25.11.09 Fashion from A to Z - Interview with Ada Zanditon

Stumbling into Ada Zanditon's studio on a rather wet and blustery evening, the conversation initially turns to the weather - "It's freezing outside!"; "It was blowing a gale earlier!"; "Did you get caught in the thunder storms today?" Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 10 years, you'll notice that we're all experiencing the undeniable effects of climate change due to the damage that has been done to our environment and eco-system. No, I'm not a scientist, and neither is Ada; but she does know one thing for sure: In the near future, fashion and everything else will be done the right way, or the un-ethical way. And if we want to continue to enjoy, consume and create, then there's no other two ways about it. "For me, there is fashion and there is non-ethical fashion...if our earth is changing, and our weather is changing, and it's obvious that it is - then how do we design for the future?"

Ada is on a mission. Over the past two years she has been feverishly working; growing her high end fashion label from the ground up in one of the most fiercely competitive industries on the planet, whilst facing the even tougher challenges that come with running an ethical business. And she is by no means alone in her struggles and triumphs. Many like-minded designers, manufacturers, producers, and industry experts are also starting to make their voices heard on ethical issues - influencing everyone from haute couture designers (Vivienne Westwood) to well known high street brands (M&S, Monsoon).

But forget ethics for a minute - Ada's real concern here is fashion and design, and her number one priority is to produce something wonderful and exciting that people can consume responsibly - "If someone is attracted to the product for the product alone, and then they discover the added ethical value after purchase, that's even better."

Miss Nash: For those not directly involved in the industry - fashion and fashion design is known as being all about overindulgence, frivolity, and excess. Yet the way that you are operating seems to completely contradict these assumptions. What do you think fashion is really about today and how do you seek to change people's attitudes to it through your own ethical fashion label?

Ada Zanditon: I don't know if I think about it that much in those terms.
I quite like excess as well. But I think that at heart I'm quite a minimalist.  When I was younger, I grew up in a very maximalist era, so it's natural to find the opposite thing appealing. I remember discovering a Margiella jacket in Liberty's and it didn't have the buttons on the outside - it had the buttons pressed into it. I really liked the way that the whole garment was about something very simple that kind of made it quite 'other'. That's what I'm pursuing in my own work. I don't think that it's about excess versus maximalism - it's just something to do with elegance and curiosity.

 Ada Zanditon AW09 Collection

When someone says the word 'ethical' it conjures up a whole array of definitions and different theories. What is your personal interpretation of what it is to be 'ethical'?

Oh god - it's a dreadful word! My personal interpretation is that there's fashion and there's non-ethical fashion. For me, as a designer, every decision I make has a lot of consequences - a lot more than if I was a manufacturer. The designer is the number one point in the process, and then all these other processes depend on the decisions that the designer makes; what the designers are demanding. If there is more demand coming from designers for a particular kind of fabric, then the amount produced will increase. Or if designers want a certain kind of colour - more of that colour will be produced. So designers actually have a lot of power, and I don't think that they all necessarily think about what they're doing with it.
For me - on the flipside of being a designer - I constantly ask myself how I feel about the earth, what's happening to the planet, and the human effect on the planet. What's interesting about the future is not necessarily just 'trying to save the earth', but also - how do we adapt? How to design for the future, rather than just the present day; that's interesting to me and I think about that a lot.

What do you do now to ensure that you are well within the guidelines that define an 'ethical designer'?

So many things!
The major ones are my fabric choices, and most of my manufacturing is done in the UK. Because of the scale I’m at right now, I prefer to manufacture locally. For me it's more sustainable to do so and really valuable because it means that I can get on the tube and go see the people who are making my clothes; I don't have to get on a plane. I can see them much more often and so the relationship is much more hands-on and personable. It also means that I can really keep track of the quality.
Fabric is really important and local fabric especially is very interesting to me. Using British wool makes a real difference. It's from the Shetland Islands, it's spun and dyed in Gloucestershire, and it's beautiful stuff. For my last collection 'The Colony' I used a lot of linen, which was sponsored by Masters of Linen. All of it was grown in France, woven in Belgium and Italy. It's nice to have that connection and knowing, not just where it was woven, but that it wasn't a great distance between the place it was grown to the place it was spun - that you can draw from this local network.

On your website - www.adazanditon.com - in your sustainability manifesto, it says that you use 'a range of organic and natural fabrics as well as innovative waste reducing and energy conscious solutions to create sculptural elegant desirable fashion' can you explain in more detail what 'innovative waste reducing and energy conscious solutions' actually are?

It's looking at a whole way of doing things - running a business and thinking at every level, how can I improve this and make it more efficient? One example was from last season’s collection where everything was based around the idea of hexagons. We did these patchwork dresses all made from those shapes. When you're cutting the hexagonal patterns from the fabric, you're literally using 99.999% of it because it's all totally filled in by these shapes. Then all of the little snippets that are left over from the edges are used to create hip pads and shoulder pads for other designs that weren't based around hexagons. So all of the off-cuts went back into other garments, whether it was visible or not. It meant that we were using all of the fabric that we purchased.
We recycle, we save all the fabric off-cuts from toiling and cutting. I have a different box for every different type of waste we produce! Everything is saved and used - even pattern paper. If it's big enough to trace off a dart, we save it. We have ethical cleaning products for the studio, energy saving light bulbs; everything and anything we could think of.

What are the major limitations that you have encountered thus far whilst running an ethical fashion business as opposed to a regular fashion business?

The availability of different fabrics in the right quantities is a big limitation. I am generally buying fabric from producers that only produce very small amounts of each fabric, and so it's more expensive. I want my designs to be able to compete with all kinds of other high end designs, but when I’m trying to make and price a dress so that it is the same, in the eyes of the buyer, as a dress that is non-ethically produced it's very difficult. You have to be really clever in the design so that it translates into a fantastic end product even after going through this very challenging system. It is a limitation and something that makes the whole process a hell of a lot harder, but it's actually an opportunity to be more creative as well.

What is the one major development in textiles that would make the biggest difference to your designs?

What I would love is if a company that was manufacturing recycled synthetics also gave you the opportunity to recycle the garments that were made from those fabrics with their company again. Like Patagonia: You can buy your recycled Patagonia plastic fleece, wear it, then take it back to them and they'll recycle it for you. The great thing about certain plastics is that they can be very efficiently recycled - the process uses very little water and energy - compared to how much energy it takes to grow crops and harvest them. Also, certain kinds of plastic don't lose their quality in the recycling process, because of their molecular structure. There's an amazing opportunity to be able to create things from plastics that have a never-ending lifecycle. If we have all this synthetic fabric already there, why are we making more? It would be great if we could persuade synthetic manufacturers to think about how to harness all of those resources already in existence, and figure out how to re-use them again and again, instead of producing more from scratch.

Do you make a big deal of promoting your label as ethical, or do you prefer to leave that aspect of it as an added bonus/surprise for your customers?

I like it to be the latter - I like it to be a surprise. When I started out I felt the opposite, just because I felt so passionate about it as an issue. But what's happened now is that my business has grown, I’ve done a few seasons, done my catwalk shows, and I’ve realised that a huge amount of people kind of don't care. It sounds awful to say that, but a huge amount of people actually don't care. My opinion is that it's great if people care and have an interest, but then there's a huge amount of people who will never care, and for those people I would like to be able to offer them something that they simply just want and want to buy into. That takes away the need for them to care.

Which other luxury designer brands, or high street retailers do you respect in terms of their efforts to be more ethical/eco-friendly?

Marks&Spencer is a really obvious one. I think what they've done is fantastic. They really set a high standard and delivered on it. The amount of organic cotton available on the market increased due to the amount that they bought to use in their own range. This demonstrates how fantastic hybrid ranges can be: M&S decided to make just a couple of products from organic cotton, bought a huge amount of it, and the effect of that purchase on organic cotton was incredible. Farming and the availability of organic cotton for smaller designers and companies was made much easier.
That's why it's not about being exclusive at one end of the market or the other. It’s equally important for people in couture, in mass production, and on the high street to be thinking more about ethical fashion and seeing the importance of it, because they can all make a difference in different ways.
I mean, there's Vivienne Westwood for example, who's amazing. She went on Jonathan Ross and started talking about climate change and how it's not ok that a huge amount of suffering is going to happen as a result of it. It's great that someone who's in her position; with a very high end and revered fashion brand, is on prime time television expressing that kind of opinion and putting forward those important points of view.

What are your biggest concerns regarding ethical issues and the high street?

Despite the huge amount of press, and the realisation that sweat shops are real and the conditions in them are awful, there is still a huge amount of clothing being produced in them. There are still a huge number of factories out there with really dreadful working practices, all over the world, so that's not something that is over.
But on the flipside of that, there are some incredible factories out there. Especially in China - where they've done really well and come up to some really good standards. Some of their factories make what we do over here look really pitiful because theirs are huge, state of the art, beautiful buildings. The people that run them make sure that there is enough organic agriculture available for everyone who works there. Because they have that scale, they have the opportunity to do something sustainable in an amazing way.

 Ada Zanditon AW09 Collection

Your collections are showcased in Hangzhou, China. China is considered to be one of the most irresponsible nations when it comes to sustainability and ethical practises. How did you come to such an arrangement with a Chinese contact?

I got offered to go over there and show my collection and I thought it would be a great opportunity. I was introduced to this company called OTT and they do all their design manufacturing - everything - in the one building. It's a huge building and it's been built on amazing principles of design, so that they have plants growing everywhere in the building and really pristine spaces for everyone to work in. They told us their plans to have organic agriculture growing inside and on the outside of the building. They're very interested in sustainability and they use all sorts of sustainable fabrics within their range. But there is no mention of it when they sell the product; they don't talk about it, they just do it. When they first started, they were sustainable because they wanted to be, and now they're increasingly interested in making it a part of how they market themselves.

What are your hopes for ethical fashion in the next 5 years?

My hopes for ethical fashion are my hopes for all fashion in general: That it becomes more sustainable.

I think that fashion is the most exciting way that you can express yourself. I love it - I realise there are many people who have no interest in it - but for me, I believe that fashion is one of the most incredible tools of communication. In the interest of being able to continue being excessive; to continue to have amazing clothes; to continue to have artists like McQueen and Galliano creating incredible things that make people think - even if it's just for a few minutes from looking at it in a newspaper, we cannot continue to consume in the way that we do because it will lead to us not being able to consume at all. Fashion is part of our society and our culture, and my hope for it is that it can all become more sustainable because that's what means it will last, and continue.

You have worked with many different musical acts and performing artists in the past  - such as Patrick Wolf and Bishi - What music is inspiring you the most at the moment?

I work with these amazing musicians - I love Patrick and Bishi's music - they are both so talented and skilled, but I do not have such great taste myself! At the moment - I’ll tell you the truth - I'm most inspired by Disney! I've been listening to Disney musicals, Mary Poppins, The Nightmare before Christmas, The Little Mermaid...If it's Disney, name it, and that's literally the music I’ve been listening to solidly. I don't know why! Maybe I’m re-discovering my childhood? I don't know - all I know is that I'm absolutely Disney-obsessed at the moment!

Well this should make the next question very interesting! - Which of those musical heroes would you love to see wearing your clothes, or collaborate with in the future? (!)

I would love for Disney to do a re-make of Sleeping Beauty, or Snow White, or Beauty and the Beast, and have Lady Gaga playing the heroines and doing the voices for them. If they could animate her, and have everyone wearing all of my clothes - that would be fantastic! Something like that! Ha ha.

 What is the first thing that set the wheels in motion for you new collection - AW09/10 'The Incantation of Amergin'?

It was a book called 'Soil and Soul' by Alastair McIntosh. It was all about campaigning for land rights in the Outer Hebrides, with a very simple, strong, underlying message.
   Most people in cities are suffering from what has been termed as 'nature deficit disorder' and I think that this is true for a lot of people - even people that I know. When you're living in a city like London, for example, everything around you is relatively new, compared to the ancient history of the land and the countryside that you actually came from. You end up experiencing this funny sense of disconnect from your roots when surrounded by all of this very modern architecture. In the book, all of the people felt very connected to their land and natural surroundings, and they all came together and fought for it when it was under threat. They believed that by destroying or building on top of the land any further, it would reduce the quality of their lives and the cohesiveness of their community - and these things were more important to them than a commercial opportunity. I think that that is an incredible message.

So how did that translate into the clothes when you went to design?

What I wanted to do with this collection was create things that felt very solid and classic - and create something that was very dark. If you look at what Stonehenge is in the world of architecture - Neolithic, old, aged, ancient historic monuments - I kind of wanted to create clothes that had that same sense of solidity and permanence.

What kind of woman do you see wearing your clothes?

Tilda Swinton - she's absolutely amazing. I really admire her because she takes on incredible roles that have real gravitas to them - I loved her in Orlando, it's such an amazing film. And she's a very unusual beauty as well - it's not obvious. She has this incredible intelligence that she brings to everything she does, and yet she's utterly glamorous at the same time.
As well as Tilda Swinton, I love Penelope Cruz - she is absolutely one of my favourite actresses. She's so beautiful in a very classical expected way, but then she does these really interesting, meaty roles - like the nun that's dying of aids, and is also pregnant! I mean that's not a simple, flimsy role at all! Or she took on this role of playing a drug dealer's wife in 'Blow' and it's a really heavy role where she ends up wearing a shell suit, looking really unglamorous playing a total victim - it's interesting. I like actresses who take on these intense roles that aren't just about them looking really beautiful on screen for 2 hours - they are amazing, glamorous women who really show their humanity on screen. Charlize Theron is another one - absolutely amazing. These are the kinds of women that interest me - thinking women of substance, who are also glamorous, beautiful, and individual.
As far as models are concerned, I think that Stella Tenant is amazing. She has wonderful features, is so different, and always has this strong identity.

You've achieved so much this year; what are you most looking forward to in 2010?

Continuing. And selling. Those are the things that excite me the most at the moment.
Continuing to grow, increasing the number of evening pieces in the range, bringing my illustrations into the brand...
It took a long time to really get my design style totally integrated into what I am doing, because I had to deal with all of the challenges involved in starting up an ethical business. But now I can find good sources of ethical fabrics more easily, as well as the right people to make my clothes - so some of those challenges have been dealt with, and now things can really blossom. I had to lay the foundations first, and now it's time to really run with it!

AZ’S WEBSITE: www.adazanditon.com

AZ’S MYSPACE: http://www.myspace.com/adazanditon

FOLLOW HER ON TWITTER: @adazanditon

AND ON FACEBOOK: Ada Zanditon official Facebook Group