Person
Rebecca Burgess
American natural-dyer, weaver, and textile-systems advocate; founder and Executive Director of Fibershed (2010), the organization that brought the bioregional-fiber-economy concept to international practice. Author of Harvesting Color (2011) and Fibershed (2019). Through Fibershed and its Affiliate network, Burgess has built the institutional infrastructure for traceable, regional, soil-to-soil textile economies — modeling at small scale what a regenerative textile system at continental scale could become.
Life and Fibershed
Rebecca Burgess began her career in natural dyeing and weaving and as an environmental-education teacher in Northern [[berkeley|California]]. The concept of Fibershed grew from a personal challenge in 2010 — to wear, for one year, only clothing produced within 150 miles of her home in Marin County, using only natural dyes and locally-grown fibers.
The challenge required building, from scratch, the relationships and supply chain that no longer existed: identifying local fiber producers, mills, dyers, and seamsters; coordinating production timelines that span years (sheep → wool → mill → yarn → garment); rebuilding craft skills that had been lost from regional practice.
The result was a working fibershed — the textile equivalent of a foodshed — and the realization that the model could scale through replication, not centralization.
Fibershed the organization launched the same year. Today it operates a Northern [[berkeley|California]] fiber-production network and an international Affiliate program with regional fibershed organizations on multiple continents. The Climate Beneficial™ Wool program, in partnership with farmers and the textile industry, certifies wool from regenerative-management farms and brings it into commercial garment supply chains.
Major books
- Harvesting Color: How to Find Plants and Make Natural Dyes (2011)
- Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy (2019, with Courtney White)
Conceptual contributions
The framework Burgess articulated through Fibershed — soil-to-soil textile systems — has reshaped how [[regenerative-agriculture|regenerative agriculture]], textile manufacturing, and fashion brands think about traceability, regional supply chains, and the role of fiber in carbon-and-soil cycles.
See also
Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.
- Member of: [[person]]
- Founded: [[fibershed]]
- Pioneer of: [[bioregion]]
Sources
- Fibershed published materials
- Fibershed (Chelsea Green, 2019)
- Climate Beneficial™ Wool program documentation
Rooted in life.
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