Stay ConnectedWARDROBE CRISIS is a fashion podcast about sustainability, ethical fashion and making a difference in the world. Your host is author and journalist Clare Press, who was the first ever Vogue sustainability editor. Each week, we bring you insightful interviews from the global fashion change makers, industry insiders, activists, artists, designers and scientists who are shaping fashion’s future.
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Copyright: © 2022 Clare Press
You might know her from the cover of Italian Vogue, campaigning against Victoria's Secret for its lack of diversity, or her role as ambassador for organic beauty brand INIKA, but what Robyn Lawley wants to talk about is spinach. In this candid interview, she tells her powerful personal story of overcoming some pretty scary health issues, and challenges us all to rethink our relationship with meat and dairy products.
We're used to talking about vegan diets as planet-friendly and cruelty-free, but could their anti-inflammatory properties also help people heal from auto-immune conditions? While the studies are scant, and the official line remains that: in general, autoimmune disorders cannot be cured - what you eat obviously plays a role in the body's complex responses.
When Robyn was diagnosed, while pregnant, with Lupus, her health outlook seemed bleak. Doing the rounds of hospitals and conventional doctors left her feeling frustrated and hopeless. But as a young mum with a thriving fashion career, she was determined to try everything before succumbing to the suggested chemo treatments. For Robyn, following a strict "hyper-nourishment protocol" (powered by green veg and flax seeds) had far-reaching effects. Today, her lupus is in remission, and she hopes to help others.
Going vegan, she says, was a win-win - it also allowed her to reduce her climate impacts and do something about the nagging guilt she felt the more she learned about animal cruelty in the factory farming system.
Check out the shownotes for more links.
Don't forget to tell us what you think! Find us on Instagram @mrspress @thewardrobecrisis
Thank you for listening!
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This week Clare sits down with legendary Aussie Greenie, Bob Brown to talk Tasmania’s old growth forests - where towering eucalypts that have been standing for centuries are threatened with the chainsaw, thanks to government short-sightedness and corporate greed. The good news? Grassroots action is rising, as the numbers of tree-appreciating citizens swell, helped by a glowing new documentary, The Giants, by Rachel Antony and Laurence Billiet.
The film's subjects are indeed giants - not just Bob, but the towering Eucalyptus Regnens, Huon Pine and Myrtle Beech trees of the Tarkine forest. As Bob said back in the 1980s when another pristine wilderness in his adopted state was under siege - destroying these natural wonders would be like scratching the face of the Mona Lisa. Don’t worry fashion fans, we do talk about clothes at the end - Bob has thoughts on strategic dressing for getting what you want, including at protests.
This interview is both essential and a thrill for anyone who cares about forests and life on this planet.
Check out the shownotes for the background on Bob and the Tarkine.
Discover the movie at www.thegiantsfilm.com
Don't forget to tell us what you think! Find us on Instagram @mrspress @thewardrobecrisis
Thank you for listening!
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Ten years ago, the devastating Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka proved just how deadly the business of making clothes could be for marginalised garment workers. In countries like Bangladesh where cheap clothing is produced at high volume, and wages are kept low, it’s these workers - mostly young women - who face the greatest exploitation and vulnerability.
As a result, a new consumer movement was born in the form of Fashion Revolution. New agreements, like what’s now known as the International Accord and Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry, were developed. Supply chain transparency became a buzz phrase. We’d entered a new era of scrutiny, spotlighting working conditions, poverty wages and brands that failed to do the right thing. So far so good, but today the power imbalances persist between brands and suppliers that result in unfair purchasing practices persist, the right to unionise is by no means universally upheld and almost no big brands pay a living wage.
Events commemorating the disaster’s anniversary went hard on the hashtag, #ranaplazaneveragain - but how much has really changed since 2013? Are factories everywhere safer? How about fairer? To what extent has fashion production really become more ethical?
You're going to hear from three people who spend their days advocating for a better deal for garment workers:
TAMAZER AMED is ActionAid Bangladesh’s lead for Women’s Rights & Gender Equity.
SARAH KNOP is Baptist World Aid Australia’s Advocacy Manager.
NAYEEM EMRAN is Oxfam Australia’s Economic Justice Strategic Lead.
Check the shownotes for links and further reading.
Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress
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Psst! Mushroom leather is not actually made from mushrooms – but it is fabulous! Much Like our guest this week. Merlin Sheldrake is the biologist and author of the extraordinary book, Entangled Life, How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures.
You might not give fungi much thought, but mycelium networks are working their wonders all around us. And we need them! Together with bacteria, fungi are responsible for breaking down organic matter and releasing carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus into the soil and atmosphere. Without fungi, nothing would decay. We partner up with fungi to make some of the foods and drinks we love the most (hello, bread and beer). And fungi is also causing quite the buzz in fashion, thanks to the invention of new leather-like materials and plastic alternatives derived from mycelium. Forward-thinking designers from Iris Van Herpen to Stella McCartney have been inspired by fungi’s wonderful properties and intriguing life.
Prepare to be wowed by this enlightening conversation that might just change the way you think about everything around you.
Essential listening this Earth Day! Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress
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Whether it’s the joy of dyeing cloth with pomegranates, the age-old practicality of turning sheep wool into felts and knits, or the rich legacy of complex embroideries and silk Ikat weaving, Central Asian textile traditions are bonded by cultural meaning and a respect for the natural world. And resources: nothing gets thrown away, as this week’s guest Aigerim Akenova explains through her love for patchwork - her nomadic ancestors' answer to upcycling.
Aigerim is the country co-ordinator of Fashion Revolution Kazakhstan. With a global outlook (studied in Milan, lives in California), she's also a contemporary Kazakh designer determined to centre sustainability in the national fashion conversation, as the country she was born and raised in scales up its design and creative industries. Still, the big money in this former Soviet territory of 19 million people, is still in mining. The economy is based on oil, coal, gas, but also things like copper, aluminium, zinc, bauxite and gold. As Aigerim puts it: "We've got the whole periodic table." And Kazakhstan is the world's largest uranium producer.
What role could sustainable fashion play in growing newer, lower carbon industries here in line with SDGs? What do young urban Kazakhs and Central Asians in neighbouring countries want from the fashion today? As well as its craft heritage, Kazakhstan also has a vibrant modern fashion scene, its own fashion week, and (doesn’t everywhere?) fast fashion - so how can these two sides find balance in future? Aigerim says we have much to learn from nomadic traditions of sustainable clothing systems.
THIS IS OUR ANNUAL FASHION REVOLUTION SPECIAL BE CURIOUS, FIND OUT, DO SOMETHING. This year's theme is Manifesto for a Fashion Revolution - check it out here.
Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress
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How much do you know about the chemicals you're exposed to through every-day things like cosmetics and skincare, clothing or even food packaging, and food itself? How about what chemicals might be contaminating air, soil and water from industrial processes? Do you ever even think about it? We often presume governments and companies will protect from harmful substances, but history is full of examples where the advice over what's safe and what's not changes over time (from asbestos to cigarettes to talc) - the science moves on, new studies are published and one day something everyone presumed was just fine turns out to have grim consequences. Can anyone really say what levels of chemicals with potentially harmful healthy effects are definitively safe for people, animals and the environment, given the variables involved?
Andrea Rudolph is a sustainability pioneer, and a much-loved Danish cultural force. A former TV and radio presenter, she started her organic skincare company Rudolph Care back in 2009, after taking part in a Greenpeace activation that tested the blood of eight Danish volunteers for chemicals present. What Andrea discovered rocked her world, and changed the path of her career.
Now she’s on a mission to raise awareness about toxic PFAS. Andrea wants to see “forever chemicals” banned from consumer products, and to stop any more of them from building up in our environment. This is also the story of one woman’s battle with breast cancer, the power of Nature and how life gets even more precious when you fear losing it. A heart-felt and ultimately hopeful interview, about activism, vulnerability and what really matters. Andrea's message to the consumers: We can change things - but first we have to know what we're dealing with.
Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress
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A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, over 8 million Ukrainian refugees have been registered across Europe. According to UNHCR, the vast majority of civilians who have fled the war are women over 35 with one or more children. Men aged between 18-60 are not permitted to leave (except under special circumstances).
This week, instead of the regular fashion angles, I’m bringing you this very personal conversation with Olena Braichenko, a Ukrainian refugee who, with her six-year-old daughter, is currently staying with my best friends in London. When I go to visit them, they joke that I never want to leave. How must it feel when you can’t?
Finding refuge in a new country is obviously a wonderful thing - and we acknowledge the many millions who aren’t so lucky - but what’s it like to try to make your way somewhere far from home, with strangers? To have to learn a new language? When your husband, parents and many of your friends are back home, and you’re watching the war on the news? When your life, as Olena puts it, feels “on pause”?
This is also a story about sustainability and food culture, Ukraine’s famous černozëm black soil, long traditions of foraging, pickling, small family farms and growing your own veggies. It's a story about home, what we love, and how we live.
Olena is a food writer, publisher and academic, who with her husband, Artem, founded Yizhakultura – a project dedicated to Ukrainian cuisine, where scholars, chefs, food critics, and food anthropologists discuss its history, culture and heritage. She believes in the power of culinary diplomacy, to help get beyond the single story. War is devastating, but people, she reminds us, are more than their experiences of displacement. “I am firmly convinced that everyone who has survived occupation needs to be seen not as a victim, but first and foremost as a person.”
Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress
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Fashion doesn’t exist in a vacuum. As Coco Chanel once said, it’s “in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what’s happening.” So how, as a designer, you do respond to what’s going on in the world when that's a tragedy close to home or heart?
On February 6, 2023 a magnitude 7.8 earth quake hit south-eastern Türkiye, and northern Syria. It was catastrophic - causing unfathomable damage and loss of life. Official figures put the death toll beyond 50,000 people. And to make matters worse, it was bitterly cold winter. Against such a backdrop, fashion’s concerns may seem trifling, but the region is a textiles centre, while and the many garment factories on the other side of Turkey will also feel the effects, with huge numbers of people displaced and vulnerable. Plus through all this, fashion month went on.
What do you do as a creative from an affected country, when you’re reeling from this but not there on the ground? Or not physically impacted? How do you just carry on as normal? Should you even try? If not, then what? On a practical level, do you cancel your fashion show? Realistically, what good would that do?
Do you try to compartmentalise, or block it out, or use your platform to speak out and raise money? Probably all of the above, at the same time! There’s obviously no correct answer, but these are the questions. And also, the context for this week’s interview with London-based Turkish designer Bora Aksu, who shares candidly about what it means to be a creative trying to navigate all this.
But while this is how the conversation begins - it's not how it ends. At it's heart, this is a warm, hopeful and inspiring interview about fashion, family, craft, heritage, upcycling and the practical work of trying to choose the most sustainable textiles as a fashion designer – Bora has been has doing it for years, long before sustainability became the next big thing.
If you’d like to make a donation to the ongoing relief and humanitarian work in Türkiye and Syria, please see the shownotes at www.thewardrobecrisis.com
Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress
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How do you feel about trends? In sustainable fashion circles, that word can have negative connotations. After all, it's the sped-up trend cycle delivers us fast fashion. Flipping between different, and often conflicting, fashion trends, it's easy to lose control, buy and waste too much. But there's more to trend forecasting than predicting that next week you'll be wearing blue. Or Barbiecore. Or whatever momentary madness TikTok is serving.
Mapping cultural, lifestyle, economic and societal trends helps us form a picture of where we are headed and shape our strategies for everything from new business models to reaching our chosen audiences.
Want to know how the metaverse will impact retail? Or if consumers are really likely to spend more on sustainable solutions going forward? Keen to figure out how Gen Z thinks, or if that's even a thing? Some predict generational terms will soon be a thing of the past...
This week, Clare sits down with Christopher Sanderson, co-founder of London-based trend-forecasters, The Future Laboratory, to ask, what's around the fashion corner - and how they heck do they figure that out anyway? What's the role of intuition, and how can you hone yours? A must-listen for anyone in business who doesn't want to fly blind.
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Find Clare on Instagram & Twitter. Find extended shownotes on www.thewardrobecrisis.com
P.S. In Australia & want to book a presentation for your company? Here's the link to Chris's March 23 speaking tour.
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No doubt you’ve heard the buzz about regenerative agriculture. But who’s actually putting it into practice for the textile sector? At the soil level? Brands can say they want it, regulators can try to incentivise it, chemical companies might resist it, but at the end of the day, it’s the grower who has to actually do it.
What’s it really like for a small-scale Indian cotton farmer trying to make a living? What challenges do they face? And what’s in it for them if they do decide to transition their fields and methods back to the old ways? Yes, the old ways... because, guess what - regenerative agriculture is not at new idea!
This week, Clare meets Nishanth Chopra, founder of Oshadi, a "seed to sew" fashion supply chain, contemporary womenswear brand, artisanal textile company and regenerative cotton farm in India.
This is a story about how the future of textiles and modern artisanship relies on learning lessons from the past. It’s also about one extraordinary young man’s drive to make a difference, and his galvanising tactics - let’s just say, he’s not someone willing to take no for an answer. Nishanth is proving that it can be done.
Enjoying the podcast? We are proudly independent, and rely on our listeners to help us stick around.
Can you share the episode on social media, or write us a glowing review in Apple podcasts?
Find Clare on Instagram & Twitter. Find extended shownotes on www.thewardrobecrisis.com
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