FILM REVIEW: The Nettle Dress

The Nettle Dress is a modern fairy tale about the healing power of nature and craft directed by BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Dylan Howitt, released by Dartmouth Films in cinemas across the UK and Ireland from September 15.

I had the pleasure of being invited to take the morning away from my laptop, head to London and join Dartmouth Films for a screening of The Nettle Dress. I’ve been so looking forward to catching a glimpse of the story it tells, and I’d heard so much praise, but I wasn’t prepared for my reaction. I struggled not to cry throughout, and as I was there in a professional context this became a little embarrassing as I failed to keep myself composed…. Particularly in the moments when I congratulated filmmaker Dylan Howitt and dressmaker Allan Brown after their Q&A.  

The film’s narrative spans 7 years of Allan’s life where he moved through loss, grief and purpose as he creates a dress spun fully from nettle fibre – using a mix of nettle and flax thread only as he pieces the cloth together at the end of the process.

Dylan takes us through the journey of this process, through each stage of gathering the raw material, retting, carding, spinning, designing, weaving, washing, cutting, fitting and capturing images of Allan’s daughter Oonagh wearing the dress in the very woods from which the nettles were gathered.

It is incredibly moving. Allan says, as he describes creating cloth from foraged plant, “the nettles were transforming me rather than me transforming them”. There is so much that is held in the storytelling whilst we as the audience engage as witnesses in the process.

What stood out for me was the strong sense of relationship throughout. Allan’s relationship to the purpose, the fibres, the cloth and the outcome; to ritual, heritage craft and ancestral knowledge; to his children; to the land he was walking to gather the nettles; to his dog who was such a faithful companion throughout; to the isolation that came with aspects of the work and to the community he built as a result of it.

For me, this is what is fundamentally missing as we buy, wear and dispose of clothing in modern times – many of us have lost that deep relationship with what we are wearing and the story of how it was made. This is why one of Sustainable Fashion Week’s four ‘pillars’ is #reconnect. Our clothing directly connects us to the land, to animal life and to community. Reconnecting with the process of how our outfits are made underpins our ability to change our fashion habits.  

I urge you to watch The Nettle Dress or organise a screening near you! As part of Sustainable Fashion Week 2023 there are screenings in the following venues:

Fri 22 Sep // Duke of York Cinema, Brighton

Thu 26 Sep // Quad Cinema, Derby

Sat 7 Oct // Rook Lane Chapel, Frome

Thu 5 Oct // Bridport Arts Centre, Bridport