New Zealand designer Karen Walker is one of The Business of Fashion’s 500. Her brand sells in 42 countries, in prestigious stores like Barneys New York, and Liberty of London. She is a New York fashion week veteran, with some very famous fans. Everyone from Beyoncé and Rihanna to Scarlet Johansson, Alexa Chung, Lorde, Lena Dunham, Toast the dog, oh look everyone, wears her sunglasses.

She also designs ready-to-wear, handbag, shoe and jewellery collections as well as homewares. Okay, Karen Walker is a hot brand...

But what does it take to be an ethical one too? How can successful designers incorporate sustainability and social responsibility into their business models? Karen says "ethical values of responsibility, uniqueness, quality and connection, are at the heart of what we do." What does that look like on a practical level?

From Sydney to flamingo city

Paris Fashion 101. Catherine Barber is a stylist, fashion muse and one of the original street style stars. Vogue calls her a “fashion eminence”. Vanity Fair? An “original”. Indeed that magazine just included her on its 2017 Best Dressed List. Catherine always looks fascinating in her turbans, Louboutins and armfuls of bangles, perhaps with a 1920s robe and lamé harem pants, or a 1970s Halston jumpsuit.

She is also an accessories designer with her own line of sunglasses, a massive vintage fan and a walking fashion encyclopedia with a particular fascination with the history of Paris fashion in the 1970s.

But best of all, she's a mad keen cycler. Could there be a more glamorous of eco-aware-transport influencer? Pas possible! Riding a bike to the fashion week shows wearing a vintage kimono, high heels or even couture? No problem, darling. This conversation is an epic sweep through fashion history, served with a side of camp humour. Enjoy!

Australia's GREAT BARRIER REEF is the largest living thing on earth. Visible from outer space, it's the size of 70 million football fields and is home to 400 different types of coral and more than 1500 species of tropical fish. It's a magical underwater garden. No wonder fashion is obsessed with its beauty.

But climate change is killing the reef, and fashion, being a major manufacturing industry, has its part to play. About 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the fashion sector.

This week we meet Tim Flannery, internationally acclaimed scientist, writer, explorer and conservationist. As a field zoologist he has discovered and named more than 30 new species of mammals (including two tree-kangaroos). His pioneering work in New Guinea prompted Sir David Attenborough to put him in the league of the world’s great explorers and the writer Redmond O’Hanlon to remark, “He’s discovered more new species than Charles Darwin.”

How fast is too fast? This week’s episode is a recording of a live panel discussion on the current state of fast fashion held at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne.

Reconnect with your clothes, says model Rachel Rutt on this week’s episode. We live in a our throwaway society. "Landfill fashion" has become a phrase - we literally buy clothes to throw them away. With fast fashion brands dropping new stock into store sometimes as often as every week, we're consuming new clothes like never before. The average woman wears just 40 % of what's in her wardrobe, meanwhile it's cool to declutter. Or is it? Have you considered where all that "clutter" ends up when you remove it from your house? Rachel makes the case for making mending great again!

Iconic Aussie fashion designer Linda Jackson, along with her friend Jenny Kee, invented a new language for modern Australian fashion in the 1970s, with their boutique Flamingo Park.

This Episode is about friendship, culture and respect, and valuing originality. It’s also broadly about craft and technique and the hands-on practice of making clothes. And it's about contemporary Australian fashion history, and some of the important creative voices that shared it.

SERIOUSLY HATTY. Stephen Jones is the most extraordinary, the most famous, and the most marvellous milliner working in fashion today. In this Episode, Clare catches up with the living legend about his decades-long working relationship with the house of Dior.

Be yourself, everybody else is taken. Growing up gay and dreaming of glamour in 1960s Reading, he moved to Manchester then London in search of what he calls “the beautiful people”, cadging window dressing jobs off the likes Tommy Nutter (tailor to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones) and cult filmmaker Ken Russell’s wife along the way. In La La Land, he did the windows for luxury boutique Maxfield. In mid-80s Manhattan, he worked for Diana Vreeland at the Met, before joining Barneys.

Simon’s story is both extraordinary, and, in a weird way, ordinary – in that Fashion Land has long been a place where eccentric, creative kids from small unremarkable towns can find a home and thrive.

In this Episode we talk about his professional path, and how today’s new generation of designers and dream weavers can navigate the changed fashion landscape. We discuss Simon’s unwavering belief in the value of originality ("Conformity is the only real fashion crime") and some of the fashion geniuses he’s encountered. And of course we TALK SHOP…

By the power of the podcast. An insightful interview with Conscious Chatter founder Kestrel Jenkins, we discuss the power of the podcast as a medium, who we think is listening and why, and how we keep them tuned in.

We share our perspectives on ethical and sustainable fashion, discuss how the conversation has changed since we both first joined it, and where we see it heading.