When she liked their ethics she didn’t like their fashion, and when she liked their fashion she really didn’t like their ethics.
Trapped by her own sense of morality and good taste, North Vancouver resident Kaya Dorey had no choice but to start her own, ethical fashion line. Her tank tops and t-shirts might not have attracted international models, but they did catch the attention of the United Nations.
The UN recently named the 29-year-old designer a Young Champion of the Earth for her efforts to change the world with style.
“The enormous social and environmental costs of the fashion industry - in production, consumption and disposal - have become increasingly apparent. Kaya’s selection as a Young Champion of the Earth draws global attention to the ills of a booming industry,” stated UN Young Champion program co-ordinator Russell Galt.
Dorey was told she won in September, then told she had to keep it a secret for two months prior to the official announcement.
While she told her bosses, parents and boyfriend, she otherwise crammed the news into the back of her mind until Nov. 22, she says.
“It kind of felt like I won again,” she says.
The prize comes with trips to the UN General Assembly in New York in September 2018 as well as the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi at the end of November for what she calls an: “entrepreneurship boot camp.”
As she packed her bags for Kenya’s capital city Dorey discussed the environmental disaster lurking downstream from the haute couture high life.
In Metro Vancouver, where a ban on throwing out textiles is currently being considered (a resolution is scheduled for January) old clothes account for a little more than two per cent of the landfill, or a little more than 19,000 tonnes.
The documentary River Blue shone a spotlight on the concept of hydro-cide, one environmental scientist’s term for the homicide of waterways by tanneries and the dye industry.
“It is one of those issues that no one really likes to talk about,” Dorey says.
The engine of the fashion industry is style, and as new cuts and colours ascend there’s no thought given to the old, out-of-style clothes, Dorey explains.
“I feel like I’m lucky in the sense that I’m starting right now and I don’t have a huge, big fashion brand out there that’s got a massively complicated supply chain,” she says. “I can start from scratch and do it right.”
Like tech visionaries who hatched their best ideas in someone else’s garage, Dorey’s studio is in her parents’ North Vancouver basement.
From there, Novel Supply Co.’s clothes are manufactured near Main Street in Vancouver with fabric from China.
A lengthy distribution channel isn’t ideal, but Dorey hasn’t been able to find her preferred fabric – a hemp and organic cotton blend – in Canada.
“I really wanted to source fabric from Canada but it’s not really possible,” she says. “Hopefully, if somebody reading this has a mill they can contact me.”
Dorey has touted hemp as a pesticide-free fabric that doesn’t need as much water as cotton. Still, it has its challenges, she allows.
“The people making my clothing are just like: ‘Why are you working with natural fabrics? They’re so unpredictable and they’re so hard to work with,’” she says. “But to me it’s really important.”
The clothes bear patterns but no dyes, she says.
“It would be contradictory for me to make a really sustainable product and then dye it with toxic chemicals.”
However, Dorey is investigating onion skins, avocado pits, and other methods of natural dyes.
A graduate of Handsworth Secondary, Dorey initially pursued tourism management at Capilano University before earning a sustainable business leadership certificate at BCIT.
“My background is not in fashion at all,” she explains.
Dorey was intrigued with the notion of starting a sustainable clothing line but she wrestled with its ethical ramifications for a while.
“I hemmed and hawed over it for a very long time because it kind of goes against my values to create more stuff,” she says.
At BCIT she remembers wanting to work for a brand that shared her values and her style. She couldn’t find both.
She decided to launch Novel Supply Co., raising $10,000 through a
Kickstarter campaign.
“Even though I’m creating more stuff I’m doing it in the most sustainable way possible,” she says.
It’s a far cry from synthetics derived from petroleum and micro-plastics polluting the water, she says.
Attention needs to be paid to clothes that populate the back of closets like an island of misfit toys, all those unloved puffer jackets, trench coats, platform shoes, and slogan t-shirts that end up in the landfill.
Dorey is in the midst of starting a take back program so old clothes can either be turned into something new or composted.
While she still has budgeting to do, Dorey imagines most of the prize money she received – US $15,000 - will go towards closing the loop.
But she’s also cognizant that the way she does business will have to change as the people who sew her clothes are all approaching retirement age. Young people, she says, tend to want to be the designer rather than the seamstress.
“The manufacturing industry is kind of a dying one, sadly, in Vancouver,” she says.
Dorey anticipates a move toward automation.
Her clothes, which include t-shirts and cork wallets, are available through her website and at various pop-up markets.
She’s been looking to stock her clothes in stores (“it’s more sustainable than me starting my own store,” she reasons.) but has struggled to find one that aligns with her values.
Most of those clothes bear the Novel Supply logo, three triangles that represent the North Shore mountains. North Vancouver’s proximity to nature helped form her outlook, she says.
“To me, that is so much a part of who I am and I think, so much a part of why I’ve ended up where I am.”
More info is available at novelsupply.com/
