all kinds of arguments to try and buy back into the old habits of consumption. We need to take our duty as good citizens very seriously and be very vigilant against all these claims. We must reduce our consumption and increase the quality of everything around us from product to human relationships. Support the people we know first and build circles of trust slowly but surely.

There are no quick fixes and it’s going to be a long tunnel but if we take care of each other we will get farther faster.

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#15

Thank you, Kavita! I will certainly keep your words in mind for the upcoming years.

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