WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

Sometimes it can feel like sustainable fashion is a new thing , but pioneers laid the groundwork years ago. People like this week's guest, British fashion change-maker  Tamsin Lejeune. Back in 2006, Tamsin founded the  Ethical Fashion Forum , a London-based industry body for sustainable fashion. Her team also brought us Source, one of the first platforms to list sustainable resources &am...

How does an ordinary Aussie bloke go from motor-cross riding and working as a welder to setting up a social enterprise fashion business? You're going to meet James Bartle, founder of Outland Denim . This is a candid eye-opening interview about an extraordinary story. We talk about the tough stuff: Who gets trafficked, and who does the trafficking and why ? Is it possible to empathise with their de...

If only all fashion was fair trade fashion. According to the Global Slavery Index 2018 , fashion is one of 5 key industries implicated in modern slavery. In Australia, every year we import over $US4 billion worth of clothes and accessories at risk of being tainted by modern slavery. 40 million people globally are trapped in it, and 71 % are women. In this Episode, we hear from ethical fa...

According to the Global Slavery Index 2018, fashion is one of 5 key industries implicated in modern slavery. How does that happen? What can we do about it? In this Episode, you're going to meet Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey, a British crossbench peer in the House of Lords who is active in the ethical fashion space and is working to amend the UK's Modern Slavery Act. Modern slavery is, of course,...

What is fashion week actually for? Is the old system tired and old-fashioned? Has it lost its purpose and reason for being? If so, what sorts events do we want to see take over? Do we need sustainable fashion weeks? Meet Evelyn Mora, the millennial change maker behind Helsinki Fashion Week.  Evelyn is on a mission to reinvent “traditional concepts of fashion week venues and the ways they pres...

How can fashion aristanship empower women? What does a fair work accessories factory look like, and how do the workers see value in the setup? How about in community hubs, where skilled artisans can work as collectives? This is the second instalment of a 2-part series about the UN's Ethical Fashion Initiative,  a flagship programme of the International Trade Centre. The EFI connects skilled a...

Ciao Simone! Simone Cipriani is the founder of the UN's Ethical Fashion Initiative,  a flagship programme of the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the UN and World Trade Organization. The EFI connects skilled artisans in places like Kenya, Mali, Burkina Faso, Haiti and now Afghanistan, to the international value chain of fashion, working with the likes of Stella McCartney, Vivienn...

What to pack for an expedition to Antarctica? Or to keep yourself alive on a remote mountainside? In extreme conditions, clothes move way beyond fashion to become tools for survival.   In this Episode, you get to hang out with environmental scientist, polar explorer, author and adventurer Tim Jarvis , a man for whom pushing himself to the limits of his physical endurance is all in a...

Can fast fashion turn circular? Can fast fashion ever be sustainable? Will  circularity  fundamentally change things? How about  supply chain transparency , collaboration and pumping resources into textile innovation? Is all this eclipsed by  the shadow of overproduction? Swedish giant H&M is the second biggest clothing company in the world (the first is Zara.) The H&M...

"Change isn't going to be easy, but there's no time to procrastinate or hope someone else is going to fix it…it's time to do something. YOU are the person you've been waiting for." — Tim Silverwood. Australian oceans advocate Tim Silverwood is fighting plastic pollution. Why? Nearly one third of the plastic packaging we use escapes collection systems, which means that it ends up clogging our city...

Lily Cole is a model turns eco-entrepreneur. She was the youngest model to appear on the cover of British Vogue, and was listed by French Vogue as one of the top 30 models of the 2000s. Her pictures, shot by some of photography's greatest names (think Tim Walker, Nick Knight, Steven Meisel) are some of the most memorable in the business, but these days Lily has other fish to fry. An environme...

You might know about ROLAND MOURET 's famous "Galaxy" dress. Fitted, flattering, cap-sleeved and much-copied, it was a phenomenon in the 2000s, worn by everyone from Beyoncé and Scarlett Johansson to Demi Moore and Victoria Beckham. You might also know about another of his glamorous clients, the Duchess of Sussex who wore a chic navy Roland Mouret dress the day before her wedding to Prince Harry ....

London's Victoria & Albert Museum (“perhaps the world's best dressing-up box” with an archive of more than 75,000 items of clothing) takes on sustainable fashion. The Fashioned From Nature exhibition includes amazing historical garments as well as contemporary fashion by the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Katherine Hamnett, Alexander McQueen, Christophers Kane and Raeburn, and Bruno Pieters. But...

Simon Collins is a creative director, educator, fashion consultant, and ex-dean of the fashion school at Parsons in New York. With his new platform Fashion Culture Design , Simon holds what he calls Unconferences where not-boring fashion people address topics such as, How do you solve a problem like fashion week? And, Can sustainability be sexy? At an opening address of the Copenhagen Fashion...

Meet Sara Ziff, founder of the Model Alliance. She is a campaigner for a fairer, more sustainable fashion industy in general and for the rights of models in particular. This Episode was recorded during the Copenhagen Fashion Summit  - Sara was there with model Edie Campbell and casting director James Scully to speak about the RESPECT Program.  It launched with an open letter signed by mo...

She's a strong tailor, cuts a mean coat & has been a Woolmark Prize finalist. One of the most considered, creative, thoughtful designers working in Australia today, Bianca Spender   also thinks deeply about sustainability & making positive impacts on people & planet with her work. In this interview, recorded live at the recent SCCI Fashion Hub in Sydney, we discuss Bianca's approa...

How can we begin to solve fashion's most pressing sustainability issues ? We need collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and a willingness to look fearlessly at what's wrong as well as the opporunities for positive change. We need the movers and shaker s to get involved, and stakeholders from all areas of the industry to join them. We need fresh ideas and points of view . Enter, the  Copenhagen Fa...

It's Met Gala time, which means your social media feeds are going to be full of who wore what. This got us thinking about the huge influence of the red carpet on fashion and pop culture, and about how it works and who, apart from the designer, creates these looks - because make no mistake, celebrities do not dress themselves at these things... What better time to share an Episode about styling? &n...

Are you a sneaker freak? How sustainable are your favourite sneakers? If they're by cult French brand, Veja , the answer is very. In the sustainable fashion space, we often talk about reducing the negative impacts of production on people and planet, but Veja's Sébastien Kopp and François Morillion talk about having a positive impact on the environment and society. Not less harm but active goo...

Who made your clothes? Welcome to the last in our mini-series of four shows in celebration of Fashion Revolution Week, the global not-for-for profit campaign that was established on the anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, to promote transparency in the fashion industry.  You're going to meet Fashion Revolution 's Head of Policy, Sarah Ditty. Sarah is based in London, and has...

Where would we be without creative  collaboration ? This week's Episode is all about fashion community , its power to change the world, and the idea that together we are stronger. You're going to meet the inspiring change-maker  Jackie Ruddock , CEO of The Social Outfit , a Sydney-based social enterprise and fashion brand that works with refugees and new migrants to provide first Au...

This Episode is about the magical powers of the clothes swap. It's also about us having way too many clothes.  And some of it is just about the charmed life of Patrick Duffy, New York's clothes swap king, and co-founder of Global Fashion Exchange . Buy less choose well is great, but it's clearly it's not what everyone's doing. There are quite simply too many clothes in our wardrobes. Fas...

"By walking, we connect with the Earth" - Satish Kumar. Towards the end of 2016 two friends from Melbourne, Megan O'Malley and Gab Murphy went out for a walk. A year later, they made it home. Calling themselves  Walk Sew Good they went on a epic adventure - walking 3,500 kilometres through Souh East Asia to collect and share stories from some of the people who make our clothes. They met with...

We need to talk. And we need to listen. Fashion is supposed to be modern, cutting edge, leading the way . But is it? Or is it stuck in old-fashioned tropes that place white culture at its centre? Now is the time to shake things up and insist on representation and inclusivity, and we all have our parts to play. But what does diversity really mean? Are we headed in the right direction, and are we go...

Photographer and author Ari Seth Cohen is the creator of  Advanced Style , a project devoted “to capturing the sartorial savvy of the senior set.” He says, “I feature people who live full creative lives. They live life to the fullest, age gracefully and continue to grow and challenge themselves.” In this interview, you're going to hear all about how he began, who he met along the way, what he...