A Holistic Approach to Mental Health and Sustainability with Maggie Dimmick

Designer Feature: Maggie Dimmick | Ethel Studio

Hey Maggie. We are excited to get to know you. Please share a little bit about yourself and what brings you joy.

I am a textile designer, artist, and entrepreneur focused on eliminating textile waste. I love working with color and fabrics, as well as sharing my passion for fabric scraps with others! 

What is your background and what are some key moments that led you to where you are today?

I majored in apparel design in college, but came to be more focused on textiles and surface design. I worked in the New York fashion industry until two years ago. My most recent position in New York was working for Eileen Fisher sourcing fabrics and designing textiles. It was there where my eyes were opened to the atrocities of the fashion industry. We had ambitious sustainability goals for our textiles, and I learned a ton about the technical aspects of converting  fabrics and their supply chains to be more responsible. 

I also began reading books on sustainability across industries: Cradle to Cradle was a life changer for me- I couldn’t unlearn what I learned from that book! That, combined with witnessing with my own eyes the sheer amount of textiles wasted during the garment cutting process was also something I could never put out of my mind. These elements came together and really influenced me to devote my work towards finding solutions for textiles already in existence to do my part in reversing the growing negative impact the industry has on the earth and the life that lives here. 

When did you first discover your love for textiles and how did it ultimately lead you to start your own company, Ethel Studio?

I’ve always loved working with fabrics. I learned to sew when I was very young, and never turned back. I made costumes for my local dance school and would always save all my fabric scraps. My mom was not a fan of this, but I was pretty convinced that I could find a use for all of them… now here I am still convinced that a solution can be found for all the scraps! I used to work in the fashion industry in New York, and I became aware of just how much fabric is wasted during the garment cutting process when I visited factories. There was one day I visited a factory in Queens, NY and I saw fabric scraps (and paper patterns) being swept straight into the trash. A part of me inside started burning and I knew I had to reverse this! 

Can you share more about your mission and how you go about inspiring sustainability and wellness?

Yes! So Ethel Studio’s mission is to create textile products that eliminate textile waste and inspire well-being. Sustainability and wellness might seem like two unrelated concepts, but we’re really bringing them together! First, in a literal sense, we are striving to address textile waste through our sourcing and manufacturing processes, and then our products themselves serve the purpose of being tools for an individual’s journey to well-being. 

On a more conceptual level, I’m a believer in holistic approaches to things: that we can’t just focus on mental health or just focus on environmental sustainability and overlook everything else. We need to be working towards it all: when we look inside to get to know ourselves via the practice of meditation, it seems more and more contradictory to not also take a look at the products around us, how we consume, how we design things, how we lead our lives and interact with each other…. So things really do start to meld together….  

“I’m a believer in holistic approaches to things: that we can’t just focus on mental health or just focus on environmental sustainability and overlook everything else.”

Tell us a little more about your product and why you choose meditation pillows?

Our meditation cushions are made here in Minneapolis and St. Paul using fabric scraps rescued from local designers’ cutting rooms. Since we work with a variety of fabric scraps, each cushion has its own combination of shades, textures, and geometry--No two cushions are exactly alike!

When first developing the cushion, I didn’t want to make another product that would be a part of a passing trend. I wanted to create something that someone could use for a long time and would have an actual purpose. Meditation had become a really important and transformative tool for me at the time, and it was actually on a meditation retreat two years ago that I started to formulate my ideas for what Ethel Studio looks like today. I was looking for how I could help others while also still designing textiles, something that I can’t live without! 

Have you always been interested in meditation or mindfulness, or was this something you discovered later in life? 

I tried meditation a few times here and there in college, but it never really clicked until around about 2017, so fairly recently. I was having a really difficult time mentally, emotionally, even physically, which was getting only worse (the 2016 election didn’t help) until I was prescribed a daily Yoga Nidra progressive relaxation exercise by a therapist. It took an existential crisis for me to realize I needed to change from the inside out. Meditation and mindfulness, along with relaxation practices like restorative yoga-- have truly changed my life. Without them I wouldn’t be where I am today. But to be honest, meditation is still so hard for me! My meditations are still 92% filled with me going through my to do list, but that other 8% is what makes the difference. 

What are some of the biggest challenges you see in the fashion industry right now? Are there any areas you think we should be more aware of and talk about?

There are SO many problems in the fashion industry! It’s hard to rank them when all the issues are so dire. I think over consumption and over production are major issues that us as individual consumers, designers, and brands can address today. We all have way too many clothes and textile products and production does not seem to be slowing down at all. Water use + pollution, air pollution, mono-crops, chemical toxicity, deforestation from the leather industry and rayon manufacturing, greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel consumption, loss of localized manufacturing, the list goes on and on! There are a lot of social issues too- even in our own country where workers are being exploited and underpaid. 

“Not everything is perfect— it’s all a work in progress, but I’m trying to always strive for better...”

 How do you see yourself living your values through your work? How do you talk about sustainability to your friends or followers? 

I try to weave my values into everything I do. I’m a very values-driven person, so it is hard for me to do things that are not in alignment with them. I find it helpful to run decisions by my mission statement: will this decision be in alignment with my mission and values? Not everything is perfect-- it’s all a work in progress, but I’m trying to always strive for better, knowing that current limitations in my product or process can hopefully will be ironed out in the future. 

Talking about sustainability with others can be really difficult. It’s all so complicated. There’s no one miracle fabric or material with zero environmental footprint that will solve the world’s problems. I also don’t believe that anything is truly 100% “sustainable”- Sustainability is a goal that we need to strive towards. I try to portray this to my customers and followers: that we are trying to do our best by using rescued fabrics and striving to find solutions for scraps that we can’t utilize fully. I also strive to educate our viewers on the process that goes into making our products because I believe that understanding and appreciating the process of making a product contributes to the purposefulness of its purchase and lifetime of use. 

“I also strive to educate our viewers on the process that goes into making our products because I believe that understanding and appreciating the process of making a product contributes to the purposefulness of its purchase and lifetime of use. ”

 You used to be  textile artist in New York, what have been your impressions of the Midwest and have they changed since you’ve started living here?

Personally moving to Minneapolis has been a breath of fresh air. The default here is kindness - even if someone is being “Minnesota Nice” it all comes across as kindness to me, so I think it’s great! Minneapolis has amenities of a big city, but with a small city feel to it. And relative to NYC, it’s much more affordable, so that’s given me some space to start my own thing. I don’t think I could not pull off what I’m doing here in New York. 

As time has gone on, I’ve learned to not trust any statement or opinion about the weather from a local. And I inevitably have been seeing behind the layers of how things work here, but I continue to appreciate the Twin Cities, and I think it’s a truly special place with so much to offer. I hope more people from all around the US can come to get a glimpse of what’s going on here!   

What are some small shifts you’ve made in your life or business to be more sustainable?

I’ve made lots of shifts but it’s all still, and will continue to be, a work in progress. I’m always trying to look at my materials or my business practices to see how they can have less environmental impact, and more positive impact in terms of best utilizing fabric scraps out in the world that have potential. On a personal level, things are also always a work in progress. When I first started becoming aware of my huge environmental impact as an American, the many small first steps were the easy parts: composting, reducing food packaging, eliminated single use cleaning supplies, etc. I ride my bike whenever I can. But after the small stuff, the big stuff is harder to address: like airline travel! 

Beyond Ethel Studio, you’ve started the first ever Textile Week in Minneapolis St Paul. We’d love to learn more about it and where it’s going next!

Yes, We successfully launched the first ever Textile Week here in the Twin Cities!  It was one big experiment this first year. My co-organizer Maddy Bartsch and I noticed how there are such strong textile communities here that exist in silos with little interaction between them or with other audiences. Our goal is to create a time and space to bring artists, craftspeople, and industry together to break down barriers and foster cross-pollination of ideas, methods, stories, and histories related to textiles.  We learned a lot from this first year and have exciting ideas and partnerships in the works for 2020. You can stay up to date by following us on Instagram @textileweekmsp and at textileweekmsp.com.  

What else are you most inspired by? Any books, artists, or podcasts we should know about?

Oh so many things! It’s always changing. I love traveling, watching films, and spending time in nature when possible. I love artists like Helen Frankenthaler, El Anatsui, Anni Albers, Sheila Hicks, and Sam Gilliam to just name a few. 

As for books, anything having to do about sustainability, meditation, or design, I am all over it. I read a lot of magazines- especially on interior design and art. Also I recommend Cradle to Cradle and Overdressed to anyone wanting an intro into sustainability/ reversing the fashion industry’s continued environmental atrocities. 

You can follow the work of Maggie at @ethelstudio. If you are in Minneapolis, get plugged into the textile community by following @textileweekmsp.