There is a specific kind of heartbreak that only happens in fashion, and it happened to me Tuesday on Greene Street.
A sample sale was packing up in one of those SoHo showrooms with the cast-iron facades, and out on the curb was a rack — plus boxes — of deadstock fabric. Rolls of it. Silk charmeuse, a gorgeous slubby linen, a printed cotton that looked like something off a Sabyasachi mood board. All of it headed for the trash because the season was over and nobody wanted to pay to store it.
The fashion industry does this constantly. We make beautiful things and then we throw beautiful things away, and we call it inventory management. It makes me a little insane.
I asked the woman breaking down the rack if I could take some. She looked at me like I'd offered to take out her recycling. "Take all of it, honestly," she said. "They're going to bill us if we don't clear the sidewalk."
So I took what I could carry. Which, it turns out, is more than a reasonable person can carry. I had silk under both arms and a roll of linen balanced on my shoulder like a bazooka, and I hauled the whole rescued haul down to the Spring Street station and onto the C train.
A man gave up his seat — not for me, for the fabric. The fabric got a seat. I stood.
This is the part of fashion work nobody photographs. Not the runways, not the front rows. The dragging of deadstock fabric across SoHo because you physically cannot watch good silk go in a dumpster. The fashion industry trained me to want the shiny version, and then real life handed me a bazooka of linen and a long ride home.
I'm going to make something from it. Maybe a few things. A bias-cut slip from the charmeuse, definitely. The printed cotton wants to be a wrap dress, the kind my aunties would approve of and also borrow.
There's a whole movement around deadstock and sustainable fashion now, and the industry loves to put it on a panel. But it really just comes down to this: someone has to carry the fabric home. It might as well be me.
Waste is a choice. I keep choosing the other thing.
Love,