WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

For this week's #sharethepodcastmic episode, Aja Barber is in charge. She's interviewing her friend, Kalkidan Legesse, 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...

A note from Clare: Welcome to Series 5, Share the Podcast Mic. After everything that's happened this year, we wanted to shake things up and share the power of this beautiful platform with some of the BIPOC voices leading the conversation in sustainability and ethical fashion. So after this episode, I'll be passing the Wardrobe Crisis mic onto them. Each will interview a person of their choice.&nbs...

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, and 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 t...

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 Jacquard by Google , so of course we talk about that, and the future of tech innovation in fashion particularly around wearables. But fundament...

"You can't farm spiders!" says this week's guest, scientist David Breslauer. You can keep more them in serious numbers spinning webs off hula-hoops suspended from your office ceiling though... Enter Bolt Threads, the Californian biotech company behind Microsilk - a bioengineered sustainable fibre used by Stella McCartney. Find out how they did it, where the science is headed, and what's next (hint...

How did denim get so unsustainable? And did it all start with stone washing? Our guest this week accepts responsibility for the industry going so hard on that. Francois Girbaud was there at the start, when, as he says “I was just a stupid guy” - and didn't know about the environmental impact of stone washing. After that, of course, came acid wash, sandblasting, all the rest of it. So, yes, we disc...

What's in my clothes? If you're asking that question, you probably expect the answer to be about fabric content. Polyester? Cotton? Wool maybe, or silk. But what about chemicals? You won't find these listed on your typical garment label. Last Series, Clare interviewed Greenpeace activist Kirsten Brodde, who led the Detox My Fashion campaign, launched in 2011, to force fashion to wake up to the tox...

You know those people who are always ahead? The true originals no one can catch? Helen Storey is one of them. This British former runway designer and current Professor of Fashion & Science uses fashion as a trojan horse for big issues.  Ten years ago she collaborated with a chemist to make garments that filter pollution from the air. She's made dresses that dissolve to show how we destroy...

“I don't give voice to anyone, but I have a really amazing tool and that's my camera. I use my camera to amplify the voices of people who feel unheard.” Today photographer Giles Duley is the CEO and founder of the Legacy of War Foundation, and an activist for the rights of those living with disabilities caused by conflict. But he started out working in music and fashion, shooting for magazines lik...

Can fashion really make a difference? Can artisans be agents of change? Could a humble bangle help make post-conflict land safe for the people who live there? It sounds crazy to be talking about war and bombs in the same sentence as fashion and jewellery. But that's exactly what Article 22 , a New York-jewellery brand and social enterprise that's handmade in Laos, seeks to do. They upcycle sh...

On World Oceans Day , we meet Australian big wave surfer Laura Enever. Laura started surfing as a kid in Sydney. She spent 7 years surfing professionally on the Women's World Tour . Now she's decided to reinvent herself as a big wave surfer. And we mean seriously big - these waves are scary, dangerous and remote, they break way out to sea, or on shallow rock ledges and only a few times a year. Wha...

This week, we're hanging out on the Copenhagen kitchen of the brilliant "insecure overachievers" behind GANNI . Married couple Ditte and Nicolaj Reffstrup are the force behind the cult Copenhagen label and they've have made it, according to Vogue, a "stratospheric success" beloved of #GanniGirls all over Instagram. Just don't call it sustainable fashion. "A brand might do one organic T-shirt and c...

Friday May 22nd is the International Day for Biological Diversity . Actually this whole year was meant to be about that. The World Economic Forum named 2020 the Year for Nature Action. It was to culminate in a big conference about the UN convention on biological diversity in Kunming, China in October. But the coronavirus pause doesn't mean we get to hold off on action to protect Nature. This week'...

Welcome to the second of our special reports about the fashion industry and COVID-19. This one is about how designers, makers and manufacturers are responding to the shortages of PPE - personal protective equipment - and scrubs for frontline workers, as well as masks for all. What is PPE? Why are there shortages? How have fashion designers and industry leaders around the world stepped up to produc...

You probably already know that industrialised farming is chemically intensive and a big greenhouse gas polluter - but how much do you really know about animal agriculture? About its enormous scale, the waste and the way we treat the animals that feed us, and provide leather for the fashion industry? In this interview Philip Lymbery, CEO of Compassion in World Farming and author...

If you've listened to Episode 115 on how garment workers are being impacted by COVID-19, try this one next. It's an edited version of a story we ran back in 2017, about living wages. Many of the women who make our clothes in countries like Bangladesh still fall far short of earning a living wage.  April 24th is the anniversary of the Rana Plaza garment factory disaster. Join Fashion Revolutio...

Welcome to this special report on how garment workers around the world are being impacted by COVID-19. Fashion is being severely impacted by the shutdowns. You might argue, the sustainable business is the one that survives this. But as usual, it is the worst off who bear the brunt, because they don't have safety nets to catch them.  How is coronavirus impacting garment workers around the worl...

What kinds of products do we want to put out in the future? How can we rethink our design practices and material choices - and persuade the customer that it matters?  Once we get to the other side of the COVID-19 crisis, circular and regenerative systems are going to be even more important. But how do we do it case by case? This week's guest British accessories designer Anya Hindmarch has alr...

"We are at one of those pivotal moments when it feels like the world is coming undone," wrote David Ritter , CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific in a recent newsletter. "But the best of humanity comes out in moments of crisis. It's a phenomenon that we saw in the [recent Australian bush] fires, and which we are seeing again in the face of the pandemic." Can we take this enforced pause to design a...

For 7 years, Fashion Revolution has been asking, #whomademyclothes? on a quest for greater transparency in fashion supply chains. Now, they're asking #WhatsInMyClothes ?, and say: "The answer is far more complicated than the composition label on the side seam. This is the starting point, but it doesn't account for the plastics lurking in our clothes, the trees cut down to transform wood into visco...

Emily Penn is a British sailor and the co-founder of eXXpedition - a series of all-women voyages exploring the impacts of plastics and toxins in our oceans. "The only way to reduce the potential impacts on human health and the environment is to reduce consumption," she says. But where to begin? For the next two years, a total of 300 women will sail around the world on eXXpedition's voyages of disc...

What's driving the fashion's latest obsession with upcycling? And how far can it go? Might fashion stop using virgin materials completely one day?  Upcyling means taking something discarded, usually unloved and considered trash, and transforming into something new and of a higher quality. It's become a major fashion buzz word , thanks to designers like Marine Serre in Paris, and even Sarah Bu...

The #metoo hashtag was a moment, sparked in when the actor Alyssa Milano used it on Twitter in October 2017 in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations. That tweet went viral. More than 19 million people around the world have since used the hashtag to share their stories of sexual harassment, abuse and violence. But Me Too is a about more than social media. Me Too is a movement, founded by the...

London stylist Bay Garnett has magic powers when it comes to finding fashion gems in charity shops. The former editor of Cheap Date magazine (all about thrifting) famously put Kate Moss in the pages of British Vogue wearing vintage.  Want to get in her wardrobe? Even better, learn her tips and tricks, hear how thrifting has changed over 20 years, and learn why giving garments multiple lives i...

Welcome to Series 4! Our first guest is American supermodel Amber Valletta -sustainable fashion's favourite face, using her platform to make positive change in the industry. How did she move from celebrity covergirl (she had her own MTV show in the '90s, and in the 2000s did a Hollywood movie with Will Smith) to fashion's eco conscience? Today Amber is the model most closely associated with eco-fa...