WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

There used to be a stigma about old clothes. Whereas vintage was always cool for those in the know, until fairly recently plain second hand wasn't always so welcome. But this is changing: 30% of millennials have shopped second-hand in the last three months. Instagram is full of stylish people wearing second-hand gear. Fashion rental and resale sites are booming. In this Episode, recorded in P...

Meet the Australian designer on a mission to save the planet one dress at a time. She's just been in London for Fashion Week showing her work at Buckingham Palace , no less. Livia Firth and Emma Watson lover her, and she's always in Vogue . No wonder everybody's talking about Kit Willow . Her KITX label i s a sustainable fashion standout, established to do good as well as look good.  Recorded...

Meet British fashion's ruling King of Ucycling, and prepare to fall in love with his ideas. He's a Fashion Revolution favourite who shows both mens and womenswear at London Fashion Week Men's. US Vogue says  Christopher Raeburn  "totally relevant" and WWD notes that right now he totally captures the Zeiteist. True that, but this is no sudden trend-driven thing. Raeburn has been crea...

Welcome back! We're excited to kick off Series 2 with this inspiring interview with Gosia Piatek , the fabulous force behind cult ethical fashion label Kowtow . Decluttering, minimalism and the sustainable wardrobe are big themes in the ethical fashion conversation. But what does minimal design really mean? And what's it like to be an aesthetic minimalist with a partner who's a full-on maximalist...

London has Browns and Dover St Market, Milan has 10 Corso Como, New York has Jeffrey, and Paris had Collette. In Australia, the multi-brand designer fashion stores to know are Melbourne's Marais and in Sydney, Parlour X . This Episode is about independent high fashion retail , how it works and what it does, what's happening with bricks and mortar stores, and why we need them. You're going to meet...

On any given night in Australia 1 in 200 people don't have a roof over their heads.  Nasir Sobhani A.K.A T he Streets Barber  skateboards around Melbourne giving free haircuts and shaves to homeless people as a part of his ‘ Clean Cut Clean Start ' movement.  Today, fashion and hairdressing live in the same world, along with makeup artistry, art direction, photography. The hair styl...

Join ethical fashionista Clare Press as she asks, Do you suffer from affluenza? This week's guest, Australian economist Richard Denniss has the cure! Richard is the author of a fascinating new book called Curing Affluenza , in which he argues that there's nothing inevitable about our current mode of consuming . “The vast majority of humans who have ever lived (and the majority of humans alive toda...

Join ethical fashionista Clare Press as she asks, What's it like to be a garment worker in Asia making clothes for high street brands in Australia and the global north? This Episode explores one of the biggest issues around fast fashion and cheap clothing supply chains - low pay. Do we care? Do brands? And what's being done to campaign for a living wage and fair fashion? Based on CEO pay levels of...

Vincent Stanley  is Patagonia's Director of Philosophy. (Yes, that's a thing). He has been with the outdoor gear company since 1973, when his uncle, Yvon Chouinard, gave him a job as a kid out of college.  Vincent is a deep thinker and passionate environmentalist, and a visiting fellow at the Yale School of Management. He's also a poet, whose work has appeared in  Best American...

Have you got  big ideas ? Do you dream of starting a company that makes a difference in the world ? Or working for one? Are you interested in how brands can create positive impacts in communities, beyond the boring, some would say broken, mainstream consumerism model? This Episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in  social enterprises .  Blake Mycoskie is one of the...

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  Beyonc é and  Rihanna  to Scarlet Johansson, Alexa Chung, Lorde, Lena Dunham, Toast t...

Yves Saint Laurent , Loulou de la Falaise, Pierre Cardin, Chanel, Givenchy, couture, prêt-à-porter and vintage shopping in the Paris flea markets , this week's Episode trés chic . Meet Paris-based Australian-raised stylist and César-winning costume designer, Catherine Baba . Vogue calls her a “fashion eminence”. Vanity Fair? An “original”. Indeed that magazine just included her on its 2017  B...

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 toprical 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 manufacturin...

This week's Episode is little different from normal. It was recorded in September at a live Q&A event at the  Wheeler Centre for Books & Ideas in Melbourne, and moderated by  Madeleine Morris, a reporter for ABC television's  7.30 .  We touch on a whole lot of issues front and centre in an industry currently in overdrive, from  slow fashion ,  overconsump...

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...

Linda Jackson is an iconic designer who, with Jenny Kee, created a new visual language for contemporary Australian fashion in the 1970s, inspired by Australia's flora, fauna and landscapes. Until then, the Australian fashion industry had mostly looked outward, copying what Europe did. But Linda and Jenny shook that whole thing up, and the world took notice. In Sydney they engergised the fashion sc...

Stephen Jones is the most extraordinary , the most famous , and the most marvellous milliner working in fashion today. This interview took place at the National Gallery of Victoria on the eve of the opening of the exhibition , THE HOUSE OF DIOR: SEVENTY YEARS OF HAUTE COUTURE. During John Galliano 's tenure at Dior in particular, from 1996 to 2011, Stephen made some of the house's most jaw-droppin...

Before ecommerce changed the world, designers knew they'd made it when their collections were stocked by Saks, Bergdorf's or Barneys . The iconic New York department stores hold a special allure, even when you live elsewhere. But retail, globally, is in a state of flux. Will there even be physical stores in 10 or 20 years' time? As customers continue to head online, it seems like every week there'...

The ethical fashion movement is gathering momentum. Not so long ago sustainable, ethical, eco-fashion (whatever you want to call it) was a too easily dismissed as some way-out, niche concern. Something kooky, and very possibly hairy and hemp-y, that belonged on the lunatic fringe. Well, no longer. Today sustainability is a buzz word. Everyone wants a piece of the activism action. We're in the midd...

Beauty is one of the major motivators for people who work in creative industries – they want to make beautiful things, whether it's a garment, textile, show or picture. They want, as Megan Morton puts it in this Episode, to chase down true beauty wherever they see it. Not to push the beautiful lie but to try to capture and understand it. Megan is a stylist, author and “house whisperer” with a life...

What do you think is possible? How about im possible? Kim Pearce and Katherine Davis are living proof of the old adage: where there's a will there's a way. The Possibility Project , which they cofounded after meeting on the school run, “delivers social justice programs through the mindset of social entrepreneurship”. What does that look like on the ground? Try their womenswear label Slumwear 108 ,...

Hands up who's over the narrow view of beauty peddled by mainstream fashion brands and media! Elisa Goodkind wants us to take back our power from magazines, advertising and the money-driven global fashion business, so that getting dressed each day becomes an act of self-love.  With their platform StyleLikeU New Yorkers Elisa and her daughter Lily Mandelbaum are breaking down the fake stereoty...

In our final Episode for Plastic Free July, Clare interviews American visual artist  Marina DeBris. Marina calls herself a “trashion” designer, as well as an environmental activist, and  anti-plastics campaigner. She makes her "Beach Couture" collections from rubbish she finds washed up on beaches. There's a history of fashion designers referencing refuse.  John Galliano's&nbsp...

Kalpona Akter is Executive Director of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity. An inspirational and influential figure in the country's union movement, she is a former child labourer who began working in a garment factory at age 12.   By 17, she'd been fired for standing up for her own rights, and those of her colleagues. ‘The day they fi...

TOME is a New York-based fashion label. Designers Ramon Martin & Ryan Lobo are known for collaborating with, and taking inspiration from, female artists. This season they looked to the Guerrilla Girls for a show inspired by the Women's Marches and the Trump administration's attacks on Planned Parenthood. How can high fashion combine the pursuit of gorgeousness with serious messages about diver...