Bobby Kolade is the designer behind Ugandan fashion label Buzigahill - which puts the politics of upcycling and waste colonialism at its core with the brilliant, provocative concept: Return to Sender.
Buzigahill's collections are made from items of secondhand clothing donated in the global north, and increasingly being dumped on the global south in unsustainable numbers. Why “return to sender”? Because much of Buzigahill’s clientele is in Europe and North America…
Fashion communication isn't just about the clothes. It's about how we talk to each other.
Meet Lou Croff Blake, a Berlin-based non-binary fashion practitioner, scholar, artist and community organiser. Their work merges queer theory with community-building, advocating for intersectional equity and amplifying the visibility of marginalised genders. Which sounds like a of words! Because it is. Carefully considered words chosen to challenge the dominant narrative.
British model Junior Bishop - who just so happens to be a wheelchair user - spoke at the Houses of Parliament recently, she called on the fashion industry to do more to tackle its disability access issues. Representation is an important first step, but we can’t stop there.
Bet you can think of a thousand places where career progress is affected by your postcode, where you went to school and what your parents did. And lurking behind all that: race, gender, sexuality, difference, not to mention how much cash you've got...It's time for a power shift.
Meet Rahemur Rahman, a British-Bengali artist, educator and designer who is determined to change the system, not simply tinker round the edges of representation.
Here are some questions for you: How much is enough? How can creatives incorporate the idea of sufficiency in their output? If you make physical objects, what does it really mean to be sustainable in your practice? And, how can you, as my guest this week, Irish fashion designer, artist and maker Richard Malone, puts it, "do your own thing and stick to it" in the context of fashion's relentless push for newness?
The first ever interview with designer Roland Mouret about sustainability. Mouret is famous for his elevated, elegant womenswear - but he has also considered sustainability deeply, and questioned everything around it, from how and why he makes things, and how that has evolved, to the impacts of over-consumption, the power of fashion to communicate a message and how we can make sustainability hot—and not just hot right now.
What can we learn from the past to design a better fashion industry for the future?
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 most importantly, it looks at fashion's eco footprint, and the massive impacts of textile production on the planet, and asks: What can we learn from the past to design a better fashion industry for the future? Curator Edwina Erhman unpacks it all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
