Mood Board

We are so excited to be featuring the work of Sara Gates, whose limited edition collaboration on the ARTbutt Jane Briefs can be seen here.  Sara is an artist, collaborative printmaker, and business owner who works in Brooklyn and lives in Rockaway Beach. She is the mastermind behind Gallery Diorama and in 2006 she founded Kingsland Printing, an artistic-minded, high-end, collaborative screen printing studio which she still owns and operates today--and also where the Jane Briefs were printed!

Fun fact: Sara and I were studiomates at Rockaway Artists Alliance in the summer of 2019 when we first hatched this idea. She was volunteering as an instructor at the print studio there and we spent many an idyllic summer day biking out to Fort Tilden, working in the studio, then frolicking together into the ocean afterwards. And I DO mean ✨frolicking✨...if you grab a pair of these panties don’t be surprised if you feel a bit of that whimsical energy too!

Read on to learn more about Sara and her creative process below:

As we all know, sustainable fashion costs more than fast fashion because synthetic fabrics and cut and sew labor in countries that lack fair labor laws are cheaper by comparison.  However, this growing awareness has had little impact on sales in fast fashion, and sustainable brands, though growing, often are not able to sustain themselves beyond a few seasons. 

The food industry has successfully convinced us that healthier, sustainably-grown, organic food is worth the extra cost. Why hasn’t the same thing happened in the fashion industry?  And whose responsibility is it to make this change: the consumer, the brands, or the government?  While I believe the responsibility is ultimately a collective feedback loop between all three, we have been inordinately focused on consumer and brand obligation and need to put more effort into demanding government and policy legislation, as outlined below:

If there is one word we are almost more tired of hearing than sustainability it’s greenwashing.  Some entities spend more time analyzing how everyone else is doing sustainable “wrong” instead of seeking out and promoting better ways of doing it “right.”

Of course greenwashing exists, and it is important to be able to identify the outright liars bandwagoning onto a belief system they don’t actually practice in hopes of gaining a buck from the consumer who does.   But there is a big difference between a company that’s lying and a company that’s trying…and we need to keep supporting the ones that are on the right path until we are all doing sustainable perfectly.  As a consumer it is still good to ask questions, do the research, and make informed decisions in alignment with your beliefs.  This is the part of sustainability that requires the customer to do the work: which is to be curious, be critical, and keep demanding better. 

How is it that there are so many so-called sustainable swim brands now?

There has been an explosion in brands labelling their swimwear as sustainable, and the reason is this: The mills that are producing spandex from recycled plastics have found a way to scale it out at a cost per yard that is marketable (though still within the luxury pricepoint).  But more importantly they’ve dedicated these qualities to running stock yardage, which means smaller companies don’t have to commit to huge minimums up front, a common barrier that usually prevents them from being on the vanguard of any new fabric technology. 

Baruch Spinoza was a 17^th century philosopher who to this day is still regarded as one of the most prominent thinkers of our time, and someone whose work and perspective I have always been curious about...