The World Needs Creatives with Rachael Sardelich 39. Rewilding Industries with Celeste Tesoriero
What happens when the work you love is built on systems that break the world? What if you stood face-to-face with the devastation your industry creates and walking away wasn't an option?
Today's guest, Celeste Tesoriero, chose to stay. She decided to rebuild her industry from the inside out.
Celeste spent over seventeen years building a formidable fashion career, working for iconic Australian brands and luxury houses like Roland Mouret. She launched her own label that garnered seven international design award nominations and collaborated with sustainability leaders at Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney through the British Fashion Council.
A transformative moment in Bali changed everything, when she was confronted with the harm hidden within the fashion production industry.
Instead of walking away, Celeste got curious. She studied sustainability, permaculture, and Indigenous knowledge systems. Then she did something that takes tremendous courage: she went back to transform the industry she loves.
For the past eight years, through Sonzai Studios, she's been bridging worlds — the commercial and the sacred, the extractive and the regenerative. She helps businesses integrate Indigenous wisdom and genuinely sustainable practices, fundamentally challenging how we think about growth, profit, and our responsibility to the natural world.
Together, we explore the themes of:
- What it means to be humbled by nature and learn to work with rather than against ecological systems
- The courage it takes to close what's successful but misaligned, and how that grief becomes a gateway to something more real
- How to bridge the sacred and the commercial without compromising either
- Why personal sustainability — your own capacity to endure — must come before any business strategy
- The art of holding a mirror to broken systems with empathy rather than condemnation
- What happens when we stop asking "how do I grow?" and start asking "what do I value?"
- And how indigenous wisdom offers us a 60,000-year blueprint for working in right relationship with the natural world
Join us for a conversation about rewilding industries, bridging worlds, and what happens when you refuse to accept that the way things are is the way they have to be.
KEY SHOW LINKS:
Explore Rachael's 1:1 Creative Partnership
Follow Sonzai Studio's on Instagram
Protocols for Non-Indigenous People working with Indigenous Knowledge
5 Steps to a Sustainable Wardrobe & More Resources
You can follow The World Needs Creatives on Instagram HERE.
Explore working or collaborating with Rachael at rachael@rachaelsardelich.com and learn more about her work HERE.
You can join the wider conversation and our community over on Substack via THIS LINK.
The original painted work in the show design was hand painted by artist Sarah Darling.
The creation of our original musical score was created by Camilla Rose Sullivan.