Hi! My name is Drew and I am the creative and organizer behind Crunchy Couture and Crunchy Couture Club.

When I started sewing my own clothes in 2019, my ultimate goal was to to make a pair of pants that fit me for maybe the first time in my life. For years I would either spend way too much time hemming pants by hand or would rock a raw hem or a double-wide cuff, claiming it was “cooler that way.” I also never met a pair of pants that fit both my waist and hips.

After practicing with smaller projects, struggling my way through understanding printing and assembling pdf patterns, and finding the perfect pants that wouldn’t require a zip installation (too scary), I was ready to source my fabric. I was living in Atlanta at the time and was close to an old fabric shop that sold a variety of discount fabrics. It was big, smelly, completely disheveled, and entirely overwhelming. These are all now markers of what makes for my favorite type of fabric store, but as newbie I was extremely intimidated.

I walked away with what was most definitely an upholstery or home decor fabric, but I was none the wiser at the time. Then, within just a couple of days, I was the proud owner of a brand new pair of pants that I made from a flat rectangle of fabric. That fit. And were comfortable. Immediately I knew that I had a lot of work to do.

I wish I could say that it was my first pair of pants that radicalized me to see the obvious injustices that run rampant in the fashion industry, but this happened gradually then all at once. And some of the things I’ve realized are this:

• There is so much existing, usable fabric. Everywhere.

• What we save in cost as a consumer is being paid for by others who don’t earn a living wage and by the earth who is being used as if all her resources are endlessly regenerative.

• We think fast fashion is just SHEIN but it’s actually every shop in the mall. Any mall.

• Shopping in places like Forever21, H&M, and outlet malls growing up completely warped my idea of what clothing should cost or what level of quality I should demand.

• Consumers are generally well-intentioned, but not exactly motivated to sacrifice their limited resources to shop more sustainably. Or, sacrifice their social signaling to not shop at all.

• There’s not a lot of people who understand how clothing is made from even the most basic sense, but it’s not their fault. This is by design to make people feel intimated by clothing repair so that they just toss and re-buy instead of mend what they have.

I find that being curious about where your clothes are coming from is often enough. If you’re curious, you’ll learn, and when you learn, you grow. Crunchy Couture Club is just the place for that. Let’s talk, discover, create, and build a community of people that reject the fashion industry as it is and demand a better way. Because we only have one earth.