First Week in Ireland
My internship at Celtic Fusion went into full swing this week upon my arrival in Co. Clare on the morning of the 12th of October. From the moment I arrived, we went straight to work revamping the store’s website. For me, this meant checking/editing each item listing for grammatical errors and changing the wording to help create an image for the customer to grasp onto so that they could see themselves wearing the product. Through doing this, I have familiarized myself with all the fabrics that Regina uses in her products mainly: raw jute, cotton, linen, and woolen tweed. I’ve managed to do only a bit of looking into the sustainability aspect of these fabrics, but after the baseline edited of the website is done (hopefully in the next couple days!), we have plans to create an entire page on the store website detailing the lengths she has gone to be as sustainable as possible and her goals for sustainability in the future.
While reading the book on Brooklyn Grange, I found that they often stressed the importance of value-added products for companies that focus on sustainability – because every move you make as a sustainable business is a going to be more expensive, there is no room for waste. We came across this situation at Celtic Fusion this week, in the form of an entire order of Men’s tunic shirts that had been damaged by the sun. Letting them go to waste is not an option, so we went out and gathered some inkcap mushrooms to try to naturally dye them. Because it is natural dye, there will definitely be discrepancies in the quality of dye, but we plan to market them as “living garments.” Because they’re naturally dyed, they will keep changing color – which is something we can actually use to our advantage!
Next week will be even busier, we are planning to visit Biddy Early’s home (with lots of respect), a wise woman and suspected witch who was a local in Co. Clare in the 19th century. After that we will be doing a Biddy Early inspired photo shoot in time for marketing a Samhain (the Irish name for Halloween) sale.
