Angel Chang on why listening to Indigenous knowledge & preserving textile traditions can offer solutions for a more sustainable future

Conscious Chatter

In episode 284, Kestrel welcomes designer Angel Chang to the show. Over the last decade, Angel has been working with artisans in southwest rural China, making garments using zero carbon design / Indigenous practices (all-natural, locally-made, zero electricity).

“For the past 20,000 years, we’ve been making our own fabric and you know, using ingredients from our own backyard. It’s only in the last 150 years that electricity was invented, that chemical dyes were created, that plastic and plastic textiles were created. And all the stuff that we say is polluting for the fashion industry — well, that was all created in the last 150 years. So, if we really want to create quote unquote sustainable clothing, we just have to make clothing like it was before then, before the Industrial Revolution." -Angel

The sustainability and fashion narrative has an obsession with whatever is *new and innovative*. The focus regularly leans toward innovations in fabric development or tech-centered approaches to reduce carbon emissions. There tends to be this obsession with looking forward into the future, instead of slowing down to look back and maybe unveil what we could also learn from the past.

This week’s guest has deep knowledge around this. After falling in love with the hand-embroidered Miao traditional costumes exhibited in museums around the world, Angel found herself traveling to remote mountain villages in Guizhou Province, China, searching for the elders who made them.

And she ended up finding them.

Years later, she’s working in collaboration with several communities, in an effort to help preserve their textile traditions that over the last 30 years or so, have been eroding amidst China’s rapid modernization.

As she says –

“Saving these textile traditions is not just about preserving the past. They can also provide tangible solutions for an environmentally sustainable future.”

Turns out, zero carbon design – fashion that’s all natural and locally-made with no electricity — is possible.

Quotes & links from the conversation:

• “I think maybe it’s human nature to always want to find something that’s new and flashy. But I feel like it’s also feeding an obsession that will never be satiated. There’s always so much emphasis on technology and the future, and the thing is — technology is not going to be the thing that’s going to save us from climate change or whatever. We have to learn how to work with nature again.” -Angel (49:59)

• Alexis Bunten, Angel mentions them and some of their wisdom about the need to reconnect with our own roots

• “I think not being able to know who you are fuels a lot of insecurity and unrest internally. And so, I feel like learning about where we come from, our ancestral roots, and going to that physical land and just feeling it and spending some time there — I feel like that will give us a lot of solace and calm us down and bring more satisfaction to our hearts and souls.” -Angel (59:38)

• “How Ancient Textiles Can Help The Future”, Angel’s TEDTalk

• Angel Chang Website >

• Follow Angel on Instagram >

• Follow Angel Chang (the brand) on Instagram >