What will you be wearing tomorrow? Will your jacket have been grown in a lab, or your jeans coloured using bacteria? Will we still have shops? What does the future of work look like for the people who make our garments?
Photographer Lily Clatworthy
Clare’s new book, Wear Next, Fashioning the Future (Thames & Hudson) presents a crystal ball look into tomorrow's wardrobe, imagining 16 scenarios likely to shape our fashion futures, from conscious, fair, slow and upcycled to biointelligent and digital.
We all know that the current fashion system is wasteful, environmentally harmful and exploitative. If we carry on as we do now, it could account for a quarter of global emissions by 2050. Now it's time for solutions. They already exist! Creative thinkers are dreaming up new ways to craft our sartorial identities that don’t wreck the planet.
Written by the presenter of the much loved Wardrobe Crisis podcast, this essential new book introduces us to fascinating innovators around the globe who are redesigning fashion from the ground up, and changing it in the most fundamental ways.
““Clare Press has had enough of the doom & gloom surrounding sustainability. Her latest tome is an optimistic look at fashion’s roadmap for the future.””
Photographer Lily Clatworthy
““A real page-turner!””
““A beautiful patchwork of story-telling that’s never dull and never misses a view of the bigger picture.””
““A book of beautiful solutions.””
““An exciting ode to a regenerative fashion future. To truly emerge from the current ‘planetary emergency’, we need all hands on deck and convincing narratives for change across all sectors, and socio-economic-political systems. Through honest story-telling and real-world experiences, Clare Press does just that - and reminds us once again that we have the power to choose the future we want.””
““Clare Press invites us to collectively envision a future of fashion that is just and joyful! Spectacular in scope and vision, this book is the roadmap for the fashion evolution we have all been waiting for, one rooted in respect, reciprocity &
resourcefulness.’””
““Most of us know how environmentally destructive and socially damaging fast fashion can be, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Clare Press speaks to innovators ... [whose] shared objective is to design a greener, regenerative and safe fashion industry.””
““Packed with original thinking… a book that I ended up staying up far too late last night to finish.””
““In this spirit of optimism, Press’ persona on the page (much like her interviewing style in Wardrobe Crisis) is lively and colloquial. She’s a skilled storyteller, framing the hard facts and figures of her research – everything from the number of people employed in Cambodia’s textile sector (800,000) to how near-infrared technology is being used to sort fabric for recycling – with enlivening narrative detail.””
““A must read for anyone who wears clothes.””
““I’ll call it an atlas, not to be shrugged off, for how to put community before profit, beauty (in its truest forms) before trend, and ‘craft’ before product.’” ”