Meet the fashion designer priest
March 31, 2010
By Kerry Weber - Catholic Digest
April 2010—In the June 2009 issue of Vogue, editor- in-chief Anna Wintour discussed her effort to find fashionable, eco-friendly clothes worthy of being worn by actress Cameron Diaz at a photo shoot. Of the items she selected, Wintour wrote: “My personal favorite is a neat pair of checked shorts that our market editor, Devon Schuster, discovered under most unusual circumstances.”
The shorts, she writes, came from Goods of Conscience, a company dedicated to high-end fashion, fair wages, and sustainable materials. In a world too cheap, and convenient, the company’s mission is noteworthy, but perhaps what Wintour considered unusual is the fact that Goods of Conscience is not run from a fashion workshop in Paris, but the basement of a Catholic church in the Bronx, and is the brain-child of Father Andrew O’Connor.
O’Connor, a priest at Holy Family parish first met Schuster while conducting a marriage preparation class for Schuster and her fiancé. After learning of their shared interest in fashion, Schuster asked to see a few examples of his work. She took photos to bring back to the magazine. Several samples were then brought to Diaz’s photo shoot, where Diaz personally chose the “neat pair of checked shorts” from among a selection of eco-friendly clothing. “Most of what [Diaz] is wearing in the photos is from green sources, but not all of it,” says O’Connor, “because it’s so hard to find, at that level, clothes that are truly fashionable and truly green. It’s a huge advantage to say we only do green; we started this way.”
Goods of Conscience began as a result of a Guatemalan retreat taken in 2004 by O’Connor at the urging of his priest friend from Texas. While there, O’Connor learned about both the Mayan weaving process and Jesuit Father Stanley Rother, who was a missionary and promoter of the art of Mayan weaving before he was murdered by a Guatemalan death squad in 1981. Impressed by the cloth, O’Connor decided to continue Rother’s advocacy work and set out to connect the Mayan artistry with the modern day United States.
The results is what O’Connor calls “Social fabric” a soft, light-weight, material made of organic cotton woven by Mayan women on a traditional backstrap loom. The social fabric also has a unique touch: At the request of O’Connor, weavers include a reflective thread made in the U.S. and create small, cross-like designs in the fabric that become visible in the right light. “I thought if I could combine, as a metaphor for the Incarnation, this not-made-by-hand fiber from the United States, and have it woven into a cloth in a set of crosses, that it would be a symbolic combination of the value of both,” he says.
O’Connor developed the fabric with the help of a Mayan family, as well as the Museo Ixchel del Traje Indigina, a Guatemala City promoter and preserver of textile arts that also helps broker the cotton through a remote village. He sold bags of coffee in and around his parish to earn money to pay for the fabric, then used the soft white cloth to make new altar server robes for his parish.”
After seeing the finished product, some friends suggested he enter a business-plan competition at Columbia University. The project made it to the semifinals, but O’Connor was told the market for albs was too small. In 2005, he decided to expand his line to include men’s and women’s clothing, and Goods of Conscience was born.
The company has three main missions: Mission Guatemala, Mission Bronx, and Mission Green. As part of Mission Bronx, Goods of Conscience helps finance marriage counseling for parish couples, while Mission Green includes promotes urban farming and the growth of local produce. O’Connor also tries to instill an interest in art and sustainability in the children of the parish, and has taught them how to silks-screen T-shirts. He also hopes to build a greenhouse on the church property to raise awareness of the importance of eating local produce. Another aspect of the company mission is insuring that a living wage is paid to both the Mayan weavers and his employees in the Bronx.
Maria Rivas, 65, is the organization’s head seamstress. Originally from the Dominican Republic, she now lives in Harlem, with her husband. Rivas met O’Connor through her pastor in Harlem and began volunteering for Goods of Conscience, working from home to complete small projects based on O’Connor’s designs. But as the company grew, so did her involvement.
“I wanted to be part of it,” she says in Spanish. “It’s not just making clothes. To me it’s a labor of love; it’s helping others in need.” Her expertise comes from experience. “I was making clothes for my dolls when I was 8 years old. At 12, I was already making clothes for friends and people in my neighborhood. Rivas is assisted by Carmen Alberty, also a local, skilled seamstress.
Both the design and craftsmanship of the clothes are appreciated by the buyers. Holy Trinity parishioner Pat Gutierrez, 64, has been a longtime supporter of Goods of Conscience and says O’Connor’s designs now fill her closet. They’re sturdy, they’re comfortable, they’re unique,” she says. She adds that the project has also helped her expand her view of the world. “When you think of the workmanship, where this all comes form, the people who make the fabric, it makes it even more meaningful. It’s the idea that somehow we’re combining together, we’re trying to bring some of the spiritual wealth from the poor into out world of technology that has really gotten cold and away from that,” she says.
Most of Goods of Conscience’s sales come from customers in the New York City area and through the internet, but O’Connor hopes to see sales growth through personal visits to parishes and eventual placement of his products in stores across the country. But parish visits are about more than just sales, he says: “I’d love it if people could afford the clothes, but I do just like to go out to make a presentation so that people are able to see and think and reflect on the spirituality of the lifestyle that I’m advocating.
Goods of Conscience garments cost more than clothing at the average department store- the shorts worn by Cameron Diaz, now called the Cameron Short, cost $275. O’Connor says that while some customers are shocked by the price of his designs, most come to appreciate the craftsmanship and effort that goes into each piece. “The shirt looks like an ordinary shirt,” he says. “But it’s a piece of art. The more people know about how it’s well thought out, the less the sticker shock seems to be an issue.”
For those who can afford to purchase the designer garments, O’Connor offers smaller items such as bags, hats, and ties under $100. For those who want to support the cause but can’t buy the clothes, small donations go a long way to supporting Goods of Conscience’s newest program, which creates school uniforms for Guatemalan children from their native fabric. O’Connor says Catholics should also recognize the power of their parish community. “The more people learn about these issues, the more they can go to their parish and say, ‘Let’s think through our choices,’” he says. “The community has purchasing power which can be brought to bear on ethical issues.”
O’Connor believes that the creation of original art is one way of renewing the Church. In the past, he has worked on projects such as a mobile made of photos of parishioners’ praying hands, each with prayer intentions on them. Parishioners then prayed for each other’s intentions. “One of the big frustrations I’ve had,” he says, “Is that the Church uses things to worship that are very symbolic but, in general, they’re mass produced. For a church to commission an artist to do anything original is very rare. Parish committees often think they’re saving the parish a lot of money [by buying these items], but generally the bottom line helps to pull the plug on creativity and the possibility of getting people involved in a church for a more long-lasting personal experience.”
But commissioning art doesn’t have to cost much, and can mean a commitment to an artist and a community, he says. In the future, O’Connor hopes to establish a program in which university students from Slovenia participate in an internship program during which they would help parishioners rebuild the floor at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in lower Manhattan.
The idea of art bringing people together is nothing new to O’Connor. “I’ve always seen art as something that is communal, getting people involved in the parish community,” he says. “My overall art belief is I’m thinking theologically of a new cosmology. The Church is one place in the general landscape of the West where you can have a local cosmos-something meaningful that represents what the whole universe is like, something you can enter into. You want to open up and flourish humanity? This is where it should take place: in a cosmological setting.”
