WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

There's a long history of exploitation in the denim supply chain, as our first guest this week, Bego Demir , can attest. He developed incurable silicosis in the 2000s as a result of his sandblasting job in a Turkish factory producing jeans for a famous American brand. These days Bego coordinates Clean Clothes Campaign Türkiye, and is supporting a creative new activist strategy to hold another bran...

What are the biggest issues facing garment workers globally today? How can we most effectively advocate for them if we've never walked in their shoes? What do we mean by solidarity, and how does that work in action? Is the compliance and social auditing industry the answer? (Spoiler alert: no!) In this deep and meaningful introductory convo with Clean Clothes Campaigner Johnson Yeung , we unpack t...

Welcome to the first episode of our new series all about workers' rights. My guest this week is Christina Hajagos-Clausen who is the IndustriALL Global Union ’s director for the Textile, Garment, Shoe and Leather Sector. Our interview was recorded during the organisation's 4th Global Congress held in Sydney at the end of last year, at "a critical moment. Workers everywhere are being hit by converg...

So Shein has bought Everlane and it's freaking people out. This feels like the right time to throwback to 2019, and my one-on-one with Everlane's founder Michael Preysman. I found it super interesting to listen back to what he said 7 years ago about why he built the brand, what inspired him, and his hopes for changing the game around sustainability. He ended up selling to LVMH-backed private equit...

This week, I bring you an interview with the fascinating artist Nikesha Breeze. Their Living Histories project explores African diasporic stories, and was a standout at this year's Biennale of Sydney. The fashion connection? Cotton's colonial history. Maybe you (rightly) love cotton as a beautiful, breathable natural fibre, and routinely choose it over synthetics. Me too! But how much do you know...

As supply chain shocks rock the world yet again, we ask: is globalisation a failed experiment? As my guest this week points out, the idea that global trade is always beneficial for everybody is a lie. Big business just gets bigger, multi-national corporations lobby governments to win tax breaks and shape trade deals, while bankers bet on the misery of millions. There's no point pretending that thi...

In a future shaped by climate breakdown and extreme weather volatility, the current systems will be forced to change. Where does that leave fashion? My guest this week has ideas for "a profound structural shift away from fashion as trivialised, superficial and seasonal." Indy Johar is the co-founder of Dark Matter Labs and a Professor of Practice at RMIT with the Planetary Civics Inquiry. In his n...

In Tasmania's jawdroppingly beautiful Takayna/Tarkine lies the southern hemisphere’s largest single tract of temperate rain forest. It's home to an extraordinary wealth of Aboriginal cultural heritage sites, and habitat for over 50 threatened species. Many of its magnificent trees were here long before colonisation, with some Huon Pines thought to be more than 2000 years old. It’s a pristine, moss...

A child's dress rescued from the roof of a bombed-out museum. A mother teaching her daughter her ancestral embroidery techniques. A Miss Universe contestant confused over just whose traditional clothes she's trying on on a field trip. Cultural appropriation, erasure, silencing. Joy, close looking, reframing perfection. On International Women's Day, it feels timely to publish this important episode...

This is the third of four episodes about embroidery. They're all very different perspectives, but each asks in their own way, what is the significance of these stitches? What are they saying, what's their message? It's never just, 'I'm gorgeous.' Textiles, as we know, can have deep meanings. In the case of Palestinian tatreez embroidery, it speaks of culture, belonging and exile, documenting stori...

Wait, what? That's not real moss?! Occasionally, you come across something that blows your tiny mind. That's what happened when, flicking through a World of Interiors magazine in my local library, I discovered the blisteringly brilliant work of my guest this week. It lodged itself in my psyche and I determined to track her down. I did! And here is the resulting conversation. I hope you enjoy it as...

  Imagine learning embroidery in the home of Henry VIII's famed Abraham Tapestries, which have hung on these hallowed walls since 1547. Turns out, it's a thing. The Royal School of Needlework is based at Hampton Court, and offers Europe's only degree program specialising in hand-embroidery. We meet three students from the class of 2025. Featuring: hard work and failing eyes, the marvellous cr...

What's new about the current secondhand obsession? Trick question! Nothing. For most of human history, there really was no such thing as waste. As my guest this week, Robin Annear writers in her fascinating book, Nothing New, A History of Secondhand, " Common sense dictates that used must have always followed new." Used stuff had value and there was always a market for it. But how much do you actu...

The global handcraft market is worth more than a trillion dollars. Yet, particularly in rural areas, many highly skilled craftspeople live with inconsistent incomes, no social safety nets and ongoing threats to their cultural heritage. There is rising interest their wares, for some of the same reasons that secondhand is booming - uniqueness, story, the human touch in an increasingly disconnected,...

We’re all secondhand shoppers these days. But where? How? And more importantly, why? Online marketplace platforms have grown exponentially (making billionaires of some of the founders in the process) but there’s also a surge happening IRL, where the indie dealers hold the power. And the more niche the better. In this episode we’re exploring how preloved fashion is booming in physical spaces, and i...

In the first of a mini-series on the rise of second-hand fashion, my guest is the very charismatic and knowledgeable Aussie vintage fashion guru, Philip Boon . I'll leave it to him to tell you his story, and that of the late Mary Lipshut , the extraordinary Melburnian vintage doyenne, whose collection Philip (with his business partner Sonia) now manages as part of The Internationals. Get ready for...

We know the struggle to resist the January sales is real! So this week's pod is for anyone who needs a reminder that some of the best things in life are free. Or, maybe you could use bit of encouragement to take a moment to ground yourself. Consider it permission to forget capitalism, scary news headlines, the spectre of going back to work for while. In this limbo time after Christmas but before t...

Lizzie Dibble wants libraries to lend clothes as well as books. Not just any clothes though. A carefully curated selection of donated second-hand fashion, imbued with the stories of former wearers, and volunteer-run. With Love From… has built a collection of occasion-wear, mostly for women (though there’s also a children’s dressup box) for library members to loan in her hometown of Oswestry, UK. T...

Despite Shein’s new sustainability rhetoric, workers are still paying the price for the ultra-fast fashion giant’s success. To 75-hour working weeks, piece rates and no contracts, we can add secrecy, opaque financial operations and a general air of mystery around its billionaire founder and how the brand does business. This is the story they don't want told. But thanks to Swiss NGO Public Eye's me...

Listen up! Yayra Agbofah is the founder of Ghanaian non-profit, The Revival. He's seriously stylish a poet, a creative upcycler, and one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders, as well a 2025 winner of the H&M Foundation's Global Change Award. And he's got some advice for the global fashion industry... Also covered in this charismatic convo: why wear a hat, the art of kno...

We're back! And excited to be kick off Series 12 with this fabulous interview with Copenhagen-based Moroccan Danish stylist, and excellent dresser, Samia Benchaou . Clare and Samia met at fashion week when they got talking about the power of a great outfit. Can you relate? Bet you have a story of someone you met because of what they were wearing! (If so, tell us on Instagram). Clothes speak before...

Construction! Proportion! Craft! What lies behind the enduring power of the suit? Of great tailoring? How is that amplified when it’s bespoke? What makes a good suit? Does it still matter? Why? And how much should it cost? All these questions, and many more are on the (cutting) table this week, as Clare sits down with Savile Row tailor Dominic Sebag-Montefiore, creative director of iconic bespoke...

This week's guest, Glen Rollason , describes pattern making as the architecture of fashion. It's the bones, the structure, the technical process that gives our clothes shape, moves them from the 2D to the 3D, and helps them fit. Pattern making is drafting, design, and highly skilled technical process - but it's also team work. No pattern, no coat! From the basics (what is it, where do you begin) t...

In the last of our mini series, Made in Melbourne, we meet Australia’s National Designer of the Year 2025, Amy Lawrance. Amy launched her namesake label just a couple of years ago, but she's highly experienced - working for other labels, teaching at RMIT, and she is an extraordinary, couture-standard maker. Her architectural patterns are blisteringly original, she uses mostly undyed silks and has...

What do your favourite clothes mean to you? How connected are you to most of what's in your wardrobe? If you had to start from scratch, what would you prioritise? This interview is the third in a mini series of four about made in Made in Melbourne. This time, it's actually made in Ballarat, which is about 120 ks from the Victorian capital, but you get this idea. We're talking thriving in your own...