Dear Shaded Viewers and Diane,
One would expect no less from a Origin Passion And Beliefs fair, and sustainability was indeed a major theme this year in Vicenza, where The Next Black documentary, looking at alternative methods of production, sourcing, even washing our clothes to minimize their environmental impact, was also screened. Young designers, hindered though they would be by the small quantities of their collections, show exemplary reluctance to compromise: and side by side with the very peaks of innovation – take Chromat’s 3D printed laser ports implanted on a bra – there’s a topical wistfulness for the ways things were done once, that finds among the suppliers and manufacturers on site much fertile ground.
In particular, it was a book by Pierre Rabhi, a poet and farmer who invented the concept of Oasis en tous lieux, and moved from Algeria to France in the 70s to promote the science, movement and practice of agroecology, that inspired S M K’s second season, titled Retour
