From the Seattle Times of Wednesday, 1/25/95--a feature article
taking up 3/4 of the front page of the "Scene" section with
photos..here are excerpts from the article by Mary Elizabeth Cronin
titled:
 "HEMP IS HOT"......
A hip, mostly younger crowd is tuning in and turning on to hemp as a
comfortable and environmentally clean fabric.
        You may know hemp by one of its aliases: cannabis sativa,
marijuana, weed.  But unlike the infamous leaves, hemp fabric --
produced from the stalk -- is legal tender.
         Go ahead and stash your hemp/cotton work shirts in your hemp
canvas courier bags without paranoia -- as long as you don't try to
grow your own threads.
        Hemp grew up, dropped the leaves and got a job in the clothing
business.  And in the past two years, the Pacific Northwest has
become a hub for hemp clothiers;
        Robert E. Jungmann started Manashtash Mountain Products in
Seattle last January.  He now has his hemp backpacks and briefcases,
hemp/Guatemalan cotton print vests and hemp/silk boxers in 40 retail
outlets nationwide.
        Most retailers have been receptive.  But when Jungmann first
tried shopping his ware in the Midwest, "I got a lot of strange
looks.  I got the boot out of a few stores.  It's not like that in
Seattle."
        It's not a joke, man.  It's an industry now.  Nearly passe are
novelty hemp items such as baseball caps emblazoned with a marijuana
leaf and the slogan, "Don't smoke this hat," say local retailers.
        Rich Morrisey, formerly of the Seattle-based Generra sportswear
company, plans to shop his new line of up scale 100% hemp linen
shirts and hemp/silk vests and boxer shorts at the men's wear show
in Las Vegas next month.  The "Just Naturale" label is derived from
latin and means "laws of nature."
        "Sort of fitting," said Morrisey, legal counsel and executive
vice president of finance for Generra for nearly a decade.  Last
October, Morrisey stepped down after six months as chief financial
officer for American Hemp Mercantile in Pioneer square to launch his
own line.
        Hemp attracts local clothiers for some of the same reasons
seafarers of yesteryear used hemp for sails.  The blustery, nautical
climate in Seattle is ripe for hemp clothing, proprietors say.  It's
a fabric both insulating and breathable, durable and
water-resistant, and feels good on the skin.
        How good does it feel?  It's all in the weave.  Spun fine and
woven with silk, it's soft and flowy.  Combined with cotton it feels
like your favorite pair of old jeans.  A 100% fine weave hemp is the
linen of old.
        "It's what linen was made from for hundreds of years before
people got confused between the fabric and the drug." Morrisey said.
        The confusion reached a crescendo in 1937, when Congress
outlawed the growing of hemp.  Cannabis has been an illegal crop
ever since, except for a World War II waiver to produce the fabric
for military use.
        During that WWII hemp heyday, Kentucky was a leading producer.
Last month, Kentucky Gov.  Brereton Jones formed a task force to
study whether hemp could once again be a viable crop for Kentucky
farmers, especially given the slump in the tobacco market, said jim
Claycomb, the governor's administrative assistant and agricultural
liaison to the Hemp Task Force.
        Industrial hemp, now produced in China and Eastern Europe, is
harvested from the stalk.  The plants, sown 4 inches apart, grow 10
to 15 feet high.  Harvesters soak the stalk to loosen the fibers for
the fabric. The core is ground to make particle board.
        Industrial hemp is grown from a type of cannabis that does not
pack the punch the smoking variety does.  "As we understand it,
basically, what (smoking) it gives you is a sore throat and a
headache," Claycomb said.
        Local hemp clothiers are closely watching Kentucky's first step
toward legalizing industrial hemp production.  Hemp cloth would cost
less if it were produced domestically, said Ken Friedman, president
and founder of American hemp Mercantile.  He pays a Hungarian mill
from $4 to $9 a yard, depending on the weave and weight of the hemp
fabric.  Clothing-quality cotton direct from the mill starts at 41
to $2 a yard.
        Friedman got into the business, indirectly, from the legal side
first.  Some of the clients Friedman defended as a criminal defense
attorney turned him on to hemp as paper.  Friedman and Hal Nelson,
American Hemp vice president, searched out and set up a deal with a
mill in Szeged, Hungary, and began importing paper in January 1993.
By that August, the business expanded to manufacturing hemp
clothing.  American Hemp now has 600 wholesale clients throughout
the country.
        American Hemp Mercantile, in the Smith Tower, was among the
Pacific Northwest's first hemp clothing wholesale and retail
businesses.  It has become a de facto information and wholesale
clearing-house for local designers and retailers.
        Besides it's own line of clothing, the store carries first-time
designers such as Matthew Dubin, who produces snowboarding coats and
baseball-style shirts out of his Olympia (Washington) home.  Next
month American Hemp plans to introduce a line of canvas hemp
oxfords, mules and lace-up boots from Deja Shoe in Portland, Oregon.
        Hemp grows like the weed that it is and requires no pesticides
or fertilizers.  The clothiers say they want to prove the business
of environmental responsibility can be profitable.
        "It's a selling point with the younger crowd I'm appealing to,"
said Dubin, a former horticulture student at Evergreen State College
who turned to designing hemp clothing after his scholarship ran out
last year.
        "One day the idea hit me: I should do something with hemp," said
Dubin, who calls himself "a cottage-industry type of a guy."
        many of the local clothiers have just, or are nearly, finished
with college.  That group includes Dubin, Jungmann, Hemp Textiles
International wholesalers, Yitzac Goldstein and Robert R. Gould in
Bellingham (Washington), and Cory Brown of the Fremont Hemp Co.
        Brown used college term papers to research his niche in the hemp
business.  He is nine credits short of receiving a marketing degree
from the university of Washington, but he already has a retail
store, the Fremont Hemp Co., which he opened with partner Erica
Karson in November.
        I discovered that retailers couldn't keep up with the demand for
the product," Brown said...


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