WELCOME TO SERIES 5 - WARDROBE CRISIS SHARE THE PODCAST MIC. OUR FIRST GUEST HOST IS AJA BARBER.
Kalkidan Legesse
If you've listened to this Episode on your favourite podcast app already (don't forget to subscribe - it's free. Apple users, please rate & review - it only takes 2 mins!), welcome to the SHOW NOTES.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: Aja Barber 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.
Listen to last week’s episode where Aja’s interviewed here.
EPISODE 129 FEATURES SUSTAINABLE RETAILER KALKIDAN LEGESSE
Kalkidan Legesse is the founder of Sancho’s - a pioneering Black-owned sustainable fashion store in Exeter in the UK. She is also a writer - read her piece in The Guardian here.
Sancho's sells ethical and fair trade clothing, gifts and accessories from sustainable fashion brands like People Tree, Armedangels, Lefrik and Just Trade. They also really innovate with their pricing accessibility - and you'll hear all about that in this interview.
What else gets unpacked in this important conversation? Kalkidan's Ethiopian roots and how returning to Addis Ababa as an adult sparked the idea for Sancho's. The million racist micro-aggressions people of colour face in the fashion industry (and everywhere else), who gets the power, and how to be an ethical leader.
Here’s Kalkidan’s website. Here’s Sancho’s on Instagram. Scroll for more on the store.
Kalkidan Legesse
ABOUT SANCHO’S
After meeting at Exeter University in 2012, Kalkidan Legesse and Vidmantas Markevicius opened their first pop up store on south street in 2014. A few months later they opened their first permanent shop on fore street, 10 doors down from where the current shop lives. The name Sancho’s originates from when Kalkidan was a child she was lovingly nicknamed ‘Sancho’ by her Ethiopian family.
They found their inspiration for Sancho’s Shop through travelling to developing countries such as Ethiopia where they saw, first-hand, the effects of the fast fashion industry. The low wages, mass dumping, social disruption and environmental destruction affected them to their core. www.sanchosshop.com
NOTES
PREMIERE VISION is a textiles trade show held in Paris. Find them here.
WHITE SAVIORISM The phrase refers to a white person who acts to help non-white people, but in a context which can be perceived as self-serving.
DEVELOPING COUNTRY is an outdated, patronising term - it’s time to retire it although the WTO and the UN still use it. (Don’t EVER go there with “third world”. ) In 2016, the World Bank gave up using the term developing countries altogether in favour of the more straightforward lower-, middle- and upper-income countries.
Aja uses the term “traditionally pillaged” because she says: “Most of the time the countries people are referring to are incredibly resource and labour rich, but they’re not cash rich. And you have to ask ourselves, why is that? They’ve got all the things that we need, and we use in our part of the world. so why is it that these countries are not wealthy? There’s got to be something about the system that isn’t really working fairly.”
ETHIOPIAN WEAVING TRADITIONS Ethiopia has a rich textile history, and is renowned for its beautiful cloth. Today, hand weaving and crafting sectors remain one of the most important nonagricultural sources of income in Ethiopia. Hand weaving is a traditional technology to produce specialty fabrics as well as ordinary fabrics in the rural and semi-urban areas scattered throughout Ethiopia. Weaving is traditionally found throughout Ethiopia but there are clustered hand weaving activities in the Shiro Meda, Adisu-Gebeya, Kechene-Medhane Alem and Guellele in Addis Ababa. In the rural areas, Dorze and Konso in Southern part of Ethiopia are well known for their weaving as is Gondor,Gojjam and Wollo in Amhara.
“So much power is taken away from garment workers, by design. But there are alternative means - there are ways in which you can have positive relationships with everyone along your supply chain, and that is a powerful tool for development.” - Kalkidan Legesse
Kalkidan outside Sancho’s in Exeter
Sancho’s TRANSPARENT PRICING & PAY WHAT YOU CAN policy invites the customer to choose their price tier - the lowest price covers just the cost of the item and shipping it to you; the middle price covers that and overheads such as the shop, bills and staff wages; the top price covers all of the above with a bit more to invest into the future of Sancho’s. “If you spend more, you give someone the opportunity to spend less.” More here.
COST OF LIIVNG. Approximately 14 million people are in poverty in the UK – more than one in five of the population, including 4 million children and 2 million pensioners, up by 400,000 and 300,000 respectively over the past five years, reports Guardian UK. Read more about Britain’s inaccessible cost of housing here.
BLACK FRIDAY is “just a day with crazy discounts and marketing tricks.” Read the rest on Fashion Revolution.
“WE NEED TO HAVE A MORE CRITICAL CONVERSATION ABOUT CAPITALISM THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE DEMONISING PROPLE WHO ARE ARE ON OR BELOW THE POVERTY LINE.” - AJA BARBER
“AT ANY POINT IN TIME, BRANDS CAN PAY GARMENT WORKERS MORE.” KALKIDAN LEGESSE
LORA GENE is a UK-based sustainable fashion label, and a B Corp. Each garment is produced through conscious sourcing and with care about the environment and the workers. Find them here. Shop Aja’s capsule (pictured below) 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