The purpose behind MATTER was never to be a fashion brand, and so we never subscribed to its trends and seasonality of launches. Our focus was on textiles and craft and so we work our model around artisan production, building a business that takes into account this inherent slowness, with season-less styles and seasonal fabrics. The change we want to impact can be broken down into three points of focus: artisans, designers, and customers.
Change beyond textiles is our mission and commitment to make rural artisan production sustainable, shift designers’ approach to their process, and inspire customers to value provenance. This is bigger than what we want to do with MATTER, it extends to a conversation that we want to continue; on the value of cultural heritage in textiles, the importance of people and process, the understanding of clothing production chain and larger environmental and social effects. To get the ball rolling, we asked our community to join in and lead our conversation to #ChangeBeyondTextiles.
Stephanie Dickson is the founder of The Wedge, a leading platform connecting conscious people from around the world together. She started this social enterprise as a way to form a community that would impact change. Out of that venture, she then created Green Is The New Black – Asia’s first conscious festival, inspiring others to buy better. Both platforms are rooted in the motivation to empower others to take action – an element she felt was missing in the current industry.
Her journey in her approach towards shopping and fashion can be divided into two distinct chapters of her life; drawing a line at the moment where she intentionally decided to distance myself from fast fashion. Before this change, she lived for the cheap thrills of online shopping. Admittedly, the process of looking for items, purchasing them, waiting for it to arrive, and unwrapping them had its own invigorating high. There was something so exciting about the exclusivity of receiving boxes filled with the newest and trendiest clothes. But when she quit her job, her income reduced and she couldn’t afford to buy as often as she used to. At that point, she also came to realize that the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world. The weight of that reality sort of put everything in context and she realized that her purchase decisions were contributing to that plight. To explain a little more, we asked Stephanie to share about the intention and values behind her journey.
“What I really love about Matter as well is that they are openly a work-in-progress. They are very transparent throughout their whole supply chain. They share incredible stories and theyʼve done that in a really sexy way, in a way that makes me love the brand, love the clothes even more. And I am really excited about the new direction that they are taking to have even more environmentally sustainable options including things like the new collections coming out, the new materials that they are using and really just promoting that you know what, it is okay to be honest about where you are and where you are going towards.“
Listen in on the conversation to #ChangeBeyondTextiles and see what the rest of our community has to say about the journey. Read more on our journal here.