WELCOME TO SERIES 5 - WARDROBE CRISIS SHARE THE PODCAST MIC.
IN THIS EPISODE WE’RE INTRODUCING THE CONCEPT. FROM NEXT WEEK, WE’LL BE WELCOMING GUEST HOSTS TO SHAPE THESE CONVERSATIONS.
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A note from our founder, Clare Press:
Welcome to Series 5, “Share the Podcast Mic.”
After everything that's happened this year, we wanted to shake things up and share the power of this beautiful platform with some of the BIPOC voices leading the conversation in sustainability and ethical fashion. So after this Episode, I'll be passing the Wardrobe Crisis mic onto them.
Each will interview a person of their choice.
Your guest hosts are some of the most exciting, dynamic, inspirational voices working in this space today - as are their guests.
I couldn't be more grateful to them all for sharing their experiences with us, and being part of this project.
I'm excited to bring you this contextual episode with the brilliant sustainable fashion writer, activist and stylist Aja Barber, before I pass the mic on to her as our very first guest host next week.
Thank you for listening and being part of our community,
Clare x
Courtesy Aja Barber
EPISODE 129 FEATURES AJA BARBER
Aja is a London-based writer, stylist, fashion activist and cultural commentator. Her work focuses on sustainability, ethics, intersectional feminism, racism and all the ways systems of power effect our buying habits. Aja is passionate about social justice and rebuilding systems of oppression.
It's all up discussion today: from the COVID reset and garment workers to allyship (when brands get it wrong & how to get it right) and fashion billionaires. We’re unpacking white fragility, the dreaded Karens, and coddling vs. discomfort. This is a conversation about how the system is rigged but we have the power to change it. Aja's vision for a sustainable fashion future? Press play to find out. And don’t miss next week’s Episode, with Aja in conversation with Kalkidan Legesse.
NOTES & LINKS
FOLLOW Aja on Instagram here.
Find her PATREON here.
This is a lovely profile of her from Stylist magazine.
“Everyone should be talking about sustainability because our mutually assured futures depend on it.” - read Aja’s op-ed, The Problem with Sustainability Influencer Culture on Eco-Age here.
AJA ON 2020 & BLM: “I THINK THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT MOMENT, BUT UNTIL THE POWER SHIFTS, UNTIL WE REALLY START TO SEE BLACK, BROWN AND INDIGENOUS PEOPE IN POSITIONS OF POWER, WE CAN ONLY MOVE THE DIAL SO FAR… IT’S ONE THING TO SAY WE NEED TO SUPPORT BIPOC PEOPLE, IT’S ANOTHER TO HAVE A SHIFT IN POWER…
“THE WORLD HAS A REALLY SHORT MEMORY, WHERE IT’S LIKE EVERYBODY GOES, ‘OH, THIS IS HORRIBLE, WE NEED TO CHANGE THIS!’ BUT THEN THEY GO BACK TO DOING THINGS IN THE EXACT SAME WAY… HOW DO WE INCORPORATE THESE CONVERSATIONS SO IT’S NOT JUST THE THING WE DO NOW, BUT IT’S THE THING THAT IS ALWAYS IN THE ROOM.”
TOKENISM “ The Pudding did a deep dive into the skin tone of US Vogue’s cover stars. One of its findings was that three out of 81 models were black between 2000 and 2005. It’s improved over time but the models that did appear on the cover generally had a lighter skin tone, adhering to the eurocentric beauty ideal.
Beverly Johnson was US Vogue’s first black cover model, in 1974. “[My agent] said, ‘You’re on the cover.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, the cover of what?’ She said the cover of Vogue magazine. I remember my heart was racing just like it is now,” she told NPR in 2018.
But even the joy of this was covered in another reality. The reality of the Token. The idea that there is only one model of colour who is allowed to be present at any one time (similarly, André Leon Talley is the only known black member of staff at US Vogue). As the former model Grace Jones wrote in her autobiography I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, “Beverly was one of the reasons I left the States. I knew that as long as she was in place she would get everything … One black model was all they needed and I would pick up the crumbs … [Beverly] was the token black model. They didn’t need two tokens.” Indeed, the next black model to appear on the cover of US Vogue wasn’t until three years later, in 1977, with Peggy Dillard. Fortysomething years later and Joan Smalls’ brilliant and searing testimony of racism in the fashion industry described the attitude towards her as “the token black girl”.” VIA THE GUARDIAN. Read the rest here.
COOLEST MONKEY Remember when H&M cast a black child to model a hoodie emblazoned with the words “Coolest monkey in the jungle”? Us too.
CODDLING Aja reminds us she’s not here to “coddle you.” The word… (define word, connotations) Aja mentions Aunt Jemima - an American syrup and pancake brand. Read the story of its racial stereotyping here.
WHITE SUPREMACY Oh no, not us. That’s, like, Nazis, or whatever.
Sorry, you’re wrong.
“If the consensus is that white supremacy is a thing that only exists in the hate-group fringe, that claim should be held in skepticism against the reality that many of the racial outcomes—income gaps, housing and education segregation, police brutality, and incarceration—of the era of naked white supremacy persist, or have even worsened,” to quote from this excellent reader in The Atlantic. It matters how we define it. “Narrow definitions of the term actually help continue the work of the architects of the post-Jim Crow racial hierarchy.”
WHITE FRAGILITY
KARENS GONE WILD “The archetype of the Karen has risen to outstanding levels of notoriety in recent weeks, thanks to a flood of footage that’s become increasingly more violent and disturbing. There’s the Karen who was recorded spewing multiple racist tirades against Asian Americans in a park in Torrance, Calif., upon which the Internet discovered that she had a history of discriminatory outbursts, earning her the title of “Ultra Karen.” There’s the Karen in Los Angeles who used two hammers to damage her neighbors’ car as she told them to “get the f–ck out of this neighborhood.” There’s the Karen who purposely coughed on someone who called her out for not wearing a mask while at a coffee shop in New York City.
And perhaps most notably, there’s Amy Cooper, the “Central Park Karen,” who elevated a national discourse about the dangers associated when Black people are falsely accused when she called the police on Christian Cooper (no relation,) a Black man who merely asked her to leash her dog in a part of Central Park that required it, invoking his race on the call.” Read the rest in TIME
Clare was freaking out about some aspects of Karenishness that may be less obvious - for example getting impatient in a cafe waiting for a coffee because you’re so busy… Watch the Youtube vid she mentions here.
White women, are you a KAREN? Take this quiz if you dare.
MUNROE BERGDORF is a British transgender model and activist. In 2017 she was hired by L’Oreal - but fired days later after she posted about white supremacy on Facebook in response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Read this from Guardian UK: “With fashion brands such as Nike now speaking out about racial injustice after Floyd’s death in police custody sparked protests across the US, L’Oréal Paris shared a statement on Instagram saying: “L’Oréal Paris stands in solidarity with the black community, and against injustice of any kind. We are making a commitment to the @naacp to support progress in the fight for justice. #BlackLivesMatter.” In response, Bergdorf posted a message that accused the company of throwing her “to the wolves for speaking out about racism and white supremacy” when she was sacked.’ See Munroe’s post here.
PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP Writer and sociologist Holiday Phillips sums up the problem: “An ally is someone from a nonmarginalized group who uses their privilege to advocate for a marginalized group. They transfer the benefits of their privilege to those who lack it. Performative allyship, on the other hand, is when someone from that same nonmarginalized group professes support and solidarity with a marginalized group in a way that either isn’t helpful or that actively harms that group. Performative allyship usually involves the ‘ally’ receiving some kind of reward — on social media, it’s that virtual pat on the back for being a ‘good person’ or ‘on the right side.’” Read the rest of her excellent essay for Forge here.
Watch Aja’s video, “Performative Allyship is Triggering” here.
‘As racist practices in some workplaces have come to light, companies are under scrutiny for how they’re practicing allyship. Certainly posting a black square to Instagram is not enough. As organizations speak out against racial injustice, many have been accused of “performative allyship”—condemning racism through broad gestures but enabling its effects in their own workplaces.
Black employees from across industries told Fortune that they’re keenly familiar with such optical allyship. They say their companies speak out in support of racial equality but don’t hire black executives or equally pay black employees, don’t listen to their concerns regarding discrimination, or were completely silent about racism up until now. They have stories of affirming individuals and gestures, but those are much fewer and farther between.’ VIA FORTUNE. Read the rest here.
RESOURCES. The books mentioned in this interview are:
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo Lodge. Listen to her podcast here.
Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad
Rachel Cargle is the academic, writer and lecturer behind The Great Unlearn. Her Public Address On Revolution from May 2020 is essential viewing:
Want more? Don’t ask Aja - ask Google.
CLOTHING WASTE EXPORTS According to BBC, “Second-hand clothing is one factor in the near-collapse of the garment industry in sub-Saharan Africa. The West's cast-offs were so cheap that local textile factories and self-employed tailors could not compete…East African governments argued that domestic demand for locally made clothes was being suffocated by cheap, second-hand clothes.
So in 2015, countries in the EAC announced that second-hand apparel would be banned from their markets from 2019. In Rwanda's case, the government said wearing hand-me-downs threatened the dignity of its people.” The Trump administration responded with bullying tactics.
Rotting textile waste near Accra
Aja mentions piles of rotting clothing waste outside the Ghanaian capital Accra. “A significant percentage of the clothing sent to the main market, Kantamanto — one of the largest second-hand clothing markets in the world — is unsaleable. And without the systems in place to recycle it, around 40 per cent of the used clothes imported into the country ends up rotting in landfill sites. More than 50 tonnes a day are being discarded, and many items are being dumped on wasteland and beaches and then finding their way into the sea.” Via Daily Mail.
PROMETHEUS & THE EAGLE “In Greek mythology, Prometheus had a reputation as being something of a clever trickster and he famously gave the human race the gift of fire and the skill of metalwork, an action for which he was punished by Zeus, who ensured everyday that an eagle ate the liver of the Titan as he was helplessly chained to a rock.” Via ANCIENT HISTORY ENCYCLOPAEDIA here.
MUSIC is by Montaigne, who sang this special acoustic version of “Because I love You” from her album Glorious Heights, just for us.
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Clare & the Wardrobe Crisis team x