In Episode 343, Kestrel welcomes Adam Taubenfligel, the cofounder, creative director and responsibility lead at Triarchy, to the show. With the goal of restoring integrity to the word sustainable, Adam drives innovation in denim, advancing mindful materials and responsible production at Triarchy.

"How many millions of pieces of clothing are we stuck with because the factory had a minimum, the store only ordered this many, that was the cost of doing business, we had to do it, and so here we are. And so, you know, this scale question is influencing everything and creating mountains of garbage so that people can then congratulate themselves on the success of having hit milestones that are not based in any meaningful reality." -Adam

THEME — RETHINKING FASHION's Conventional Manufacturing Models

For the last 15 years, this week's guest has been entrenched in the denim space, building a brand that in the beginning, was focused on simply making really good jeans. When they realized the intense amount of water waste and chemical harm caused by the denim industry, they quickly brought responsibility into their brand DNA.

For years, they have been focused on "reducing their impact" – reducing their water use, reducing the chemicals used, reducing the toxicity in the distressing process … because reduction was the only option they saw possible, when existing within the boundaries of a fashion system built to thrive on overproduction and overconsumption.

Until recently … when they discovered a way to entirely remove some of the steps in their supply chain. An opportunity to build an entirely new system that could truly shake up what it looks like to manufacture a pair of jeans today.

Like he wrote in a recent Substack article –

"The future of sustainable fashion will not depend on everyone making better choices forever. It will depend on creating systems that no longer require them to. Because the best sustainability decision is the one you never have to make."

Quotes and links from our conversation:

• "In fashion, there doesn't really ever seem to be a conversation around anything other than growth. So growth requires consumption, and then consumption requires cheaper pricing. So then cheaper pricing requires less responsible choices. So then we're all just making future garbage so that we can consume more and make companies grow so that they can become quote unquote more successful. I'm so confused around what the definition of success means in fashion. I will so often see people talking about the success of a financial milestone or another store being opened or another this and that. Like, we did it, we worked so hard, this is so incredible. And I'm like, right, but this is all irrelevant future garbage. What are we celebrating exactly?" -Adam

• Adam's Substack

• WTRLSS

• Triarchy's Website

• Triarchy's Instagram

In Episode 342, Kestrel welcomes Olivia Cueva, a radical dreamer, designer, technologist, and researcher, to the show. Olivia's work bridges creative technology, fashion, biomaterials, and storytelling to explore transformation, regeneration, and collective care. Her practice moves fluidly between community-centered education, speculative design, and research into sustainable and bio-based materials—always with the aim of sparking dialogue, nurturing resilience, and envisioning more just futures.

"A lot of the research that I do now is focused on natural dyes and working with plants and seeing how the natural dyes that we would maybe normally use on natural fibers actually translate to biomaterials. it's been a really amazing process of returning or like sort of remembering ancestry in a way … when I'm working with a certain plant, I'm actually not just looking at its color properties, but I'm also researching what is the story of this plant? How has it been used in different indigenous cultures?" -Olivia

THEME — EXPANSIONS AROUND MATERIALITY TO RETHINK FASHION'S SYSTEMS

Before we dive in this week, I want to share a massive thank you and shout out to my friend Denali Joie, who was featured back on episode 312. Denali helped connect me with this week's guest after meeting her in Brazil at a conference. You can listen to my episode with Denali here >

I am so grateful for this connection as it led to this week's guest's cofounder attending the Design For Compliance workshop Gabi and I hosted at UC Berkeley through Fashion Is Outrageous, and led to the amazing conversation that you're about to hear.

Sometimes, we don't slow down enough to realize how these tiny links lead to really beautiful future moments, and I just wanted to take a moment to honor Denali and the way that she instigated this beautiful unfolding.

This week, we're talking about a super intriguing overlapping of biomaterials research with community-centered education. My guest, Olivia, has woven these seemingly diverse practices into her extremely expansive work.

However, when we get into it, and she talks about using "Future-Facing Innovation" to reimagine our relationships with garments and the systems around us, or she shares more on how her biomaterials research links with Oakland Style Lab, a sustainable fashion education program and community cultural hub dedicated to building a more inclusive and resilient fashion ecosystem in the Bay Area – the correlations are beautifully seamless.

She shares with us how ancestral knowledge and intergenerational learning drive her work and how throughout it all, she focuses on slowing down in order to better reclaim critical thinking amidst the current world we live in.

Amidst the consistently depressing political times we are existing within, it's a refreshingly grounded take that definitely helped me feel optimistic and further motivated.

• "Fashion is so interesting because we're all connected to this industry, whether we care about what we wear or not. Right? Like we all wear clothes for the most part. It's something that touches every society. Whether we shop fast fashion, we only shop thrift, we only shop sustainable fashion brands or we shop at Target — you know, we all are participating in this system and the system is generating so many clothes and textiles and so much waste, and so many people are not aware of that." -Olivia

• Oakland Style Lab's Website

• Olivia's Website

• Oakland Style Lab Instagram

• Olivia's Instagram

In Episode 341, Kestrel welcomes Dr. Joanne Brasch, the Assistant Director at the California Product Stewardship Council (CPSC), to the show. A network of local governments, non-government organizations, businesses, and individuals supporting policies and projects where producers share in the responsibility for managing problem products at their end of life, CPSC is California's thought leader and expert on Product Stewardship and the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) movement.

"We're most proud of our textile EPR program because we achieved a lot in SB 707 that set a new level, a new generation of EPR programs that take a higher priority and implement a lot more reuse and repair throughout the program." -Joanne

THEME — EXTENDED PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY & TEXTILE WASTE DIVERSION

This episode is the second in our two-part series dedicated to exploring some of the layers around Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR, and Textile Waste Diversion.

In line with this conversation, I want to share about an upcoming event I'm collaborating on that's taking place in Los Angeles on June 10th. The Recovered Textile Exhibit is hosted by the City and County of Los Angeles, the California Product Stewardship Council, and the LA Cleantech Incubator. It's funded by CalRecycle, LA Sanitation, and others, and is in collaboration with Afflare.co and Fashion Is Outrageous.

There will be keynote speakers, discussions, and interactive activities that my cofounder Gabi and I helped develop, all with a focus on textile circularity and diverting textiles from the landfill. Additionally, the PRO (Producer Responsibility Organization), Landbell, will be present at the event.

If you're interested in attending, you can RSVP here. If you're able to join, I hope to see you there!

On the last show, we touched on some of the big picture ideas around EPR, and many of the questions around how we can make these circular systems practical.

On this week's episode, we're diving deep into the first-ever textile EPR bill in the U.S., SB 707: The Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024. While this isn't the first EPR policy to hit California or the nation, it is the first to cover TEXTILES.

I chat with someone who played an integral role in the legislative process for the bill – we dive into more on their open-collaborative approach and the importance of community-informed programs, we explore what the "most diverse board requirements" means within the context of SB 707, we learn about how feedback played a distinct role in the legislative process including some from the Or Foundation, and we discuss some of the definitions within the bill like REUSE and RECYCLE, with a focus on unpacking the definition of REPAIR, which is the first global definition that includes upcycling.

You will hear words and phrases like PRO, Needs Assessment, dynamic, legislative and regulatory process, and more. We do our best to help contextualize these definitions along the way, but if you have questions, let me know. I don't want this to feel like another policy conversation that leaves you in the dark – I want it to feel like you can feel welcomed into it, as this is a monumental bill for California and the sustainability and fashion industry as a whole.

One of my favorite things about this bill is that it's DYNAMIC, meaning it will change over time, and be rewritten every 5 years, based on key findings and learnings. So remember – your voice can play an important role in how this bill continues to evolve moving forward.

Also, to note – when this episode was recorded, our guest's new title had not yet been released publicly. Congrats to her, as she is now the Assistant Director – you'll actually hear her reveal it to us later on in the episode.

Quotes and links from our conversation:

• "If we're shopping in a different way 20 years from now, this program can adapt to that because the plan is rewritten every five years and has evidence-based decision-making provisions within the program." -Joanne on why SB 707 being a dynamic bill matters

• "I think the open collaborative approach has really been making sure everyone is using the same language and understands the same process so we can get the best engagement now." -Joanne on CPSC's approach to developing community-informed programs

• "We know repair costs more. We know that it's labor intensive, but we also know, you know, it's a greater GHG reduction and opportunity to again create new products from existing materials." -Joanne on the importance of incentivizing repair in the bill

• Recovered Textile Exhibit, June 10th (2026) in Los Angeles, CA

• Join the STRAT (Statewide Textile Recovery Taskforce)

• California Product Stewardship Website

• CPSC Instagram

In Episode 340, Kestrel welcomes Constanza Gomez, the cofounder and CEO of Sortile, to the show. Sortile is a company focused on empowering the textile recycling industry with technology that enables the identification, sorting and traceability of textiles.

"I was a much more hopeful person when I started this company and I've slowly become more of a skeptic. But that means I've leaned more heavily on the need for regulation versus people acting of their own free and good hearts. And so I think the opportunity is great. You can redefine and set real incentives to manage end of life better." -Constanza

THEME — EXTENDED PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY & TEXTILE WASTE DIVERSION

EPR, or Extended Producer Responsibility, has come up on the show in the past in various capacities – we first talked about it in depth back on episode 275 with Liz Ricketts and Sammy Oteng from The Or Foundation when they were the first grant recipient of SHEIN's Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Fund to help manage textile waste.

Just to get our minds on track for this chat – EPR or Extended Producer Responsibility initiatives or legislation ideally ensure that producers are required to assume the costs of collection, treating, and recycling of the end-of-life of their products.

We are currently in a very exciting time when it comes to EPR policy around the world – there are mandatory schemes in France, Sweden and the Netherlands, with others on the horizon … and where I'm based, here in California, the nation's first EPR policy for textiles, SB 707, passed in 2024, and is currently moving through the process of being implemented.

There are still SO MANY UNKNOWNS when it comes to how these policies are going to play out, but one thing that this week's guest sees as a benefit to this shifting legislation is – MORE ACCESS TO DATA.

As she shares, we just don't have enough data on the textile industry, and when we do, it's generally static data. When EPR comes into play, companies are going to HAVE to report and share specific data, which is going to bring in a much more consistent stream of data and over time, will lead to having more access to dynamic data as well.

This week's guest sees the direct link between research and data, and the need for more of both across the textile space to support more textile diversion – her own research led her to develop a table top textile scanner that helps determine the fiber composition of textiles, a massive support in the sorting process.

We talk about that, but also bigger questions around the opportunities and challenges she sees with EPR policy. I have to say – one thing this week's guest absolutely nailed in our conversations is – posing which questions that we should be asking right now with a big focus on – how do we make these systems practical?

• Sortile Website

• Follow Sortile on Instagram

In Episode 339, Kestrel welcomes Beth Jensen, the Chief Impact Officer at Textile Exchange, to the show. Leading the organization's efforts to achieve beneficial climate and nature impacts, Beth oversees key functions at Textile Exchange including impact data and Life Cycle Assessment studies; impact tools and reporting mechanisms; reports and research; fundraising; and public affairs/policy.

"A big part of vulnerability is really admitting that you don't have all the answers. So in sustainability, in fashion, apparel, and textile space, this is just the way we have to operate. If you said you had all the answers, you wouldn't be taken seriously in this space … What you present as data might change the next time you present it because you have new and better information. You just have to be able to work in the gray and really take the best available information and make informed decisions based on that information." -Beth

THEME — DATA & FASHION: METHODS & ACCESS

Before we dive in, I want to take a moment to remind us all that FASHION IS POLITICAL.

Whenever a big politically-charged moment arises in the U.S., there is this narrative I see creeping around that expects fashion (brands, designers, creators, etc) to stay silent on quote unquote political issues – that fashion should stay in its so-called lane, detached from the world around it.

Here's the thing – FASHION IS POLITICAL. It always has been and it always will be. It doesn't exist in its own little vacuum. If you care about the fashion industry, and its impact on people and the planet, it's imminent to pay attention and engage in so-called politics, because it's entirely interconnected. Just to mention a few of these significant overlaps –

• The origins of the fashion industry in the United States – cotton grown by Black enslaved folks who were forced to immigrate – is political.

• The way clothing supply chains operate – predominantly spread across the Global South where our clothes are made by mostly women of color, who are often paid less than a living wage – is political.

• How certain materials permeate the fashion industry – fossil fuel-derived fibers AKA plastic. While other natural fibers were historically made illegal to grow AKA hemp – is political.

• The largest garment manufacturing city in the U.S. is Los Angeles, employing over 46,000 garment workers, most of whom are immigrant women from Mexico and Central America. L.A. is the wage theft capital of the U.S., with the average hourly wage being $5.85 (Labor Violations In The LA Garment Industry, Garment Worker Center, 2020)

• The institutionalized violent origins of ICE as well as the continued horrific acts they have made toward immigrants and nonimmigrants, fellow members of our communities – is political.

• As Faherty called it in their recent IG post – systemic inhumanity affects us all – our families, friends, colleagues, neighbors and communities, and that is political.

If you try to separate fashion from politics, clothing from humans, it's impossible. Clothing is made by people who are integral members of our communities and valued creatives along the supply chain. We must advocate for our fellow community members and the safety of our neighbors.

This is the second episode is a 2-part series dedicated to DATA IN FASHION. While many of you may already have an understanding of these elements, I think they are important to reframe and contextualize the following conversation.

The fashion industry and the so-called sustainable fashion space has a concerning history with data. The so-called stat – fashion is the 2nd largest polluter globally, second only to oil – unfortunately spread like wildfire before it was found to be unsubstantiated – in 2017, journalist Alden Wicker brought this to light in an article on Racked, and the NY Times did a deep dive into it the following year, calling it the "biggest fake news in fashion".

It's clear that the fashion industry has a massive impact on the earth and its inhabitants – it's an industry that not only thrives with models of overproduction and waste, it also prioritizes synthetic fossil fuel-derived materials like polyester. But, considering how long this inaccurate claim was utilized by the sustainability and fashion realm (to note, I still see it used today and often have to send articles to folks to remind them that it was never substantiated) – I guess, it becomes challenging for fashion to be taken seriously in the greater climate conversation.

Being that fashion is one of the most underregulated industries – I know this is shifting with more policy coming into play, but it's slow. This has further reduced the amount of data collected from brands, because it hasn't been required.

As you can tell, data, fashion and sustainability have a complex history. This week's guest understands this reality, and is pushing to shift the narrative through her work with Textile Exchange. But it's a tricky task, when for her, a lack of data shouldn't prevent us from taking action.

• "Without having data to underpin statements about something working toward reducing impact or creating beneficial impact, there's really nothing for those statements to stand on. Now the challenge there is making sure that we're striking the right balance of not letting perfect data get in the way of doing the work that we need to do to improve practices and create beneficial outcomes for the industry." -Beth

• Materials Market Report 2025 (Press Release)

• Paper on Ensuring Integrity in the Use of Life Cycle Assessment Data (Press Release)

• Industry Reports Library

• Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Library

• Follow Textile Exchange on Instagram

In Episode 338, Kestrel welcomes Miranda Green, an investigative journalist focused on politics and climate change, to the show. As the author of Atmos Magazine's weekly newsletter, The Understory, Miranda takes a weekly look behind the climate headlines to question how decisions are made, why they matter, and what they reveal about this moment.

"I think data to me is, they're facts. It's hard facts. It's looking at points that have been, you know, they're determined by scientists. They've been measured. They are proven points that then, I can use as building blocks to tell my story." -Miranda

THEME — DATA & FASHION: METHODS & ACCESS

This week, we're taking a bit of a pulled back lens, exploring data amidst the current volatile political landscape, with a focus on climate data. Also, to note, this episode was recorded in December of 2025 – as things are changing so rapidly in these times, I want to clarify that detail.

We are in this period of so-called misinformation and an era in which DATA MANIPULATION, as this week's guest articulates, is very real. But it's not only the way the data is being adjusted to fit the user's agenda - there's also the reality that scientifically-backed data is disappearing.

The article that led me to this week's guest is called – "Big Gov Wants To Take Away Your Climate Data" (link below) and in it, she talks about how she always anticipated when the EPA would release its annual tally of corporate polluters and the fines they would have to pay when the pollution was too high. BUT, under Trump, these corporations are no longer required to report their emissions. And that means we don't know what the baseline is for these big polluters, moving forward – we no longer have the comparison data. This is just one blip in the labyrinth of climate and emissions data that this administration is finding ways to bury or delete.

For this week's guest, an investigative journalist, the erasure of climate and emissions data by the Trump administration is making it harder to do her job, and to write stories about what's truly going on.

On the show, we regularly talk a lot about the desire to understand where we're at when it comes to data in the fashion space, in order to determine the best way to move forward. With fashion being one of the most underregulated industries, having a complicated history with so-called data, and with big fashion players being some of the most notorious polluters out there, this reality of disappearing data is highly concerning.

But people are fighting back – scientists and advocacy groups are finding ways to monitor the situation and challenge the Administration's actions. And this week's guest has ideas as well of how we can all get more engaged in ways to resist the continued erasure of significant climate data.

• "Big Gov Wants To Take Away Your Climate Data", article by Miranda on Atmos

• "I think out of sight out of mind is essentially what we are seeing happen right now and it does make it hard to determine what the truth is because what it ends up becoming is essentially, as you just described, is a marketing battle." -Miranda (23:11)

• Follow Miranda on Instagram

• Follow Atmos on Instagram

In Episode 337, Kestrel welcomes Gail Gallie, the founder of THE NAT, to the show. A new convening force for Nature, THE NAT is primarily focused on galvanizing the private capital needed to close the nature finance gap; they just held their inaugural NAT Gala "Night For Nature" in September 2025. From working in advertising to co-leading the creation of the UN Global Goals Campaign, Gail has an extensive background in global advocacy and campaigning.

"I was pretty blown away that you could quantify the amount of money that was needed to fix where we are now to where we need to get to in order to be in harmony and sustainably working with the planet's resources…and then she said the number and it was $711 billion a year. And I was like, OMG that's enormous…And at the same time, this guy next to me lent in and he said, did she just say the nature finance gap is $711 billion? I said, yeah, I had like sad face, like boo, thumbs down, it's loads. And he said, no, he said, that's like not that bad." -Gail

THEME — BRINGING NATURE BACK INTO THE FASHION FOLD

In our last episode, I talked about how this 2-part episode theme – BRINGING NATURE BACK INTO THE FASHION FOLD – was inspired by Carry Somers' new book The Nature Of Fashion and the importance of reminding ourselves that we are Nature and fashion has the potential to be more of a reflection of Nature.

This episode approaches this narrative from an ENTIRELY different lens – one that involves finance, luxury and creating a spectacle – which is why I really love the juxtaposition of these two conversations.

If you hadn't heard yet, there is an actual number that has been calculated – an amount of money that if invested annually into nature-positive projects – could halt biodiversity loss and support a reset for the earth, enhancing life on this planet for years to come.

It's called the nature finance gap – and according to estimates in 2020, the number was $711 billion dollars. If you're like me, hearing that number made me sink deeper into my seat, feeling the overwhelm wash even further over me. But turns out, for folks working in the investment space, this number's not actually that astronomical. It's somewhat accessible — according to this week's guest, if just 2% of global capital is redirected into nature, we could close that gap.

So how does that happen? Considering that about 80% of current conservation funding comes from public sources like governments and multilateral institutions – that leaves a ton of space to galvanize private capital to bridge that gap.

This week's guest has set out to make this happen by creating a luxurious spectacle in celebration of Nature. Anyone ever heard of The Met Gala? Right. Of course you have.

If you work in sustainability, have you ever felt annoyed that everyone is paying attention to this one over-the-top night? And have you felt irritated that so much money is being funneled into the tickets and often very unsustainable attire for the evening?

You're not alone. Yet so many of us still pay attention to it all. It's a spectacle and we are drawn to it.

This week's guest, Gail, generally shared similar feelings. But a couple of Met Galas back, she shifted her perspective and decided to thinking about copying the concept, instead of fighting it — creating a sparkly night focused on generating more funding for Nature – to push toward closing that Nature Finance Gap.

Maybe if we *feel* the power and intrigue of particular cultural moments, we should question how to replicate and reimagine them — instead of finding ourselves caught in the hamster wheel of complaining about the negative impact they may leave behind.

• Global Biodiversity Framework

• THE NAT's Website

• THE NAT on LinkedIn

• Gail Gallie on LinkedIn

• Get in touch with THE NAT

• Follow THE NAT on Instagram

In Episode 336, Kestrel welcomes author and visionary changemaker, Carry Somers, to the show. Co-founder of Fashion Revolution, the world's largest fashion activism movement, and the author of a new book – The Nature Of Fashion: A Botanical Story Of Our Material Lives, Carry has worked across the fashion space in various capacities, advocating for a shift towards transparency, fairness, and sustainability in supply chains.

"Textiles reflect our connection with the natural world, but they're not just about utility. They're definitely about beauty as well. But they're also really an echo of our disconnection from it. And I realized during my research that that rift actually started far earlier than I'd ever realized." -Carry

THEME —BRINGING NATURE BACK INTO THE FASHION FOLD

There are various theories on what has led to the so-called disconnect between humans and nature – not only physically, but also ideologically. Amidst the fashion conversation, it's not necessarily prioritized. We may hear environmental advocates pushing for an expansion in the narrative to ensure humans are included as an integral part of nature. Or we may hear discussions about why we must reconnect with nature in order to better care for it.

As this week's guest, Carry, teaches us – textiles are an integral part of this story – and they can tell us far more about our relationship with nature than we ever imagined – from both a historical and future-oriented lens.

This two-part focus of the podcast is inspired by her new book – The Nature Of Fashion: A Botanical Story Of Our Materials Lives. The theme is: BRINGING NATURE BACK INTO THE FASHION FOLD.

If you know me, you know I get very nerdy about words and their layered meanings. Which is why reading this segment from Carry's pulled me deep into the pages that followed –

"The Latin verb texere, meaning to weave or construct with elaborate care, reminds us that both textiles and texts stem from acts of creation. Textiles and texts, born of the same etymological thread, are entwined with our histories, our cultures, our lives."

The beautiful thing is that these overlaps between textiles and texts – materials and stories – goes far beyond just Latin. As our guest shares, they both evoke texture and encode memory, and through her research, she discovered that across various cultures around the world, there are parallels in both language and meanings, connecting textiles with texts.

So, it becomes more and more clear that textiles have something significant to teach us about our collective history and future. At the same time, as my guest reminds us, the inequity of the archives became glaringly obvious the deeper she got into her research.

So, in her book, *data collection* meant something more expansive than what we might be used to. For her, it was rooted in research, while also welcoming imagination and prioritizing oral traditions.

As she poses in the book – "what if the story of humanity could be told through a single thread?"

• "Balance is not a place to reach, but a rhythm to feel." -Carry in her book

• Buy The Nature Of Fashion

• Carry's Website

• Follow Carry on Instagram

In Episode 335, Kestrel welcomes Lisa Kibutu, the founder of Regenerative Fashion Collaborative Exchange (REFACE) and Regenerative Textile Development Institute (RTDI), to the show. A tech-led social enterprise, REFACE was created to holistically address the negative impact of the global fashion industry on climate change, biodiversity, and the environment in Africa. With RTDI, she is building a pioneering research and development institution that leverages blockchain technology, zero waste operations, and regenerative agriculture to transform agricultural waste from Indigenous grain crops into high-quality textile yarn.

"You're standing in this space, the gap between what society is expecting of you and what your soul insists on you to become. And it influences all my work and my obligation to the sacrifice of our ancestors, the sacrifice that they made to the colonizers, which is why we are where we are today. I sit on ancestral intelligence, which is the blueprint and the foundation of everything that I do. A little bit more than a blueprint to me – I am actually just going to claim my inheritance from the ancestors. And that claiming of the inheritance has become my purpose." -Lisa

THEME —WHEN *REGENERATIVE* MEANS SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST A BUZZWORD

The following is a very important statistic that is rarely centered in the so-called sustainability and fashion conversation — as reported by the UNEP, Africa contributes less than 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the continent has been disproportionately impacted by the changing climate.

With this in mind, in conjunction with her knowledge in fashion, design, anthropology and regenerative agriculture – Lisa founded a powerful two-prong approach to not only address the negative impact of the global fashion industry on climate change, biodiversity, and the environment in Africa, but also – to strategically research and develop innovative textiles made from the waste of Indigenous crops, and to maintain ownership of these technologies within the continent.

Africa has a unique potential at this point in our history – especially when it comes to regenerative agriculture, with 80% of all the food production in Africa being run by smallholder farmers.

The opportunities across Africa are expansive. And as Lisa reminds us, it's not about empowerment. It's about following the blueprint from AI – that is ancestral intelligence – and focusing on enriching communities across the continent.

• "You're right. Fashion is cultural. Cause you've moved from the basic need of covering according to weather patterns, and then you advance to the space where – you need to appeal to aesthetics. That's the next level. But aesthetics are particular to what you find in your environment and then it becomes artistic expression, personal expression of yourself. And I think those are the pieces now, when we talk about fast fashion – those are the pieces that are missing." -Lisa

• RTDI Website

• Follow REFACE on Instagram

In Episode 334, Kestrel welcomes Emily Mikhaiel, the cofounder and creative director of Nazeerah, to the show. A clothing brand inspired by the legacy of her grandmother, Nazeerah supports organic and regenerative farming practices to honor Egyptian cotton, and produces locally in Egypt to maintain direct relationships with their suppliers and reduce their carbon footprint.

"There really wasn't waste while my father was growing up. Everything was either composted or if it was metal, it was recycled or reused or repurposed. If a garment was no longer wearable, they'd cut it up into strips and weave carpets out of it. And once the carpet was no longer usable, they'd cut it up again and compost it. So using that knowledge and thinking, you know, as a society, we've existed without plastics for millennia. Why can't we return to that and draw inspiration from that in our design?" -Emily

SEPTEMBER THEME —WHEN *REGENERATIVE* MEANS SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST A BUZZWORD

This week's episode is focused largely on a regenerative approach to making clothes – one that includes thinking about the end of life of the garment at the design process, where organic cotton farming is centered, not only to help maintain soil health, but also to enhance biodiversity and restore carbon to the soil, and where local production is prioritized.

Without sounding like a broken record, it's important to acknowledge how this word – regenerative – has undoubtedly become another buzzword that's taken fashion by storm. We've seen countless brands integrate it into their marketing messaging, and it's becoming more and more utilized across the space as the "new way" to talk about building a more sustainable brand.

HOWEVER – it's very key to note that regenerative is by no means a new concept. As we've touched on in past episodes, it is rooted in Indigenous knowledge, in traditional ways of farming and ancestral ways of growing plants and being in conversion with the Earth.

This week's guest has deep family ties to cotton and garment making in Egypt. As she shares with us, Egypt has a unique history connected to cotton farming that for generations, was intrinsically linked to the natural rhythms of the Nile River.

Through her brand, she is not only honoring her ancestors' connection to the land, but also supporting farmers who are reclaiming what regenerative cotton farming can look like today.

• Nazeerah Website

• Follow Nazeerah on Instagram