From front row to front bench? Why not? It's time we stopped considering fashion as simply fluffy. The industry is a giant global employer with serious impacts on the environment, and yet it is not traditionally associated with being active in the political arena or central to government policy. Our guest this week, on the final Episode of Series 2, is Londoner Tamara Cincik, founder of the British policy organisation Fashion Roundtable, who is determined to change this.
Catherine Teatum and Rob Jones, are the London creative partners behind Teatum Jones - an inclusive, though-provoking label challenging fashion’s norms. What role can fashion play in empowering women and girls? How can we modernise fashion and make it way more inclusive? How do we smash the idea that you have to look and be a certain way to qualify as beautiful, stylish, in fashion? How come fashion ignores disability - and keeps on getting away with it? Why do designers have a responsibility in this area, and how can they maximise their positive impact?
Meet Indian designer Ruchika Sachdeva of Bodice Studio, the Delhi-based label that took out the 2017/18 International Woolmark Prize . She trained at the London College of Fashion and interned at Vivienne Westwood, before returning home, where she showed as a “Gen Next Designer” at Lakme Fashion Week in 2010. A year later, she launched Bodice Studio. Her idea? To make thoughtfully designed modern classics with integrity, and a respect for artisanal producers.
Let’s get ethical. Paul van Zyl is a human rights lawyer and ethical fashion entrepreneur. He grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, and served as the Executive Secretary of South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1995 to 1998.
In 2009 he founded Maiyet, a luxury fashion brand with a social impact purpose. The idea? “We incorporate ancient traditions in untraditional ways by partnering with artisans in developing economies and by sourcing material in ethical ways. We create limited exquisite product in limited editions. The hope is that by doing so we promote entrepreneurship, prosperity, and dignity in places that need it most.”
How about we stop throwing clothes away?
Stats vary. Does the average woman discard a piece of clothing 4 or 7 times before she gets rid of it? Depends who you listen to, but it’s never good. Everyone agrees that clothing production is rising while usability is declining.
According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the average number of times a garment is worn before it ceases to be used has decreased by 36% compared to 15 years ago. In the US clothes are only worn for around a quarter of the global average. The same pattern is emerging in China, where clothing utilisation has decreased by 70% over the last 15 years.
Despite this, clothing production has about doubled during this time. We now produce around 100 billion garments a year, and of this total fibre input that is used for clothing, 87% ends up landfilled or incinerated.
Iconic Australian fashion designers Pamela Easton and Lydia Pearson and their Easton Pearson label were known for their slow fashion approach. Think artisanal fabrics and embellishments, ethical production and made in India. But could they survive in the new fast fashion era? A frank discussion about the challenges of running an independent, slow fashion business in a fast fashion world.
Who is on next? Meet Sara Maino, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of VOGUE ITALIA, and the fashion force behind Vogue Talents. A stylist and talent scout, she is a tireless supporter of new generation designers focused on sustainability and a guiding light for creativity in the fashion industry.
In this podcast, Wardrobe Crisis presenter Clare Press talks sustainability, planetary boundaries and activism with legendary educator and London fashion fixture, Dilys Williams - founder of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion.
Meet legendary thinker, innovator, disruptor and Cradle to Cradle hero, William McDonough. Architect, designer, thought leader, and author – his vision for a future of abundance for all is helping companies and communities think differently. He was the inaugural chair of the World Economic Forum’s Meta-Council on the Circular Economy and currently serves on the Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Environment and Natural Resource Security. For more than 40 years, he has defined the principles of the sustainability movement. This interview is a must for anyone who is interested in the circular economy, or indeed just cares about the future of our planet.
Sustainable fashion innovation steps up! Meet Katrin Ley, managing director of FASHION FOR GOOD - the world’s first sustainable fashion museum in Amsterdam. The organisation that was co-founded by William McDonough and set up to bring together the entire fashion ecosystem with incentives, resources and tools for sustainability. At its core is William’s concept of the Five Goods, which, he says, “represent an aspirational framework we can all use to work towards a world in which we do not simply take, make, waste, but rather take, make, renew and restore.”
Take, make, discard is so last season. Dame Ellen MacArthur is determined to change our economic system from linear to circular. In this inspiring interview with the former world champion sailor and current circular economy expert, we look at keeping products in the loop, designing out waste, and changing the way we make, sell and consume products such as fashion. But this is also a story of personal triumph, how to stay focused and set effective goals. It’s about having a plan - knowing which direction you want to go in is how you make stuff happen.
Common Objective has been described as a Linkedin sustainable fashion. Meet the British fashion change-maker behind it, Tamsin Lejeune.
Back in 2006, Tamsin founded the Ethical Fashion Forum, a London-based industry body for sustainable fashion. Her team also brought us Source, one of the first platforms to list sustainable resources and suppliers in one place. How much has changed since then? How far off is sustainable fashion from being the norm? What tools do we need do fashion better and connect as a community?
Jeans genius! In this podcast, Clare Press interviews James Bartle about his Australian B Corp denim company Outland Denim and how fashion can provide good jobs for survivors of human trafficking in Cambodia.
Love fashion, hate sweatshops. Hear from ethical fashion pioneer and People Tree founder Safia Minney about fair trade, The True Cost, and fashion activism.
What is fashion week actually for? Is the old system tired & old-fashioned? Has it lost its purpose and reason for being? If so, what sorts events do we want to see take over? Do we need sustainable fashion weeks?
Meet Evelyn Mora, the 26-year-old photographer-turned-event-producer behind Helsinki Fashion Week. In its current incarnation, the event happened for the second time in July 2018, taking sustainability as its focus.
Evelyn's mission? To reinvent “traditional concepts of fashion week venues and the ways they present collections to buyers and press” while simultaneously “questioning the way we consume.” Evelyn says her vision is all about “circularity, sustainability and beauty” but it’s also about getting rid of what’s gone before. She’s a change agent who likes to shake things up. She wants fashion weeks to be super-inclusive, zero-waste, diverse, open to anyone who's interested, showcasing only ethically produced and environmentally-aware collections; in short, totally different to how they used to be.
Who made my accessories? Part 2 of our story on the UN’s Ethical Fashion Initiative, featuring artisans in Nairobi, Kenya.
Ciao Simone! Simone Cipriani is founder of the UN’s Ethical Fashion Initiative, a flagship programme of the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the UN and World Trade Organization.
The EFI connects skilled artisans in places like Kenya, Mali, Burkina Faso, Haiti and now Afghanistan, to the international value chain of fashion, working with the likes of Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood, Karen Walker, Adidas and the Australian accessories house MIMCO.
The work empowers informal manufacturers and craftspeople to enter the international value chain - providing an income for some of the poorest people in the world. This promotes the growth of sustainable business in place of aid dependency. It provides opportunity. This is not charity, this is work.
Talk about intrepid. What to pack for an expedition to Antarctica? Or to keep yourself alive on a remote mountainside? In extreme conditions, clothes move way beyond fashion to become tools for survival.
In this Episode, you get to hang out with environmental scientist, polar explorer, author and adventurer Tim Jarvis, a man for whom pushing himself to the limits of his physical endurance is all in a day's work. But Tim doesn't undertake his incredible expeditions just to prove he's tough; he does it for a higher purpose - to spread the word about climate change, and show us how some of the remotest regions on Earth are being impacted by global warming.
Can fast fashion turn circular? Can fast fashion ever be sustainable? Will circularity fundamentally change things? How about supply chain transparency, collaboration and pumping resources into textile innovation? Is all this eclipsed by the shadow of overproduction? An interview with H&M’s Anna Gedda.
Australian oceans advocate Tim Silverwood is fighting plastic pollution. Why? Nearly one third of the plastic packaging we use escapes collection systems, which means that it ends up clogging our city streets and polluting our natural environment. Every year, up to 13 million tons of plastic leak into our oceans, where it smothers coral reefs and threatens vulnerable marine wildlife. The plastic that ends up in the oceans can circle the Earth four times in a single year, and it can persist for up to 1,000 years.
The first ever interview with designer Roland Mouret about sustainability. Mouret is famous for his elevated, elegant womenswear - but he has also considered sustainability deeply, and questioned everything around it, from how and why he makes things, and how that has evolved, to the impacts of over-consumption, the power of fashion to communicate a message and how we can make sustainability hot—and not just hot right now.
What can we learn from the past to design a better fashion industry for the future?
London's Victoria & Albert Museum (“perhaps the world's best dressing-up box” with an archive of more than 75,000 items of clothing) takes on sustainable fashion. The Fashioned From Nature exhibition includes amazing historical garments as well as contemporary fashion by the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Katherine Hamnett, Alexander McQueen, Christophers Kane and Raeburn, and Bruno Pieters. But most importantly, it looks at fashion's eco footprint, and the massive impacts of textile production on the planet, and asks: What can we learn from the past to design a better fashion industry for the future? Curator Edwina Erhman unpacks it all.
It’s time for change. Sara Ziff is the founding director of the Model Alliance. She is a campaigner for a fairer, more sustainable fashion industry in general, and for the rights of models in particular.
She’s a brilliant tailor, cuts a mean coat and former Woolmark Prize finalist. One of the most considered, creative, thoughtful designers working in Australia today, Bianca Spender thinks deeply about sustainability and making positive impacts on people & planet with her work.
In this interview, recorded live at the SCCI Fashion Hub in Sydney, Clare and Bianca discuss the designer’s approach to integrating sustainability into every aspect of her business. They talk about her use of deadstock, her design process and relationship to and obsession with Nature, and what it ws like to grow up in the fashion business—Bianca’s mother was Carla Zampatti, who presented her first collection in Sydney in 1965.Setting sustainability goals.
Until 2020 Eva Kruse was the president of Global Fashion Agenda. With a background in TV career and Danish Fashion Institute, she founded the Cophenhagen Fashion Summit to coincide with United Nations summit on climate change that happened in Copenhagen in 2009 to address the most critical environmental, social and ethical issues facing our industry and planet.
Whether it’s the Oscars, Met Gala, GRAMMYS, Green Carpet Awards, social media is often full of who wore what. The red carpet has a huge influence on fashion and pop culture, designers, celebrities. But how much do you know about the job of a FASHION STYLIST? Meet New York-based fashion editor Laura Jones who is fast carving a niche for herself as sustainable fashion’s go-to creative.
In the sustainable fashion space, we often talk about reducing the negative impacts of production on people and planet, but Sébastien Kopp and his business partner François Morillion talk about having a positive impact on the environment and society. Not less harm, but active good.
Is it possible? How do you choose eco-positive materials to make sneakers? Can you make money doing it? Veja sneakers cost 5 times more than conventional brands to produce because the raw materials are environmentally friendly and purchased according to fair trade principles, while the sneakers are manufactured in fair factories. How do you balance the books? Hint: you give up advertising.
What are the challenges of working this way? And what are the rewards?
In this Episode, recorded in Veja's HQ in Paris, Clare speaks with Sébastien about these questions and more. We talk: vegan shoes, Made in Brazil, agro-ecological organic cotton and wild rubber. We cover the history of colonialism in the Amazon, the definitions of success and failure and how to reshape the economic system for the better. This is a fascinating conversation with a truly original fashion thinker.
Pro-fashion protest! Who made your clothes? In the last in our mini-series of in celebration of Fashion Revolution Week, the global not-for-for profit campaign that was established on the anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster to promote transparency in the global fashion industry, we meet Fashion Revolution’s Head of Policy, Sarah Ditty.
Sarah is based in London, and has a wealth of insights the big issues around ethical and sustainable fashion today, from modern slavery to living wages through sustainable fabrics and fashion waste to extending the life of our clothes. Why do these things matter? What can you do to help? How far have we come, and what sort of fashion industry would be like to create for our future? Find out how Sarah started out, where her passion for social justice comes from, what it was like to be a sustainable fashion blogger before that was an actual thing, and where she stored her excessive wardrobe before she saw the light...
How can we use fashion for good? The Social Outfit is an independently-accredited Sydney-based social enterprise and fashion brand that works with refugees and new migrants to provide first Australian jobs in the fashion industry, through a design and workroom, retail storefront in Sydney's Newtown, and online store.
A lively conversation is about the magical powers of the clothes swap, having way too many clothes, and the charmed life of Patrick Duffy - New York’s clothes swap king, and the founder of Global Fashion Exchange. We heart Patrick.
We need to talk. And we need to listen. Fashion is supposed to be modern, cutting edge, leading the way. So how come it’s stuck in old-fashioned tropes that place white culture at its centre?
Now is the time to shake things up and insist on true representation and inclusivity, and we all have our parts to play. But what does diversity really mean in the fashion context? And why aren’t we changing fast enough?
Kimberley Jenkins is a writer, educator and authority on the intersections between fashion, race and culture. At the time of this recording, Kim was teaching at both Parsons, The New School and the Pratt Institute in New York. In January 2020, she joined the faculty at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, as Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies.
She specialises in the sociocultural and historical influences behind why we wear what we wear, specifically addressing how politics, psychology, race and gender shape the way we ‘fashion’ our identity. Plus she's a massive vintage fan, and a serious fashion history buff.
Growing old glamorously with Advanced Style. Photographer and author Ari Seth Cohen is the creator of Advanced Style, a project devoted “to capturing the sartorial savvy of the senior set.” He says, “I feature people who live full creative lives. They live life to the fullest, age gracefully and continue to grow and challenge themselves.”
Ari has a longtime interest in clothing and style and a lifelong affinity for his elders. When he was growing up, his late grandmother Bluma (a librarian) was his best friend; her “energy and attitude towards life” continue to inspire him. As a result, he couldn’t help but question the absence of mature faces in the lifestyle and fashion media. “I noticed a lack of older people in fashion campaigns and street style sites,” he says. “I wanted to show that you can be stylish, creative and vital at any age.”
In this interview, you’re going to hear all about how he began, who he met along the way, what he learned and how he changed the way the world looks at older women.
It’s packed full of charm and wisdom, but best of all it’s packed full of Advanced Style ladies. From Ilona Royce Smithkin, who at 97 published a book on staying creative, and still her makes her own false eyelashes, to Tziporah Salamon, who bikes everywhere because it’s the best way of showing off an outfit, and Jacquie Murdock the former Apollo dancer who at 82 shot a Lanvin campaign and many more.
Vestiaire is putting the love in preloved. In her first podcast interview ever, Fanny Moizant talked about what makes her tick and building the French ‘re-commerce’ site that’s now booming.
This interview is a must for anyone who buys or sells secondhand anywhere. It’s a ‘How to make it in fashion’ episode, a tech disruptor episode, an inspirational woman episode. Fanny is a working mamma and she shares wonderful advice on female entrepreneurship. She flew up in the South of France, and studied at Institut Français de la Mode Not surprisingly, she also has fantastic style. Fanny Moizant is super chic.
Kindness by design. Meet the designer who pioneered earth conscious processes in Australia. This conversation was recorded after she’d just been in London for Fashion Week showing her work at Buckingham Palace, no less. Livia Firth and Emma Watson lover her, and she's always in Vogue. No wonder everybody's talking about her label KITX.
Kit is fearless fighter for fashion's eco future and a true original, who considers sustainability at every stage of her design and production process. She counts among her fans Emma Watson, Karlie Kloss and Princess Mary of Denmark, but if you ask her if she gets a special thrill from famous women wearing her clothes, she says no. In Kit’s mind, all her customers are equal.
Remaking our world. Long before upcycled fashion brands were trending, British designer Christopher Raeburn led the charge in London, breathing new fashion life into old army gear, parachutes and 1940s maps. This interview is a beautiful insight into his Remade, Recycled and Reuse ethos, recorded in 2018, but required listening any day.
A conversation about the beauty and power of minimalism, and building a sustainable brand from scratch. Founded in 2007 by Gosia Piatek, KOWTOW is a conscious label with a strong design philosophy and innate sense of comfort. Described as minimalist and effortless, the brand’s aesthetic is inspired by Gosia’s interests in art, architecture, culture, craftsmanship, landscapes and her own travels.
Kowtow fabrics are exclusive and designed in-house. The label is committed to using fair trade certified organic cotton, Global Organic Textile Standard approved dyes, mindful manufacturing with fair working conditions, ethically sourced trims and sustainable packaging.