Everybody's talking about degrowth. Does this mean we’ve finally woken up to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse? Are we ready to challenge capitalism’s obsession with GDP and perpetual expansion? If so, what’s the alternative? And how can we apply this to fashion, beyond simply "buy less"? How might we reimagine the whole system, and rethink how we measure success?

This week's guest is Jason Hickel author of Less is More - How Degrowth Will Save the World.

Jason is a rockstar economist (no grey suits here) focused on global inequality, political economy, post-development, and ecological economics. He teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London and serves on the Statistical Advisory Panel for the UN Human Development Report 2020, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe and on the Harvard-Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice.

Belinda Duarte is a former athlete and educator, current inspirational leader, formidable female exec, proud First Nations Australian and the inspiration for Series 5 - #sharethepodcastmic

As a sprinter and heptathlete, she trailed for the Commonwealth and the Olympic Games. She was the inaugural director of the Korin Gamadji Institute (more below), and integral to the establishment and development of the AFL SportsReady’s National Indigenous Program. In 2012, Belinda was voted Football Woman of the Year. Today, she is CEO of Culture is Life, working to empower young people through Indigenous-led solutions and cultural connection.

While this Episode is just in time for January 26th - a significant day in Australia; it's time to #changethedate - there is lots more up for discussion: from Belinda's family story, to sustainability and Indigenous wisdom, raising strong young people, ethical leadership and how we can use sport and culture to move towards reconciliation.

Model mentor. Charlee Frazer is a New York-based Australian model and a proud Awabakal woman from the mid-north coast of New South Wales. In 2016, she made her international debut on Alexander Wang’s runway, after Guido Paolo had chopped her long hair into a chic bob. That season, Charlee walked 40 shows including Prada, Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Lanvin, Givenchy and Céline.

Now Charlee is working with First Nations Fashion & Design founders Grace Lillian Lee and Teagan Cowlishaw to support Australia's first ever Indigenous fashion council. This is a beautiful conversarion about reframing the fashion discourse, connecting to country, and mentoring emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fashion talent.

60,000 years of sustainability. In this Episode Aboriginal journalist, speaker and advocate for the Indigenous fashion sector YATU WIDDERS HUNT interviews SHONAE HOBSON - a Southern Kaantju woman from Coen, Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland. She is the inaugural First Nations Curator at Bendigo Art Gallery. She catches up with first nations fashion designers JULIE SHAW and TEAGAN COWLISHAW. And explores the vibrant contemporary Indigenous fashion scene happening in Australia right now.

Why does so much fashion still cling to strict men's and womenswear codes? Is the industry finally ready to shake off these tired old binaries and embrace the trans and gender-nonconforming community? Or is Harry Styles' Vogue cover about as far as it goes?

For this week's #sharethepodcastmic episode, sustainable fashion journalist Aditi Mayer interviews Alok Vaid-Menon about their new book, Beyond the Gender Binary. Alok is a gender-nonconforming poet, author, performance artist and designer.

Up for discussion: everything from gender neutral fashion, to the limitations of representation to what it means to truly redefine beauty. Also, fashion has been largely silent on the rising wave of transphobia, says Alok, yet continues to draw inspiration from gender-nonconforming people.

This episode is a powerful call to designers "take it as an ethical imperative to de-gender their lines" and to "everyone, regardless of your gender, to make this an issue."

Kalkidan Legesse is the founder of Sancho’s - a pioneering Black-owned sustainable fashion store in Exeter in the UK. 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.

Functional, accessible fashion please! For all the talk of inclusivity finally being taken seriously by fashion, the industry is way behind on many fronts. It basically ignores entire sections of the market, which makes no sense from a business perspective, let alone a social one.

Adaptive fashion is both an opportunity and a necessity - as this week's brilliant guest, author Keah Brown says, disabled people love clothes too. And they're tired of having to alter things that don't work for them. Accessible, adaptive design is the future, and forward-looking brands are taking note.

Our chat covers everything from Keah's New York Fashion Week debut and how her hashtag #disabledandcute went viral to writing her first screen play and the finding joy in the everyday. This is an enlightening, bright interview full of inspiration.

What is fashion actually for? Philosophy! The Internet of Things! Irvin Penn! From not being Mozart to designing outfits for The Muppets, as a kid... It's all up for discussion in this week's ep with Levi's Vice President of Global Product Innovation, Paul Dillinger.

Paul drove Levi's Jacquard collaboration with Google, so of course we talk about that, and the future of tech innovation in fashion particularly around wearables. So of course we talk about that. But fundamentally, this is a conversation about why we wear what we wear, what fashion means and how we've used it across time to craft our identities. Oh, and sustainability.