While most designers make their own clothes, not many can say they grow them.
But this forms the crux of alpaca farmer and fibre artist Amee Dennis’s work.
Her designs are made from pure alpaca fibre grown by alpacas on her property along with other natural materials such as native grasses, cereal and wheat.
“We raise our animals, shear them, process our own fibre, design, make, package and sell all our own products,” Ms Dennis said.
“Our fibre doesn’t leave our farm in little Peterborough in regional South Australia.
“Every step of the process is done by us.”
From farm to runway
Ms Dennis was the only South Australian to make the cut for the 2024 Sustainable Fashion Festival running in Western Australia this month.
It is featuring more than 50 leading eco designers from around the world.
Eco Fashion Week Australia (EFWA) founder and event coordinator, Zuhal Kuvan-Mills, said Ms Dennis’s work stood out to her in the selection process.
“The producing, putting together, creating and presenting her work, it’s just beautiful … and of course, [the] very close relation of the environmental aspects of the works is creative,” Dr Kuvan-Mills said.
Ms Dennis said her creativity was largely inspired by her “bush kid” heart and the red dirt that made up the landscape of home.
Alpacas naturally come in 16 different shades. (Supplied: Nicole Drew Photography)
“If you look closely [at the land], there are so many colours and patterns and textures, and inside all of the seasonal change as well, there is an endless amount of inspiration there,” she said.
Even her fibre of choice offered a plethora of colour and variety.
“Alpacas come in 16 standard colours, and every animal is a variation of that,” she said.
“I can work with some of the purest, softest most unique fibres in the world but I can also do it without having to dye or do anything else to the fibre.
“It’s about connecting people with landscape and really being able to tell the story of farming communities and how important they are behind everything.
“You can’t have anything unless you’ve got somebody behind it producing that raw material.”
Paper jewellery, alpaca clothing
Ms Dennis said her eco design dreams started when she began making paper jewellery about 2014.
That evolved into clothing when she was first invited to EFWA in 2017.
But living 400 kilometres from the nearest shop, she had to get creative, learning to sew on old sheets and tablecloths.
Amee Dennis’s designs made their way down the Busselton Jetty catwalk. (Supplied: Simon Lau)
“[The organisers] went, ‘What are [the models] going to wear? They can’t just walk down the runway in jewellery’,” she said.
She said she pinned sheets on the mannequins, took them to the homestead the next morning and asked how to sew.
“Then my mother and my grandmother and other staff would sit and help me figure all of that out,” she said.
Ms Dennis said her love for eco-fashion came from her interest in how products were made, and how it often took longer than one would think.
“I’m also really passionate about that education, about the product you start with,” she said.
“What is it that needs to be grown or raised, in order for you to have that end product?
“I just think people are so disconnected from that.”
Turning one designer into 10
The Sustainable Fashion Festival boasts having the “longest unofficial catwalk in the world” on account of the Busselton Jetty it takes place on — a round-trip of 3.6 kilometres for models.
EFWA went for one week and consisted of just a catwalk when Dr Kuvan-Mills started it in 2017.
Dr Zuhal Kuvan-Mills is also a sustainable fashion designer. (ABC South West: Anthony Pancia)
It has evolved into a month-long celebration of sustainable fashion, featuring runways, an art exhibition, seminars, workshops, pop-up shops, a clothes swap, clothes repair service and more throughout Busselton and Perth.
But if people didn’t support sustainable fashion, Dr Kuvan-Mills said “it would just become a hobby” and not actually address the problem of fast fashion and the “giant mountains” of landfill it created.
“If the public starts supporting their own local, sustainable designers, they’re going to start realising how they’re producing those particular pieces, how long it takes … how beautifully made, how strongly made, and how it’s made also in Australia,” she said.
“One designer can become 10 designers. And we can turn our back to fast fashion.”
‘Lost’ skills can help the planet
Ms Dennis said she wanted her works to show there were “really simple things that every person can do to do their little part”.
“When we were kids and when our parents were kids, you were taught how to patch the hole in our jeans … how to fix your hem,” she said.
“Part of it is about bringing back some of those lost skills, about being able to create something out of something that’s already there, or just fix it, because it’s not actually broken, it just needs mending.”
