Field to catwalk: can fashion be made on the farm?

To challenge fast fashion, Katie Allen makes knitwear from the wool of her own sheep

We are all familiar with buying produce direct from farm shops, to cut food miles. But what about fashion?

Concerns about the environmental impact of the global fashion industry are widespread, but radical alternatives are rare.

Now a sheep farmer in Wiltshire is pioneering "farm fashion", making high quality knitwear from her own wool, even growing her own dyes.

Katie Allen said it was a "stark contrast to the synthetic dyes that cause so much damage to our oceans and soils".

So how does she do it, and could it be scaled up?

The sheep are fed only on grass and wildflowers, in a low impact farming system

Great Cotmarsh Farm is just outside Royal Wootton Bassett, near Swindon. The town was named for being a wool town, and for centuries West Country wool traders clothed Britain.

Now, many sheep farmers struggle to break even when they shear their sheep.

Mrs Allen said most "get hardly anything for their wool clip, some even end up just dumping it in landfill".

"It's such a waste," she said.

We walk through her meadows to see the sheep, grazing on grass and wildflowers.

She uses no fertilisers or pesticides on the grass, the sheep are fed no additives.

They come in two colours, which to my eyes look brown or white.

But Mrs Allen is a fashion designer as well as a farmer.

"The Castlemilk Moorit sheep produce this lovely hazelnut coloured yarn," she explains. "And the Portland make this soft ecru colour."

She shows me a bobble hat she has knitted, and with the sheep just behind her, it is striking. It's like she just unravelled a sheep onto a hat.

But not all clothes can be brown and white, or even hazelnut and ecru.

To make colours, we have to visit her dye garden.

Dyer's chamomile flowers produce this warm yellow colour in the wool

Unsurprisingly, this is a riot of colour. Vivid reds, soft pink dahlias, and a bed of bright yellow.

"This is dyer's chamomile," she explains. "It creates this lovely warm yellow colour on the Portland wool."

The process is remarkably simple. Like making the tea that chamomile is famous for, the yellow flowers are steeped in water. The original cream yarn is then just soaked in the yellow brew, until the desired colour is achieved.

Some flowers give surprising colours. Another yellow plant, the tansy, yields an olive green which Mrs Allen has knitted into a patterned sweater.

Compared with the industrial chemicals used in conventional high street fashion, the environmental benefits of this simple technique are obvious.

And the garden itself is a pollinator's dream.

"The flowers are alive with ladybirds, and insects, and all sorts of bugs.

"It is such a stark contrast to the synthetic dyes which cause so much damage to our oceans and waterways," Mrs Allen says.

The olive green stripes in this jumper were dyed with the yellow tansy flowers behind

But could all jumpers be made this way? Mrs Allen sells her knitwear online, as "Katie Cotmarsh", with a jumper costing around £300.

She accepts this is much pricier than a high street alternative, but insists "people need to buy clothes much less often, and buy better things".

It's the same argument you hear from meat farmers, raising sheep and cows in a more nature friendly way. In fact, Mrs Allen also sells lamb meat, on the same principle.

Pricier, but tastier, and with a much lower impact on the planet.

But much of her purpose is to show what is possible.

She regularly hosts visits from fashion students, keen to learn another way.

Fashion students visit the farm to learn a different way to create fabrics

I watched a group from Falmouth University, steeping yarns, experimenting with the different dyes, feeling the fleeces.

Tom Crisp runs the university's sustainable fashion course, and has worked in the industry for years.

When he started working, he said "no-one was linking the fabric with the farm it came from".

On their visit, students saw how the sheep are cared for, how the soil health is managed, the wildflowers encouraged.

"That's what has been so valuable, seeing that connection between the farm and the fabric," he said.

Other students see the connection with food.

"People are really concerned now where their food comes from," said Cassandra Boxley, a student at Falmouth.

"And that has helped us in the fashion industry ask the same questions about where our fabrics are made."

So could this way of making clothes catch on?

Mrs Allen has an intriguing answer.

"It is repeatable, but not scalable," she smiles.

What she means is other farmers could do the same thing, making small amounts of clothing from their farms. But doing so on a large, industrial scale is counter-productive.

"People are really interested in the story behind my products, there is a market there.

"I would love to see more farmers working directly with designers, and there are many people trying to drive a resurgence of this way of working with wool."