Welcome to Grounded Wellness, your go to podcast for
simplified and trusted information on how to live a
more non-toxic and holistic life.
We're your hosts. I'm Bethany McDaniel, founder of
primarily pure, biohacking enthusiast and mom of three.
And I'm Courtney O'Connor, holistic esthetician with over
15 years experience in the healing power of touch and
holistic skin care rituals. If you've ever felt curious
about where your clothes come from and why it matters, this
episode is for you. While most of us have heard of
fast fashion, it's something that feels easy to brush off.
We've all been guilty of caving to the latest trends and styles
at a suspiciously low price point, and today we're going to
discuss the opportunity to impact ourselves, others, and
the planet through regenerative clothing.
Our guest today, Otis and Christy Dawn Buschaus are the
husband and wife Co founders of the farm to closet brand Christy
Dawn. We discussed their journey of
creating a regenerative clothing line, the impacts of fast
fashion, and why relationships are key to a life well lived.
Let's dig in. Christy and Otis, thank you so
much for making the trek out to the farm.
Let's dive right in. Tell us the Christy Don story.
How did you guys create this amazing brand?
Yeah, so Christy Don started as a hobby.
I moved to LA when I was 18, started modeling.
And I used to thrift and vintage shop a lot.
And I would buy these thrifted dresses and I would take them to
my tailor and I would basically like redesign these dresses that
I would find at thrift stores. And I would go to set and I
would get compliments on these dresses that I would kind of
recreate with my tailor in Santa Monica.
And this all stemmed from growing up in a really small
town. And my mom and I, we would go
thrifting because it was the only place to go shopping.
And my mom loved to sew. And so she would take these
dresses or blouses or jeans, whatever it was that we could
find. And she would fit them on my
body. And sometimes we would change
the shape of the sleeve or add some buttons.
And so my love for creating intricate, unique pieces stemmed
from my childhood with my mother.
So Christy Don started with me basically saying I I want to
start a dress company, but I really just wanted to make
dresses for myself to wear. And at the time, Otis had a hat
company. And I came home from a photo
shoot, and I was telling him about this grand idea of
starting a dress company without having any idea of how to do it.
And Otis turned around in his little swivel chair at the
office and was like, I'll help you do it.
Let's do it. Wow.
And then three months later, we launched Christy Don.
Three months. That's so quick.
Otis is amazing. Once you give him something,
he's like the fire in this business, like you give him the
idea and it will happen, like he's the driver of the idea.
Yeah, and you would probably been seeing her do this and
seeing how much she loved it. So did it just click with you
instantly when she came to you with that idea?
Yeah, I mean, I, I had a hat company before, a Russian winter
hat company in sunny Southern California that I hated.
I don't want to go down that. I don't want to go down that
road for too long. But let's just say I I'd cut my
teeth. I'd learned about what doesn't
work, and what doesn't work is not believing in something.
But especially as an entrepreneur, you know this you.
Didn't believe in the Russian hats.
We weren't passionate. About them?
Hard to get too passionate about them.
Huge. Furry synthetic fur like bright,
bold. Who was the target customer for
these? NFL fans.
So we put we put it on my hat. That goes on my hats.
It's a longer story. Genius idea like it's a smart.
Idea It's a longer story that we don't need to get into, but
let's just say that I cut my teeth on whatnot do and and and
that's so valuable, right? Like, you know, at least one
step not to take and and that step was really around like
believing in what you're doing. So like I would never wear a
Russian winter hat in Southern California.
So it's really hard to have a company selling these things.
Now granted, if I was in Green Bay, maybe I'd be wearing those,
but I wasn't wanting to wear them, so it was really hard to
do it. So funny because my husband also
had a hat company, but it was totally sounds similar to what
you were describing, like an opportunity based, not passion
based. And he had a friend that was
doing these and selling them on Amazon.
They kind of went in together and it didn't flop per SE, but
he just completely lost interest in it and it kind of fizzled
after a while because there was no passion.
Yeah, exactly. And as, you know, like you start
a business and you're going to hit a lot of dead ends.
Like there's going to be times you're like, this doesn't work.
And if it doesn't work and you don't believe in it, it's really
hard to keep going. But I saw the way that people
stopped her on the street and asked her what she was wearing.
And so I knew that she had this gift for designing really
beautiful things. So you have Christy wants to
make beautiful dresses, and I'm flat broke.
I just want to make rent. That's where we're at.
And I want to real quick for anyone who is unfamiliar with
you guys and unfamiliar with your story, Otis one survivor in
in what year was that? 2006.
OK. So you would had quite a few
very like different unique types of life experiences at this
point. That's right, That's right.
Yeah. So 2006 I won $1,000,000.
I start my hat company right around the same time I.
With them, with your winnings. With my winnings, I lose all of
that money, or I don't even want to say lose.
I spend all of that money on this really interesting
alternative education called life and.
She the best education there is. And, and just just as as this is
happening, someone comes to me, he's like, we want to buy your
hat company for the price of your inventory.
And I was like, great, Get Me Out of this thing.
Let's let's start fresh. So we start this and she wants
to make beautiful dresses. I want to make rent.
Like, let's get that. That's the important part.
We're we're not trying to make a difference at the global level,
even the local level. She just wants to make beautiful
dresses. I want to make rent and we don't
have much money. I don't have any money.
She's got $20,000 squirreled away from her modeling career.
So that's our budget. Like to start this thing, we
have $20,000, which as I'm sure you know is not that much to
start a company. And so we don't have enough
capital to go to a fabric supplier and say like, hey, we
want to buy some fabric from you.
Because they're going to say our minimum is 1000 yards.
And it's even if it was $2.00 a yard, there's, there's $2000 and
that's 10% of our budget. We don't want to do that, right.
We don't have the, we don't have the customer base yet to support
that. So our best choice financially
was to use something called deadstock fabric, which is the
excess fabric from other, other clothing companies.
And the reason that there's so much excess fabric is that it
costs a whole lot for a clothing company to carry raw goods than
it does to miss opportunities on the back end of the sales.
Does that make sense? So there's a lot, there's a lot
hanging around. And so Christy and I decided,
hey, this is a great way to start a company using dead stock
fabric. And it, like I'm saying, it was
not because it was better for the earth.
Let's just say that it was like it was, it was what we could
afford. It was super.
Importable and it also really hit my creative outlet like I
could make 5 of this dress and then it's done like how cool is
that or depending on you know we made 20 of something because
we've found 50 yards so it was really fun creatively because I
could just kind of make whatever I saw and found it was very
spontaneous and. And the assignment for Christy
was like, make what you want to what you'd like to wear, right?
And so she's already got this like thrifting kind of mindset
of like little gems. So dead stock's the perfect
solution, right? So we get to this place called
Rag Finders. It's on San Pedro.
It's four stories tall. It's like half of a city block.
And it's pallet after pallet after pallet of fabric, all
different prints, all different weeds, knits, you know,
polyester, cottons, linens. Super overwhelming.
Yeah, I was going to say it was an overwhelming.
It's a headache. It's a headache.
Yeah, it was both. It was overwhelming and.
It was a headache for me. I was overwhelmed.
We don't know anything about the fashion industry when we
started. We're like, let's just for me,
I'm like, I just want to make beautiful stuff.
Yeah, this work. What is this fabric?
I have no idea. And were you paying attention to
like natural versus synthetic fibers at the time?
Not necessarily. We were in the sense that we
were, we were definitely not into polyesters.
Like that was the limit. The limit was like no
polyesters, no synthetics. But not to the point we are now.
Obviously nowhere near where we are now.
I think we were like, all right, rayons work and just, you know.
The drape of a rayon was very nice, easy.
It worked for so many different silhouettes and body types like
we would definitely. Is that a blend of natural and
synthetic? No.
So what rayon is, it comes from eucalyptus trees and then it's
in this closed loop system is how they process it.
So it calling it a natural fiber is a bit of a stretch, but it's
not a synthetic fiber either. What does closed loop system?
Mean it means that the the chemicals used to process OK
that fiber are in a closed loop. So they're not getting like
spilled out into the into the environment, right?
You're you're keeping them. So then is the is the problem
the chemicals that they use? If it comes from a eucalyptus
tree, that sounds really nice. Well, yeah, I think that, you
know, once it's like anything, right?
It's like so much of of like plant based foods are so highly
processed, they become not great for the body.
I think anytime you heavily process anything.
OK. So heavily processed eucalyptus
trees there. You go think about it like.
Those rayon. So, yeah, so we started there.
We started with these dead stock fabrics.
But but being in that space and seeing all these fabrics sitting
there, it begged the question, where did all this come from?
You know, and I think that was. Overwhelming in that.
Sense it was overwhelming, but it also was like, where did it
come from and why is it here? Why are, why is there so much
fabric sitting here that's been sitting here for 30 years?
And and so just with a little bit of digging, we quickly
discovered that fashion is the second largest polluter on the
planet as an industry, right? Behind oil and gas, right?
That's right. That's right.
And and so like any good half ass marketer, when Christy
released these beautifully designed dresses that were five
of a kind, we also told the story of deadstock, which is
we're not contributing to fashion's footprint.
We're using the excess of these other brands.
This is sustainable and I don't know if by definition it would
have qualified as sustainable, but that was that's how we
posited it to our community. And when we released the the
initial set of dresses on December 27th, which by the way,
if you're going to start a company, it's the worst time,
not the greatest time to do it. You'd want to use it before
Christmas, but we didn't know much you.
Guys, we didn't know much. It wasn't that we didn't know,
it was just things take long, right?
Particularly. Planned for it to be sooner,
Yes, exactly. So we release it and and the
response is incredible. People really love her designs.
They love her dresses, but they also really are responding to
the story of deadstock. They're responding to the the
calling of like, hey, this is this is better for the earth.
And I think I can't speak for Christy, but Christy can speak
for her and she's right here. But for me, it it was the first
time in my adult life where I had done something that I
benefited from, that I also felt good about the the the impact
that it was having outside of my own personal circle.
Yeah. And it really invited us to keep
on the strength, you know, of like, whoa, what does this mean?
Yeah. And it also just like, started
our exploration around the fashion industry, right?
Like we entered into that four story building a fabric and
you're like, whoa, what is this all about?
And then, you know, later we start making the clothing and
we're like, can we meet the sewers?
And the woman we're working at the time is like, oh, no, no,
no, you don't want to go there. And we're like, what?
Yeah, we want to meet the people that are making the clothes.
And she's like, no, you can't go there.
And then then that was another question for us, like, well, why
can't we go there? And, you know, then we started
noticing that the all of the sizes were different within an
inch or half an inch. And I was like, wait a second,
This seems so strange. So then you know, it just
started we. Started a lot of in your mind,
yeah, yeah. And and now you guys are going
beyond sustainability and you have regenerative clothing,
which we'll get into in a little bit.
Can you just quickly touch though on the difference between
sustainable and regenerative? Yeah.
Absolutely. Do you want to do this city?
I'll. Try my best to explain it.
So I like to look at sustainable as a flat line.
So if you look around, it's like we want to sustain something.
It's you're not doing anything better for it.
You're not hurting, but it's, you're just sustaining a flat
line. And when you think about
regenerative, regenerative is healing.
So whatever you're doing, you're healing the, the soil, the
biodiversity, the people, the customer, yourself.
Yeah. We talked about that too with
with regenerative livestock farming, like the farm we're on
right now, like sustainability is treading water, but
unfortunately it's sustaining a broken system.
Whereas like you said, regeneratives actually improving
the soil and then in turn what's being grown on the soil that
person people utilizing those products.
Yeah, exactly. I think for.
Us, you know, we have two small kids and we were looking around
and we're just like, what are we doing to actually improve this
place for our children and for their children?
And you know, we had to ask ourselves that question like do
we want to sustain mass extinctions and wildfires and
flooding and so much more? Or what can like what can we
actually do in this industry a fashion to actually heal and
brings us to our regenerative clothing so.
Before we fully dive into regenerative clothing, I want to
talk about the fashion industry as a whole.
I have a pretty crazy stat here that an entire garbage truck of
clothes is being burned or sent to a landfill every second, and
we waste enough clothing to fill 1 1/2 Empire State buildings
every day, so obviously we're doing something very wrong in
how we produce and consume clothing.
For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of fast fashion, can you
guys explain how fast fashion came to be and just how it how
it developed? Yeah, I mean, I, I, I'm no
historian, but basically Titans of industry figured out that
like, all right, we have this global commodity called cotton
and in in many, for many fashion brands, the markups are quite
impressive, right. To start a fashion company is
actually very risky. There's there's so many
failures. But once you get to a certain
point, especially if you're an extracted brand, the margins
become great. So the Titans of industry were
like, hey, this is great, here's what we can do.
We can get people to buy things that they don't need because
there's this glut of cotton on the market.
And so rather than having people wear the same shirt, you know,
for five years, what if or the same dress for five years, what
happens if we can just convince them that they need to buy a new
dress every week or, and can't wear the same things over and
over again. And it's all rooted in the
extraction and the exploitation of humans and planet to create
really low cost garments that are sewn really quickly by
people who are usually making slave wages.
And, and typically in these on these garments, you have a
really low stitch count as well because you can go faster,
right? So the sewing machine, you know,
you're zooming through and you're only.
So there's this planned obsolescence.
They're designed to break down. They're oftentimes using
synthetic fibers, right? So it started with cotton, but
then it moved to like, Oh my God, polyester, which is derived
from these oils and these petroleums.
Oh my God, we can make it for even cheaper.
So you have your czaros and you have your H and Ms. and you have
your targets and you have all this.
Have you heard of the brand Sheen Sheen?
Is the worst I've seen. Is the worst.
Right, something that they produce 10,000 different designs
a day I. Cannot even imagine.
Have you been on? Their site it is.
I've never been banana. It is so.
Also just energetically when you go onto that site, you're like.
So bad for the nervous system. Exactly, like my nervous system
immediately just regulates getting on there.
Yeah. So you.
Have so you have these systems where people, you know these
companies I, I believe one of the richest men in the world is
the owner of Zara, right? Like makes sense.
They. It becomes incredibly
profitable. And because they're doing scale,
they're doing times of scale and, and, and then, you know,
the, the culture begins to accept the, the prices as like
normal, right? Oh yeah, $15.00 for a dress that
makes sense. And not you're following the
trends and, you know, disposing of things and getting new things
all the time. It's the only.
Way you could possibly do it, right, Exactly.
So that's kind of the way of land is that people expect
clothing to be really, really cheap.
People have no relationship with where it comes from.
Oftentimes the brands themselves have no relationship or of of
where it comes from either, right?
They don't even know who they're extracting or who they're
exploiting. And that's that's part of the
problem with these supply chains is that it's so commoditized
that the exploiters themselves have this almost firewall.
Disconnected. Yeah, between what's actually
happening to the Earth and the actions that they take.
Working that way, you have to be disconnected.
Yeah, because once you become connected to the people who are
making your garments, there's no way to treat doing it like that.
Exactly. Have.
You guys seen the true cost of fashion?
It's so hard. That was.
Yeah, that was the first time I became aware of the corruption,
just the impacts on so many levels of of big fashion and.
And sadly, I think there's kind of been just dead noise since
then. I think it made a bit of a
splash, I'm remembering correctly.
And, and since then, it just doesn't seem like there's a
whole lot of talk about the fashion industry and, and the
negative impacts health wise and on a human level.
You guys are of course, doing an amazing job of raising
awareness. Clothing doesn't come with an
ingredient list like food does. So we're seeing so much
awareness about corruption in the food industry right now, the
problems with big food companies.
And I think it's easy to see like, oh, there's red dye.
There's all these chemicals I can't pronounce.
Like, yeah, it makes sense that I wouldn't want to be putting
this into my body. But with with clothing, you
don't see all of that. And I read that I mean, clothing
does contain a lot of chemicals like and.
There is technically a little tag, but no one's really.
Looking but that bag but that no, the bag doesn't the.
The. Fabric itself, right, like you
touched on like most of it is synthetic derived from petroleum
byproducts. Yeah.
But then on top of that, like what other, what other chemicals
are in the clothing that we're wearing everyday?
Totally. The hidden chemicals that we're
wearing. Uh huh.
Yeah, so. So, so, I mean, I couldn't tell
you what the chemicals are because we don't use those
chemicals, right? But I would tell you that
conventional dyeing processes, well, let's just, let's just
work through it. Let's just protect.
And it was cotton. Not so.
Even starting on starting with cotton, let's say it's.
Let's it's conventionally grown cotton, 25% of the world's
insecticides are used on cotton on growing cotton just for scale
to understand that right. So we use insecticides, we use
pesticides on cotton. Then as I was describing to you
before we started this, if, if we're harvesting the cotton with
a cotton picker, right, not done by hand, but with the machine,
we have to exfoliate. There's more chemicals that are
put out of that cotton. So now we've got the cotton, we
gin it, we spin it and let's just say that we're going to
yarn diet conventionally or we're going to use a ton of
chemicals to yarn diet. Then we're going to leave it.
And now let's say we want to put a print on top of that.
So now we're going to use something called discharge
printing, which means we're going to put more chemicals on
to that piece of cloth to remove the initial chemicals that dyed
the yarn in that area, just to add another set of chemicals to
create new colors, right? And then we're going to put that
on our skin. We're going to wash it a few
times. We're going to put that on our
skin. I I can't tell you what the
names of those chemicals are because we don't use those
chemicals in any of our processes.
I also tell. You that when you're using those
chemicals, the people in those factories are in full hazmat
suits. Well, so that can give you an
idea of what those chemicals are.
Yeah, and and I've heard, I mean, I know flame retardant is
sprayed on a lot of clothing and especially.
Children's clothing, yes. Yes, children's pajamas I think
is a big one. So I always look for the big
like neon tag that warns you about, you know, fire hats,
lizards. I'm like, OK, good.
That's the one I want. The one that they say is going
to put my child at risk for fire hazards because I know it wasn't
great, but flame, flame retardants crazy.
But looking into it, it's like these flame retardant companies
lobbied these politicians hardcore to mandate laws that
their product is sprayed on, on clothing.
And, and I don't think very many lives are being saved by that.
If if any, I think way more people are being harmed by these
toxic chemicals. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Formaldehyde is another one that gets sprayed on clothing to give
it these anti wrinkle properties.
P Foz, also known as forever chemicals, will will provide
clothing with like water resistance.
And I, I used to work at Lululemon back in the day.
I remember a man, older man came in and he was asking me like, do
you guys have any organic clothing?
And I was like, what? Like I don't even think I had
thought about organic clothing ever.
Like I knew about organic food, but I was just kind of like, I
don't know, maybe it's organic. I have no idea.
And he was like, well, no. He started talking to me about
the chemicals that the clothing is sprayed with and how it sits
on your skin and it absorbs. I thought he was cuckoo at the
time. And now I always think about
this. I'm like, he was so right.
This this old man was like so ahead of his times like 15 years
ago, knowing all of this stuff about clothing and I'm just now
realizing it. Obviously like you want to to go
to, to strive towards finding like regenerative pieces and
buying things from brands like yours.
But I think like lower hanging fruit is like avoiding these
anti wrinkle stain resistant clothing because you just know
that they are just a chemical soup.
That's right. Yeah.
And I and I think like you start, you know, if you can, you
start from from the things closest to your body out right
underwear, which we're going to be releasing our intimates
collection. I'm I'm actually, we have a
men's and women's. I'm wearing mine now but oh
that's super. I just made scrap so we had
scrap farm to closet pointel and he made boxers.
Wait, what's pointel? Pointel.
Is like a little kind of eyelet cotton.
It's weaving. And he made his own pair, and I
saw them in the closet and I was like, what?
These are so cute. And so I wore them one night.
And then we were like, let's make underwear.
We need to make underwear. So that's so cool.
Yeah, I would say. Like start there right from like
someone listening, right? Hey, start with your underwear.
That's probably, you know, the most intimate thing you're going
to be putting on your body and then work out from there.
And, and I think it's like anything like if we, if we take
the whole scale of it and we realize like how toxic
everything is, we can freeze, it can put us in a freeze and that
doesn't help us, right? So it's like little bits at a
time, starting to just even ask the question, what am I wearing
is incredibly powerful, right? Just to ask about that.
I think when you think about food systems, right, like how
many people wake up in the morning and drink a green juice?
And of those people that are going to wake up in the morning
and drink a green juice, a large percentage of them are going to
want that to be organic because they understand, oh, this is,
you know, this is some important organs in my body.
But almost nobody wakes up in the morning and says, like, I
want organic clothing on my skin.
And of those zero percent that do that, 0% of those people say
it better be regenerative, right?
It's just we're not there yet. And so giving ourselves a lot of
grace, like, we're in this soup. We're in the soup of like,
incredible chemical exposure. So we have to forgive ourselves
and the systems that are in place right for that.
And then we say, OK, like, how do we begin to move our way out
of it? I think that's really the
important part is understanding, OK, it's not healthy.
It's not great, but it is where we are.
And one step at a time, we find our way out.
And it's through awareness and consciousness that we do that,
you know? Yeah.
Yeah, it can be overwhelming. And rather than be caught up in
that overwhelm and freezing and maybe just pushing it aside and
doing nothing, it's this process of of making one change at a
time, knowing that anything you do, you know, in the right,
stepping in the right direction is going to make a difference.
Yeah. And just kind of allowing
yourself to go through that process at whatever pace you
can. Totally baby stuff, Yeah.
Talk to us about the human impact of fast fashion.
What does that look like for the the individuals who are making
fast fashion garments? Oh my God, that's, that's the
got to be the saddest part. You know, most of the time in
these factories where fast fashion is being sewn, it's
close to slave labor. Oftentimes the, the, the
dressmakers, they live on campus and they're, they also purchase
all their food from the same company.
Well, that's, you know, they provide all of it.
And so they're they get, they get let out on weekends or, or
weekend day, a singular day. That's a bit paid per piece that
they make. So there's, you know for them a
demand to make more to they want to make more to receive more
payments. So they're not incentivized.
Bathroom free hours, Yeah. Breaks, no.
Food breaks, Yeah. It's it gets real.
I mean, even even in Los Angeles, right, where you
wouldn't say that's the capital of fast fashion companies that
make their things in Los Angeles oftentimes pay people buy the
piece. So we wouldn't label them as a
fast fashion company. But what we see directly is that
people skip their breaks. They don't use the bathroom
because they're so being paid so poorly that they're like, we
better maximize this. It's just.
A natural result. Yeah, yeah.
And even like internally, like we started hiring more
dressmakers when we started to grow.
And Pedro, who runs our operations in the factory, we
would bring people in to sew our dresses for Christiana.
He had to retrain them on how to slow down, how to train them to
do 12 stitches per inch. And oftentimes, like, a lot of
them would leave because they would find it really frustrating
to have to slow down because he was really like, no, no, no,
like, let's take our time. Like I want to show you that,
like, you don't have to rush here.
This is how we do it. And so that was really
interesting when Pedro would talk to us about it.
He's like, this is not normal. Or your average dressmaker in
Los Angeles. Yeah.
That's wild, because I think a lot of times we see made in the
USA and we think, OK, perfect, great, I'm not contributing to
this corrupt industry. But it sounds like that's not
always the case. You'd be.
Surprised. And there's a reason why the
woman that we first worked with, with Christy Don, when we
started, they didn't want us to see where the clothes were being
made, even though that was in MSLA.
Yeah. Wow.
What's the worst? Are there countries that are
just known as the worst for corruption?
And I mean. Obviously China doesn't have the
greatest reputation, Bangladesh, Vietnam and so, but I think
rather than like even label which countries are the worst, I
think it's really, it really comes down to relationships.
Yeah, right. Because there are great
factories in China and there are great factories in Vietnam and
there are great factories in Bangladesh.
There's great factories in Los Angeles and there's terrible
factories. Yeah, in all of those places.
What? Propelled you from being this
quasi sustainable brand to a full blown regenerative clothing
company when? We were using dead stock.
It felt great to be like, we're not part of the problem.
Look, we're doing something that's good and we're not part
of the problem. It felt really good.
And after five years, that dopamine hit started wearing
off, right? And as Christy explained it, we
looked at her children like, what are we leaving our
children? Are we leaving our children a
desecrated landscape? And we're going to say to them,
well, we weren't part of that problem, guys.
Is that what we're going to say? Or are we going to say like, no,
we we're going to leave them something better You're.
Correcting it and and we're. Going to be part of the
solution. But before we can be part of the
solution, we have to really identify what the problem is.
And I'm not going to pretend like I know what the problem is
for everybody. But for me and for Christy, when
we really dug into it, we looked at what's happening out in the
environment with the chemicals. We looked what's happening with
the human beings. We looked at what's happening
economically and socially. And we, we felt like these were
all just symptoms. And so if these are just the
symptoms, the root issue is intimacy is that as human
beings, individuals, we've lost our connection with the earth,
we've lost our connection with each other.
And more importantly, we've lost our connection with ourselves.
We've forgotten our own innate connection.
And so to solve for all of these symptoms is to solve for
intimacy. And so as a brand, how do we
solve for intimacy and where does our fabric come from?
And how can we begin to forge a relationship with the earth?
And how can we forge a relationship with the ones who
tend her? And how can we forge a
relationship with those who sew the dresses right?
And through those relationships we can heal ourselves, each
other, the earth. The whole web is contingent upon
relationships. So if we find that the
relationships are frayed, our work is to get intimate and to
strengthen those bonds. And so that to me is what
Christy Don is really doing is that we're going intimate, we're
going into relationship. And that is what we're offering
our community is like when you're wearing that dress, that
tells the story of a relationship with the earth,
with the Mycelia network, with the farmer, with the Jenner, the
Weaver, the spinner, the dressmaker, the designer.
And it's, it's recognizing the interconnectedness and it's
honoring every single connection there.
And now you're wearing that frequency and you're not wearing
all those chemicals, but you don't even need to know the
names of those chemicals. You just have to know that
you're connected and that you're wearing that life force.
And to me, like that's, whoa, that's so beautiful.
It's taking. Things back to maybe not
necessarily like local in the sense we think of it today,
because I know that like your farm is in India and we'll talk
more about that, but a localized way of doing things where there
is that connection when when there's so much separation now
and typically in the fashion world.
So you guys were asking these questions.
How did you stumble upon regenerative farming as being
the answer? Because you started this process
of becoming regenerative in 2019.
I believe that was before regenerative was cool and before
it was be even being talked about on like a big scale like
it like it's starting to today. But how did you find out about
that? So in a former life I played
music poorly, but I played it and IA lot of.
Former lives, yes. And one of the bands that I used
to always play music with was a band called the Makepeace
Brothers and one and the lead singer in that band, his name's
Finney and Makepiece, he started an organization along with some
other friends of ours called Kiss the Ground.
Yes. In Venice, like it was just like
around, like it started really simply like, Hey, can we take
these sidewalk grass paths and, and can we grow things here And
like, and how do we, how do we treat the earth?
And I remember him being on my Facebook feed and I kind of
wasn't really paying attention. And then I started to pay
attention a little more like, what, what are these guys
tripping out about? And they were like, oh, like, we
can, we can solve some of these crises.
It's through the soil. And so that started to land for
me as I was asking this question like how do we get intimate?
Well, so. We were like, I remember getting
dressed one day after having Christie Don and realizing that
I was wearing something that carried such heavy frequency in
the garment. And you had just come home from
Columbia and had like a pretty intensely beautiful ceremony and
kept talking about this farm. And he said, I see our family on
this farm. And it was like simultaneously
while I was getting dressed and realizing that I was wearing
like slave labor stitched into my clothing.
And I was just like, where's this fabric coming from?
And then the dead stock, the four stories of fabric.
And he was talking about our family on a farm.
And Otis looked at me in the kitchen and was just like, what
if we? Started.
Our own regenerative farm and grew our clothes.
All of our clothes come from the earth.
It's a fiber. We can grow our clothes.
And of course I'm like, you're crazy.
How are we going to do this? Like how are we actually going
to do this? And then insert the Makepeace
brothers and it just. All kind of collided.
It was crazy how it all happened.
Went from. Like this idea of like, let's
start our own regenerative cotton farm to like a few months
later, we had we had seeds in the ground in the road India,
but the. Story is very kismet like wow,
you have to tell the story of how you know, we energetically
we we said it out loud that we wanted to start a regenerative
farm and of course I'm just like, how are we going to do
that? But I trust him to make anything
happen because that's just his nature to bring things to life
and. Yeah, I think that's such a big
part of starting anything like just make like those ideas I
think come to all of us and those those like deposits in our
mind. But it's the difference of just
kind of brushing it off like that sounds like a lot.
I don't know how the all the pieces are going to fit together
yet. Just going to like shelve it
versus like, no, this is this has been put into my brain for a
reason and I'm going to take the next step, next step and stuff
that I can, whatever that looks like and it.
Usually feels different, I will say, like there is like a
different tambour to like to an idea that you know is going to
come to fruition. Yeah, it's one of those moments
where you could feel like that tingly.
It just sat. Right.
Yeah, in your in your gut, yeah. Yeah, and it's kind of like the.
Sheep. I was just telling you, we just
got this herd of sheep and we're going to use the wool to make
lanolin to put in a in a lip product.
And I have no idea how to do it, but we'll figure it out.
Yeah, exactly. And.
I think by the grace of God and effort you put those two things
together, you can really bring it to life.
And the story is quite amazing. I think you should tell
everybody how is your end? So, so I come home from this
ceremony and I tell Christy we're going to start our own
regenerative cotton fireman. She's like, what on earth did
you do in that ceremony? How are we going to do that?
And I was like, I don't know. I don't know.
Let's see. So I got to the office and I
started to Google regenerative cotton and nothing much came up.
This is early, early 2019. What?
Was the ceremony. It was a yahe ceremony, so I was
drinking in a in a ceremony with the folks from the Putamayo area
of of the Columbia Amazon. Wow and.
So anyways, I I get home, I'm in the office that morning and I
Google regenerative cotton and there's really nothing.
So I Google ethically grown cotton and I find an NGO and
they're called the Responsible Sourcing Network.
And I call them and I say, hey, I have this vision of starting a
regenerative cotton farm. Can you help me to say I'm
sorry? We can't help you.
We don't deal with that. But we're losing a little bit of
funding and we have this employer who just started.
We can't keep her. Maybe you want to meet with her.
Maybe she can help you. She's fresh out of college.
Her name's Marin Wilson. She drives down from Santa Cruz.
She comes to the office. We sit down.
I share with her the vision. We both talk about where this
would make the most sense. And we both feel like India
makes the most sense because not only can we grow it
regeneratively, but there are all these systems that are
already in place that have been in place for thousands of years,
like plant dyeing and block printing and hand weaving that
we don't have to reinvent the wheel, we can do it there.
So we we both feel like India makes the most sense, which is a
great that we all feel like it makes the most sense, but how on
earth are we going to do it? We make.
Everything in LA we're like, OK, we're going to India.
That's just what happened. We don't know we're.
Already on like regenerative. Farm.
Now we're going to India, so I hire.
Marin so Marin joins. So Marin calls Rebecca from
Fiber Shed, which is an organization that supports and
promotes fiber, local fiber sheds and says, hey, I'm working
with Christy Doll. We want to do a regenerative
farm in India. Can you help?
And she says, I'm sorry, I don't have any relationships with
anyone in India. 3 or 4 hours later in a road India, Nishanth,
who is the son of a man who owns a conventional textile company,
is listening to this podcast that Rebecca had recorded months
before. And he loves what Rebecca has to
say about fiber sheds. And he guesses her e-mail
address. And he says, hey, my name's
Nishanth. I want to start a carbon
positive cotton farm, but I need a brand to partner with.
I don't have the money to do it. Do you know anybody?
And so boom, here we are like, oh cool, you want to do Carbon
3? Days a carbon.
Positive or carbon negative, whichever, I don't know exactly
how to describe that. Isn't like God lining things up
for you guys? I don't know like what it is
that's. Right.
So, so we put together we're like, let's try this
regenerative thing. What's that?
Let's figure it out. Let's you know, really
regenerative is is really so land specific.
So we go and we find, he goes and finds 4 acres of land that
we're going to Christy Don's going to lease.
The idea is that we're going to pay for process, we're not
paying for yield. And I think that's a really
significant thing to talk about because typically brands pay for
yield. If you can grow it, we'll pay
for it. But we are saying no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, we don't. You don't know if you can grow
it this way. We don't know if you can grow it
this way. So we're actually going to pay
to grow it this way. And there's a longer story to be
had about the debt spirals that rural farmers are in all around
the world because of the green revolution that started 40 years
ago with pesticides and insecticides and fertilizers.
But Long story short is that we said we're going to foot the
bill. We're going to put the weight of
that on our shoulders. We're not going to ask the
farmers to carry that weight. And with four acres, it made
sense. It wasn't that much of A capital
outlay, but it was still absolutely insane to start our
own regenerative cotton farm. And the four acres of land that
we got were they were devoid of life and death.
They weren't even, it wasn't dead land.
It didn't have death in it. Death would have been great.
You know what? I.
Mean exactly we would have taken the dead land.
So we model the whole thing out like all right.
This is what we think the best case scenario will be if it
works. That like this was just over a
bunch of Zoom conversations with me.
This was just like an exploratory every week let's
meet and just like talk about what this may look like.
And that's what I love about the regenerative like way or the
systems. It's like you're constantly
evolving and you're trying new things and you're learning from
them and like this farm, this specific farm that.
We started with was devoid of life and we had to till it,
which normally you wouldn't, but in this case the land was like,
please till me and put nutrients back into the soil, which I love
because there's no like real linear, like direct way.
It's like ask the earth and she'll tell you.
And it's been a really beautiful kind of reminder that we're in
relationship with the Earth and with each other.
And it's been that's been at the forefront of this project is
let's explore together. Let's explore with the Earth and
see what you know she has to tell us and what the.
Farmers have to tell us. Yeah, it.
Was a true like. About it yeah, like it started
there with with that. So what what else does that look
like for you guys at your regenerative farm?
Because I know regenerative can look different depending on
what's being grown or raised but what makes your farm
regenerative? Well.
So, you know, first and foremost, I think it's what
she's describing is that you're, you're in a state of constant
improvement, right? Like things are constantly
getting better. So you're listening and you're
trying things. We have cover crops, we do chop
and drop. We have pollinator strips, we
have juice like. Yeah.
And just for people who, who are
watching, who may not understand the significance of all of that,
like let's contrast that with a big mono crop cotton farm where
the same crop is just grown constantly on the same plot of
soil until the soil becomes super depleted of any nutrients
and then pesticides, herbicides are heavily sprayed.
So this is actually farming in a way that restores the health and
the biodiversity of the soil. Yeah.
So, so when we we went to visit when we first started and
Koopasami and Eshwari had been living on that land that we
leased. 50 years the. Patriarch of the way, Eshwari is
the the the the wife, and Koopasami is the husband.
And I asked Eshwari, I said, tell me about farming this way
because the land had been farmed conventionally for 40 years.
What was it? Sugar cane prior.
Yeah, it's sugar cane and sesame.
And anyway, so I asked her, I said, like, tell me what the
difference is doing it this is it working?
How does it feel for you? And she said to me, she said,
first of all, she said it's not nearly as hot on the land
anymore 'cause when you farm with chemicals, it creates a
whole lot of heat. I.
Bet yeah, she said. I don't have sores on my arms
and my legs anymore when I walk through the fields.
Wow. And then she said me.
This is like the most impactful thing that she said, she said.
And as far as the Earth, you don't have to ask if the earth
is happy. Just look around.
The dragonflies are back. The earth looms have returned.
The earth is happy and for me that was like, Oh my God, this
is working right? So for anyone that isn't
familiar with the significance of sequestering carbon from the
atmosphere, tell us the significance of that.
Yeah, So, you know, carbon in the atmosphere can be really
dangerous And, and it, it, it can create a warming effect on
the planet or it can create climate change, not necessarily
just warming, but carbon in the soil is incredible, right?
It, it means that you have incredible biodiversity, you
have root systems. And so as the soil has become
more and more depleted, the carbon has moved from the soil
out into the atmosphere. And so everyone's like, Oh my
God, climate change, totally a natural reaction.
And and it it seems, seems helpless, right?
But wildly, the soil is incredibly resilient and
forgiving. And we can move that carbon back
from the atmosphere down into the soil.
It's called carbon sequestration.
And we do that through regenerative practices, not just
with growing cotton, through any regenerative practice to growing
anything else. But really it's, it's building
the, the, the organic content in the soil, which is which all of
our bodies are made of carbon and any, any life uses carbon.
And so, so by doing that, you reduce the carbon in the
atmosphere, you pull it back down in the soil.
And it also allows the soil to become more of a soil, sorry,
the soil to become more of a soil sponge.
So you create water tables. It's, it's incredibly impactful
and it's just one marker for a healthy system.
And it's actually a marker that's more scientific than it
is kind of where I stand, which is more on the hippie dippie
vibe. But it's a really important
marker and it's something that we've done, I think quite well
on our, on our, on our land, yeah.
We always say with the livestock that we raise at Primal pastures
regeneratively, like 100 years ago it just would have been
called farming. You know, it's now with fact,
the factory farming of livestock and the mono crops of a lot of
the plants that we eat, things are just so backwards and are
really contributing to a less healthy planet.
And I think it's interesting that cows often get blamed for
this when really it's like how the cows are being raised and
also so many other things, by the way.
But when we raise things in a regenerative way, it really,
truly does like, restore the health of the soil, which is
it's everything for the health of the planet.
Yeah. It's.
Basically how our ancestors used to farm.
Exactly, Yeah. We're just hedging over
£3,000,000 of carbon events sequestered from our farms from
I think we've done that 320 acres all in over the course of
five years. That's insane.
Yeah, so it's, it's working. And you know, we're a really
relatively small company. We're no H&M, we're no Zara.
And the way that we the way that we designed the whole project is
we did it open source. So it none of what we're doing
is proprietary. In fact, if any brand wants to
go reach out to Nishanth right now and take acres with him,
they are totally capable of doing it.
We have a. Lot of brands that reach out and
ask to buy our yield of regenerative cotton and we're
like actually here's our partners information.
Well, they go straight to him and yeah, like we really
recommend getting an acre or two if you can.
Has anyone? Yeah, yeah.
Have and then if you were like, what do you even know, I think.
I think right now this year we're responsible for 80 acres
and I think in total I think Nishant is managing about 400
plus acres for the year. So there's other brands that are
getting involved. And the thing about it like from
a, from a business point of view is typically if you were to
source your cotton from the global commodity market, you're
usually you can finance it and you can get, you know, terms
that you're usually to market before you're paying for it.
We have a year from the time we pay for the first seed in the
ground. So when we can bring it to
market. So it's, it brings additional
challenges with it. And one of the ways that we
figured out how to kind of adjust for that is like I said
to you early on, we were like, wait, the farmers can't be asked
to carry this, this weight all on their own.
As a brand, we're going to put it on our shoulders.
But then what we realized like, Oh my God, we can't carry this
either. So then I'm thinking about like
a table, right? Like if you have a table with
four legs, you're moving that weight across or you're sharing
that across 4 legs. What's, what's the way to
lighten the load on our shoulders is like, Oh my God,
our community, our mycelia network of human beings.
Wait, can we? Do a quick, quick explanation on
mycelia because I wasn't familiar with this term and you
told me about it before we started recording.
Yes, but it's really cool. Quick snapshot.
I mean, I don't want to like ruin this some, some scientists
are going to be like, that's not what it is exactly.
But basically the mycelia network in the soil is this
network of of little hairs, fungi that are sharing
information across vast spaces. And so when you till land, you
disrupt that mycelium network. But what's amazing is that if
you have a Grove of trees and then you have a pestilence come
in, what scientists have discovered is that if the first
tree, right when that first tree is experiencing this pestilence,
the trees all the way at the other side of the Grove are now
releasing certain chemicals and enzymes to prepare and prevent
those pests from ruining them. And that is all because of the
mycelia network. So there's this intelligence
under the ground that's speaking all the time, and it's a wisdom
that's shared between the plants that's really, really, really
beautiful. So.
Amazing. OK, Thank you.
I didn't mean to derail you. No, no.
It's fine. But what I was trying to say is,
is that what you find Is that the more you can share the
weight, no one has to be the hero if everyone takes a little
bit, no one has to be the martyr.
And so we asked our community and we said, hey, listen, we
want to take 40 acres of, of, of land that we're going to commit
to 40 acres during this six month growing period.
We would like to invite you to support us on that.
And so basically it's called the land stewardship.
And so our community can steward for $200, which is about the
cost of our Dondres. They can steward about 3500
square feet of farmland. And what is they pay $200 up
front. And at the end of the season, we
say, hey, this is the, this is the price we're going to pay you
back for the cotton that grows on your square footage.
We, we pay back our stewards in the form of store credit.
And with any regenerative system, things tend to get
better and better. So every season we've done this,
people have gotten back more than $200 in store credit.
And so it really helps us manage the cash flow.
Yeah, but it helps regenerate the land.
And now it's not just on our shoulders.
Yeah. And now and more.
Connection. That's right, clothing.
That. That's right, yeah.
That's really cool anyways. That's kind of like that's the
story of what Christy Don, how we got here and why we got here
and why we did it. I.
Love just at every level. How much better regenerative
clothing is for the people that, that are growing it on the
farms. And you mentioned like the, the
woman, like not getting the sores anymore that she used to
get when they were growing conventional cotton.
Like how amazing. And then so much better for the
people producing it in the working conditions.
Like talk to me a little bit about the, the people that sew
Christy John clothing. I I know that their wages are a
lot higher than typical person working in the clothing
industry. What does that look like?
Yeah, we have a factory here in LA.
Like it's not here, we're in Marietta, but in downtown.
Yeah, in downtown LA, we have a factory there where everyone
there gets a living wage and we also have health benefits and
paid time off. So, you know, for us, it's like
that's that's the only way, you know, that's what we've always
done for our team here in LA. Also really sweet little story,
our sewers in LA, they all wear Christie on Wow.
So people that come in to like have an interview or whoever is
coming in that we're meeting with, they're like, first they
walk in and they're just like, what is happening?
Like everyone's smiling and laughing.
And this does not look like your average factory.
And then everyone's wearing Christy Don.
It's. Super.
Sweet. For me it's not.
Mandatory, yeah. Not at all.
Not like we. Force them to no like these.
They're proud. To.
Yeah, to. Wear Christine not to wear the
dresses that they're making. Yeah.
Yeah, that's really. Cool, talk to me about what you
used to dye your clothing, because I know that's radically
different than how most clothing is dyed.
Yeah, yeah, this is my favorite part about, well, one of my
favorite parts, what we do. So we use a lot of plant dyes
and a lot of the flowers and the plants are so beautiful.
You can get such a different range of color.
Some of my favorites are turmeric.
And then there's like little recipes basically for each
color. So when we went to India, we
went to a natural dye house and it was basically the kitchen of
this man who has worked with these plants for, I think he
said 20 years. And before he lets anyone come
into the kitchen to create these recipes with him, they have to
spend like four years with him in the woods, like identifying
the plants, working with the plants.
It was so special. And when you look around, he has
all these little recipe cards as if you're cooking something and
these big pots to create these really just vibrant, like so
beautiful colors. But you'll see some things in
the kitchen were turmeric. There's a flower, I believe it's
called clitoria or clitora there.
We use a lot of roses, lots of flowers, marigolds.
We use rusted nails. There's this process of
releasing this like black color by using rusty old nails, which
is so funny. And yeah, it's just like it's so
many different colors that you can get from using the beautiful
things that the earth creates. That is so cool.
It's so cool. Yeah.
And you can get like 5 different
ranges. And indigo, we use a lot of
indigo and matter root and the Blues and the indigo, it's like
I'm not wearing like this is indigo.
This is like the last shade of indigo.
And it just, you would just hold the cotton in the VAT for much
longer than you would like the light blue.
Yeah. Well.
So these like ancient traditions that they're using and and
keeping track of, like you mentioned with the different
recipes, like so much wisdom and intention goes into that.
Recipe card. It's like this much turmeric and
then this much sesame oil and then how long you leave it in
the pot for. It's really so beautiful and
intentional, really cool and old to like, this is old wisdom that
they carry. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And I'd imagine takes so much
more time so. Much more time.
I mean, those dresses that we make that are all we usually do
block printed and vegetable dyed pieces because it just feels so
intentional to do both of them. But those dresses always take so
much longer or are either very late on our production schedule,
but it's fine. It's so worth it because it's
and then wearing one. Is unique, yeah.
Yeah. And so that's the other thing,
like often times on the design team, we will approve 1 shade of
color and this is 6 months before it comes to to life where
we can sell it and shoot it, shoot the product, but we'll
approve like a light blue and then we get it.
And Nishant, our partners like, sorry, there was a sandstorm and
there's little spots all over and the shade is like, you know,
five times different, either darker or lighter.
And you're just like, OK, cool, tell that story.
And so often times we have to share, like this is what was
happening in that part of India when they were dying, this
fabric, and there was a sandstorm that came through.
So that's why there's all these little dots everywhere.
And like, you're wearing the energetics of a sandstorm.
Yeah. What a cool story to tell.
Very cool. Yeah.
Have that information about the clothing that you're wearing
Totally. So rare.
And it. Keeps us like really in the
moment as well. I think, you know, on the design
side, you can get really used to like you get, you fall in love
with the thing you originally designed.
And when you're working with the natural elements, you're just,
you're actually in the flow of what will come.
And it's also this beautiful surprise that you're like really
excited to see. So now we know with block prints
and vegetable dyes, we're like we approve this color but it
might be 5 shades lighter or 5 shades darker.
Yeah, I read preparing for this interview that polyester has a
frequency of 15 Hertz, which is equivalent to a dead or dying
person. And I, you know, this is very
new for me to dive into the frequency of clothing.
It may sound really out there to a lot of people, but I truly
believe there's something to it. Talk to us about the frequency
of regeneratively raised clothing and natural fibers in
general, and how that differs from synthetic fibers.
Gosh, I mean, I don't have any data to support this, and I
think it would be so fun for us to actually figure out a way to
do that with our fabric. For me, it's really how I feel
when I'm wearing it. And I'm lucky enough to wear a
lot of regenerative clothing. So now when I do wear something
that is not, I'm such a sensitive, subtle being that I
can really tune into the feeling of putting on a garment that
doesn't have a regenerative quality.
I guess I could just share with you the things that I feel like,
you know, it's similar to when we take our shoes off and we
come out here and we ground. It's kind of a similar feeling
when you're putting a regenerative piece on your body.
It's the largest, The skin is the largest organ of our body,
and we're absorbing so much of the actual frequency of not only
the cotton, but the energetics that go into making the garment.
Yeah, I think I. Think all of that does translate
on some level, like the energy of the humans that were making
your clothing, like passed on on some level like you feel.
It when you're hanging out with someone and they're really
negative, right? And you're like, I'm just like
totally slumping into this feeling and when you hang out
with someone who's really positive and beautiful and you
know, you can feel the difference.
And I would say that our clothing has a very similar
feeling if you are able to tune into it.
Yeah, we live in a really fast-paced world.
It's hard to like get dressed consciously every day and
actually tune into what you're wearing.
But maybe try it next time and see how it feels because you
might really not be able to turn away right when you get dressed.
Yeah, I thought. It was interesting with silk too
that you mentioned. So I also read that silk has a
lower frequency and but and you mentioned that's because like
silkworms actually. Yeah, you.
Have to kill the silkworm guy. In the process.
But then there's something called peace silk.
I thought you were saying peace silk.
Yeah, like. Peace and love Silk where the.
Silkworms don't die and the frequency is a lot higher and
Rs, I think you said linen is like 500 Hertz, yeah, which is a
totally natural fiber, so yeah. Linen and wool.
Fascinating. Wool.
When you shear your shear your sheep.
Make a coat. Yeah.
Exactly. I mean, I, I certainly, I think
after sitting with you, I think we're going to go figure out how
to measure the hurts of what we're making.
Yeah. You've got to do it, but I
think. You can kind of intuitively just
look and say like, wait a second, do I want to wear
slavery? Do I want to wear extraction?
Right? Like no, like, I mean, same
thing with like diamonds, right? Like now people like, oh, blood
diamonds and it doesn't just, it just doesn't feel as good.
Forget, you know, forget science, Like, oh, I don't, I
don't want to be associated with those things.
But now we're wearing it right. And so I think all of it, to put
it all in perspective is like the purpose of Christy Don on
the surface appears to be. And we thought we started a
clothing company, but I think now we've kind of reframed that
for ourselves. Is that like clothing is the
Trojan horse. And our hope is that when people
buy Christy Don, when people wear Christy Don, that it, it
invites in them a level of inquiry that maybe it wasn't
there before. Because when I look at the world
and I see what's going on, my heart hurts sometimes and and
not just what's going on externally, sometimes internally
too. And I see this like almost this,
like forgetting the connection, forgetting who I am, forgetting
who we are. And the anecdote to that is
presence, right? And so like, if clothing can be
an Ave. for people that actually just take a moment of like,
wait, what am I wearing? Oh, wait, this, this was grown
in a road India, right? Like by a farmer over there
who's now energetic is here with me.
If we can begin to remember those things.
Really, Christy Don is in the business of shifting
consciousness little by little by little by little.
And we do it by wearing beautiful things.
And that's such a gift and it's such a privilege to do that.
But there's a shirt that we have a T-shirt on the back.
It says we are the regeneration. So sometimes we think about
healing as being external or regeneration happening outside
of us on the farm. But like, quite literally, if we
looked at the Earth as an entire system and then we looked at
ourselves as part of that system, why on Earth are we
incarnating right now in this time where things are so
seemingly in flux? Oh my goodness.
Maybe we are the regeneration that's being invited into
happen, but the only way to do that is to actually come into
our own presence. And so the dresses and the
T-shirts and underwear, Yeah, it's an invitation.
Yeah, it's an. Opportunity.
Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of.
How we, how I look at it, at least Maybe Christy's not
tripping like I am, but that's what I'm at.
I'm tripping like he is. You're.
Both tripping. Yeah, we're both stripping.
You're on the same page. I think it's so cool what you
guys are doing and I think that there's going to be more and
more awareness in this area in the coming years.
You know, we're seeing it happening with big Food, big
Pharma and I I feel like big fashion is next.
There's a lot of powers that be that are trying to keep us from
from going there. I think like Christy and I were
just talking about how even these like fashion publications
that that we all see, it's like they are funded by the ads from
these big fashion companies, similar to how food companies
are funding the regulations of all of these associations.
American Heart Association. You know, there's, it's, it's
all kind of corrupt and and broken.
And, and I don't think we think fashion is something that has
been like easy for us to feel disconnected from and brush off.
But when the awareness is there, there's just there's going to be
more change. I think it.
Becomes an heirloom piece. That's right.
And we get that feedback so often from our community that
mothers or grandmothers or not, they're like, I'm saving this
for my future child or I'm going to give this to my
granddaughter. I love that.
And that's like it was. Back in the day, exactly like.
It becomes this really cherished heirloom piece.
Like I could see this dress being passed down from
generation to generation to generation and never going out
of style. And that's.
The goal, like when I'm designing, that's the goal.
And you know, we don't follow trends.
I think that's a really like important part of this
conversation too. Like when you're not following a
trend, it becomes a timeless piece.
You can wear it for so long. Like our Dawn dress.
It is the first dress that I ever designed and to this day is
our best selling dress. And that was 10 years ago.
And that speaks volumes to the design, the designs itself.
And I just think that's so cool because if you were to look at,
you know, a Forever 21 or a Czar, like you're not wearing
the thing that they've made ten years ago.
No, no, no. So the intention is followed
through. So when you come to market with
regenerative clothing, how was that received by the general
public? So, yeah, yeah.
So we're so excited, you know, like we, she wants to make
beautiful dresses. I want to make rent.
And now we're like, Oh my God, we're going to make a difference
in the world. We can't wait.
We're so excited. It's working and and we come to
market and we are beating the drum of regeneration.
We launch. Farm to closet collection, we
call it. The Farm to closet collection
and we talk about regenerative, regenerative, regenerative.
We're like. This is genius.
This is awesome. People are going.
To love, yeah. Wait, everyone's going to stop
and pause and take? No, you know, and I think, you
know, first of all, let's be honest, regeneration, that's a
scary word. Like that sounds really
scientific. And there's a like, what does
that even mean if you don't know what it means already?
But we didn't think about that. We just kept saying like these
dresses are regenerative and no one gave a hoot this dress.
Heals the Earth. This dress drew X amount of
carbon from the sky. Crickets.
Yeah, nobody. Cared it wasn't.
Crickets. But it was definitely not.
It was at. Least A cricket.
A few of them, yeah. Yeah, people just didn't respond
the way we had hoped. Maybe we were too far around the
curve. Maybe it was too complex of an
idea. Maybe it was that buying habits
right now in this disposable world are actually really
selfish that for somebody to buy something, they're not buying it
because it's good for the world. They're buying it because they
want to feel good, they want to look good or they want to feel
something. And so when we recognize that we
realized that we had to compete on the same playing field that
the fast fashion companies are, which are they're they're
competing to make people feel good, even if it's just for a
fleeting moment, right? And so we had to let people
know, hey, you're going to feel really good in this dress.
You're going to look really good in this dress.
And if we're going to talk about the benefits to the earth,
before we can do that, we have to talk about the benefits to
you as a consumer. And then over time, once we get
you in our ecosystem, we eventually slow drip you the
story of regeneration. It's something that we allow you
to discover on your own, and when you get to that point, then
you're ready for it. Then you become a lifelong
either Christy Dong customer or just a customer of regeneration.
They're just a, you recognize your own innate connection.
And that's really kind of what we've come to, yeah.
So instead of leading with regenerative, regenerative farm
to closet carbon sequestration, we realized very quickly that
that's not the way that the customer is going to fall in
love with this collection. It's really getting the dress or
the piece in their hands on their body, have them fall in
love with the garment and how they feel while they're wearing
it, and then let the regeneration in the farm to
closet really speak for itself. And that's been the experience
now that we've kind of like taken our foot off the gas
around preaching what we're doing because we were so
passionate about it. We're realizing that actually
our customers really passionate about it too.
When you just let it like land very authentically on their
body. I do.
This with my husband, I let him, I kind of plant seeds and let
him discover something on his own.
And then he's, he's more about that, you know, whatever that,
whatever those seeds I'm trying to plant are when he discovers
it, it's kind of like you're doing the same thing, exact same
strategy. Yeah, exactly.
But we were so passionate about it that we we wanted that to be,
you know, the messaging right off the bat.
But yeah, I think it was intimidating and I understand
why. Not everyone knows.
I mean, not everyone's ready. For it.
Yeah, exactly. And.
Then when they realize it or they see the, you know,
beautiful, like piece of paper that we put in the order and
they read about it after they've put it on, then it starts to
land for them. Yeah, that's right.
That's right. And I think what's also wild is
that recently we Loyola Mary Madison University down in in
Los Angeles and their marketing school, they did a class on
Christie Dawn and in part of their research, they started to
research that generation of people and their relationship to
the word sustainability. And it was actually a four
letter word for them because everything had been greenwashed
so much that people stop these younger generations like we
don't believe you. And I think that's a really wild
realities that we're facing is that marketing for these
conventional methods has gotten so good that they have blurred
the lines between what's beneficial and what's not.
And this younger generation coming up, they don't know what
to believe. So if you're going to say it's
good, they're going to assume it's not.
Yeah, it's. Like a red flag.
That's right. And they kind of want to
discover it for themselves. And so we've had to not that we
cater to the younger generation necessarily.
I think there's our demographic is a little bit older, but
recognizing like there isn't a native intelligence and people
and trust that and and feed it in little bits and and let them
get to where they need to get to so interesting.
OK, I know we're short on time, so I'm going to start closing us
out. Christy, you recently posted
about how you started eating meat again on social media.
What led to that decision and how has that been for you So?
It's been fairly new my meat eating journey.
Were you? A vegetarian or vegan I.
Was I started as a vegan and then when I became pregnant
became more of like a pescetarian.
And for me, initially it started at, we had a spiritual teacher
that we worked with for many years.
And basically like my first few sessions with him, he wrote.
He was like, we're going to break this pattern through your
eating habits and I'm going to take all this stuff away and
just see what comes up. And in that process, I did a lot
of research around, you know, how the animals were treated in
the process to eat the meat and became very sensitive to the
energetics of the, the meat that I was putting in my body and was
just like pretty repulsed by by that my.
Conventional, yeah. Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. And it was 14 years that I
didn't eat any meat, and I'd have fish occasionally.
And, you know, my body is actually the reason why I
started eating meat again. Like, I'm pretty low on iron and
magnesium and my blood work is just like asking for real whole
protein meat. And so it's been about six
months now and so far, I feel a lot better.
It's definitely, it's a journey of healing, but I'm hopeful.
And I really am just like honoring the animal.
Obviously, we're only eating, you know, regenerative meat.
I still haven't really dabbled with certain meats, but I will
say my body is craving more and more of it.
Have you? Guys ordered from primal pastors
yet? No.
OK, you got to place an order. The.
Plainest meat in America? Amazing.
OK, we will. Yeah.
You'll love it, yeah, but. It's been really nourishing and
I find that like, I'm so much more full.
I have more energy through the day, I'm sleeping better.
It's been positive all around. It's just like now getting used
to the textures in my mouth. Yeah, it's an.
Adjustment, Yeah. Question for both of you.
What makes you feel the most grounded?
But for me, I would just say my, my personal and efficient
practice is like where even some there's some days where I like,
I don't want to do this and then I go do it.
I'm like, thank God I did that. Yeah, well, that, yeah, I would
say similar. My, my practice, my devotion to
the divine, to God and being anywhere in nature.
I mean, this feels so grounding. It's like the immediate
grounding is when I'm at the beach or closest to the redwoods
or the oak trees. And yes, yeah, yeah.
Or the Cottonwoods. Exactly.
Love it. Well, thank you both so much for
being here. It's been awesome just chatting
with you guys on and off there and really appreciate you making
the drive. Where can people follow along
with you and buy your amazing line of clothing?
Yeah. Christydawn.com Our Instagram is
Christy Dawn. Yeah, I guess you don't.
That's pretty much it.