WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

“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 capabilities that already exist. That might mean some re-shoring, but it’s also an encouragement to value what's already in our backyards.Reports of the end of textile manufacturing in so-called consuming countries are exaggerated. We've still got it! Albeit on a smaller scale than when our parents were young. Wherever in the world you are listening, Meriel wants you to look around and recognise what you already have in terms of local skills, manufacturing & R&D capacity. Australia, for example, produces some of the world's best fibre, and there are still production facilities domestically for most stages of the supply chain. Find a gap? Might be worth working to close it.Full Circle Fibres is a recipient of the Country Road Climate Fund. Discover here.Check out the shownotes on wardrobecrisis.comCan 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. Thank you!Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ones: how do we want to live, in relation in one another? How can we heal and listen and unlearn to change systems that don’t work anymore?Missed part 1? Do go back and listen. Or find it here. Can you help us share it?These podcasts are in addition to our usual programming and form a 2-PART SPECIAL EDITION ON THE VOICE REFERENDUM IN AUSTRALIA. They came about because Clare kept speaking to people who hadn’t yet read the ULURU STATEMENT FROM THE HEART.We wanted to help with that, and to be active on behalf of our deeply felt support for the YES23 campaign in this referendum.Part 1 is a mini pod on the Uluru Statement and the question of Indigenous recognition in the Australian constitution - it’s under 10 mins, ideal to share! As Juno says at the end of this interview, whatever happens with the Aussie referendum on October 14th, this is part of a long fight for social justice that continues. And there’s hope! “Don’t argue with people who don’t see it yet, because they will eventually … We can see this groundswell of good will, of kindness of wanting to know, to learn, of opening up to each other.”RESOURCES:ulurustatement.orgyes23.com.aureconcilliation.org.auThe Australian Fashion Council supports Yes - more here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 TO FIX THAT.” Yes23You will also hear from JUNO GEMES. One of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary photographers, she has been documenting the civil rights movement in Australia since the 1970s. What next? For the full interview with Juno, listen to Part 2.www.thewardrobecrisis.comRESOURCES:ulurustatement.orgyes23.com.aureconcilliation.org.auThe Australian Fashion Council supports Yes - more here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 tried and true member of the sustainability movement — arguably being a founder of the word before it even really became a thing.”But does he relate to that? How does he see his work? What inspired it all back in ‘90s London’s rave scene? And how does he see the future for fashion’s young waste warrior disruptors? Part fashion history lesson, part provocation to challenge our consumerist culture, this one’s an adventure - enjoy!Check out the shownotes on wardrobecrisis.comCan 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. Thank you!Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Taylor Zakhar Perez, a rising Hollywood star known for his leading man roles and Paris fashion week looks, discusses the risks and rewards of talking about sustainability, the lack of famous names in climate activism, and his journey from competitive swimmer to supply chain nerd. They also explore the overwhelming nature of sustainability challenges, crafting an image in the film industry, and the power of kindness and gratitude.

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 “collaborating on projects [to] end their destruction.”Over the years, such projects have included: working with Adidas to phase out single-use plastics; partnering with big-name visual artists on everything from underwater sculptures to sustainable surfboards; funding research into new materials; and setting up programs in schools. On a practical level, Parley’s work is just as likely to play out as beach cleanups in the Maldives as it is to be a new Dior bag. It’s all in the mix, to beat what Cyrill calls “our addiction” to virgin plastic.Next on his To-Do List? Just a total materials revolution. “We need to change the way we make stuff.”Check out the shownotes on wardrobecrisis.comCan 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. Thank you!Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danish designer Cecilie Bahnsen discusses her intersection of couture and ready-to-wear fashion, the challenges of upcycling precious scraps, and the idea of timelessness in a novelty-obsessed world. They also explore the joy and pleasure found in clothes, the cultural influence of cycling in Copenhagen, and the pressure of the fashion industry. Bahnsen shares their approach to sustainability and the creative use of off cuts, as well as the creative process and collaboration in fashion shows.

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 by sharing your favourite Episodes. Thank you!Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 to get behind a more sustainable future? Rachel calls them “architects of desire”, and says people who work in advertising, marketing and media play a vital role in persuading us what to want. Which comes with great responsibility…Access the Playbook here for free.Check out the shownotes for more links.Don't forget to tell us what you think! Find us on Instagram @mrspress @thewardrobecrisisThank you for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 herbicides, cheap synthetic fertilisers, and tearing out trees and hedgerows to make managing monocrops easier, farmers produced so much, there was plenty to spare - and waste.But the bonanza couldn't last forever...Today, they are experiencing a backlash. Once celebrated for filling our plates, farmers now find themselves vilified for destroying our environment. That many are the very same people who remember when everyone loved and respected them, and are only doing what governments and consumers said they wanted, is not often discussed. Can regenerative farming save them, and our soils?Sarah Langford is the author of Rooted, How Regenerative Farming can Change the World. She’s also a farmer herself, although she didn’t start out that way. A must-listen Episode as a stand-alone, but for maximum inspo, listen back to the Eps on sustainable materials, animal cruelty, and leather supply chains when you're done! Check out the shownotes for more links.Don't forget to tell us what you think! Find us on Instagram @mrspress @thewardrobecrisisThank you for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.