Eloise Grey

Make Your Own Cutting Edge Fashion

Quick post to grab the moment. I found myself watching this very compelling video in the JC Report. The designer talks about how wasteful the fashion industry is - with products, fabrics and everything going round the world, sitting in transport and so on for only $10 profit. I really do have a problem with our globalised system mainly because of the huge carbon impact of moving all these products around the globe all the time. So this cool very NY label, Sans have started selling their own patterns. You download the pattern and print it off on your home printer, chose the fabric and make it at home. Much more low carbon and much cheaper!

I spent a large part of my teenage years pouring over pattern books at my local Army and Navy department store in Guildford (and yes I did get out too). They don't sell these anymore, though the recession-busting boom in 'crafting' as it's now called may change all that. I learnt much of my sewing skills by sewing my way through mostly uninspiring patterns. The design skills came from being able to look at a normally frumpy pattern and see the potential - adjust it and tweak it to fit my ideas.

On a similar note, I'm slightly embarassed to be infatuated with Kirsty Allsop's Home Made Home. I can't get enough of this crafting. That reminds me that what I should be doing now, instead of blogging, is making bunting. I've nearly finished making 60 metres of bunting for my wedding next week. 

Sissinghurst calls

In the last year I have been journeying through the Edwardian writers.. from Virago Modern Classics (Kate O'Brien) to the Bloomsbury group (Woolf) to the delightful Persephone Books series (do read Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day). For some reason Vita Sackville-West and Sissinghurst beckoned, repeatedly. I have a lovely old Penguin version of The Edwardians waiting to be read, as are Harold Nicolson's diaries, which my grandfather had. He was also a diplomat and I wonder if they ever met.

However, as soon as I bought 'Sissinghurt, An Unfinished History' I devoured it. I've been so busy with other parts of life to read much recently, but this broke through the workload and brought me into a new world. Written by Adam Nicolson, Vita and Harold's grandson, it was a sublime read. I never quite knew what topography was but Nicolson's writings on the topography of Sissinghurt had me in raptures. For the uninitiated, it's the land. A curious parallel to his grandmother's poem, 'The Land'. The history of the land of this part of England brought in many histories. The history of agriculture, industry & trade, the National Trust, and so on. It was broad, beautiful and romantic.

Nicolson is trying to turn Sissinghurt into a locally sustainable business whereby all the food that is served to visitors is grown or reared on the farm, organically. Heroically, this model aims to return the farms to serve the castle, as they did in years before. It's fascinating and somewhat terrifiying to read how quickly a lively integrated estate was broken up and separated out into distinct uncommunicating elements, specialising in different products which came nowhere near the castle kitchen. The kitchen of one of the most famous gardens in the country. How did gardening and food diverge so dramatically that we no longer see the land as a source of food or product but purely an ornament there to be preserved?