Meet the ‘Knitting Monk’ and Others Using Slow Fashion as a Spiritual Practice – Fashionista
A monk, an Episcopalian sister and a “typical clergy spouse” talk about their experiences pursuing textile arts and the Divine.
Brother Aidan Owen got into knitting because he needed a “winter sport.”
A monk at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York, Brother Aidan joined the order when he was 28 and immediately jumped into flower gardening as a way to contribute to his new community. But when cold weather forced him indoors for a season, he found himself antsy for another creative outlet.
Though some may imagine monks as figures from a bygone era, now-33-year-old Brother Aidan became a knitter the way many people his age do: through the internet. Brother Aidan relied on YouTube to help him build on the basic skills he’d been taught by a roommate in seminary, found himself connecting with fellow enthusiasts on Instagram and generally fell into what he calls the “black hole of knitting online.” Finding Brooklyn Tweed, a company known for contemporary, “not-your-granny’s” knitting patterns, helped seal the deal.
“I just fell in love,” Brother Aidan says during my visit to his office at Holy Cross, where part of a cable knit-sweater he made is framed and hanging on the wall alongside a crucifix fashioned from reclaimed wood and a painted icon of the Virgin Mary.
Brother Aidan knitting in his studio. Photo: Whitney Bauck/Fashionista
“It connected so many of these various threads in my life because I was really plugging into the ecological aspects of spirituality,” he explains. “I had my Christian spirituality, I had the ecological stuff, and then I had creativity and making things. And it all came together in knitting because you’re literally clothing yourself with stuff from the earth.”
Knitting soon became a gateway to all manner of fiber arts, from plant-based natural dyeing to sewing, as Brother Aidan delved deeper into the conversation around apparel production and sought to create a wardrobe for himself that was “sustainable, personal, ecologically sound and well made.” Hearing him talk about material sourcing — comparing the value of organic cotton, linen, locally-sourced wool or waste materials — it’s clear that he’d fit right in in most ethical fashion spaces, though he’s never formally worked in the industry.
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For Brother Aidan, the slow fashion movement’s emphases on treating people and planet with care have a direct connection to his understanding of what it means to live a life in pursuit of the God he believes created the world. But there’s also something about laboring over his own garments that has changed the way he values clothing even beyond the environmental aspect.
“You realize the amount of labor that goes into something. I value those pieces in a totally different way than I would something store-bought,” he says. “There’s an awareness and gratitude that develops for the clothing I have. And there’s an appreciation of beauty — I think that’s a hallmark of any kind of authentic spirituality.”
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