The Story unfurling:
Dr. Katie Anderson, DAOM, LAc: Founder
I began my journey in textiles and apparel at the University of Texas in Austin, dreaming of creating fabrics that carried art and meaning. I worked briefly as a buyer for an intimate apparel shop, but quickly saw the shadows of the fashion industry — toxic dyes, waste, and systems that felt broken. My soul longed for something more honest, more alive.
From hands in the land
That longing carried me across the Pacific, where I put my hands into the red soil where I owned and operated an island farm. I planted cacao orchards and vegetables, tended trees, learned to listen to the land. Farming was backbreaking, but it was also where I came home to myself. In the rhythm of soil regeneration and closed-loop systems, I discovered what it means to be an active participant in the Earth’s healing. With every seed and harvest, I learned the medicine of plants and the sacredness of reciprocity.
To Chinese Medicine
In those same years, I found acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine — first as a patient, when my body and spirit were worn from farming, and then as a calling. The medicine reached me in a way nothing else had: it worked with the roots, the rhythms, the unseen patterns. I chose to devote myself to its study, and in becoming an acupuncturist I deepened my relationship to plant medicine, body cycles, and the subtle frequencies that stitch us to the natural world.
Full circle
And still, the thread of fashion quietly tugged at me. Friends noticed and playfully poked about the “Katie fit”: long flowing silk dresses, naturally dyed, layered with linen shirts and wool socks. I realized my entire body craved the feel of natural fibers — silk especially. To me, silk feels like wearing nothing and everything at once: ease, elegance, freedom, and prayer woven together.
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Before my fifth year at Burning Man, I felt the call most strongly. I longed to walk the desert wrapped only in silk — natural fibers dyed with plants, garments that could catch the wind like whispers of the Earth. I wanted panties of silk to carry me through ritual, dust, and dance. That desire became a revelation: where my love of natural fibers, my background in textiles, my devotion to the Earth, and my “fashion drip” could converge.
So Of Earth and Ritual was born.
and with that the Planty Panties.
Here, each garment is a plant prayer, a wearable Earth echo, a slow fashion offering created in small batches, designed in Bend, Oregon and consciously made by my small team in Indonesia. These silks are not just clothes
— because style is spellwork —
they are vessels of beauty, authenticity, and sensuality, connecting body to Earth and spirit to sky.
...
This is why I’m here: to create garments that let us feel more ourselves, more alive, more attuned to the frequencies that elevate and expand us.
