WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

We all know clothes have meaning, beyond just looking nice. We’ve often talked on this podcast about the importance of how they are made. This week, we’re considering how fashion’s meaning stretches beyond supply chains and our wardrobes, to shape our culture and the way we see ourselves collectively. How does fashion see itself when it comes to race and privilege? How about the male gaze?Clare sits down with Caryn Franklin, journalist, style icon, fashion citizen (not consumer, please!), one-time presenter of The Clothes Show and all-time national treasure. These days her work centres on education and activism - she’s a visiting professor of diverse selfhood at Kingston School of Art, in London, and gained her MSc in applied psychology specialising in selfhood, objectification, inclusivity and gender bias.Partly, this interview is a personal one about a life in clothes but it’s also a provocation: How can we use fashion as a vehicle for positive self-esteem, rather than allowing it to make too many of us fee

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, Richard Malone, puts it, "do your own thing and stick to it" in the context of fashion's relentless push for newness?Also, where does class and privilege play into all this? Does Fashion with a capital ‘F’ actually want to be more inclusive and welcoming? Or is all the talk of breaking down the barriers just lipservice? The fact is: many of the people who “make it” in fashion have an had a head start. You only have to look at the current obsession with Gen Z nepo babies. Let's not pretend the playing field is level.Richard Malone is queer London-based, Irish fashion designer, artist and maker, whose work challenges subtly a system that's built on unfair advantages. A thought-provoking conversation about everything from colonisation and the loss of Irish craft traditions, to what fashion sho

Why does fashion have such a problem in accepting all bodies they way they are, and recognising the beauty in different shapes and sizes? I know, I know, we’ve heard it all before, yet depressingly little changes.Our guest this week has had enough! Self-described as “that body morphing b*tch”, Michaela Starck is a super-talented London-based Aussie creative director/designer/dreamboat who’s beautiful work includes her own glorious self, as well as Paris-worthy, bow-bedecked frillies.A frank convo on fat-shaming, where the body positivity movement fails, and the magical powers of backing your own vision. Even when people in your life keep telling you you’ll never make it? Especially then! Take that, naysayers!Check the shownotes for links & further reading.Tell us what you think! Can you help us spread the word ?Wardrobe Crisis is an independent production. We don't believe in barriers to entry and are determined to keep this content free.If you value it, please help by sharing your favourite Episodes

If you’re interested in natural dyes, or want to know more about hands-on textile techniques, this episode is a joy. It's also a great one if you are into ideas around seasonality and connection to Nature. Aren't we all?!Continuing our Pacific theme (don’t miss last week’s Episode with Fiji Fashion Week’s Ellen Whippy-Knight) these two stories are also from Fiji, but a long way from its capital Suva. They’re both about different aspects of Indigenous practices, and living in balance with the the land, the oceans, the skies and biodiversity.First, meet Letila Mitchell, a renowned artist, designer and performer from Rotuma. Her work in the fashion space grew out of costume, & has developed into a practice that’s all about revitalising traditional Rotuman textile making, and re-finding cultural knowledge disrupted by colonisation.Our second interview is with Noleen Billings, from Savusavu, on Fiji’s northern island of Vanua Levu. Noleen isn't famous or a fancy expert in anything other than common sense but h

When Anna Wintour was introduced to Ellen Whippy-Knight as the founder of Fiji Fashion Week, the Vogue editor-in-chief exclaimed, “Fiji has a fashion week?!” Sure does, Anna. It turned 16 last year, and is an established force in a small yet burgeoning Pacific fashion scene.White sands and turquoise waters. Surf breaks. Rugby. Fiji is rightly famous for these things, it’s also an international garment-manufacturing country with an independent design community, mainly focused on the local market and the Fijian diaspora.Now Ellen, a formidable fashion force in her own right, is determined to bring sustainability and technical design education into the picture...Check the shownotes for links & further reading.Tell us what you think!Can you help us spread the word about Series 9? Wardrobe Crisis is an independent production. We don't believe in barriers to entry and are determined to keep this content free.If you value it, please help by sharing your favourite Episodes, and rating and reviewing us in Apple or

Addicted to thrifting? Wondering where all your money’s gone? Feeling the fashion clutter feels? If you answered “yes” to any of the above, it might be time for a fashion detox.From Slow Fashion Season to ReMake’s 90-day No New Clothes challenge to the Rule of 5, more of us are looking for ways to circuit-break bad fashion habits. There’s a real movement going on with conscious fashionistas sharing what’s worked for them when it comes to slowing down, buying and wasting less.Our first guest for 2024 is Jenna Flood, a slow fashion stylist who’s been sharing tips and tricks with her followers around what she calls her Wardrobe Freeze.It all began for Jenna after she created a spreadsheet to track where her money was disappearing to. Turns out she was over-spending on ethical brands and treating second-hand like it was fast fashion – ultra high turnover. It didn’t help that she works in a consignment store surrounded by temptation…What rules did she set for herself? How did she stick with them? And, was it worth

CONTENT WARNING. A note from Clare: "While in this Episode, we talk about creativity and hope, baking and Strictly Ballroom, and address a wide range of things from the politics of climate action to biodiversity, we also discuss the details of going on a hunger strike. Personally, I would say that bit is not suitable for children, although I suspect Gregory would disagree. I'd also like to let you know there's mention of eating disorders in this interview. It's a compelling listen - there's much to think about and learn from here, and I admire Gregory's stand and his ethics. But do exercise your own judgement with little or vulnerable/ anxious ears around.Thank you,Clare xxx"How far would you go for climate action? Changing your lifestyle? Sounds doable (to an extent!). Divesting from businesses that support the fossil fuel industry, perhaps? Would you consider getting into politics? Or more controversial actions, like risking arrest at a banned street protest, or harbour blockade, for example? Our guest this

It's that time of year again, when world leaders (along with marketers from brands, oil and gas industry lobbyists, celebs on their private jets) head to the UN climate conference to discuss what to do about greenhouse gas pollution and our warming world. Extreme weather! Rising sea levels! Phasing out fossil fuels! Wait, actually, maybe tone that last one down because it's a bit hard, and our mates in the extractive energy industry aren't keen ... okay, how about: Phasing down fossil fuels? That sounds more reasonable... Luckily there are also voices of reason at these events. It's time we listened more to them. As a group of Pacific Climate Activists head to COP28 in Dubai to tell the world what it's really like to live on the front line of climate change in a low-lying island nation when one-in-100 year cyclones hit back to back, Clare sits down with Ni-Vanuatu woman activist Flora Vano, to hear about her work empowering women in the climate movement. Turns out it's going pretty well. Flora is fab, and her

“When did we decide we couldn’t make stuff anymore?” asks this week’s guest, Meriel Chamberlin, the textile technologist behind Full Circle Fibres, an Australian startup producing “paddock to product” garments on-shore.We know that the fashion industry’s climate impacts are significant, and that most of it comes down to the textile production stage. So how can we do things differently, close to home? Who needs to come together to make that happen, to share expertise, innovate, and also to fund it? How might fibre production tread more lightly on the land? Protect, or even enhance, biodiversity? These are some of the big questions driving the initiatives we’re talking about on this week’s show.We've often covered the trouble with factories on this podcast; issues around garment worker injustice and unfair conditions. Very important stuff! But we hardly ever hear about the excellent factories. This is an Episode about the opportunities to make fashion more sustainable at the factory level, and the skills and ca

Our guest for this Special Edition interview is JUNO GEMES, one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary photographers.Born in Hungary, she moved to Australia as a child. In 1970, then a young artist, she spent six months living on Country with Aboriginal communities at Uluru. She went on to documents First Nations activism and the Civil Rights Movement in this country for five decades. Juno photographed many of the early protests and meetings led by Aboriginal activists in the ‘70s and ‘80s, forming lifelong friendships with key figures in the Movement. She photographed the Uluru Handback Ceremony in 1985; marches and activations around the Bicentennial in 1988, and she was one of ten photographers invited to document the National Apology in Canberra in 2008.Wherever you are listening across the world, these stories are important to discover. It’s obviously not just Australia that grapples with a legacy of colonisation, and you care about sustainability, the questions linked to all this are fundamental on

In this mini pod, which is Part 1 of our Special Edition on the Voice, you will hear RACHEL PERKINS read you the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Rachel is an Australian filmmaker, a proud Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman and the co-chair of the YES23 campaign. She is also co-chair of Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition, and is a signatory to the Statement from the Heart.“As the largest consensus of First Nations peoples on a proposal for substantive recognition in Australian history, the road to the Uluru Statement from the Heart is a long one even without mentioning the decades of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activism that came before it.” Discover more here.It forms the cornerstone the referendum that’s asking Australians to recognise Indigenous culture in this country’s constitution, and establish a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.“FOR THE PAST 250 YEARS, WE HAVEN’T PROPERLY LISTENED TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN HERE FOR 65,000. THIS IS OUR CHANCE

It’s fashion month again and the big brands with the big budgets dominate our feeds. But amidst the commercial noise of the contemporary fashion circus, independent gems still exist. There are true artists who go their own way, and often set the future trend agenda (although they tend not to get the credit). Our guest this week is one of them. He’s been shaking up the London underground scene since the ‘90s. Meet Dr NOKI, the original upcycler. Just don’t call him that…NOKI does fashion on his own terms, including the language he prefers to describe his work. He “custom-builds” his “mashups” and “landfill drops”. It’s a practice that owes at debt to dadaism, and made sense of his dyslexia when he was young. The story reaches to back into the ‘90s club scene, through the culture jamming of the No Logo years to end up at the cutting edge where art and fashion collide today.Now, a new generation that’s interested in sustainability is discovering him for the first time. Last year, Hypebeast heralded NOKI as “a tr

Woolmark's new ambassador Taylor Zakhar Perez is a rising Hollywood star known for his leading man roles. You might recognise him from a certain rom com that we're not mentioning here (in respect of the actors' strike), or his role in a royal drama based on a cult book (again, not going there). Maybe you know his Paris fashion week looks - snaps of him emerging shirtless from his car outside the Prada’s menswear show went viral in June.But whether you’re one of his 4.7 million Instagram followers, or discovering his work for the first time here, there's no denying Taylor's charm. He's smart, down-to-earth, generous with his time and endlessly curious, and we love that he was up for a conversation about how to use influence for good.In this conversation, we discuss the risks and rewards of daring to talk about sustainability when you're known for something else, why more famous names don't get involved in climate activism or rewear their clothes, and how this former competitive swimmer became a supply chain ne

Series 9 has landed! Our first guest is Cyrill Gutsch, the fascinating founder of Parley for the Oceans. With his partner Lea Stepken, this NY-based designer and branding expert started his global environmental organisation in 2012, after bumping into Pamela Anderson at an art fair. Pammy was wearing a Sea Shepherd T-shirt, and when Cyrill asked her why, she told him Sea Shepherd’s activist-in-chief Paul Watson was in trouble - he’d been arrested in Frankfurt on an international warrant. Cyrill, being German, thought he might be able to help, and went to visit Watson in his lawyer’s office. There, he learned that Watson’s strife was a drop in the proverbial compared with what's happening to the oceans. Plastic pollution! Climate change! Overfishing! Could creativity be the super power needed to turn it around?The rest, as they say is history. Cyrill decided to ditch his regular clients, and donate his time to just one: OUR OCEANS. Specifically, “raising awareness for their beauty and fragility” and “collabora

Danish designer Cecilie Bahnsen studied at RCA in London, and interned with John Galliano and Erdem before starting her own label in 2015. You’ve probably seen her voluminous dresses, or her recent sneaker collaboration with ASICs. Cecilie says she operates at the intersection of couture and ready-to-wear – it’s high craft, she creates her own textiles, and loves to use embroidery and smocking which lends her work a certain whimsey. But although expensive, it’s not untouchable, as you will hear. Cecilie wears hers’ on her bike! A very Danish approach.We talk about the challenges of upcycling precious scraps which defy standardisation. The idea of timelessness in a novelty-obsessed world.Building a creative business, and how Cecile approaches scale and growth. What it takes to make it - determination, for sure, but also a really clear sense of what you want, and how you treat others.Ultimately, though, this Episode is about joy - the pleasure we can find in clothes, even down to the sound of fabric rustli

Meet Danish creative Henrik Vibskov - fashion designer, costume designer, curator, musician and professor. He shows at Copenhagen Fashion Week (which is coming around again next week) but also Paris, and he has a store in New York. A supremely conceptual designer – his last collection, Long Fingers To Ma Toes, was inspired by the tomato in weird and wonderful ways.In this interview Henrik shares his experience of living up to CPHFW's recently introduced 18 Minimum Sustainability Standards. What did find de-motivating about trying to implement sustainability initiatives, and what kept him going? But also, how did he get here? Why the vegetable obsession? Would anyone come to a 3-hour fashion show? (Spoiler alert: they did!) What is fashion actually for in 2023? And what do the next generation of artistic designers need to make it? It's all up for discussion in this charismatic convo.Enjoy the show? Wardrobe Crisis is an independent creation and we need your help to keep going and grow our audience. Please help

ICYMI: fashion has a greenwashing problem. No wonder policy makers, consumer watchdogs and NGOs are taking an interest. According to the UN: “Misinformation and greenwashing are ubiquitous ... As sustainability has grown as a selling point, all manner of vague and inflated claims have appeared across advertising, marketing, media, packaging and beyond.” Enter the UN's new Sustainable Fashion Communication Playbook, an open-access guide that seeks to change that, while better aligning how the fashion industry talks with the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. This week, we're delighted to welcome the Playbook's lead author, Rachel Arthur, to the show to deep dive into its recommendations.We're asking: What if marketers, PRs, fashion journalists and photographers used their creative powers to encourage us to live a 1.5 degree lifestyle, instead of endlessly update our consumer goods? (Curious about a “1.5 degree lifestyle”? Listen for the full explainer!) How could professional communicators use their talents

Hang on, what's the question? Why is everyone talking about regenerative farming, for starters. For fibre as well as food. #regenag is fashion's new favourite hashtag. What if we put back more than we took out? Stopped drenching the land with toxic chemicals? Worked in harmony with Nature? Could we feed and clothe the world if we produced less, and differently? Would we starve? Would prices skyrocket? How did we get to this place, where no one - not the land, not biodiversity, not the nutritional content of food, and not the farmers who are on the front lines - wins?Oh, and have you heard the one about there being just 60 cycles of soil left on Planet Earth? That's no joke. While this oft-quoted stat has been disputed, there's no denying that intensive, so called "conventional" farming practices are depleting soil health the world over.During WWI, food shortages had us in a panic. No wonder, in the 1950s and '60s, we were obsessed with maximising yields. Through a combination of hectic new pesticides and herb

Meet British accessories designer turned local leather supply chain builder, Alice Robinson. With her business partner Sarah Grady, Alice runs Grady & Robinson, a startup that’s trying to rebuild the local leather supply chain in the UK, in a totally traceable way, connecting regenerative farmers with processing and vegetable tanning in Britain. Their goal is to offer a product that traceable to its farm source, made entirely in the UK, and biodegradable at end of life. That’s a big ask, because the industry has all but disappeared in Britain, so if you’re a emerging handbag designer – as Alice was when she was studying at the Royal College of Art a few years ago - and you want to buy single origin leather locally, you pretty much can’t. This didn’t sit well with her, so as you will hear, Alice decided to do it herself - buying a sheep five miles away from her home in rural Shropshire, and documenting its entire journey from the field it lived in, through its slaughter, through to the tanning process

When it comes to the fabrics we make our clothes from, there’s much confusion. Many of us don’t have a clue what textiles we’re buying and wearing; we’re not really teaching it in schools and brands don’t tend to talk too much about it, not least because so many of the textiles they use are unsustainable synthetics.But materials matter, and they are all around us. Getting back in touch with them can be really satisfying. And when it comes to creating a more sustainable fashion industry, their impact is enormous. What we choose, whether as designers or consumers, really makes a difference.Amanda Johnston is an academic and former fashion designer who works on education projects for Sustainable Angle, which puts on the Future Fabrics Expos in London - the perfect person to take us through what’s happening in the world of sustainable textiles today.Think of this as your Sustainable Textiles 101 go-to! We’re answering some of the popular questions we often get asked: How do you choose the most sustainable textile