Amy DuFault
Welcome to The Good Dirt, Episode 1!
Amy has been a sustainable fashion writer for the past 13 years and has repped for dozens of sustainable fashion designers. Her work has appeared in publications including Ecouterre, Participant Media, and The Guardian. She’s also the former editor of EcoSalon and co-owner of a boutique. Currently, Amy is the Sustainability and Communications Director for Kathy Hattori of Botanical Colors, and she works as a consultant on communications, sustainability, and event planning for folks like Elizabeth Cline, Buffy Bedding, and TS Designs. Amy is also co-founder of the Southeastern New England Fibershed and is working to educate farmers in the potential of fiber farming for carbon sequestration and the reversal of climate change.
We first became aware of Amy as an important voice in the world of slow fashion, and as a no-nonsense advocate for change in an industry that is destructive and broken. When we learned about Amy’s involvement with The Food and Fibers Project, an initiative aimed at making a connection between what we eat and what we wear, we knew we had found a kindred spirit, and wanted to get to know her better. She kindly agreed to come onto a webinar we hosted in 2017, and we had such a great discussion with her and Anna Brones, one of her food and fiber cohorts.
In the fall of 2018, Amy joined us as the keynote speaker at our first Lady Farmer Slow Living Retreat. With her years of experience in the fashion sector and her passion for changing the status quo, Amy was the perfect fit for taking the participants of this inaugural event to the very heart of the slow fashion movement.
Since that auspicious gathering over a year ago, Amy has taken her voice and passion from the runways of New York to a deeper place. With her feet-on-the-ground approach, Amy is broadening the scope of her work by becoming an activist and spokesperson for the source of it all– the soil. She seeks out the best guides, teachers, farmers, and producers, talking and working with them, taking on projects, learning AND educating every step of the way. We feel such a strong kinship with Amy in that migration towards the soil as a focus for our content.
In this conversation, we cover a number of topics as Amy shares her current work with the Southeastern New England affiliate of Fibershed, the national non-profit based in northern California. Amy defines for us what a fibershed is, and describes how it relates to sustainability in both food and fiber systems and how it affects climate change. She touches on several key concepts in the world of soil science– no-till vs. traditional farming, the relevance of weeds, carbon sequestration and the vital issue of nutrient density in our foods.
Along the way, the discussion touches on the many ways that care of the soil and slow living overlap, the concept of patience, of waiting, of working with nature instead of trying to control it, and of taking the opportunity to witness and heal our addictive behaviors as we do so. Whether we are farmers or not, every consumer decision we make somehow relates back to the soil, and we all have our part to play in regenerating a healthy world.
Join us in this relevant and wonderful conversation with Amy as we explore this common ground we all share, The Good Dirt!
Follow along with Amy’s work on her website, amydufault.com, or on Instagram, @amytropolis.
