It’s time for change. Sara Ziff is the founding director of the Model Alliance. She is a campaigner for a fairer, more sustainable fashion industry in general, and for the rights of models in particular.
Ep 41 BIANCA SPENDER, ON NATURE, PROCESS and CREATIVITY
She’s a brilliant tailor, cuts a mean coat and former Woolmark Prize finalist. One of the most considered, creative, thoughtful designers working in Australia today, Bianca Spender thinks deeply about sustainability and making positive impacts on people & planet with her work.
In this interview, recorded live at the SCCI Fashion Hub in Sydney, Clare and Bianca discuss the designer’s approach to integrating sustainability into every aspect of her business. They talk about her use of deadstock, her design process and relationship to and obsession with Nature, and what it ws like to grow up in the fashion business—Bianca’s mother was Carla Zampatti, who presented her first collection in Sydney in 1965.Setting sustainability goals.
Ep 40 EVA KRUSE ON COPENHAGEN FASHION SUMMIT
Until 2020 Eva Kruse was the president of Global Fashion Agenda. With a background in TV career and Danish Fashion Institute, she founded the Cophenhagen Fashion Summit to coincide with United Nations summit on climate change that happened in Copenhagen in 2009 to address the most critical environmental, social and ethical issues facing our industry and planet.
Ep. 39 STYLIST LAURA JONES, RED CARPET READY
Whether it’s the Oscars, Met Gala, GRAMMYS, Green Carpet Awards, social media is often full of who wore what. The red carpet has a huge influence on fashion and pop culture, designers, celebrities. But how much do you know about the job of a FASHION STYLIST? Meet New York-based fashion editor Laura Jones who is fast carving a niche for herself as sustainable fashion’s go-to creative.
Ep 38 VEJA's SEBASTIEN KOPP, ACTIVE GOOD
In the sustainable fashion space, we often talk about reducing the negative impacts of production on people and planet, but Sébastien Kopp and his business partner François Morillion talk about having a positive impact on the environment and society. Not less harm, but active good.
Is it possible? How do you choose eco-positive materials to make sneakers? Can you make money doing it? Veja sneakers cost 5 times more than conventional brands to produce because the raw materials are environmentally friendly and purchased according to fair trade principles, while the sneakers are manufactured in fair factories. How do you balance the books? Hint: you give up advertising.
What are the challenges of working this way? And what are the rewards?
In this Episode, recorded in Veja's HQ in Paris, Clare speaks with Sébastien about these questions and more. We talk: vegan shoes, Made in Brazil, agro-ecological organic cotton and wild rubber. We cover the history of colonialism in the Amazon, the definitions of success and failure and how to reshape the economic system for the better. This is a fascinating conversation with a truly original fashion thinker.
Ep 37 FASHION REVOLUTION'S SARAH DITTY
Pro-fashion protest! Who made your clothes? In the last in our mini-series of in celebration of Fashion Revolution Week, the global not-for-for profit campaign that was established on the anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster to promote transparency in the global fashion industry, we meet Fashion Revolution’s Head of Policy, Sarah Ditty.
Sarah is based in London, and has a wealth of insights the big issues around ethical and sustainable fashion today, from modern slavery to living wages through sustainable fabrics and fashion waste to extending the life of our clothes. Why do these things matter? What can you do to help? How far have we come, and what sort of fashion industry would be like to create for our future? Find out how Sarah started out, where her passion for social justice comes from, what it was like to be a sustainable fashion blogger before that was an actual thing, and where she stored her excessive wardrobe before she saw the light...
Ep 36 HOW TO BUILD A FASHION SOCIAL ENTERPRISE - THE STORY OF THE SOCIAL OUTFIT
How can we use fashion for good? The Social Outfit is an independently-accredited Sydney-based social enterprise and fashion brand that works with refugees and new migrants to provide first Australian jobs in the fashion industry, through a design and workroom, retail storefront in Sydney's Newtown, and online store.
Ep 35, Global Fashion Exchange’s Patrick Duffy on the Rise of the Clothes Swap
Ep 34 WALK SEW GOOD - DISCOVERING POSITIVE FASHION STORIES
Ep 33 KIMBERLEY JENKINS TALKS FASHION & RACE
We need to talk. And we need to listen. Fashion is supposed to be modern, cutting edge, leading the way. So how come it’s stuck in old-fashioned tropes that place white culture at its centre?
Now is the time to shake things up and insist on true representation and inclusivity, and we all have our parts to play. But what does diversity really mean in the fashion context? And why aren’t we changing fast enough?
Kimberley Jenkins is a writer, educator and authority on the intersections between fashion, race and culture. At the time of this recording, Kim was teaching at both Parsons, The New School and the Pratt Institute in New York. In January 2020, she joined the faculty at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, as Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies.
She specialises in the sociocultural and historical influences behind why we wear what we wear, specifically addressing how politics, psychology, race and gender shape the way we ‘fashion’ our identity. Plus she's a massive vintage fan, and a serious fashion history buff.