Toby Smith took up weaving 25 years ago when she retired from her career as a professor of political science. Enough politics and term papers. She now teaches the delicate art of carefully choosing fibres and enmeshing them together into fabrics at the Silver Harbour Centre.
Those who get into weaving find it deeply rewarding in different ways, Smith has found.
“There’s a connection between the brain and the hand, and weaving brings those things together,” she said. “It uses your creative side as well as your intellectual side.”
Most of the people in the program don’t have any background in the arts but Smith said everyone has that innate potential.
“One of my goals is to reach down back into that person that we all were when we were young – we love to draw, we love to colour and paint – to get that person and draw that person out, to have some expression again in their life,” Smith said. “Because it is so rewarding to make things with your own hands.”
There are currently 24 weavers in Silver Harbour’s program but there is another 20 who might be on the waiting list for a year before they can take part. Weavers and other artists from Silver Harbour are coming together for a runway show April 12, to model their unique designs and raise money toward the purchase more looms, so more seniors can enjoy the same enriching experience.
Those who attend and are lucky enough to purchase a one-of-a-kind garment can claim bragging rights and a stylistic originality that few other folks can, Smith said.
“It’s the curse of American casual as a design sense. There’s no individual artfulness in it. Clothing is a sartorial language and we compose our identities and our orientation to the world by composing our wardrobe every time we go out the door,” she said.
Each piece of fabric takes months of work
At Silver Harbour, there is a particular emphasis that the reuse of existing materials, be it vintage linins and textiles, or a whole rainbow of donated yarns – wools, cottons, synthetics, and “some, we don’t know what they are,” Smith said.
“So it’s a very complicated cloth in the end,” Smith said. “It’s a myriad of colors and textures, and it’s really beautiful … and that makes a very distinctive jacket.”
Simran Likhari, arts program co-ordinator for Silver Harbour, said it should be appreciated that each piece of fabric may have taken months of work before before the cutting and sewing even began. That “slow fashion” imbues the garments with a value you cannot find in off-the-rack purchases.
And today’s seniors grew up in a time when it was better understood that products and materials were scarce and therefor intrinsically valuable, she added. It’s a lesson today’s generations could be reminded of.
“These days, everybody goes to the store, you buy the latest trendy thing, you wear it two times, and you throw it in the bin. It ends up in the landfill. And here is the concept of mindful consumption,” she said. “This is a demographic of people who really value things. They don’t throw away things.”
The oldest maker and model doing a turn on the catwalk will be 102 years old, she said.
“It’s to educate people about all the beautiful things that seniors make. We want to challenge ageism by saying that fashion is not the prerogative of the young people,” she said.
The Art of Slow Fashion event takes place Saturday, April 12 from 1 to 3 p.m. The $25-ticket includes lunch, door prizes and the fashion show.
