From Soil to Style: At the Crossroads of Farming and Fashion
Written by Helena Wrenne
Fashion and Farming panelists. Photography by Dominique Mueller
On a Saturday morning in May, in a secondary school in Kinsale, fashionistas and farmers alike gathered to discuss the unlikely intersections of their two worlds.
Two industries rarely spoken of in the same breath became the unexpected focal point of a new kind of gathering, one that asked us to rethink not just what we wear, but where it begins. This past weekend, the inaugural Farming and Fashion festival brought together growers, designers, and thinkers to explore the deeper threads connecting land, clothing, and sustainability. The conversations made it clear that real sustainability must go beyond buzzwords. It has to root itself in every layer of the system, from soil to supply chains.
At the heart of the festival is a story about returning to the land, to materials, to meaning. Behind it all are Mareta Doyle and Ciara Hunt, a mother-daughter team whose backgrounds in the arts and fashion world have led them, unexpectedly, back to the soil.
Mareta, whose background bridges both the art world and festival organising, shared her passion for regenerative practices. “We put in 7,000 trees during COVID,” she says. “My husband is obsessed. We’re not farmers, but we’re very interested in the land.”
Ciara, whose roots are in magazine publishing, speaks of the transformation of her life from urban fashion to rural restoration. “We bought a small farm, restored the house, and realised how quiet it was… no birds, no bees. The land had been intensively farmed for decades.” What followed was a hands-on journey of hedgerow restoration, and tree planting. “This journey has been fascinating, working with the land and learning about it”.
“The idea for the Fashion and Farming festival really came together less than six months ago because of this journey we have both been on,” Ciara explains. The conversation Mareta and Ciara seek to cultivate is a conversation that is urgently needed. As Ciara points out, “We have had the farm-to-table movement, but not farm-to-fabric.” She explained that we have had the conversations about recycling our clothes and buying second hand. What is needed is a movement that goes back to the land. “There is a disconnect between fashion and ultimately where these fabrics come from”.
Unraveling the Fabric of Fashion
Over two days, the festival welcomed soil experts, regenerative farmers, wool producers, and pioneers in sustainable fashion. It asked attendees to stop seeing clothing and land as separate issues and instead view them as part of the same system. One of the festival’s most compelling themes? Soil. That unassuming, life-giving substance we too often overlook.
On stage, the Land Gardeners spoke passionately about soil health. One of the most striking insights was the shared bacteria between soil and the human gut. This microbial connection is not just biological, it is a metaphor for the deep, often overlooked relationship between human health and the health of the planet. It reminds us that caring for the earth is ultimately caring for ourselves.
But the conversation did not stop at soil. It expanded outward to wool, to flax, to fashion’s role in global systems of waste, labor, and ecology. Coco Baraer Panazza, CEO of MyWardrobeHQ pointed out: “There is enough clothing on the planet to dress the next six generations.” It is a sobering reminder that overproduction is not just a flaw of the system — it is the system.
Transition year Junk Couture at Kinsale Community College. Photography by Dominique Mueller
The Cost of Fast Fashion
Fast fashion’s links to modern slavery and environmental degradation are no longer hidden: they’re foundational to the system. From garment workers paid pennies under unsafe conditions to mountains of textile waste choking landfills and oceans, the true cost of cheap clothing is staggering.
Panelists from Repurpose, Oxfam, and Oliver Spencer offered compelling alternatives, showcasing upcycled and circular fashion models grounded in both ethics and style. The event showcased some exciting innovations: fully recyclable shoes, regenerative textile farming, and wool from native Galway sheep. “We are trying to close the loop,” Mareta explained to me. “From farm to fabric, and ideally back to the earth or at least not to landfill.”
The panel addressed fashion’s fundamental contradiction: an industry rooted in constant production and novelty grappling with the concept of sustainability. What does it mean if someone else, whether a worker, a farmer, or the environment, is paying the hidden cost?
And while individual actions, buying secondhand, repairing clothes, supporting small brands, are valuable, they exist within a system too large for personal virtue alone. True change, the panel insisted, requires systemic overhaul.
The Zero Waster. Photography by Dominique Mueller
Bridging Idealism and Reality
This vision must work in the real world. As former Irish Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Simon Coveney pointed out during one panel, sustainability must work for real people. “You won’t win by asking farmers to be poor,” he noted, highlighting the challenges of asking small, family-run farms to bear the brunt of climate reform without support. He referenced initiatives like Project Origin Blue, which offers a practical framework for measuring emissions and water use across 77,000 Irish farms. Its success suggests a roadmap that could be mirrored in the fashion industry, where transparency in supply chains, water sourcing, and carbon footprint remains elusive. If farmers are finding ways to stay productive while becoming more sustainable, fashion might do well to build its own equivalent system, one that is grounded in accountability but sensitive to real-world pressures. With fashion accounting for nearly 10% of global emissions, change is urgent…but must also be feasible.
Who Gets to Participate in Sustainability?
The rise of vintage, rental, and repair culture offers a hopeful counterpoint. However, the price of sustainable fashion remains inaccessible to many: Ciara notes that “most of these items are more expensive, because they are paying fair wages and using real materials.”
The festival brought together some inspiring people doing deeply important work. As inspiring as the weekend was, it also surfaced an uncomfortable truth: the privilege embedded in the conversation. Many of the people who can afford to talk about organic farming and sustainable fashion are also those least impacted by the high costs of the current system.
For many, sustainable fashion and regenerative farming are still luxuries, not options. It is easy to speak of choice when you have it. What about those who do not? It made it difficult to overlook how removed this space could feel from the financial realities of most people. We need more conversations that include working-class voices, young people, and those without land or legacy.
The Farming and Fashion festival did not solve the sustainability crisis, and it was not trying to. What it did was plant a seed. A seed rooted in care for land, creativity, and community. A seed that says: fashion can change, but only if we change the story we tell about what clothing is for, and where it begins.
But seeds do not grow on good intentions alone. They need tending - with action, inclusion, policy, and persistence. This movement has real promise. Now it needs more hands in the soil.
