WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

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 conversation with First Nations Fashion + Design ambassador - model Charlee Fraser. Charlee is a proud Awabakal woman and a beautiful spirt. She's also a Paris fashion week favourite with multiple magazine covers under her belt. Follow her on Instagram here.Find First Nations Fashion + Design here.You can find extensive notes & links on what you hear at www.thewardrobecrisis/podcastThank you to our sponsors Bendigo Art Gallery.  Enjoyed the episode? Please share it! Tag us on Instagram @thewardrobecrisis @mrspress Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Series 5, #sharethepodcastmicWhy 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 this country. And from designers Julie Shaw of Maara Collective and Teagan Cowlishaw of Aarli.You can find extensive notes & links at www.thewardrobecrisis/podcastEnjoyed the episode? Please share it! Tag us on Instagram @thewardrobecrisis @mrspress Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 artist and designer.Up for discussion: everything from gender neutral fashion, to the limitations of representation to what it means to truly redefine beauty. Also, fashion has been largely silent on the rising wave of transphobia, says Alok, yet continues to draw inspiration from gender-nonconforming people.This episode is a powerful call to designers "take it as an ethical imperative to de-gender their lines" and to "everyone, regardless of your gender, to make this an issue."It's time for all of us to start asking difficult questions, say Alok. "Asking our favourite brands, our favourite designers: why do you continue to gender your product? What is the purpose of this? The next piece is, how are we subverting gender tropes in our own lives? Are we dressing to fit an idea of what women or men should be, or are we dressing for ourselves?" Here's Aditi on Instagram.Find Alok on their website here.Find all the notes https://thewardrobecrisis.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 unpacked? Kalkidan's Ethiopian roots and how returning to Addis Ababa as an adult sparked the idea for Sancho's. The million racist micro-aggressions people of colour face in the fashion industry (and everywhere else), who gets the power, and how to be an ethical leader.Here's Aja on IG.Here's Kalkidan's own website. Here's Sancho's on Instagram.www.sanchosstore.coHead over to https://thewardrobecrisis.com/podcast/2020/12/2/podcast-130-aja-barber-interviews-kalkidan-legesse to read yours and #bethechange Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 space today - as are their guests. I couldn't be more grateful to them all for sharing their experiences with us, and being part of this project. I'm excited to bring you this contextual episode with brilliant sustainable fashion writer, activist and stylist Aja Barber, before I pass the mic on to her as our very first guest host next week.It's all up discussion today: from allyship (when brands get it wrong & how to get it right) to fashion billionaires; white fragility, the dreaded Karens, and coddling vs. discomfort. We talk about how the system is rigged but we have the power to change it. Aja's vision for a sustainable fashion future? Press play to find out.Head over to https://thewardrobecrisis.com/podcast/2020/11/23/podcast-129-aja-barber-anti-racism-work-amp-sharing-the-mic to read yours and #bethechangeAja's on Instagram here.Follow her Patreon here.Can you help us spread the word about this series? Use the hashtags #sharethepodcastmic #wardrobecrisisguesthostsInsta @thewardrobecrisis @mrspress Twitter @mrspress  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 future, and forward-looking brands are taking note.Our chat covers everything from Keah's New York Fashion Week debut and how her hashtag #disabledandcute went viral to writing her first screen play and the finding joy in the everyday. This is an enlightening, bright interview full of inspiration. What a treat to have Keah on the podcast.Let us know what you think. You can find Clare on Instagram and Twitter.Keah's website is here.Do you follow us at @thewardrobecrisis ? Remember, you can read our magazine at www.thewardrobecrisis.com, you can sign up for our bi-weekly newsletters there too.Head over to https://thewardrobecrisis.com/podcast/2020/10/8/podcast-128-keah-brown-why-is-fashion-ignoring-disabled-customers and #bethechangeTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 it across time to craft our identities. Oh, and sustainability.Basically, this is why we love to make podcasts. And Paul is the greatest. Enjoy!Head over to https://thewardrobecrisis.com/podcast/2020/9/25/podcast-127-paul-dillinger-future-fashion-philosophy-amp-wearable-tech to read yours and #bethechange Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"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.com/podcast/2020/9/17/podcast-126-david-breslauer-on-spiders-biotech-amp-bolt-threads to read yours and #bethechangeLove the show? Don't forget to hit subscribe. You can contact host Clare Press on Instagram here, and follow the show here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 fashion, and the birth of cool - with a great many pinch-me stories!Outspoken, unafraid, and a true original, Francois Girbaud is fashion pioneer.Meet the man who brought denim to Paris in 1964 with his boutique Western House, who dressed Jimi Hendrix, counted Brigitte Bardot as a customer, and wanted to be a cowboy like John Wayne.This is a rare chance to hang out with one of the great fashion characters. ENJOY!Head over to https://thewardrobecrisis.com/podcast/2020/8/27/podcast-125-francois-girbaud-denim-legend to read yours and #bethechange Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 not a mainstream topic, and most people have no idea about chemical use in clothing production. But the fashion industry has made headway.The Greenpeace campaign succeeded in making fashion take action. Initially 6 brands got behind the formation of the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) programme, with the aim of removing hazardous chemicals from apparel and footwear supply chains by 2020. It's called Roadmap to Zero. Discover how it works, learn about the wins and find out what's left to be done.Head over to https://thewardrobecrisis.com/podcast/2020/8/6/podcast-124-chemicals-in-fashion-supply-chains to read yours and #bethechangeTalk to Clare in Instagram and Twitter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.