The root of FARA’s Dreamer collaboration is about daring to dream – to envision and create a more sustainable future and a more sustainable fashion industry.
At the heart of our vision is the need to work together – to collaborate. We feel we need to let go of the word “industry”, and move toward the word “community” – a radical goal of fostering a conscious fashion world. This is our dream.
Over the years we have explored the idea of collaboration – discovering how working together can affect change and increase our capacity to spread the message of creative participation. At its heart, collaboration strengthens the individual and fosters a greater sense of community and purpose, opening up a world of empowerment
We brought this sense of community to our new Dreamer Collection. We collaborated with the incredible artist and jeweller, Rachel Entwistle, whose initial Dreamer Collection was inspired by Joan Miró’s constellation series. Captivated by these dreamy symbols, she created a capsule collection of stunning earrings and rings, like the Rays of Light Ring, the Dancer Earrings and the Mini Mystery Earrings. At FARA, we then fused Rachel’s designs with traditional Japanese calligraphy to craft the design that is printed on our hemp garments. This is what we strive for, cultivating a collaborative community where designers work together, utilising sustainable practices and materials in order to manifest something exponentially larger than each could create individually.
The conventional fashion industry is steeped in competition and novelty – the goal is to be ahead of the trend. We want to redirect this hunger for novelty and pour it into innovative and ethical fashion production. We also seek to share the love, spreading the word about other sustainable makers so we can work together to inspire and welcome shared creativity.
How can we affect change?
We see this collaborative fashion revolution as an opportunity to promote each other, share the wealth of conscious production methods, and create change from within the industry. We recognize that we can’t halt fast fashion – but we can initiate a conversation within the fashion community on how to move toward more sustainable practices.
When we started creating with Rachel Entwistle, we were mutually inspired by sustainability, craftsmanship and the grassroots activism taking place all over the world – with Greta Thunburg, Fashion Revolution, Extinction Rebellion, and the millions of people all over the planet who were taking a stand and working to change our future for the better. We realised that we wanted to stand with these activists and affect change within a largely unsustainable industry. By working together and collaborating with other conscious makers, we felt the power to affect change…the power of working together.
To start work towards this sustainable dream that we shared, we started to create small collections – testing the market and crafting limited runs of each piece (doing reruns of popular pieces of course;). While High Street fashion flooded the market, creating a huge amount of waste – our hand-crafted pieces were (and continue to be) restocked by demand, filling conscious closets rather than thoughtless landfills.
Crafting Change Through Conversation.
Working towards a sustainable future begs a lot of questions which we might not yet have the answers to. That’s ok – we recognize that this is a learning curve, a process to discuss and share. By collaborating, we can discover what a sustainable planet would look like. When we dare to work together to look at the bigger picture, we dare to dream and begin to see the silhouette of this bright future from different angles. As we join forces to bring this nebulous outline of a dream into focus, we work towards a happier, healthier world altogether.
While those seated in a position of “power” might dismiss conscious change-makers, within our community we recognize that humanity’s current fast-fashion system does not support or foster conscious growth – we also find that by collaborating and working with our community, we start to envision what a more conscious future might look like.
For all of us, whether we are running a clothing business, a jewellery shop, or shopping for a new holiday outfit – we must start to look at where we are spending, while also examining our definition of success. At FARA, and with our magical collaborator Rachel Entwistle, success is not about being the richest, the most famous or the most “powerful”. We are creators who opt to grow organically, seeking traditional routes for business growth that prioritise sustainability.
Question Fast Fashion!
As individuals, we must ask questions about what we value. While many see fashion as a way to fit in with the crowd, it should really push us to examine “What do I really need?”,
“Where does this come from?” and most importantly “How was this produced?”. When we ask ourselves this each time we purchase an item, this hits the pause button on the fast fashion endorphin rush, and pushes us to gravitate towards more conscious choices.
At the heart of our sustainable vision is a balance of collaboration, conversation and information. We seek to inspire our community of customers and creators to cultivate a lifestyle of consciously selecting wardrobe essentials, and seeking out sustainable, fair-trade, local versions of those essentials.
We’ve come to realise that this vision of sustainability is all about the bigger picture. As customers, designers and producers, we recognize that we now need to be more closely aligned with the journey of each piece which we add to our wardrobe. Only after we embrace this conscious way of thinking will we have a more holistic and global impact.
Our Collective Future
We are continually inspired by other conscious makers like Rachel Entwistle, and we’ve chosen to create nourishing and empowering networks to help forge change. We recognize that throughout history, women have traditionally been silent change-makers, but with inspiring thinkers like Greta Thunberg, we realise that we must implement change from a root level, starting with our own practices. This era of conscious innovation is an invitation to think outside of the box, not only as a business but as individuals who wish to fuel conversations that will protect the Earth for future generations. We need to ask ourselves “what is our legacy of change?” and we must hold ourselves accountable for our actions. That is what true empowerment is all about.
We hope we can work with our conscious community of makers and customers to positively affect change. Everyone get on board – we’re on the road to global change!
You can read more about our DREAMER collaboration HERE
