Undocumented Weaving and Dyeing Techniques in SiLaen

 

fig. 1 Ikat in the Sangkarsangkar 

The weaving tradition in the area Southeast of Lake Toba was once unique and rich. Various types of traditional cloths (ulos) were made here that are not found in other Batak areas, such as the Ragi Harangan and the Sangkarsangkar, remarkable for their ikat patterning and deep, rich dyes. The weaving tradition in this region has never been well studied. Weavers there resisted commercialization and commodification of their work longer than in other regions, but in the 1980s and 1990s this resistance was finally broken. Many old pieces appeared on the tourist/collector market and the tradition lost its vibrancy.  

 

In 2016, when I was trying to learn more about the use of Morinda citrifolia, a tree that yields red dye, known amongst the Batak as bangkudu, I drove through SiLaen, about a half hour away from Porsea at the S.E corner of Lake Toba. When Batak weavers still relied on natural dyes, bangkudu was still a common tree found in every village. Now it is rare because weavers use commercial, synthetic red dye that they purchase on the market. A bangkudu tree in SiLaen caught my attention, therefore, when I drove past. I wanted to know if there was a weaver in the vicinity and so I knocked on the door of a house near the tree and I was invited in.

 

My host was an elderly weaver, probably in her 70s, who had some ulos for sale. I was in luck because when I enquired, it turned out that her grandmother had worked with natural dyes and she had observed her grandmother until she was 18 years of age. I asked the elderly weaver some questions. I couldn’t understand her answers in their entirety. Nevertheless, I was able to take a few notes during our brief stay. I believe that the techniques that she described are unique to her region. 

 

She remembered that yarn had been locally spun using the spinning wheel (sorha) in 1942. Cotton (kapas) was planted and after 6 months the cotton bolls could be harvested.  It hurt, she said, “Hansit ma hape”, and my sense was that she was referring to the hard labour involved in making yarn.

 

Then the yarn was dyed. She mentioned the distinction between blue yarn, dyed solely in an indigo solution, and black yarn (na itom) made using the sigira technique. I was familiar with this from all over the Batak region. She said that the yarn (1 kumpal, a skein-like measure) was first dyed in an indigo solution (mansop) for three days, 6 hours at a time each day. This turned the yarn blue. When the indigo process was finished and the yarn was dry, the next stage could begin. This was when they put the blue yarn into a red dye (bangkudu) bath. The use of Morinda citrifolia as part of the sigira process was new to me. In other regions, the sigira process involves putting the indigo-dyed yarn into black mud where the iron content of the mud interacts with the indigo, turning the yarn black.

 

There were no restrictions on who could fetch the bangkudu root; it could be harvested by both men and women. The dye material was dried and then brought to a boil (together with other ingredients), but not boiled for long, at the edge of the river. The weaver said that a hole was dug in the ground beside the river and the liquid bangkudu dye was poured into the hole. It was not clear to me whether the earth of the hole was sufficient to make the desired chemical reaction, or whether additional earth, which she said was fetched from the foot of the mountains, was needed. Water with high iron content was added to the mixture (aek sibaungbaung: na tasihan, tasik, aek na karatan) meaning rusty water, or water with iron content. One would not wash clothes in such water, the weaver said, or they would turn yellow. ‘Rusty water’ is an ingredient when dyeing with Morinda citrifolia elsewhere as well. The weaver said that this combination of red and blue was used for various ulos design types and she gave the design types called Ragi Pangko and Antahantak (fig 2) as examples. (Legacy in cloth, Fig Cat 4.4 p. and Fig Cat 5.6 p. 304 – 305).

 

The information given (or that I managed to understand) was limited, but it gave me pause to reflect on her tradition and of course it raised several additional questions.  

 

1.     The weaver did not show me an example of the result from dyeing yarn with both blue and red dyes, and the colour that it yields is not clear to me. However, reviewing the cloths from the weaver’s area, I see a range from deep blue with a reddish-purple sheen, to a deep chocolate red. My awe for the prowess of the dyers explodes. The dyers knew how to create quite a variety of deep colours.  Evident in fig. 1 is the white of undyed yarn, the deep chocolate-red colour, and also bright red ikat. One question that comes up is whether the deep chocolate-red colour results just from bangkudu combined with the iron-rich mud and water (or perhaps tanin), or whether there is also indigo dye involved.  In fig. 2 a weaver in Porsea is holding up a lighter-coloured cloth of which the sides have a red/purple hue. Could this be the result of indigo dyeing with sigira that includes bangkudu? By combining blue and red by dyeing the yarn successively in these two colours followed by the mud bath, could the weaver achieve a whole gradient of colours along a blue – red – black spectrum? Deeper colours are produced by dipping the yarn in the dye over and over again. However, the elderly weaver told me that the dip in sigira was done only once. The proof would be in experimenting with the dye baths, or listening to elderly weavers – of which few, anymore, know the dyeing tradition. None practise it anymore.

fig. 2. A weaver in Porsea holds up
the design type called  Antakantak

 

2.     Special, in this region, is red-dyed ikat patterning in indigo-dyed yarn. I don’t think that the weaver was describing how this was done because she didn’t mention ikat – except to say in passing that she had taught all of her daughters how to make ikat. To yield this result, the yarn would be dyed with indigo after the yarn was wrapped with ties to resist the dye. When the ties were removed and the yarn was dipped in the red or bangkudu dye, the spared bits would turn red (fig. 2) (see also Legacy in cloth, p. 305 Fig. Cat 5.6b). The question that arises here is whether the weaver would submerge even the blue parts of the yarn in the red dye, thus dyeing it both blue and red, or whether she would bind off the blue part? Given the colour variation in old cloths, they may have practised both strategies.

 

3.     How important and prevalent was the use of the iron-rich water when dyeing in this region? As the weaver mentioned, it would turn clothing yellow. Certainly, many red cloths from this region have a deep maroon-chocolate colour (fig. ) e.g. Legacy in cloth, p. 268, 278). This could be from tanins, but also from the iron in the water.

 

fig. 3 resist-dyed ends of the Sangkarsangkar ulos

I became very excited when the weaver remembered that a resist dye technique had been followed to make the ‘white ends of a cloth’. This is evident in fig. 3. It was also sometimes practised when making the most extraordinary cloth from the region, the Pinunsaan (Legacy in cloth p. 363), but also other weavings with white ends, such as the Simpar (p. 300 Legacy in cloth). However, I had never met a weaver who was familiar with the process. This weaver in SiLaen was able to let me know that the end (of the warp, not the whole cloth) was dibungkus or tied off using part (leaves?) of the banana tree. The reed-like sungkit could be used as well. It is easier just to sew a white piece of ulos onto the middle section to produce white ends in the cloth, and this is done in 'morden times'. It is unclear whether the resist dye technique was always practised in the past to achieve this design result. This would be consistent with the deep Batak conviction that the warp should not be broken, but rather continuous.

 

The weaver also remembered the use of hori, a nettle plant that Batak weavers used to make a coarse fabric. I had never been able to find first-hand information about the use of this fiber. The fibres, if anything like the nettles in the Northern hemisphere, were probably quite long. She mentioned that they were knotted (dipuduni) probably end to end to produce a long yarn, and then wound up using the spinning wheel. To my knowledge there is only one hori in a museum collection, a coarse and simple cloth.

 

Violence by Definition

Designer and decolonial thinker, Pierre-Antoine Vettorello, together with his team, has made a Zine called 'The Yarn' devoted to decolonial dialogue on violence in the fashion school. I responded to their call with the following piece on the classic definition of fashion. The Zine was launched in December 2023.

Niessen, S. Violence by Definition. The Yarn [Zine] Issue 1. Antwerp, Belgium. 2023

Image by Adrian Vieriu-11625609 Creative Commons

 I have increasing difficulty with the definition of Fashion that has held course for so long: ‘rapid style change’. It is the essential part of a longer definition that was whittled down further every time another component of it proved false.  Finally only ‘style change through time’ remained and it seemed to sufficiently capture the essence of what was needed. In 1904 Georg Simmel wrote, “Fashion does not exist in tribal and classless societies.” This was the caveat, usually unwritten, that undergirded ‘style change through time’. The definition supported a West-Rest dichotomous hierarchy.

I never attended a school of Fashion. I am an anthropologist but ended up teaching in a Department of Clothing and Textiles in Canada where a significant proportion of the students aimed for a career in Fashion. I was writing a book then, one of the earliest non-Western histories of dress (Batak Cloth and Clothing: A dynamic Indonesian Tradition, 1993). The ‘style change through time’ definition was in the textbook that I was teaching from at the same time. Needless to say, I felt rather uncomfortable. Cultural relativity is the central pillar of modern anthropology. I liked to compare dress systems in terms of their respective, unique dynamics. It was confusing to me to be in a field that drew an arbitrary line between West and the Rest. Within a university, no less! I perceived a 19^th century bias, with no bother having been spent to scrutinize it and no intent on verifying it. It drove a fundamental wedge between me and my colleagues.

 

At the turn of the millennium the fashion world was slowly coming to agree that styles in India and Japan also seemed to exhibit ‘change through time’ and could perhaps be accepted into the Fashion fold. That didn’t make me feel much better. I wondered who the gate-keepers were and why these conclusions were being accepted without any self-reflexive analysis of the fence around Fashion’s fold.

 

‘Style change through time’. Innocent enough: a parade of lovelies. It was the gatekeeping that was exclusionary and unjust. It was the implicit power hierarchy, the dominance.  How and when was the definition applied?  On the face of things easy enough to fix: just acknowledge the universality of style change through time. But no, the definition was the flag on a colonial ship. There was that caveat untried but treated as true: “Fashion does not exist in tribal and classless societies.”  The conceptual violence had consequences.

 

As the Fashion industry expanded exponentially, we badly needed a conceptual revolution to curb it but instead ‘sustainability’ was being seen through the same materials-only lens that was ground for the definition of Fashion. Again the focus was on the styles: the fibres, and the industrial processes and energy used to make them. And then there was the after-thought: there should be better pay for slave labour. Here wasn’t just the materials-only lens, but the familiar in-built hierarchy. The implicit racism in the definition of fashion had never been fully and thoroughly debunked. How could industrial Fashion ever be sustainable when slave labour enables it and it expands through the exploitation of their traditions? I began to perceive the definition of ‘style change through time’ as both pernicious and insidious. I came to understand it as an invitation to put one’s head in the sand, to willfully close one’s eyes to protect the status quo. A definition so seemingly innocent, so apparently a-political, so focused on the lovely. How could one possibly rebel against bows and ribbons? As innocuous as pablum.

 

I learned to see the violence as not just against the peoples who had been pushed out of the Fashion boat -- except insofar as they were forced into slavery to make Fashion items for their oppressors and give up their own traditions. I perceived willful negation and erasure of the existence of non-Fashion and their makers and wearers. Racism can be as subtle as it is pervasive. ‘Style change through time’.

 

I think of my students. Some swallowed the definition of ‘style change through time’ whole, to regurgitate it on exams, and others who had come to Canada to try to make it in the global Fashion arena were quiet. What did the definition cost them? What did it reinforce? What latitude did they have to address the feelings that it called up?

 

As more time passes I am experiencing the hottest summer in the history of humankind. Global emergency is teaching me to see Fashion violence through a broader lens, violence in which we are all complicit. We struggle to understand why we have arrived at such a terrible zenith of Fashion over-production, over-consumption, use of toxins and build-up of waste. Now the definition ‘style change through time’ reveals the full extent of its capacity to blinker. It fixes attention on a parade of designs while Fashion is really what is happening behind the scenes. Cultures of dress everywhere in the world, including the West, are the victims of industrial Fashion predation. We, the consumers and users, are rendered complicit in the destruction of the biosphere. We have become the extension of our body coverings co-opted by industry and economics. We have become ensnared in the innocence of our own definition, sacrificed by our own game. We have joined all that has been exploited by industrial Fashion.

 

The scales loosen from our eyes gradually, but a way out of the trap is hard to find. Caught as hamsters in a wheel, we learn to see Fashion as a process in which we victimize and are victimized by complicity. How to stop that wheel?

 

I propose we start with a new definition: 

 

Fashion is ecologies of dress and bodily adornment through which we express our relationships with our environments.

 

It is a universal definition that avoids the dualism of Fashion haves and have-nots, ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’, exploiters and exploited. It offers a level playing field: we are all in this together. It emphasizes process, the materials of fashion being but a visual epiphenomenon. Most of all, it emphasizes connections and interactions in all of their complexity (ecologies). Environments are plural and multi-dimensional. 

May this definition liberate and transform understandings, offer a pluriverse of ways out. 

It turns out that we are the gatekeepers. Let us get up on the bridge and run the colonial ship aground.

Our Common . Market: Some Background

 I presented this text during the webinar, 'Expanding the Frontiers of Commoning,' 16 November 2023, with the Schumacher Center for a New Economics

 

I would like to tell you about OurCommon.Market, a collection and platform of fashion commons being developed by the activist group, Fashion Act Now, or FAN, headquartered in London, England. 

You are probably already scratching your head. Fashion commons? Now, if you are thinking, “Isn’t Fashion all about showing off, and supporting, hierarchies of status and power?” you would be right. ‘Fashion commons’ appears to be a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. I hope I will be able to alleviate some of this cognitive dissonance during the next 10 minutes.

At FAN we work on dismantling the Fashion system. But first, a bit about working within FAN. Participating in this activist group I have been excited to experience how a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. What I want to share today is very much the fruit of FAN discussions and working together; it is impossible to pinpoint the boundaries between the thinking of our individual members and that of the whole group. Many of the ideas that I will be sharing are the result of ‘group discussions’; our ideas are constructed and held in common. As we agitate for what we call ‘de-Fashion’ (i.e. degrowth, sustainability and radical fairness in clothing systems) we try very hard to learn and practice what it means to be a knowledge commons. None of us is an expert in commoning. We are learning while doing. 

The place for me to start to explain Our Common Market is with the distinction that underlies all of our thinking in FAN, namely, the difference between what we call big and little-f Fashion. If ‘Fashion Commons’ was an oxymoron for you, that is because you have big-F Fashion in mind. Not surprisingly! Most people only know big-F Fashion because it has been the dominant system of clothing production and consumption on the planet since long before all of us were born. 

Recently people have been raising their voices to decry Fast Fashion as 'Fossil Fuel Fashion' pointing out that this highly damaging form of Fashion is enabled by fossil fuels --not just for production but also for synthetic fibres. We at FAN agree, but we go much further. We point out that ALL of Industrial Fashion is Fossil Fuel Fashion. Since its inception in the Industrial Revolution in the early 19^th Century the entire trajectory has been enabled by fossil fuels, starting with coal-powered steam engines. The use of those fossil fuels has increased exponentially and Fast Fashion is only the latest stage in the trajectory.

While fossil fuels have been the true engine of industrial Fashion, Fashion theorists attributed the uniqueness of the clothing system in the West, instead, to a higher stage of cultural evolution, to a more sophisticated civilization, to racial superiority. In short, the sheer power of fossil fuels went straight to our heads and puffed up the ego of the West. The term ‘Fashion’ was co-opted for the clothing of rich sophisticates who could afford rapidly changing styles, while the rest of the world ‘merely’ had clothing rooted in tradition and slow to change. 

So there you have it, the dark side of Fashion lurking behind every catwalk and Fashion magazine: the vertical binary: the Industrial forms versus the non-Industrial forms. That simple. And thus Fashion has been celebrated while all other clothing forms, including peasant, tribal, and foreign, have been erased, ignored, undermined, plundered, and considered unimportant and bound to disappear.

I think you can see where this is going: On the one hand: the unseen, erased, carbon-sequestering, local, small-f fashion expressions  and on the other: the  growth-based, destructive, Industrial Fossil Fueled Fashion that has ballooned out to dominate the clothing scene worldwide, with FAN's interest in 'fashion commons' relating to small-f fashion expressions.

Of course the thinking of most of us has been dominated by Industrial big-F Fashion, informed by: what the shops are filled with, catwalks, fashion magazines, the styles of the rich and famous, and on and on. Small-f fashion doesn’t even appear as a blip on the screen, except maybe when dubbed ‘handicraft’. This blinkered view of big-f Fashion also dominates the framework of sustainability in Fashion, which is entirely oriented to reforming the Industry! We, at FAN, place little hope in the industry becoming ‘sustainable’, because it is growth-based and fossil-fuel based and, by definition, rooted in the unfairness of erasing small-f fashion expressions.

Long, thoughtful, soul-searching discussions amongst FAN members have led us to a fork in the road. Would we choose the Extinction Rebellion kinds of strategies of visible and audible protest against the Fashion industry, or would we choose the path of building and supporting alternatives to big-f Fashion? With the wise counsel of David Bollier in our ears, and the clear-sightedness of Sara Arnold, our co-ordinator, we chose for building and encouraging alternatives: in other words, to showcase small-f fashion. And this makes us unique as activists for a better fashion world. There are many other groups brilliantly critiquing the Fashion Industry. Make no mistake, the Fashion industry MUST BE dismantled for the well being of people and planet. But here’s the thing: when Big-F Fashion comes down, little-f fashion has to be there. Ready. Resilient. Regenerative. Small and Beautiful; Free, Fair and Alive.

Hence: OurCommon.Market, the interactive platform that we are building to connect, encourage and support small-f fashion expressions. This includes a whole array of community groups that repair, share and repurpose their clothes, farm to fashion initiatives like Fibershed (now in many countries, not just the States where it started), The Linen Project in The Netherlands, groups reviving or maintaining their clothing heritage, such as communities in the Ukraine that have produced and decorated clothing from homegrown flax and wool for generations, and so on and so on. Zoe Gilbertson, one of our FAN members, is researching bio-regional bast fibre knowledge, and is plugged into its revival in the UK. Another member, Ariel Fabbro, has constructed the website, Cobbled Goods, to profile sustainable shoes made with respect for nature.

We have constructed ground rules -- we call them the ‘Common Code’ -- for participation in Ourcommon.Market so that the communities that we on-board are not big-f Fashion wannabees waiting for their chance to ‘scale up’, but function, rather, as commons, in which the common good and fairness, not profit and growth, are central. 

We hope to offer a forum that will eventually generate a significant groundswell. Will Our Common Market result in some kind of solidarity? Will the communities learn from each other and support each other? Can we collectively become a commons of commons, or a kind of what David Bollier called "a vibrant Republic of Commoners"? That’s what we hope and aim for. 

Our path will be made by walking on it. We have to trust to the group dynamics that will take place. We know that many challenges lie ahead. They will need to be solved iteratively, within and through our communities, through trial and error, and through deep discussion: differences of language and culture; differences of vision and strategy, will need to be bridged.

Inside and outside Europe there are countless groups struggling to keep their clothing traditions alive. We want to serve, not just as an alternative to big-f Fashion, but also as an antidote, by providing a space where small-f fashion communities can find each other, support each other, shine, feel pride, revive and flourish. In short, to re-emerge from two hundred years of erasure. 

The loss of these systems is not something to shrug off, and feel that they are doomed by modernity. It is absolutely crucial that they be supported:

1.    First, they provide alternative understandings of how fashion can operate for the good of communities -- and this is desperately being sought now by Fashion reformists in the Northern nations.

2.    Second, they are part of the process of becoming sustainable in the North. The process of being sacrificed by the continual expansion of big-f Fashion needs to be reversed. Small-f fashion needs to be granted the space to survive.

3.    Third, we hear so much about the loss of natural diversity and the 6^th Great Extinction. But cultural survival is a problem equally profound. That is also part of the polycrisis. Wade Davis made a prediction 15 years ago that, 

“Within a generation or two … we may be witnessing the loss of fully half of humanity’s social, cultural and intellectual legacy.” 

My time is up, but suffice it to say that I have found profound, even mind-blowing, meaning invested in indigenous Indonesian clothing systems maintained by indigenous cultural commons. Indigenous systems of dress, not just their appearance, but also how they are made and used, are imbued with what Schumacher referred to as ‘psychological structures’ and, in turn, are profoundly linked to cultural survival. I’d like to end, now, with a quote by Schumacher.

“The life, work, and happiness of all societies depend on certain 'psychological structures' which are infinitely precious and highly vulnerable. Social cohesion, co-operation, mutual respect and above all self-respect, courage in the face of adversity, and the ability to bear hardship - all this and much else disintegrates and disappears when these 'psychological structures' are gravely damaged. A  [person] is destroyed by the inner conviction of uselessness. No amount of economic growth can compensate for such losses.”

The ATBM Disaster is apparently about to strike Silalahi

 I remember the first time I saw Batak weavers at work in North Sumatra. The year was 1978. I was mesmerized watching the weft being threaded between the warp. I was privy to an act of creation; it felt like magic to see a cloth slowly come into existence from the skillful manipulation of a few yarns and sticks. 

 

It took me many years, decades even, to understand what I was seeing: the most efficient system of production that can be imagined. Batak weavers make ulos, ritual cloth of their culture. What they make may be understood as a kind of meeting point  of so many facets of their lives. It all comes together in a satisfying, sophisticated, unique, visual and material way in their ulos.

• While weaving the weavers are also looking after their household chores. They are teaching their daughters how to weave, and how to fit weaving into their daily lives. Between throws of weft, they cooking, clean, and look after the children. 
• They work in the dry season when they are free from duties in the fields. Weaving fits an annual schedule.
• Because they use local materials, they have to learn about trees and plants and their properties. They know which ones can serve as weaving equipment, yarns and dyes. Their bond with nature is profound and reciprocal. 
• The physical environment inspires almost all of the patterning that Batak weavers have invented. 
• The weavers weave together; they help each other through weaverly challenges by sharing ideas, skills, materials, insights, and successes, deepening their kinship and neighbourly bonds as they work. They share laughter and tears, stories and inspiration. 
• They also share and grow the specific language related to their technical skills and their unique equipment. 
• Their fruits of their looms were once indispensable for every aspect of their lives: for warmth and comfort, to announce social station and cultural identity, and social and ritual roles. 
• Imbued with spiritual powers, the cloths, and the way they were made, involved the maker, and later the wearer, in the spiritual complex that permeates every part of their lives. 

Totality was inscribed in every ulos: a woman’s personal, social, cultural and spiritual life, her heritage, her know-how and her skill. Ulos production was cultural reproduction of the most essential and efficient kind. The strategies of production honoured all of the elements in all of the weaver’s various environments. The cloths embodied respect, knowledge, caring and heritage. 

 

The world of pre-colonial Batak weavers exemplifies how commons work. ‘Commons’ are shared resources managed ‘in common’ by people. I learned to see the woven cloth as a kind of confluence of commons: overlapping and intersecting cultural commons. And I see reciprocity as a primary feature of cultural commons. Those who dip into it and take from it are the ones who also build, grow and store it. For example, the language used by Batak weavers is an knowledge commons; collectively they use it and at the same time build and maintain it through use. Weaving techniques and design are commons in which know-how, knowledge and memory are held and shared, used and added to. The physical environment that is used and maintained by the weavers is another and the ritual sphere yet another relative to which the weavings give and derive meaning. All of these commons are represented and inextricably woven together in a Batak ulos, a kind of total expression of Batak social, intellectual and spiritual life.  

 

In 1978 I was also witnessing weaving commons being eroded by enclosures. Enclosures are external forces that appropriate what is held in common, taking it out of the hands of the rightful stewards. The history of Batak weaving, since the Industrial Revolution and colonialism, may be framed as a succession of enclosures by outside forces. It is a familiar story the world over. 

 

For the Batak enclosures began with imported yarns and dyes in the 19^th Century. Weavers took both happily because the mechanized imports reduced their workloads. Nevertheless, that ease came at a greater cost than the money they paid for it. The imports generated relations of dependence on the market and also reduced the weavers’ reciprocal ties with the physical world: the trees, plants, insects, earth and water involved in making the yarns and dyes. Within a few generations the knowledge of making yarn and dyes was lost because this kind of knowledge is stewarded during hands-on doing. The imported yarns and dyes were just the beginning of the take-over by external markets. Cheap Western-style clothing eventually supplanted the traditional handloomed Batak clothing. Inevitably, many weavers retired their looms. The inroads that the external markets were making were also expressed in faster transportation networks. Heeding the dictates of the new markets, the weavers had to develop regional specializations to compete. Divisions of labour emerged. Weavers had to specialize in their knowledge of design and technique. In short, the market was forcing them to de-skill. It was no longer their village communities and local markets that were shaping their craft. Rather, distant market forces began to dictate what weavers wove. Government and industry brought in semi-mechanical looms with the rationale that these so-called ‘modern’ looms would allow weavers to produce faster and ostensibly earn more. The market focus was shifting weaving  away from cultural reproduction and towards speed of production and financial earnings. Working at the new looms was another part of the process of de-skilling and the loss of women’s space in their culture. Unused, the specialized vocabulary related to the ancient Batak technical heritage was not needed in the new looms. The entire conceptual system surrounding the making of a cloth shifted. The weavers no longer needed their special medium of communication that supported the unicity of their craft. The uniqueness of their craft was also giving way to standardized production. The new looms pulled them out of their homes and into hierarchical workshop settings where they occupied the lowest rungs as wage-earning labourers doing mindless, repetitive work according to the dictates of those higher up the ladder. Fashion ‘designers’ also had a role to play in this demotion of the social position of the weavers. Appropriating Batak designs to adapt them to fashion, the designers employed the weavers as mere labour. And as if that were not enough, do-gooders are now moving in with computer-generated designs. Once again, the rationale is that the new designs will ‘aid’ the weavers. At one time the unique Batak designs emerged from the village weaver commons. No one weaver was a designer, but the weavers collectively created unique designs by sharing and trying out ideas together. The unique Batak designs are expressions of a cultural commons. Today there is almost nothing left of that crucible. The weavers’ strongest ties are now with the market, and earning money has eclipsed the cultural facets of weaving almost entirely. All culturally unique facets of Batak weaving have slipped like sand through the fingers and been supplanted with the external market economy. The weavers themselves frequently complain that, while they know how to weave, they do not know how to weave their own traditions.

 

This is a familiar story. All of the time-saving and labour-saving strategies introduced have been a kind of net pulling the weavers into capitalist spheres of production. The art that once expressed the local environment now expresses  dependence on fossil fuels (for yarns, dyes, loom parts, marketing and new technologies). The confluence and congregation of commons symbolized by ancient Batak cloths no longer exists in the modern cloths. They now exemplify  how modernity can enclose indigenous commons. The work of weavers is no longer that dense and efficient reproduction of their culture.  It has been flattened and simplified into running after money, an aim propelled by joblessness and the need for cash.

 

Every Batak region, large and small, once had its own weaver commons: unique designs, unique features of loom and technique, unique kinship and political characteristics, rituals, beliefs and language. The variety of features made the Batak region around Lake Toba dynamic and interesting. But they have been almost entirely eroded by the broad brushstrokes of modernity that reduce it to one indistinct whole dominated by the quest for money and standardized looms.

 

Remnants of the rich, ancient tradition are left. In Silalahi, a bay at the Northern end of Lake Toba, and a village culturally allied with the neighbouring villages of Paropo and Tongging, weaving is distinctive with unusual techniques and ulos designs that appear to be unique in the world. While the erosive process of enclosures has been at work in this region, some of the ancient technical features of ulos are still intact. This has largely to do with the fact that the traditional looms used in this region have not (yet) been replaced by upright, semi-mechanical looms.  This is very special. The weavers of Silalahi need to be cherished, protected and encouraged. There are not many left, and most of them are elderly. 

 

I visited Silalahi again earlier this year (2023), I wanted to take a closer look at how the weavers use three heddle sticks in a single set of heddles. It is terribly complex technique, and terribly difficult to do -- so much more difficult than the mindless weaving that occurs on the upright semi-mechanical looms. The technique has never been documented or recorded. I had the great honour to be able to sit beside the loom of one of the very best weavers, a woman devoted to the Silalahi tradition, Sinta br. Sagala, Ny. Sidabariba, Op. Dita. Her son, Marvin Sidabariba, is equally devoted to maintaining his cultural heritage. Without many means and resources besides his heart, dedication and knowledge, he does all that he can to encourage the weavers in his village.

 

Recently Marvin told me that there is a government plan to bring semi-mechanical looms into Silalahi. A plan to be mourned. It fills me with deep sadness. It will mean the end of the unusual weaving techniques and resultant ulos designs, which make the Silalahi tradition unique in the world. Once again the looms are being introduced with the best of intentions: 'to increase weaver income’. But they will erode and gradually eliminate the remainder of what is unique in the Silalahi weaving tradition, which is still found in technique and design. Is there nobody in the government who understands how special the ancient knowledge and traditions are, and who can encourage these traditional elements? Why are the Silalahi weavers being pushed to work within a foreign weaving tradition? (The looms are of Western origin.) The weavers themselves are naïve and have few concerns about the impact of these foreign looms. They know how difficult and complex their techniques are, and they are correct in thinking that these techniques cannot be performed on simple, semi-mechanical looms. What they do not know, however, is that the owners of those semi-mechanical looms have no intention of replicating the unique techniques of Silalahi. In fact, they have neither knowledge nor concern about what is unique and ancient. They only want to make the designs easily and cheaply for sale and use them in fashion. Their looms will churn out cheaper products. The buyers, who also know nothing about the unique Silalahi tradition, will make their purchases based on cloth appearance and price. This has already happened throughout the Batak region. All in the seductive name of modernity.

 

And so something unique and beautiful in the world will slip away, unnoticed except by the handful of elderly weavers who are left and knowledgeable idealists like Marvin Sidabariba. The message to these weavers will be that the world does not care about their skill and art. 

 

I stand with Marvin.

 

 

TO DEFASHION

 

Friends, do you see de-Fashion as reduction

frustration, disappointment, no satisfaction

‘tightening a belt’ that already feels too tight?

For a feel good future, it just doesn’t seem right.

 

I beg of you to change your lens

to see beyond enticing brands

to the industry failing to meet your demands

hurting us all, then turning a blind eye

seducing, brainwashing, only to deny

hiding behind a succession of styles

contributing to waste for miles ….and miles

sacrificing us all when we buy in

to seasons, sales and ‘professional’ design

to hate our bodies, lose touch with our community

with our sheep and our flax and our creative capacity

offered freely by nature; erased with impunity.

 

The top of the curve is our lowest point.

 

Humanity flattened by the consumer role,

dress of the other eroded, to say naught of our soul.

The awful potential of the exponential.

For a fistful of money, dominance and control

civilizations implode and climates boil

trapped by debt millions sweat and toil.

Industrial Fashion: you are toxic

to all that walks swims flies and thinks.

Carbon sinks are of no avail

if your coloniality will prevail.

Fashion mirror in our dress

reflecting sadly who we have come to be

though kindliness is what we want to see:

regeneration, reparation, sustainability

a healthy world, not our current distress.

 

The top of the curve is our lowest point.

 

Dear friends, we are gathered here to de-Fashion

education and the entire system, to reweave

healing in our clothes, community in every stitch

repairing the tears of sacrifice, mending, re-using

microfibres of hope in our heart relearning

the art of universal fashion: to refuse exploitation

 

When we fail to give the other room we prepare our own doom.

Here, dear friends, in Berlin

we embrace all as family

and only thus reclaim our humanity.

 

The top of the curve is our lowest point

whence we embark on de-Fashion.

Let us here, now, be the point of inflection

marking the start of the Great Resuscitation.

(recited at the De-Fashioning Education Conference, Berlin 15 September)

Fashion: Be Careful What You Celebrate! Status and Othering in Fossil Fuels and Fashion (with an appended 'Table of Industrial Fashion Myths')

 At the end of this short blog I present a ‘Table of Industrial Fashion Myths’, a work-in-progress. I preface it here briefly with some preliminary thoughts about possible links between these myths and fossil fuels. (Also published on the Fashion Act Now website: https://www.fashionactnow.org/post/fashion-be-careful-what-you-celebrate-status-and-othering-in-fossil-fuels-and-fashion)

 

For decades I have looked at coloniality, othering, and the hubris of the West/Northern Nations, as a ‘wrong turn’ in philosophical terms. If the error of our ways could only be demonstrated, has been my thinking, then all could be set aright! Hence the adoption of strategies of jumping into the pen, teaching, appealing to the innate goodness in people, their ratio. Nothing can change the world like ideas.

 

Recently, however, the idea of ‘energy-blindness’ as explained by Nate Hagens (see his podcasts on Youtube) has altered my own thinking on the topic. It is obvious that fossil fuels enable industry, including the Fashion industry, nothing new there. What is new, that Hagens has sparked in my thinking, is the significance of the fact that Western Industrial fashion is a function of the discovery and use of Fossil Fuels. I don't mean this in a deterministic sense, but clearly  the course of Western fashion history has been shaped to some extent  by the use of fossil fuels, and is inextricably intertwined with access to fossil fuels. In that case, Western fashion history needs to be examined through the lens of fossil fuel enablement. This insight may have ramifications so profound as to require a re-write of Fashion history; in the traditional focus on design history, the significance of roles and types of fuel in Fashion have been underexposed if not completely ignored. 

 

Key to this insight is that for more than a century, the distinction of ‘rapid style change’ has been attributed to Western superiority, not fossil fuels. Furthermore, when ‘rapid style change’ was regarded as definitive for Fashion, by deduction Fashion had to be exclusively Western. The Eureka moment here is the possibility that not only Western Fashion, but also the Western Fashion ego, is indirectly a product of fossil fuel access. This ego appears to have undergone a kind of collective rush when exposed to the exceptional power of fossil fuels and I propose that this rush was expressed in delusions of superiority and mythologies of othering. Indeed, a wrong conceptual turn, but there was a hydrocarbon foundation underlying it. While acknowledging that this proposition still needs to be researched and verified, I would still like to go one step further by pointing out that the Fashion ego appears to be part of a larger fossil fuel thought  complex.

 

During this crisis era of global heating, researchers and writers are scrambling to come to grips  with society’s addiction to fossil fuels. Andreas Malm’s historical research has revealed that steam power (from coal combustion) out-competed water power in the early decades of the 19^th Century because coal could be privately owned and stored where and when it suited the needs of the owner (industrialist). Water power could only be generated in proximity to flowing water and access to it demanded negotiations with others having access to that same source, as well as reliance on the right weather conditions. In short, according to Malm, steam power offered greater latitude to exploit labour (Leather 2017), and thus the stage was set. It did not take long before fossil fuels were requisite to compete successfully in industry and deploy the labour coming into the city. In addition, fossil fuel offered more independent autonomy to industrialists and thus became the lifeblood of high social status -- which it has remained until this day. (I write just as the decision of a single individual, Elon Musk, to thwart a Ukrainian drone attack on the Krim has come to light, illustrating my use of the word ‘autonomy’ in regard to high social station, i.e. isolation from social controls.)

 

The characterization of Fashion’s uniqueness relative to all other fashion forms in the world is strikingly parallel. It was a vertical binary setting off, but also separating, the West from the Rest. Those ‘with’ fashion placed themselves on a pedestal, a status position, that also isolated them from the Rest.  

 

Kendra (2021) has reviewed white supremacy in the oil industry as evident in labour relations, racial segregation and racial violence, and concluded that it “is so much the norm that it is easier to point to the exception." Malm’s research went on (in White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism 2021) to document the link between fossil fuels and the defense of white privilege, Donald Trump being a good example of a supremacist who did all in his power to remove limits to fossil fuel discovery and use. In their review of the government of climate change, Diego Andreucci and Christos Zografos (2021) noted that othering is a technical tool used by the government of climate change in strategies of ‘mitigation’ (extraction of minerals for alternative energy systems), ‘climate migration’, and ‘vulnerability’ (a filter through which to assign where social ‘improvements’ are needed). All of these strategies extend capitalist relations of racism and colonialism. They discerned that “othering helps to preserve existing relations of racial, patriarchal and class domination in the face of climate-induced social upheavals”, concluding that “[O]thering is not only a feature of fossil fuelled development, but a way of functioning of capitalist governmentality more broadly…” 

 

Notably, the accepted sustainability discourse in Fashion has stubbornly failed to address the issue of othering embedded in the existence of sacrifice zones, labour exploitation and industrial growth.

 

I am not aware of fashion having been brought into discussions about relations of race and coloniality in the fossil fuel industry, but there appear to be reasons for doing so, given that Fashion is arguably the most potent tool to facilitate and normalize othering. Fashion has its origin and raison d’être in the intent and practice of othering (Niessen 2003). It not only makes othering possible and palatable by normalizing it, but exalts it by showcasing it in association with mythologies of superiority and the goodness of consumption. Fashion’s continual physical expansion works hand in glove with fossil fuel expansion. There appears to be a relationship of complementarity between the two. While fossil fuels have clearly played a powerful role in industrial Fashion history, Fashion appears to have played a complementary role in the social history of fossil fuel relations and consumption. In the needed re-write of Fashion history attention must be paid not only to what Fashion is, but what it does. Furthermore, in the task of ‘getting Fashion off fossil fuels’ it becomes clear that entirely new fashion thought systems will need to be constructed. Taking the plastic out of our clothing and switching to other power sources will not be sufficient to change what Fashion does in the manner of fossil fuel Fashion.

 

I cite Andreucci’s and Zografos’s conclusion that “[A]ny genuinely radical, comprehensive and meaningful response to the climate crisis must attack the root causes of the ongoing, uneven and combined socioecological catastrophe” (2022) in the event that in the job of unpacking and exposing the partnership of fossil fuels and Fashion any additional encouragement is required.

 

A comprehensive account of how the political and historical links between Fashion and fossil fuels have been expressed in Fashion mythologies and othering is significantly beyond the scope of this exploratory blog. A graduate student may want to take on this important work! The ‘Table of Industrial Fashion Myths’ below is a draft list of the ways in which hubris has functioned in Fashion. It has long been averred that fashion is the handmaiden of capitalism, but its enmeshment in perpetuating the fossil fuel economy not yet. Readers are invited to comment on and contribute to this foray. 

 

Table of Industrial Fashion Myths

 

Centrisms of Superiority	Manifestations of othering and superiority	Fashion Mythologies of othering and superiority
egocentrism	narcissism   hubris	Fashion depicts individual superiority   Fashion depicts individuality
ethnocentrism	white supremacy   racism   colonialism   othering   linear time   modernity   cultural erasure   belief in Western technology    cultural sacrifice zones are condoned	Fashion is a zenith of cultural ‘evolution’    Fashion depicts social/cultural relevance   Fashion is rapid change of styles   “A least it gives them jobs” (re: Fashion labour)   Indigenous designs and techniques are freely available for use by industrial fashion    Industrial Fashion can perpetuate the clothing systems/technologies/designs of the other   ‘globalization of Fashion’   ‘universal dress’   confidence that technology will solve the sustainability problem   ‘we’ are dependent on the Fashion industry for beautiful clothing
anthropocentrism	human exceptionalism   ecological sacrifice is condoned   greenwashing	human ingenuity will solve all problems   most conceptions of ‘sustainability’

 

 

Selected References

 

Diego Andreucci, Christos Zografos, Between improvement and sacrifice: Othering and the (bio)political ecology of climate change, Political Geography, Volume 92, 2022, 102512,

ISSN 0962-6298, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102512.

 

Hagens, Nate. The Great Simplification. Podcast series on Youtube. Ongoing since 2022.

 

Kendra, Pierre-Louis. Understanding the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Legacy of White Supremacy. Who What WhyApril 2021. 

https://whowhatwhy.org/science/environment/understanding-the-fossil-fuel-industrys-legacy-of-white-supremacy/

 

Leather, Amy. “Why capitalism is addicted to fossil fuels”. International Socialism: A quarterly review of socialist theory. Nr. 153. 2017

http://isj.org.uk/why-is-capitalism-addicted-to-fossil-fuels/

 

Malm, Andreas. White Skin, Black Fuel : On the Danger of Fossil Fascism. Verso. 202

Malm, Andreas. Fossil Capital: the Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. Verso. 2016.

 

Niessen, Sandra “Afterword:  Reorienting Fashion Theory”  In Niessen, S.A., A. Leshkowich, and C. Jones (eds.)  Re-orienting Fashion:  The Globalization of Asian Dress.  Oxford:  Berg Publishers.  pp. 243-266. 2003.