The Hemp Fabric Leaders

VoteHemp.com featured our very own Summer Star Haeske, who has not only worked with MTV on Pimp My Ride, but world-reknowned designers Versace, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan. From VoteHemp.com: HIA Board Member Summer Haeske currently serves as the National Sales Manager of EnviroTextiles, LLC, a family-owned company based in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, which imports and distributes hemp and hemp blend yarns, fabrics and finished textile goods. Haeske began working with Barbara Filippone when Filippone started EnviroTextiles back in 2001. Filippone is recognized as a pioneer in the business of hemp textiles. Filippone re-opened the Western textile market to Romanian hemp back in the early 1990s, followed by Chinese hemp after 1996. At this time, Haeske helped create Earth Goods, one of the first hemp apparel lines. Now in her eighth year at EnviroTextiles, Haeske possesses a full understanding of how to design and inspect fabrics, as well as how to pattern, grade and finish products. Together, Haeske and Filippone grew the company to $1 million in sales in 2006. Not only does Haeske manage sales, but she also organizes fashion shows for events that EnviroTextiles has sponsored, including the first sustainable business conference at the Fashion Institute in New York City in 2007. One of Haeske’s favorite projects was for MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” show, which featured the Earth Day car upholstered in sustainable hemp fabrics provided by EnviroTextiles. This past January, Haeske worked with top designers Versace, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan, each of whom incorporated EnviroTextiles’ fabrics into their designs featured at the 2008 Earth Pledge event during New York’s Fashion Week “Future of Fashion.” The designs were also showcased at Barney’s 5th Avenue for the month of February.

From The Economist print edition: Sprouting soon in North Dakota “PLANS are afoot for a great expansion of the hemp industry.” So proclaimed the Department of Agriculture in its rousing 1942 movie, “Hemp for Victory”, which urged farmers to rally to the cause: “Hemp for mooring ships! Hemp for tow lines! Hemp for tackle and gear!” The plant’s long, strong fibres twist easily into rope, which made it useful for parachute webbing. The war effort was imperilled when Japan’s seizure of the Philippines curtailed America’s supply. But despite the enthusiasm of wartime planners, hemp never took root (as it were). Taxes and regulations, introduced in 1937 but minimally enforced during the war, kicked in again during the 1950s. Hemp is a variety of the cannabis plant, which also produces marijuana-though industrial hemp has a much smaller concentration of the mind-blowing compound, THC, than the smokable stuff. America’s puritans, not to mention nylon-makers, wanted production shut down. Nowadays farmers are banned from growing hemp without a permit from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which usually refuses to grant one. So many hemp products in America-food, lotions, clothing, paper and so forth-are imported from China or Canada, where farmers have been allowed to grow hemp commercially since 1998. Could hemp make a comeback? America’s greens have fallen for the stuff, and not just because plenty like the occasional puff. Hemp grows so easily that few pesticides or even fertilisers are needed. “Feral” hemp is said to grow by the roadside in Iowa and Nebraska. Barbara Filippone, owner of a hemp fabric company called Enviro Textiles, says demand has rocketed-sales are growing by 35% a year. Nutiva, a California-based hemp company that sells hemp bars, shakes and oils, saw sales rise from under $1m three years ago to $4.5m last year. “Hemp is the next soy,” predicts John Roulac, Nutiva’s founder. American farmers would love to grow hemp. North Dakota, which in 1999 became the first state to allow industrial hemp farming, has taken the lead. This week two farmers from the state filed a lawsuit to force the DEA to issue permits to grow hemp; the farmers had applied for permits back in February, thus far to no avail. Ron Paul, a Texas congressman and presidential candidate, could win over farmers in Iowa because of his pro-hemp lobbying. In February he introduced a bill in Congress that would allow Americans to grow it. If hemp grows so easily, what about using the crop as a biofuel? A Mercedes-Benz “hemp car” did make its way across America six years ago. (Among other uses in cars, “Pimp My Ride”, an MTV show, featured a 1965 Chevy Impala that runs on biodiesel and has hemp upholstery.) Perhaps this is just the niche for Willie Nelson. He already has his own biodiesel line, called BioWillie, and is not unfamiliar with other uses of the cannabis plant.