Visit the Vida Textiles shop.
Last year our friend Gretta travelled to Modena, Italy where she attended the Slow Food Convention…
Slow Food (visit the website) is a movement that supports the traditional diversity of food from the soil to the growing, cooking and finally the eating.
The Slow Food movement has recently extended to include the Slow Textiles movement; which makes complete sense because all cotton production begins with the soil. I have been aware of the advantages of organic food since the birth of our first daughter eight years ago, but I only woke up to the reality of conventional cotton production after reading an interview with Kate Sylvester in a 2007 Sunday Star Times magazine. Since then we decided to make the commitment to try whenever we can to clothe our family in either natural, organic, fair trade or recycled garments. But it doesn’t just end there. I have found myself adopting this policy for toys, household cleaning products, food (which was always a biggie) and general luxuries, often in the form of recycled goodies from the local second hand shop.
This commitment began with a desire to provide a healthy environment for our children but ended with an obligation to provide a sustainable world for others as well. Everything we buy is a conscious decision that affects not just us, but the growers and their families, the soil they work with, the water they drink and the air they breathe.
A conversation with Gretta after her visit to Modena further cemented my resolve to buy more consciously. After reading Gretta’s report (read the full report here) on the conventional cotton industry and the effect it was having on many indigenous people mainly in the third world, I reflected on Gretta’s question ‘why not import organic cotton and sustainable textiles?’.
My answer, after a lot of thought and research, was to continue to recycle and reuse, and to extend my organic, fair trade and sustainability policies to my business practices adding a little innovation into the mix. By taking a step back to the way our great-grandparents did things we make a leap forward in preserving the planet for future generations to live in.
This is why Vida Textiles aims to furnish New Zealand with a large range of organic cotton and sustainable fabrics from the yarn to the finished product.
Currently Vida Textiles is representing Indika Organics, Marina Cavalieri, Ink and Spindle and Organic Basics. The fabrics we supply are grown, manufactured and produced either organically and/or sustainably and wherever possible under the fair trade model.
Through doing these things we hope to help protect the environment, the health of its people and to preserve the traditional diversity of textiles.
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