PRESERVING THE BIODIVERSITY OF HERITAGE BREAD ANIMALS AND CONNECTING FARMING TO FASHION
By: Hillary LeBlanc
How far would you take your love of animals and fashion? LD13 Creative Director and CEO Lisa Deurer, took it upon herself to create textiles that in every which way celebrate farm animals and fashion. By creating her own textiles Deurer has also ensured specific sustainability protocols that are upheld by her brand.
Deurer was born and raised in Germany. She had the privilege of attending Parsons School of Design to study Fashion Design after playing in the highest Women’s Soccer league under 17 in Germany. She arrived at the brand name LD13 through personal connections. The LD arrived from her initials and 13 stands for the fact that she was born on the Friday the 13th, which is part of the Deurer values “making the unlucky, lucky, the uncool, cool and turning ugly into something beautiful”.
One of Deurer’s philosophies is trying to make uncool things look and feel cool. She believes this can be applied to sustainability in fashion, art, farm to fashion, dressing elderly people and more. Deurer shares, “I believe in responsibility while sourcing and manufacturing, and the power of arts”. LD13 and Deurer aspire to become a luxury fashion brand within the avant-garde niche that acts more fashion-consciously in sourcing and building supply chains while producing edgy pieces for the extra unique moment in one's wardrobe. LD13 represents the new luxury of a family-owned business that supports local/ independent systems. LD13 co-designs with people/communities they care about and they use materials that are re-imagined and source meaningfully.
How has Deurer shared that love of animals within her brand? By creating her own textiles! Deurer produces Romeldale Textiles, knits and wovens exclusively in the USA. Romeldales are a specific breed of American sheep, although she plans to expand her work to collaborate with more farmers and different sheep breeds in the future. Deurer shares, “we obtain other woven goods and knitwear/textiles from Italy, Switzerland, or Portugal. Likewise, we also work with deadstock fabric places which we source within Germany or New York. When it comes to production, we either sew and knit in house or work together with production companies that are in the US, Portugal, Germany, Italy, and Poland”. LD13 produces one-off productions, runway pieces, custom orders, patterns and prototypes. All of the development and sewing takes place in New York and Augsburg, with 2-3 seamstresses and 1-2 pattern-makers.
Recently Deurer produced a fashion show titled Farm to Table, which no doubt drew a lot of curiosity and attention. The concept was inspired as a result of meeting Isabella Rossellini (Model, Actress, and Farmer) during a class trip to her farm in 2019 while attending Parsons. At the time, Rossellini wanted to inspire fashion students with ideas, materials and lifestyles that were rooted in a FARM-TO-TABLE lifestyle.
Rossellini's idea, together with Deurer’s professor Brendan McCarthy, was to inspire us selected students with a Farm to Table concept since this was/is the trend in cooking at the time. “Fashion and food share a common interest and history because both manifest cultures in our communities. Isabella, my professors, and the Farmers I met didn't say it directly, but their underlying message was to us/me; think more locally again, build independent systems, and save animals from extinction together since careless consumption resulting in climate change doesn't make us poorer not wealthier in resources, living quality and sustaining life on this earth”. Deurer was certainly inspired by the message Rossellini shared, which reminded Deurer of her Augsburg roots, though their culture of “world heritage” was lost.
The “ROMELDALE Textile” is highlighting a pilot project & collaboration of pushing Fashion centered “sustainability talks” to the next level. “Our project & vision is the first step of bringing local production back to the United States of America, which is opening doors for new jobs and companies to help drive economic growth in a country that lost its production a while ago”. The project’s goal is to sustain the biodiversity of heritage breeds which in Deurer’s case are sheep but involve other agricultural animals. Together with Rossellini, the Livestock Conservancy, Farmer Marie, Jacob from American Woolen, Deurer and LD13 want to support Farmers and animals who look after the well-being of the land, (no overgrazing), and no sheep exploitation to create a healthier and more independent future for us and forthcoming generations. “This a project that can be adapted and inspire more countries with grazing sheep to start using the wool again and not throw it away!”
What exactly is the “ROMELDALE Textile”? Together with Rossellini, Minnich, a board member of the Livestock Conservancy and CEO Jacob Long of American Woolen, Deurer's mentor/professor Brendan McCarthy and herself, Deurer managed to create a high-end heritage breed textile, the first of its kind, from Romeldale sheep, which LD13 fabricated into a coat and jacket within the Wardrobe Harvest collection. “In addition, we managed to build an entirely transparent supply chain where we source, manufacture and sew garments made from a heritage breed sheep within the US.” For those unaware, Deurer shares that textile creation had been outsourced to Asia and Europe and was no longer a major industry in the US. “The Romeldale textile was a two-year-long project where I, reached out to Marie Minnich, the Farmer she met at the "Rhinebeck Sheep Festival" and owner of her heritage breed Romeldales, to ask if she would be interested in collaborating with myself on a Heritage breed textile.”
While still a student, Deurer started her dream by calling Minnich during the pandemic which resulted in them sourcing 500 pounds of wool from her Romeldales. “At the same time, I pitched to Long, CEO of American Woolen (one of the last functioning woolen textile Mills in the USA), to collaborate by creating a fabric.” Long was inspired and excited that a young designer showed interest in helping him and the Farmers out there to make a statement about homegrown luxury, heritage, craft, sustainability and biodiversity. After Long said yes, they started this journey. “The pandemic slowed production processes since Jacob and the scouring places weren't operating due to COVID. Still, with the support from her McCarthy, Jacob, Marie, Shawn, Stephan Deurer (Investor & my Dad), and Isabella, my project found a voice”.
After graduating in May 2021, they re-calibrated the project, “where a former engineer Shawn, helped us to wash our wool with its self-build scouring facility in Kentucky and Jacob and its team at American Woolen enabled us to spin, weave the Romeldale textile in Connecticut. Finally, in February 2022, the pilot project and fabric on how we can reinvent luxury within sustainability with renowned collaborators and a heritage breed sheep got delivered to our studio in Brooklyn, where we used it to fabricate our garments for the 2023 cross-seasonal collection "WARDROBE HARVEST" which LD13 showed at New York Fashion Week in February 2023”.
For Deurer, sustainability starts with two questions; how do we want to be remembered, and is it worth being produced? “Sustainability within fashion design can only be possible if we reinvent what luxury means in our fashionable lifestyles. To do that, we need to go back to the origin of fashion design, to produce quality over quantity, help re-build more local supply chains, support educational platforms around arts in the craft, become an active political voice to address the issues lacking infrastructures needed, and be more thoughtful in creating timeless designs that withstand trends. Together we need to reduce consumption and push innovation of recycling systems and material waste while making fashion more diverse in its experience”.
Continuing from her success, Deurer hopes to continue growing their community of likeminded people by collaborating with more Artists, Creatives, Models, Farmers, Cooks, Politicians, etc., show the next LD13 wardrobe chapter in September and a solo LD13 installation.
To learn more about heritage breeds and the Livestock Conservancy visit: https://livestockconservancy.org/2023/02/13/farm-to-fashion-heritage-breeds-sustainable-fashion/