Who's Shaping Sustainable Fashion's Design Future? Each Wardrobe Crisis series we present a new generation talent episode, spotlighting emerging fashion designers who are pushing sustainability forward. This time we’re talking with: a positive knitwear designer from Canada who’s ongoing collaboration with Post Carbon lab sees her creating living garments that photosynthesise as you wear them. A British fashion multi-tasker who works as a sustainable womenswear designer focused on deadstock mater...
Aug 05, 2021•47 min•Season 6Ep. 146
How do you feel about getting older? Maybe you’re so young it feels a world away? Or maybe you’re feeling it, and wondering where the time went? This week’s guest fashion influencer Lyn Slater has no such worries - she reinvented her career in her 60s, going from college professor to Instagram star and being described as “one of fashion's finest-dressed people”. Since then she’s been written about a thousand times as a sort poster woman for growing older stylishly. But now, she’s examining furth...
Jul 30, 2021•40 min•Season 6Ep. 145
“The 21st century has brought a critical dilemma into sharp relief: we must stop shopping, and yet we can’t stop shopping.” - J.B MacKinnon Have you noticed that stopping shopping is trending? It used to be a very unusual challenge to take on, but fashion detoxes are going mainstream as people begin to question hyper-consumerism and look for ways to resist it. But what would happen if we all turned off the fashion tap tomorrow? And not just fashion - consumer goods in general. What if eve...
Jul 14, 2021•50 min•Season 6Ep. 144
Lock up your linens! Emily Adams Bode has designs on your grandma's tablecloths. And her quilts. America's favourite emerging menswear talent made her fashion name upcycling characterful old domestic textiles and dusty deadstock - winning a CFDA award and a Woolmark Prize while she was at it. The result is menswear with meaning, designed to be passed down the generations. This is a lovely quirky conversation about what inspires her as a maker and collector , the joys of upcycling and the layers ...
Jun 30, 2021•46 min•Season 6Ep. 143
Welcome back! Series 6 is here! The title of this episode asks you to leave your pre-conceptions at the door. There is no one way for a refugee to look, seem, dress and show up in the world. On World Refugee Day, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) asks us to honour refugees around the globe. To celebrate the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home countries to escape conflict or persecution. And so we are excited to bring you this extraordinary interview wit...
Jun 23, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 6Ep. 142
While you were distracted by the latest luxury It-whatever (and the shiny, ridiculously expensive global marketing behind it) slow local fashion makers were carefully, quietly crafting their wares regardless - on a fraction of the budgets of the big fashion names. It's time to take more notice of them! Because if we don't support the independents, how will they thrive? Can small local makers compete with the big guys today, and should they try? Or is it time to build new networks that create a t...
Apr 29, 2021•34 min•Season 5Ep. 141
CALLING ALL TREE-HUGGERS! Nicole Rycroft founded Canopy Planet at her kitchen table in Vancouver with a small budget and a big idea - to protect the world's precious forests. 20 years later, Canopy is one of the leading organisations fighting globally for last frontier forests and engaging business - including the fashion industry - to find alternatives to unsustainably sourced wood in their supply chains. Do we really use ancient trees to make trivial things? Try pizza boxes and party frocks. I...
Apr 21, 2021•46 min•Season 5Ep. 140
How big is sustainable fashion in Iceland? You might be surprised to find out. We also nearly called this Episode: The Secret Lives Of Sweaters . Listen and you will see why! In this fascinating, surprising conversation about funny jumpers and changing the world, you will meet Ýr Jóhannsdóttir - a textile designer, artist/activist upcycler from Reykjavik . With her label Ýrúrarí (and her huge Instagram following ) she is making a name for herself using creativity and humour to challenge fashion'...
Apr 14, 2021•31 min•Season 5Ep. 139
Vintage and second-hand fashion is in the news more than ever before. It's set to eclipse fast fashion within ten years. The designer re-commerce sector is booming. But as shopping pre-loved becomes more aspirational, are those who rely on thrifted clothes being locked out? What's not up for debate, however, is that the piles of discarded fashion and textiles keep growing. The excess is real. Where it ends up, who pays the price, what that price should be, what's selling, what's not, what should...
Mar 04, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 5Ep. 138
Who else talks to their plants? This week's joyful episode is a love letter to what we grow - in gardens, allotments, veggie patches and pots on our windowsills the world over. But also what grows wild - in the woods, hedgerows, fields and scrub, the verges by the freeways, even the cracks in city pavements. Your guest host, musician and gardener Nidala Barker, talks with her friend and fellow green thumb, Kobi Bloom about connecting to Earth, respecting our Mother and the marvellous magic of pl...
Feb 17, 2021•44 min•Season 5Ep. 137
Welcome to another episode of series 5 - #sharethepodcastmic Don't forget to hit subscribe and if you value these conversations, please share them with your communities. Your guest host this week is Ayesha Barenblat, founder of ReMake, and she is in conversation with Nazma Akter, founder and Executive Director of the Awaj Foundation. Nazma has been fighting to improve workers' rights in Bangladesh's garment sector for 30 years - and she started out as a garment worker herself, aged just 11. Hers...
Feb 05, 2021•46 min•Season 5Ep. 136
Everybody's talking about degrowth. Does this mean we've finally woken up to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse? Are we ready to challenge capitalism's obsession with GDP and perpetual expansion? If so, what's the alternative? And how can we apply this to fashion, beyond simply "buy less"? How might we reimagine the whole system, and rethink how we measure success? This week's guest host Nina Gbor interviews Jason Hickel about his new book Less is More - How Degrowth W...
Jan 28, 2021•51 min•Season 5Ep. 135
Meet Belinda Duarte, former athlete and educator, current inspirational leader, formidable female exec, proud First Nations Australian and the inspiration for Series 5 - #sharethepodcastmic Just in time for January 26th - a significant day in this country. It's time to #changethedate There's so much up for discussion in this one - from Belinda's family story, to sustainability and Indigenous wisdom, raising strong young people, ethical leadership and how we can use sport and culture to move towa...
Jan 20, 2021•42 min•Season 5Ep. 134
In March 2020, Grace Lillian Lee and Teagan Cowlishaw announced Australia's first ever Indigenous fashion council - First Nations Fashion & Design. In December, they held their first fashion show - Walking in Two Worlds. But don't expect just any old runway. This is a beautiful story about reframing the fashion discourse, connecting to country, and mentoring emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fashion talent. Grace is this week's #sharethepodcastmic guest host and she's in convers...
Jan 13, 2021•42 min•Season 5Ep. 133
Welcome back to Series 5, #sharethepodcastmic Why are all eyes are on Indigenous Australian fashion right now? Try 60,000 years of sustainability... "We're the original fashion industry in this country," says this week's guest host Yatu Widders-Hunt of the vibrant, continuously evolving First Nations fashion and design sector. In this Episode, we hear from curator Shonae Hobson about her Piinpi exhibition - the first major survey of contemporary Indigenous Australian fashion to be undertaken in ...
Jan 06, 2021•42 min•Season 5Ep. 132
Why does so much fashion still cling to strict men's and womenswear codes? Is the industry finally ready to shake off tired old binaries and embrace the trans and gender-nonconforming community? Or is Harry Styles' Vogue cover about as far as it goes? For this week's #sharethepodcastmic episode, sustainable fashion journalist Aditi Mayer is in charge. She's interviewing Alok Vaid-Menon about their new book, Beyond the Gender Binary. Alok is a gender-nonconforming poet, author, performance ...
Dec 10, 2020•47 min•Season 5Ep. 131
For this week's #sharethepodcastmic episode, Aja Barber is in charge. She's interviewing her friend, Kalkidan Legesse, founder of Sancho's - a pioneering Black-owned sustainable fashion store in Exeter in the UK. Sancho's sells ethical and fair trade clothing, gifts and accessories from sustainable fashion brands like People Tree, Armedangels, Lefrik and Just Trade. They also really innovate with their pricing accessibility - and you'll hear all about that in this interview. What else gets unpac...
Dec 03, 2020•53 min•Season 5Ep. 130
A note from Clare: Welcome to Series 5, Share the Podcast Mic. After everything that's happened this year, we wanted to shake things up and share the power of this beautiful platform with some of the BIPOC voices leading the conversation in sustainability and ethical fashion. So after this episode, I'll be passing the Wardrobe Crisis mic onto them. Each will interview a person of their choice. Your guest hosts are some of the most exciting, dynamic, inspirational voices working in this spa...
Nov 25, 2020•45 min•Season 5Ep. 129
For all the talk of inclusivity finally being taken seriously by fashion, the industry is way behind on many fronts. It basically ignores entire sections of the market, which makes no sense from a business perspective, and let alone a social one. Adaptive fashion is both an opportunity and a necessity - as this week's brilliant guest, author Keah Brown says, disabled people love clothes too. And they're tired of having to alter things that don't work for them. Accessible, adaptive design is the ...
Oct 15, 2020•53 min•Season 4Ep. 128
Philosophy! The Internet of Things! Irvin Penn! From not being Mozart to designing outfits for The Muppets, as a kid... It's all up for discussion in this week's ep with Levi' s Vice President of Global Product Innovation, Paul Dillinger. Paul drove Jacquard by Google , so of course we talk about that, and the future of tech innovation in fashion particularly around wearables. But fundamentally, this is a conversation about why we wear what we wear, what fashion means and how we've used i...
Oct 02, 2020•43 min•Season 4Ep. 127
"You can't farm spiders!" says this week's guest, scientist David Breslauer. You can keep more them in serious numbers spinning webs off hula-hoops suspended from your office ceiling though... Enter Bolt Threads, the Californian biotech company behind Microsilk - a bioengineered sustainable fibre used by Stella McCartney. Find out how they did it, where the science is headed, and what's next (hint, it's involves mushrooms). Just don't call David Spider Man. Head over to https://thewardrobecrisis...
Sep 17, 2020•48 min•Season 4Ep. 126
How did denim get so unsustainable? And did it all start with stone washing? Our guest this week accepts responsibility for the industry going so hard on that. Francois Girbaud was there at the start, when, as he says “I was just a stupid guy” - and didn't know about the environmental impact of stone washing. After that, of course, came acid wash, sandblasting, all the rest of it. So, yes, we discuss all the important environmental stuff, but this is an epic interview about Paris, the history of...
Sep 02, 2020•39 min•Season 4Ep. 125
What's in my clothes? If you're asking that question, you probably expect the answer to be about fabric content. Polyester? Cotton? Wool maybe, or silk. But what about chemicals? You won't find these listed on your typical garment label. Last Series, Clare interviewed Greenpeace activist Kirsten Brodde, who led the Detox My Fashion campaign, launched in 2011, to force fashion to wake up to the toxic trail of textile production. So what's changed since then? Chemistry in fashion is still no...
Aug 06, 2020•32 min•Season 4Ep. 124
You know those people who are always ahead? The true originals no one can catch? Helen Storey is one of them. This British former runway designer and current Professor of Fashion & Science uses fashion as a trojan horse for big issues. Ten years ago she collaborated with a chemist to make garments that filter pollution from the air. She's made dresses that dissolve to show how we destroy what's beautiful. In 2015, in the run up to the COP15, she turned a decommissioned refugee tent, th...
Jul 23, 2020•44 min•Season 4Ep. 123
“I don't give voice to anyone, but I have a really amazing tool and that's my camera. I use my camera to amplify the voices of people who feel unheard.” Today photographer Giles Duley is the CEO and founder of the Legacy of War Foundation, and an activist for the rights of those living with disabilities caused by conflict. But he started out working in music and fashion, shooting for magazines like Vogue , GQ and Arena. Since 2004, his portrait photography has taken him all over the world, from ...
Jul 15, 2020•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 122
Can fashion really make a difference? Can artisans be agents of change? Could a humble bangle help make post-conflict land safe for the people who live there? It sounds crazy to be talking about war and bombs in the same sentence as fashion and jewellery. But that's exactly what Article 22 , a New York-jewellery brand and social enterprise that's handmade in Laos, seeks to do. They upcycle shrapnel and scrap metal from The Secret War into jewellery, and they called their first collection Pe...
Jul 02, 2020•52 min•Season 4Ep. 121
On World Oceans Day , we meet Australian big wave surfer Laura Enever. Laura started surfing as a kid in Sydney. She spent 7 years surfing professionally on the Women's World Tour . Now she's decided to reinvent herself as a big wave surfer. And we mean seriously big - these waves are scary, dangerous and remote, they break way out to sea, or on shallow rock ledges and only a few times a year. What has the ocean taught Laura about resilience and conquering fear? Head over to https://thewardrobec...
Jun 08, 2020•33 min•Season 4Ep. 120
This week, we're hanging out on the Copenhagen kitchen of the brilliant "insecure overachievers" behind GANNI . Married couple Ditte and Nicolaj Reffstrup are the force behind the cult Copenhagen label and they've have made it, according to Vogue, a "stratospheric success" beloved of #GanniGirls all over Instagram. Just don't call it sustainable fashion. "A brand might do one organic T-shirt and call themselves sustainable," says Nicolaj. "We just do what we do, and try to do better every day." ...
May 28, 2020•35 min•Season 4Ep. 119
Friday May 22nd is the International Day for Biological Diversity . Actually this whole year was meant to be about that. The World Economic Forum named 2020 the Year for Nature Action. It was to culminate in a big conference about the UN convention on biological diversity in Kunming, China in October. But the coronavirus pause doesn't mean we get to hold off on action to protect Nature. This week's guest is Helen Crowley, Kering's head of sustainable sourcing and innovation, where she works with...
May 22, 2020•40 min•Season 4Ep. 118
Welcome to the second of our special reports about the fashion industry and COVID-19. This one is about how designers, makers and manufacturers are responding to the shortages of PPE - personal protective equipment - and scrubs for frontline workers, as well as masks for all. What is PPE? Why are there shortages? How have fashion designers and industry leaders around the world stepped up to produce PPE for frontline workers? Featuring Shibon Kennedy , founder of PPE Volunteer; Emergency Designer...
May 09, 2020•48 min•Season 4Ep. 117
