London has Browns and Dover St Market, Milan has 10 Corso Como, New York has Jeffrey, and Paris had Collette. In Australia, the multi-brand designer fashion stores to know are Melbourne's Marais and in Sydney, Parlour X . This Episode is about independent high fashion retail , how it works and what it does, what's happening with bricks and mortar stores, and why we need them. You're going to meet the brilliant buyer, style setter and retailer Eva Galambos, who is Parlour X's founder. Eva is an e...
Dec 05, 2017•52 min•Season 1Ep. 26
On any given night in Australia 1 in 200 people don't have a roof over their heads. Nasir Sobhani A.K.A T he Streets Barber skateboards around Melbourne giving free haircuts and shaves to homeless people as a part of his ‘ Clean Cut Clean Start ' movement. Today, fashion and hairdressing live in the same world, along with makeup artistry, art direction, photography. The hair stylist on a shoot, for example, is just as important as the stylist, model or photographer. But the art...
Nov 28, 2017•46 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Join ethical fashionista Clare Press as she asks, Do you suffer from affluenza? This week's guest, Australian economist Richard Denniss has the cure! Richard is the author of a fascinating new book called Curing Affluenza , in which he argues that there's nothing inevitable about our current mode of consuming . “The vast majority of humans who have ever lived (and the majority of humans alive today) would find the idea of using our scarce resources to produce things that are designed to be throw...
Nov 22, 2017•43 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Join ethical fashionista Clare Press as she asks, What's it like to be a garment worker in Asia making clothes for high street brands in Australia and the global north? This Episode explores one of the biggest issues around fast fashion and cheap clothing supply chains - low pay. Do we care? Do brands? And what's being done to campaign for a living wage and fair fashion? Based on CEO pay levels of some of the big brands in Australia, it would take a Bangladeshi garment worker earning the minimum...
Nov 14, 2017•36 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Vincent Stanley is Patagonia's Director of Philosophy. (Yes, that's a thing). He has been with the outdoor gear company since 1973, when his uncle, Yvon Chouinard, gave him a job as a kid out of college. Vincent is a deep thinker and passionate environmentalist, and a visiting fellow at the Yale School of Management. He's also a poet, whose work has appeared in Best American Poetry . With Yvon, he co-wrote the book THE RESPONSIBLE COMPANY , which is like a handbook f...
Nov 07, 2017•57 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Have you got big ideas ? Do you dream of starting a company that makes a difference in the world ? Or working for one? Are you interested in how brands can create positive impacts in communities, beyond the boring, some would say broken, mainstream consumerism model? This Episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in social enterprises . Blake Mycoskie is one of the most successful players in this space, and in this interview he shares the story of his company TOM...
Oct 31, 2017•44 min•Season 1Ep. 21
New Zealand designer Karen Walker is one of The Business of Fashion's 500 . Her brand sells in 42 countries, in prestigious stores like Barneys New York, and Liberty of London. She is a New York fashion week veteran, with some very famous fans. Everyone from Beyonc é and Rihanna to Scarlet Johansson, Alexa Chung, Lorde, Lena Dunham, Toast the dog, oh look everyone , wears her sunglasses . She also designs ready-to-wear, handba...
Oct 24, 2017•48 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Yves Saint Laurent , Loulou de la Falaise, Pierre Cardin, Chanel, Givenchy, couture, prêt-à-porter and vintage shopping in the Paris flea markets , this week's Episode trés chic . Meet Paris-based Australian-raised stylist and César-winning costume designer, Catherine Baba . Vogue calls her a “fashion eminence”. Vanity Fair? An “original”. Indeed that magazine just included her on its 2017 Best Dressed List . She is also an accessories designer with her own line of sunglasses, a massive vi...
Oct 10, 2017•40 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Australia's GREAT BARRIER REEF is the largest living thing on earth. Visible from outer space, it's the size of 70 million football fields and is home to 400 different types of coral and more than 1500 species of toprical fish. It's a magical underwater garden. No wonder fashion is obsessed with its beauty. But climate change is killing the reef, and fashion, being a major manufacturing industry, has its part to play. About 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the fashion ...
Oct 03, 2017•50 min•Season 1Ep. 17
This week's Episode is little different from normal. It was recorded in September at a live Q&A event at the Wheeler Centre for Books & Ideas in Melbourne, and moderated by Madeleine Morris, a reporter for ABC television's 7.30 . We touch on a whole lot of issues front and centre in an industry currently in overdrive, from slow fashion , overconsumption and waste , to what brands are doing about supply chain transparency, as well as Au...
Sep 26, 2017•52 min•Season 1Ep. 16
We live in a our throwaway society . "Landfill fashion" has become a phrase - we literally buy clothes to throw them away. With fast fashion brands dropping new stock into store sometimes as often as every week, we're consuming new clothes like never before. The average woman wears just 40 % of what's in her wardrobe, meanwhile it's cool to declutter . Or is it? Have you considered where all that "clutter" ends up when you remove it from your house? In this Episode, fashion model and Heart Peopl...
Sep 19, 2017•44 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Linda Jackson is an iconic designer who, with Jenny Kee, created a new visual language for contemporary Australian fashion in the 1970s, inspired by Australia's flora, fauna and landscapes. Until then, the Australian fashion industry had mostly looked outward, copying what Europe did. But Linda and Jenny shook that whole thing up, and the world took notice. In Sydney they engergised the fashion scene, collaborating with creative friends like Peter Tully and David McDairmid, who went on to become...
Sep 12, 2017•53 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Stephen Jones is the most extraordinary , the most famous , and the most marvellous milliner working in fashion today. This interview took place at the National Gallery of Victoria on the eve of the opening of the exhibition , THE HOUSE OF DIOR: SEVENTY YEARS OF HAUTE COUTURE. During John Galliano 's tenure at Dior in particular, from 1996 to 2011, Stephen made some of the house's most jaw-droppingly fabulous hats. Stephen also designed hats and headpieces for the designers who came after Gallia...
Sep 05, 2017•35 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Before ecommerce changed the world, designers knew they'd made it when their collections were stocked by Saks, Bergdorf's or Barneys . The iconic New York department stores hold a special allure, even when you live elsewhere. But retail, globally, is in a state of flux. Will there even be physical stores in 10 or 20 years' time? As customers continue to head online, it seems like every week there's news of another “bricks and mortar” closure. In the US, analysts predict 25 % of malls could shutt...
Aug 29, 2017•47 min•Season 1Ep. 12
The ethical fashion movement is gathering momentum. Not so long ago sustainable, ethical, eco-fashion (whatever you want to call it) was a too easily dismissed as some way-out, niche concern. Something kooky, and very possibly hairy and hemp-y, that belonged on the lunatic fringe. Well, no longer. Today sustainability is a buzz word. Everyone wants a piece of the activism action. We're in the middle of a Fashion Revolution, where the coolest, smartest most creative fashion fans are starting to a...
Aug 22, 2017•49 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Beauty is one of the major motivators for people who work in creative industries – they want to make beautiful things, whether it's a garment, textile, show or picture. They want, as Megan Morton puts it in this Episode, to chase down true beauty wherever they see it. Not to push the beautiful lie but to try to capture and understand it. Megan is a stylist, author and “house whisperer” with a life-long love for vintage and the stories behind old things. She grew up on a banana farm in Queensland...
Aug 15, 2017•57 min•Season 1Ep. 10
What do you think is possible? How about im possible? Kim Pearce and Katherine Davis are living proof of the old adage: where there's a will there's a way. The Possibility Project , which they cofounded after meeting on the school run, “delivers social justice programs through the mindset of social entrepreneurship”. What does that look like on the ground? Try their womenswear label Slumwear 108 , and made in the slums of Jaipur in partnership with the NGO i-India. The number 108, in case you're...
Aug 08, 2017•51 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Hands up who's over the narrow view of beauty peddled by mainstream fashion brands and media! Elisa Goodkind wants us to take back our power from magazines, advertising and the money-driven global fashion business, so that getting dressed each day becomes an act of self-love. With their platform StyleLikeU New Yorkers Elisa and her daughter Lily Mandelbaum are breaking down the fake stereotypes about what's beautiful, and what's supposedly not. They've published a new booked called T...
Aug 01, 2017•33 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In our final Episode for Plastic Free July, Clare interviews American visual artist Marina DeBris. Marina calls herself a “trashion” designer, as well as an environmental activist, and anti-plastics campaigner. She makes her "Beach Couture" collections from rubbish she finds washed up on beaches. There's a history of fashion designers referencing refuse. John Galliano's controversial Couture 2000 collection for Christian Dior featured newspaper prin...
Jul 25, 2017•41 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Kalpona Akter is Executive Director of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity. An inspirational and influential figure in the country's union movement, she is a former child labourer who began working in a garment factory at age 12. By 17, she'd been fired for standing up for her own rights, and those of her colleagues. ‘The day they fired this noisy woman, was the day they made a big mistake,' she says. Eighty per cent of ...
Jul 11, 2017•58 min•Season 1Ep. 5
TOME is a New York-based fashion label. Designers Ramon Martin & Ryan Lobo are known for collaborating with, and taking inspiration from, female artists. This season they looked to the Guerrilla Girls for a show inspired by the Women's Marches and the Trump administration's attacks on Planned Parenthood. How can high fashion combine the pursuit of gorgeousness with serious messages about diversity and equality? What role does the runway have to play? ‘We underestimate the power of beauty and...
Jul 03, 2017•35 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Dr. Jennifer Lavers sees seabirds as sentinels of marine health. Are we listening to what they're telling us? Her work as a scientist attached to the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies focuses on birdlife, but recently she's been looking to art and fashion to help get the message out too. Jennifer appears in the new film Blue about the state of our seas. And she's working with her friend Marina De Bris, who shows her ‘trashion' concept (fashion garments made enti...
Jun 19, 2017•49 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Timo Rissanen is former Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Sustainability at Parsons The New School for Design, New York. Today he is associate professor at University Technology, Sydney. He is an expert in zero-waste fashion design, as well as a cross-stitch artist currently stitching a letter to humanity to be read 100 years from now. Oh, and he's a birdwatcher… Timo teaches his students to rethink traditional ways of approaching design to consider the entire lifecycle of a garment, and...
Jun 16, 2017•46 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Ocean plastic pollution kills marine life and threatens us too - the fish eat the plastic, and we eat the fish! The UN warns that 8 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans every year, and plastic has been detected on shorelines of all the continents. Our very first podcast guest unpacks this topic, and helps us think about solutions. And of course, there's a fashion element too... Laura Wells is an Australian marine biologist and body positive model. She is a eco-warrior who divides her tim...
Jun 13, 2017•44 min•Season 1Ep. 1
