Out of conviction against fast fashion
Women of Impact: Tanja Klein – LadiesDrive.World
Tanja Klein, founder of the fashion label kleinbasel, actively campaigns against the negative effects of the textile industry such as fast fashion, environmentally harmful production practices and inhumane working conditions. We ask her why and how exactly she does it.
Ladies Drive: Tanja, you are an institution in Basel and have been working in the fashion industry since the 1990s, most of that time independently. Why do you set such a clear counterpoint to fast fashion with all your work?
Tanja Klein: That comes from my own history. I learned to be a dressmaker as a very young girl, just like my mother and grandmother. You immediately learn how many hours it takes to sew a piece of clothing and how much craftsmanship goes into it. Later, I worked for a while in a large company designing clothes for fast fashion. You know, those zero-eight-fifteen things that we then wrote University of Los Angeles on. We drew the garments and then faxed them to the agency, and some time later the finished garments arrived in a cardboard box from Asia to our office in Basel. In between, everything was a black box. Who was sitting at the sewing machines? Under what conditions were the women working there? Because let’s be honest, it’s a classic low-wage job for women! This whole process was fragmented for me. Nothing connected with me anymore. It felt empty and nonsensical. At the age of 24, I set up my first own atelier, back then for haute couture. In other words, a customer comes in and we develop and tailor the perfectly fitting garment for her. Everything is made to measure and unique, from the design to the pattern to the finishing. I was passionate about it. At some point, I wanted to start my own fashion line and trained as a fashion designer. And after a few other positions, I’ve been doing that since 2002.
What are you doing today?
We design, create and distribute clothing and leather bags for women and men. We produce two collections a year. We develop the dresses and bags here in the Basel studio, the dresses are made in Croatia, the leather bags in Ticino. An important principle is to value the materials and the work. Throwing away was never an option for me. As we create our patterns ourselves, there is practically no waste. If there is anything left over, we turn it into products such as mini wallets or key rings. I rely on high-quality, durable fabrics from overproduction, so-called dead stock. We only use what is already available and only print new fabrics in the exact quantity required. We use digital cutting optimization to almost completely avoid fabric remnants.
Tell me more about Dead Stock, please!
Dead stock are fabrics that are left over from the big design labels. Dealers come to our studio and I buy the fabrics that match the kleinbasel DNA. We think about which of them fit into our color and material concept and which models we can create with them. It is important to me to create fashion that not only looks beautiful, but is also produced responsibly and with a clear awareness of our environment. Incidentally, we also have a fabric file that has grown steadily over the years. For example, a customer comes in and chooses a model from our collection but wants a different fabric – we can do this for a small surcharge. We adapt the pattern and then this model is sewn in Croatia. The manufactory is a small family business. We know everyone there and maintain close, cordial contact with them. At least once a month, the owner hangs the finished pieces on the clothes rail in his Fiat Ducato delivery van and drives all the way to kleinbasel. Meanwhile, his wife runs the tailoring business at home. We pay fair wages and value people and the environment in everything we do.
In Switzerland, the average person buys 20 kilograms of clothing per year, a large proportion of which is hardly ever worn. Around 6.5 kilograms per person per year end up in the used clothing collection. The working conditions in the production of these garments are often precarious. Fast fashion has led to clothing increasingly being seen as disposable. Small, sustainable labels cannot solve the problem of overproduction and waste, but they are an important step in the right direction.
Photos: Phil Jeker
Hair/Make-up: Najat Zinbi
Model: Mahyal. Metro Model Agency Idea and styling: Kleinbasel by Tanja