Kaltenbacher, Brigitte G;
(2025)
Let’s Grow Flax – Creating Bio-Regional Textile Resilience.
Presented at: Lets Grow Flax, Surrey Hampshire Border.
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Abstract
Globalized textile production with long, opaque supply chains, contributes to environmental damage and labour exploitation. The use of synthetic fibres and fast-fashion fuelled overproduction further compound textile pollution and landfill waste. Grassroots movements such as Fibreshed and The Transition Network promote empowering regional textile communities, the use of local, bio-degradable materials, ethical local labour, and low impact and regenerative agricultural practices instead. Inspired by the Fibreshed ethos and "Grow Your Jeans" projects in the US and UK, Brigitte Kaltenbacher initiated the community flax growing group ‘Let’s Grow Flax’ (LGF) in Southeast England in 2023. The groups’ aims were twofold: • Explore flax, a traditional local sustainable plant fibre as an alterative to highly problematic cotton, and revive traditional textile skills (fibre processing, spinning, etc), • Build a network of local growers, artisans, and micro-production facilities to produce bio-regional linen yarn and textiles. The goal was to create a pair of linen denim jeans as a sustainable alternative to cotton jeans, which come at a dire environmental cost, due to use of toxic dyes, excessive water use, and harmful chemicals.
| Type: | Poster |
|---|---|
| Title: | Let’s Grow Flax – Creating Bio-Regional Textile Resilience |
| Event: | Lets Grow Flax |
| Location: | Surrey Hampshire Border |
| Dates: | April 2024 - April 2025 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2025. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Flax growing UK, Sustainable Denim, Linen Denim, Regenerative Textiles, Locally grown fabric, Community textile projects, Bast fibre processing, Bio-regional textiles, Flax to Linen, Micro-mills for flax, Flax fibre processing, Slow fashion, Textile sustainability |
| UCL classification: | UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10206032 |
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