(Canada/USA/India, 68 min.)
Written and directed by Jennifer
Sharpe
“It's difficult for a new
designer to come out with a new set of ideas when there is an established
industry that is moving to a completely different logic that's about low price
at whatever cost,” says designer and professor Lynda Gross in the fashionably
progressive doc Traceable. Gross’s words
perfectly summarize the conundrum in which forward-thinking fashionistas and
designers such as Traceable's central
subject Laura Siegel find themselves as they try to balance the wants of
consumers with the practical needs of the other threads in the fashion chain.
Siegel’s plight should be a simple one: to offer fashionable garments that
better educate consumers and retailers about the stories woven within the
clothes on their backs. However, consumer culture, especially the “fast-fashion”
on which the garment industry thrives with impulse buys and quick turnarounds, doesn’t
traditionally allow for new ideas other than those that popularize, say, The
September Issue. We’ve seen all those fashion docs before, as famed eyes of the
fashion world tell the stories of how they became trendsetters, but a new trend
is beginning and it starts right here.
Traceable looks at the fashion industry from a new perspective as director Jennifer Sharpe follows the globetrotting journey that clothing takes from the cotton field to the consumer. The film is very much en vogue as it takes a cue from trends in other industries and offers a practical and attainable methodology for fashioning the clothing industry with sustainable threads. It’s trendy, says, to want to know where your food comes from: going organic and insisting on the 100km diet are examples of fads that became tangible changes for the ways people consume food, but the question of where food comes from should extend to all products. Too few consumers ask this question and even fewer suppliers know the answer.
Traceable takes a two-pronged approach
to sustainable fashion as Sharpe connects Siegel's story with the concept of
traceability that influences her work and that of industry peers, innovators,
and educators. Traceability, on Laura's side, reflects the philosophy that
every garment tells a story and that anyone who wears her clothing should be
able to know the tale behind the garment including where it came from and who
made it. Traceability, on the more conceptual end, tracks the course of the
materials that make up the garment, following their journey in a web of
origin-destination trips, so that manufacturers and consumers alike may better
understand the global impact of their products and know how each stitch and
piece of fabric find its way into the clothes. Both threads put a human face on
the workers in the garment industry across the full spectrum, and offer the
first steps towards a more sustainable practice that leaves a lighter
footprint.
Siegel is cut from a fresh
generation of the fashion industry as she brings her philosophy that says, 'Craft
is woven into culture.' Traceable
follows Laura on the journey towards her first show in New York's Fashion Week,
and, taking a cue from her own belief in traceability, the film traces Laura to
India and back as she introduces audiences to the threads of culture woven into
the Asian-influenced clothing she readies for her showcase. We learn about the
process that goes into making the pattern on the dresses—beautiful wood block
printing has an attention to detail and an enduring quality that one doesn't see
in the mass consumerism of Western culture—and we learn the names of each woman
who threads the beads that go into making the exquisite tie dye patterns. The
film lets the villagers speak of their own traditions and customs that travel
across the globe in these garments, while images of America mostly show brightly
lit malls and boutiques in which shoppers browse at hyperspeed. The
juxtaposition between the fast-fashion of the Western world, in which culture
if fabricated through materialism, and the East, in which clothing carries
tradition and stories, shows a clash of cultural values that needs to find a balance,
if not shift towards the values of the East, before excess consumerism traces the industry back
to nothing.
By creating characters rather
than subjects and stories rather than case studies, Traceable makes a humanist counterargument to today's fast-paced
consumer culture in which everything (and everyone) is disposable. The film
pauses with still images of poor working conditions of factories in
Asia--powerful photographs of a collapsed factory that took numerous loves—that
are unsettling proof that many consumers and manufactures know little about the
origins of their goods and require this ignorance to tip the balance of needs
and wants towards the latter in our culture of instant gratification.
Traceable looks beyond idealism, though,
and interacts with pioneers like Siegel who are making the groundwork for an
industry with a foundation that sustains itself. Professors and designers share
their experience and underscore the necessity of bright young minds like Laura,
while other innovators such as Leonard Bonnani, creator of Sourcemap, explain clearly the ease of
putting traceability into practice in the age of fast communication and social
media, and they elaborate upon the roots of traceability within mass
production. It’s a practice at the heart of the very system that creates so
much waste with traceable codes stamped onto batches and batches of products
and parts. Why the question of origins rarely arises is therefore startling
since the numbers are literally stamped onto the products of mass consumption.
It’s not so much a question of cost as it is a question of caring.
Siegel’s quest isn’t too radical
an ideal to make real, then, since traceability exists in pockets of
consumerism. A choice simply needs to be made to use the system’s ability to
chart the flow of products through the supply chain for greater philosophical
or ethical purposes other than to track down a can of bad ham. It all starts
with one simple question:“Who made my clothes?” and audiences
are bound to look at their labels and wonder after taking in this
doc.
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Traceable airs on MTV, Bravo, M3, and E! via Bell Media at 8:00
PM on April 24, which, appropriately enough, is Fashion Revolution
Day.
Traceable
Trailer from laurenmgrant
on Vimeo.
