Fashion Consort News Bytes - Feature with Sass Brown: The IOU Project

Feb 16 2022 9 mins

Joshua Williams: Hello, Sass, welcome back. And who are we going to feature this month?

Sass Brown: The IOU Project.

Joshua Williams: Ah, the IOU Project. I know they're based in Madrid. Spain. Can you tell us a little bit about them and their founder?

Sass Brown: Absolutely. The founder is Kevita Parmar. She works predominantly with hand loomed madras cotton out of India. If you're familiar with the madras cotton, it's quite distinct, they're often candy colored checks and they're quite different from weaver to weaver. Each one is quite unique. And so what she does, she works with locally grown cotton from that region that is then hand-woven. So we're talking about a fabric that has literally no carbon footprint to begin with. But moreover, he really honors the makers, whether it's the maker of the garment or the weaver of the fabric as a truly vital component of her value chain of the garment. And as equal in terms of standing as the designer or the customer.

So it's a very flat, democratic program or company, if you like. It's not hierarchical, where the designers at the top and the makers at the bottom. And so the website is fabulous. First of all, it's beautiful. It's very visually presented. And it features each of the garments, the makers of the garment. So you can dig into each garment and see who the weaver was. You can read a little bit about them. You can see who the maker was, the producer of the garment, the garment manufacturer, maybe watch a video. She specializes in small, little workshops in Portugal and Spain. And the fabric, as I said in India.

So it's very much about authorship and provenance and respect for all of the components that go into making the garment and giving a face and a voice to each of those people, who are normally so hidden from the customer.