Laura Siegel is basically the opposite of Forever 21. She’s as ethical as fashion designers come, and puts her principles into action by hiring rural artisans in India and other nations to produce her line’s clothing (laurasiegelcollection.com).
“All our textiles are created by hand by groups of artisans,” explains the soft-spoken Siegel. “So they’re hand-sewn, hand-knit, hand-dyed.”
She actually visits these villages and workers, too. Not one to assume goods are being made properly, she guarantees her garments are 100 per cent traceable while making sure employees earn living wages, receive education about things like money management and business practices and more.
Working with small overseas teams can be difficult, and it means Siegel has to work much further in advance than other designers. This means no last-minute backstage stitching – she starts work on her fabrics almost a year ahead of time. “I’m very detail-oriented, though, so that helps,” shares Siegel. “But otherwise that’s why I spend a lot of the year in India. There are just certain things you can’t communicate over the phone or email.”
She’s always on the lookout for more artisans to collaborate with and is currently in the process of adding workers in Vietnam to her roster. She attends trade shows around the world that aim to connect artisans, designers and buyers.
For most of the year, Siegel works out of the Toronto Fashion Incubator’s (TFI) studios in an 8,000-square-foot heritage building on the Exhibition Place grounds. This shared studio space is special because TFI provides it to emerging designers at reduced rates, starting at just $275/month. Without this resource, many young designers would find it impossible to work in downtown Toronto.
Siegel sketches, designs and makes patterns in the space and packs orders for shipping. She also uses it to house her archives, design library and overstock textiles.
“Before this I was in New York City and shared a 200-square-foot space with another designer,” Siegel not so fondly remembers. “I’m so lucky to be at TFI. I also get amazing mentorship here, and access to unbelievable equipment.”
Siegel recently finished her spring/summer 2016 collection, which is set to show at Toronto Fashion Week as part of the Mercedes-Benz Start Up (MBSU) competition, where she will compete against five other young designers for a prize package that includes a $30,000 bursary, mentorship opportunities and a fully produced show at the next Toronto Fashion Week in March. She also competes in the program’s Star Wars challenge, which sees designers create fashions inspired by the films in hopes of winning some more cold, hard cash. Siegel’s design, without giving too much away, involves some very cool patterned leather.
If she wins, she plans to use the extra dough on production: “We’re doing really well on sales, but that means production costs are going to rise as we have to fill more orders.”
Siegel is often inspired by her travels and experiences with other cultures – a fine line for a designer to walk at a time when cultural appropriation is a hot-button issue.
“As long as the people making the clothing are proud of what they’re doing, and they don’t think it’s weird, it’s okay,” says Siegel. “The women I work with on embroidery love it. It’s another thing when you take an item someone in India took weeks to make, ship it to China, and then have a machine reinterpret that piece.”
And what if her line makes it huge? Can the artisans keep up with demand? Siegel isn’t worried. “We’ve done fairly large orders, and if we ever found an instance where there weren’t, say, enough embroiderers… there are so many artisans, it’s not challenging to find more people. They’re hungry for work.”
sabrinam@nowtoronto.com | @SabrinaMaddeaux
