Stepping inside the studio of Makati-based label Eairth is a bit like stumbling into Santa’s workshop had Robinson Crusoe curated it. While there is a biometric fingerprint scanner hanging by a water cooler, and laptops, iPhones and sewing machines abound, everything else in this place evokes treasure, the kind that was somehow left under the sun. It’s quite fascinating.
“For the last five years, we’ve been coined this organic label, which honestly we’re not. I keep telling people we don’t use organic cotton, we don’t use organic fabric,” says Melissa Dizon Ramsay, who could very well be the surfer-chick version of Tilda Swinton. “We just love real colors.” The NYC designer points to a section of their mood board that articulates her point: “F*ck Pantone.”
According to her, the whole anchor for Eairth — a portmanteau of earth and air — “is just using cloth with natural fibers, but cooking them in extracted pigments from real sources.” Leaves, flowers, fallen wood, and tree bark supply all kinds of riches and this “rooting of the colors” was actually how the brand came to be.
Anti-Pantone
“I was on a hike by my aunt’s place in Puerto Galera and I came across the Mangyans,” she looks back. “One of them was wearing a really beautiful, faded-out Mangyan garb, a skirt, with this old AC/DC tee-shirt.” The rock-inspired garment got its peculiar shade because it was washed in the same water that was used to cook kamote. A chemist then helped them refine and develop what would become their ever-evolving system of anti-Pantone, natural hues.
Indeed, in half a decade, Eairth has gone from “buying Crispa T-shirts, tearing them apart and embroidering them” to “using cotton to silks to leathers to now making our own fabrics.” In another part of the workspace, there’s a ball of yarn that’s apparently been handspun from ripped-up cotton. Deadstock buttons sourced from Japan, meanwhile, get their patina from coffee grounds. That each and every detail is produced from scratch may be painstaking, but it’s this slow love affair that makes the clothing peerless. Eairth exists in a world entirely of its own, one that thrives on creativity and insanity, and they like it that way.
This yearning for lasting value and urge to be more conscious of the way clothes are made seems to be paying off. Eairth has found a partner for their global business, Michael Flanagan, the same man who helped build Rick Owens and was crucial in turning Repetto around in the US. “He’s going to help us grow this and brand this the proper way, get into the right channels. Our goal now is to handpick those special stores to represent us properly,” Melissa shares. “It’s almost like we’re starting over but with the five years of research and development behind us.”
Foundation Items
Of course, those new to Eairth will be pleased to know that they can play catch-up. A cluster of about 40 pieces for women and 25 for men, the Classics line is a greatest hits edit of the standbys that comprise the basic Eairth look. Melissa thinks these foundation items “answered a need in people’s lives: a great-fitting polo shirt or basic v-neck with just enough design details like the seamless sleeve, no armholes. Other signatures are relaxed chinos and shirt dresses.”
Spring 2013 holds even more surprises. “Our mood board had a lot of slacker young kids, swimming pools and crop tops,” qualifies Ana la O’, who called the collection “Thieves Like Us.” The rails are heavy with everything from corset blouses and tops that pair transparency and stripes for the ladies to elongated jean jackets and indigo jumpsuits made with handwoven Belgian linen for the gents. I spy a leather jacket dyed with duhat bark and some stylized baseball shirts that feel like old friends, but would certainly push everything I wear with them way forward.
What Carine Will Be Wearing
“When you look inside the clothes, they’re really beautifully made. You could almost turn them inside out and they would still look good,” Melissa beams. She holds up a skirt conjured from parrotfish skin. A slideshow flashes in my head: a fisherman walking up from the beach dangling his catch on a stick, the Grand Canyon, Chloe Sevigny in The Last Days of Disco, a video by The Drums. “We’re sending this to Carine Roitfeld.”
As the label makes its way across the planet, I realize that the Eairth aesthetic isn’t tied to a single place. Instead, it revolves rather blissfully around a spectrum of emotions and memories.
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Eairth is available at Ground Floor, 2631 Zapote Street, Makati City. Telephone number 822-6611. www.eairth.ph
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