Permacouture Institute is an educational non-profit for regenerative design in fashion and textiles. Working through grassroots projects, events, workshops, and consulting, Permacouture Institute furthers ecoliteracy and social practice encouraging slow fashion and textiles from the ground-up.
About
Permacouture Institute is an educational non-profit for regenerative design in fashion and textiles. Permacouture Institute supports healthy integration between nature and culture. We encourage cross-pollination between sustainability movements and preservation of traditional textile methods, sparking innovation in the process.
We work with hands-on grassroots projects to
support sustainability and textiles. We research
sustainable plant-based dyes and recycled fibers,
and consult and educate in the realm of sustainable textiles by looking closely at patterns already found in nature.
Permacouture Institute was founded to encourage
creativity in where our materials come from and the social practice that supports it. Over-consumption and toxic run-off from the clothing and textile industry has increased environmental and cultural degradation. We specifically target healthy practices and encourage the exploration and implementation of regenerative design from the smallest seed to the wellspring of new growth.
Clothing and textiles have long been connected not only to material necessity, but also to celebration of culture, ethno-botany, creative re-use and innate sense of place. Permacouture Institute explores fashion and textiles from a dynamic and ecological perspective, offering optimal solutions for change.
See our website, www.permacouture.org for more information. Email us at
info@permacouture.org
Sasha Duerr
sasha@permacouture.org
Katelyn Toth-Fejel
katelyn@permacouture.org
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You can now book a place at the next London Dinner to Dye For presented by Permacouture Institute and featuring the plants, colours and foods of early summer. It will be held as part of the Chelsea Fringe, a fringe festival of the Chelsea Flower Show which features a mixture of over two hundred garden themed public spectacles and horticultural happenings.
The Dinner will be held at a secret location in Bethnal Green, London on Saturday, 1 June 2013, 3:00 - 7:30 pm
The afternoon will include a natural dyeing workshop, fabric silk samples to take home, a seasonal dinner and cocktails to match. Featuring the colourful soups, sweets and infusions from the Soppka girls!
We’re happy to share this article which was featured in the winter issue of Selvedge Magazine. In it we write about how slow food can intersect with slow fashion over a celebration of the seasons, including recipes for natural color from cherry tree prunings and a holiday cherry tart. Given the slow start to spring this year in northern Europe, we’re still very much using these winter plants!
-Sasha and Katelyn
Exploring the Seasonal Color+Taste Palette Workshop this 
Join Permacouture and Your Local Hive for a “Dinner to Dye For” in Los Angeles this Sunday, November 11th, at Peter Fetterman Gallery in Bergamot Station. Seasonal color and cuisine all from the same ingredients of autumn in Southern California. LA friends, we’d love to see you there!
"Great civilisations have almost invariably had good soils as one of their chief natural resources"
~ Nyle C Brady from Nature and Properties of Soils
Fiber and dye garden work party, plant dye, weed walk, clothing swap.
Permacouture recently hosted an event in Oakland, California called “Weed your Wardrobe.” The premise was to both literally and metaphorically tend to the ecology of one’s wardrobe. While weeding our urban Oakland food, fiber, and dye garden, we also simultaneously held a clothing swap. By clearing weeds to grow bio-diverse crops (all while finding new life for that “crop” top!) there is a new shared joy in increasing soil fertility, the fabric of one’s wardrobe, and community.
More images HERE.
-Sasha
Permacouture was thrilled to host a Dinner to Dye For as part of the first ever Chelsea Fringe, an alternative festival to the Chelsea Flower Show made up of over 100 ‘horticultural happenings’ all over London with such features as the pothole gardener and secret garden wildlife hotels.
The misty morning made for a fragrant dyeing session in the a shady garden of the Hackney City Farm where guests tried their hand at dyeing with elder leaves, queen anne’s lace, rhubarb, onion skins, dock roots and iron. The sun came out in the afternoon for our foraging walk around the perimeter of the farm, and after conversations about rosehips and wild chamomile we returned in time for dinner.
And what a dinner it was. The menu was crafted by Chef Beatrice Ferrante using the dye plants in her cocktails, starters and mains. Finally referencing the earlier rhubarb mordanted fibres, the meal finished with a dessert of cold vanilla and mahlepi rice pudding with baked rhubarb and strawberry compote topped with crumbled pistachio halva. Dinner was served on lovely tableware custom made for the day by Owen Wall using iron and other colorants inspired by the dyeing.
Including the wonderful guests from varied backgrounds, it was an incredible mix of artists, makers and thinkers and we’ll be digesting it for a while.
Flowers and general pinache were provided by Helen Z B Wilson and many thanks to Liz Spencer and Mark Windsor for your indispensable assistance.
-katelyn
Photography by Roman Skyva and Liz Spencer
