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Madeleine: Good morning, Cara. Thank you so much for being our second ever Super Series guest. You are thinking outside the box. You're doing your own thing and you're doing it by way of creativity slowing down. You’re thinking about consumption and production and the things we wear differently.
To start, Can you tell us a bit about the work you’re currently doing and how you got to this point?
Cara: I would call myself a small scale, natural dyer. I run a studio in East Williamsburg, New York called Calyx studios.
I went to college at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, and I grew up in New York City. I'm a city kid. A lot of people think that I popped out of a grassy knoll somewhere. People hear the word natural dyer think you’re a purist who doesn't wear acrylic nails. I really don't believe in that purist narrative so I like to tell people the truth. I grew up in the city. I grew up in an apartment. I wasn't raised in the forest with a 100% sustainable way of living. But the feeling of lack of being connected to my natural environment is what made natural dye so appealing to me.
I felt inherently like I was participating in a system that was causing me to be sick, both from a mental and physical standpoint. But I didn't really understand what was causing it. I wanted to work in fashion and I loved the industry and the glamor of designing clothes. But when I got to school, I learned the truth that fashion is one of the most toxic industries on the planet. Being born a New Yorker, Italian Catholic, the guilt made me ask, “well now what?”
I actually found the medium of natural dyes my second year at school. This wonderful woman came in and gave a workshop on dyeing with onion skins.
I really believe in synchronicity. Suddenly, I started seeing natural dyes everywhere. I was interning at a jewelry company and the designer's best friend dyed the presentation clothes with natural dyes. Then I wandered into a bookstore and India Flynt’s book Eco Colour was on the shelf. I wandered into Kremer Pigments and there was a shelf of natural dyes. I feel like the medium found me.
I have always been drawn to the occult and a bit of witchiness, and now I’m out here with my pot and I'm making color with plants. It's a very playful, exciting medium. When someone first sees the color you can make from a plant, it's hard not to become obsessed.
I dedicated my whole thesis to the project in school. That's the beauty of going to college in London – you can be as creative and wild as possible.
I came home and I just started telling people what I do, and then people kept asking me to do it. And every time I've wanted to quit, someone else asked me to do it again. And I realized, okay I'm in service.
Madeleine: That's amazing. It’s so incredible that though there’s this stereotype of somebody who's dyeing with plants, you do it your way. To that end, What are your sustainability superpowers?
Cara: My accidental superpower is making people feel like they have permission to play. That was something that developed through the workshops.
The highest compliment that I think I've been paid post a class is, “I was so scared to do this before. And now I'm excited to get going.” That's all it is for me.
Anyone can do it. Honestly, if I can do it, you can do it.
Madeleine: You really do have that gift, and I've been to workshops of yours. You bring everybody on board. People often come in with the idea that they have to do it perfectly, and you really open people up to the lack of control in the medium in a way that really gets people in touch with the plants.
Cara: Absolutely. There’s a Richard Bach quote that says, “we teach best what we need to learn.” And I’ve felt a lot of that pressure for perfection myself. I definitely suffered from this feeling of needing to be what I perceived as “successful” by age of 22.
So, I really want to redefine what that idea of success is. I’m not saying you're going to come to my workshop and figure it out. But, I think it's really important for people to be able to have a container to let that chaos fly. While they also feel like they're making something that doesn't necessarily have an inherent value placed on it.
I want people when they come to a workshop, or experiencing natural dyes for the first time, to release the expectation of there being a perfect outcome, because then, you're not really giving the material the chance to do its thing. It’s also not interacting with nature in a way that's collaborative. It's controlling.
And that's the issue with us in nature right now. Zizek says nature doesn't exist.
And really, we're of nature. That’s why I love existing in a place like New York City. I want all the plant people to stay here. Wouldn't it be gorgeous if we converted all the roofs to rooftop gardens, and we had fruit forest orchards all over the city, and people could just like eat together? How sexy would that be?
Madeleine: Yes! It is sexy. Inherently. For our next question, I’m wondering, who are your current fashion/art/climate superheroes?
Cara: Seeding Sovereignty is a huge, huge resource for me. Y'all are massive.
This is such a great question. I would also say, OG Bucky (Buckminster) Fuller, of course.
And my Botanical Colors family are really wonderful.
Accessibility is a huge part of the conversation for me. Because if I've gotten flack in the past, it's that my work is really expensive. It’s a really important conversation to have about the true cost of what it takes to make clothing. In that regard, I love the work that The Or Foundation is doing. They bring awareness to secondhand clothing markets and where our trash goes.
My friend Liza, who runs Garbage Goddess, which is a logistical composting garbage collective, is also a big inspiration. We have to start talking about trash. Trash is sexy, right? Trash is hot.
Slow Factory’s education system that they put out is great. I'm really into free resources of education. Not to say that you shouldn't also charge for education. I think we need all of it. It is important for teachers and educators to be compensated.
The slow money movement is a really important movement that we don't talk about. I am actually for profit. I think that it's really important to acknowledge. We live in a capitalist society. It’s a really negative, toxic idea to think that people should work for free. Why should everyone in sustainability work for free? It's always the people who are trying to do the thing that's pushing the needle who are expected to work for free. And I think that's baloney.
It's important to talk about valuing yourself in a way that sustains you. I'm very transparent about what things should cost and what you should be getting paid. I love to run classes for young dyers and people to teach them honestly how to write invoices, do their marketing. We have wholesale meetings with Botanical Colors where people bring their projects and ask questions because it's not gonna work if you can't pay for yourself with the industry.
Madeleine: Absolutely. With all climate people, we need those resources to stay sustained. You are creating a blueprint of what it looks like to be someone who dyes with plants, and educates, and is in your element in New York City as a New Yorker. That is possible. It's really gorgeous.
Can you tell us a story of a catalyzing moment in your journey to sustainability work?
Cara: There was a series of things that happened. I worked with the collective, NI EN MORE, in Cd. Juarez, Mexico. It was a really synchronistic series of events that brought me there.
In 2016 a friend from high school who worked at Huffington Post reached out to do a video about my process. The video went viral nine months after it was made. And that event was amazing exposure. That's when my business actually went online. I went from getting three to five requests a week for work to 10 to 20 a day.
It started the flow of my business being sustainable, and it put me on an international map. I got an email from a Norwegian woman, Lena Knudsen asking if she could come to one of my workshops. So she came and took my class, and afterwards we went for dinner. She started telling me about this woman Lise Linnert she works with, who did an embroidery project about the 2,000 women who have gone missing in Juarez. She hand embroidered all of their names and the word unknown, for those unidentified.
Lena asked if I would come to Cd.Juarez and teach the family members of some of these women who had gone missing how to naturally dye. And I, of course, said yes.
I think the global North has a messed up idea of the artisan, especially from people in the global South. And this was a space of women who needed a safe environment to work.
I know that this sounds weird in terms of sustainability and climate change, but this is everything, right? Because it's about people. We forget that we're trying to help people.
We have this idea that we're going to work with artisans and help them. And the truth is, F that. What does that mean? You need to work with people to help them do what they want to do. Sometimes that means you as a designer, step aside. Sometimes it means you go down and you teach them and you just let them go free and do what they want with that process.
That to me was really eye-opening in terms of what sustainability means. You really have to throw away your idea of this organic, gorgeous, farm fresh process. Because not many not people can afford that. It really helped me open up my eyes to not being precious about this package-free existence. Which I still believe in, but you can't reject people who can't afford to play that game.
Madeleine: It's like making me consider how we can create a network of artisans in New York.
Cara: I think people are starting to. I've been talking with the FIT Natural Dye Garden and the Pratt Natural Dye Garden. The colleges are a great resource and we've been talking about finding ways to make information hubs for people.
Madeleine: In that vein, what recommendations do you have for people reading this to get involved in slow fashion and sustainability in general ?
Cara: In terms of natural dyes, Botanical Colors has a lot of free resources and information on how to get started.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Give yourself permission to like to play. I find that the happy accident is really the joy of this process for me.
A beautiful part of this practice for me is the relationships that I foster between different community businesses. You can go to your local supermarket and ask, “do you have any extra onion skins that I could use?” Or maybe go to a community garden or a local flower shop and ask them for their trash. A couple of people might look at you crazy, but hey, it helps with public speaking. You'll be surprised by how excited people get by it and how they might enjoy the beauty that their garbage could turn into something.
There's thousands of restaurants that have avocado pits that go straight into the trash. You can just walk up to them and show them something you can dye with avocado pits, and ask them for their trash. You can make these relationships with people.
That's how we start creating local community networks. These are all fun ways that we can start building community interactions on the local level that are really exciting ways to push the needle forward and get more eyes on it.
Madeleine: Big yes to that! Last question, kind of rapid fire. What is inspiring you these days?
Cara: The first thing is dirt. I've been making more raw earth pigments, and then also working with invasive plants. I find that as a very exciting resource. There's like a lot of cool people working in that space. Natalie Stopka is teaching class on how to make pigment with invasive plants.
There’s a way to take a weed, make a dye bath out of it, and then turn it into a pigment. That’s the beauty of natural dye: you can use your leftover baths and turn them into paint, you can pour them on your plants. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
I'm also really inspired by dance performances. Especially for me, in my creative work, I can get very like myopic, so it's very important for me to absorb what's happening around me even if it doesn't seem like it connects to my space.
Madeleine: That's so beautiful. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you want to mention?
Cara: I am currently rebranding to the name Calyx Studios. A Calyx is the part of the flower that holds it all together. So I’m creating a studio that focuses on projects that can go to a larger scale and that can live on after me.
