“LET OUR TEXTILES TELL YOUR STORY”
“LET OUR TEXTILES TELL YOUR STORY”
Our studio began to work with waste hosiery and cast-offs in 2002 after the designer, Katherine Soucie created several prototypes as part of her undergraduate work in Textiles at Capilano University. This work was built in response to Soucie's experience in working in the textile manufacturing trade as a fashion design student where she learned of the abundant amount of waste textiles discarded by mills daily.
Many of the applications undertaken at Sans Soucie combined hand made artisanal processes (dyeing, printing, draping/sewing) with obsolete textile and sewing machinery salvaged from factories that have closed. The hand craft skills required to produce the textiles, garments and sculptural forms are integral to the transformation process. This process lends itself to the history of textile and garment making and was developed as a way to keep traditional applications alive in connection with modern technology.
From 2002-2019, Ms. Soucie committed herself to the necessary applied research required in rethinking and transforming this material resource into a new textile for various applications using Canadian sourced manufacturing waste.
Sans Soucie Textile + Design is a studio dedicated to producing hand made textiles out of upcycled waste hosiery using zero waste applications.
In moving forward, we believe this is the most responsible way to maintain the creative integrity of our textiles and designs is to honour the valuable role that waste textile serves as a creative material resource and tool for research.
photography by: Celine Pinget and Ian Sheh
Zero Waste + Pre Consumer Waste Hosiery + Sustainable Surface Design Research
Katherine Soucie established her sustainable textile design research and practice in 2003 in Vancouver upon graduating from Capilano University's Textile Arts Program. The studio was formed as a result of a proprietary textile upcycling process she developed as a student. Her thesis research was looking at how to create new sustainable textiles from existing textile mill waste. From this, her signature hosiery textile process was born. She transforms pre-consumer waste hosiery (aka. pantyhose mill waste) from Canadian manufacturers into new textiles, garments, accessories and by-products. Artisanal textile applications, experimental methods, obsolete machinery, low impact dyes and textile inks are the foundation of this application.
Soucie states, " I am not doing anything new. I am reimagining the past, giving life to the obsolete and forgotten. I value the skillset and knowledge that has been passed down to me as a maker and as a maker I have a responsibility as to what I put out in the environment. I create new textiles in response to the material waste produced by industry here in Canada and transform modes of production (hand, industrial, digital) into collaborations that allow for past technologies to inform the present. Acting as a guide to creative breakthroughs and new pathways I am constantly researching and developing ways to integrate modern day technology, practices and industry at large to produce hand made textiles in a zero waste manner."
-- excerpt from Marilyn Wilson's book, Life Outside the Box
