So Shein has bought Everlane and it's freaking people out.

This feels like the right time to throwback to 2019, and my one-on-one with Everlane's founder Michael Preysman.

I found it super interesting to listen back to what he said 7 years ago about why he built the brand, what inspired him, and his hopes for changing the game around sustainability. He ended up selling to LVMH-backed private equity firm L Catterton in 2020, and as such was not involved in the Shein acquisition. But in a yet another plot twist, he's just announced plans to return with a new offering, that he's calling Still Radical. Questions: will anybody buy it? Who else feels let down? Can someone please press pause on sustainable fashion's Twilight Zone/Black Mirror nightmare moment for corporate #sustfash ?!

I'll be back next week with Series 13!

Want more encores in the meantime? Here's the Episode on How Shein Makes Clothes So Cheap.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, I bring you an interview with the fascinating artist Nikesha Breeze. Their Living Histories project explores African diasporic stories, and was a standout at this year's Biennale of Sydney. The fashion connection? Cotton's colonial history.

Maybe you (rightly) love cotton as a beautiful, breathable natural fibre, and routinely choose it over synthetics. Me too! But how much do you know know about the commodity's troubling history, and its links with slavery in the US? The textiles that we wear never exist in isolation, and it's the human stories that unlock meaning.

Also up for discussion: art's role in catalysing change; self-care; the healing powers of sound; capitalism and the commodification of time; our relationship to place, land and each other; how corporations profit from the prison industrial complex - and even make clothing using prison labour.

Recorded in person at the 25th Biennale of Sydney.

If you find the interview valuable, please help us share it.

Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.com

Support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress Follow Nikesha @nikeshabreeze

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As supply chain shocks rock the world yet again, we ask: is globalisation a failed experiment? As my guest this week points out, the idea that global trade is always beneficial for everybody is a lie. Big business just gets bigger, multi-national corporations lobby governments to win tax breaks and shape trade deals, while bankers bet on the misery of millions. There's no point pretending that this system works for the majority. So what's the alternative?

My guest this week is the legendary author, linguist and movement builder, Helena Norberg Hodge.

Helena is the founder of Local Futures, an international non-profit set up to promote ideas around a new economy, one rooted in place, "nature, community, and the deeper meaning that makes life whole". Her books include 2019's Local Is Our Future, and 1991's its called Ancient Futures, about her time in Ladakh, where she arrived in 1975 and began working with local communities there. She's also a filmmaker - you'll hear us discuss her documentary The Economics of Happiness. From the fashion side, she loves local textile heritage and her critique of the global fashion industry is around its focus on what she calls "the consumer monoculture". An expansive conversation about the failings of the current system and what we might build in its place - essential listening!

If you find the interview valuable, please help us share it.

Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.com

Support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a future shaped by climate breakdown and extreme weather volatility, the current systems will be forced to change. Where does that leave fashion? My guest this week has ideas for "a profound structural shift away from fashion as trivialised, superficial and seasonal."

Indy Johar is the co-founder of Dark Matter Labs and a Professor of Practice at RMIT with the Planetary Civics Inquiry.

In his new paper, "The Future of Fashion, Toward an Entangled Economy" he outlines a whole new approach whereby "fashion is not simply worn, it is inhabited, augmented and co-stewarded. It is not just manufactured or marketed, it is programmed, maintained and integrated into complex civil, ecological, and technoligical systems. The garment becomes more than a product - it becomes a living protocol, a cultural interface, a microclimate shelter and a shared asset."

In this rollercoaster convo, we talk about everything from what he wears in the plane, to why he studied architecture, the climate reality and how we might design a better future, what it means to embrace 'interbecoming', and just what your Tshirt might cost if all the the externalities of producing it were factored into the price tag. Buckle up, you might want to listen twice!

If you find the interview valuable, please help us share it.

Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.com

Support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Tasmania's jawdroppingly beautiful Takayna/Tarkine lies the southern hemisphere’s largest single tract of temperate rain forest. It's home to an extraordinary wealth of Aboriginal cultural heritage sites, and habitat for over 50 threatened species. Many of its magnificent trees were here long before colonisation, with some Huon Pines thought to be more than 2000 years old. It’s a pristine, mossy, magical place, that speaks of deep time and reminds us of our relative insignificance. To be lucky enough to camp deep in the forest is to feel an overwhelming sense of connection, gratitude, and our collective responsibility to protect it.

WAIT, WHAT....?!

WE’RE LOGGING IT THOUGH to produce woodchips, plywood and single-use packaging. Says the state government: "Around 5% of the Tarkine has been formally declared as production forest land to sustainably supply wood products." Mad but true. They don’t tell you that on the tourist websites...

Up for discussion: Why should Takayna be world heritage listed? What even is a temperate rain forest? How do they help us regular climate? Who lives there? What might the trees tell us, if they could speak? They're pretty stylish - what do they *wear? What technically is moss, and why is it such a thrill? What's it like to camp here? Are all Aussie animals out to kill you? What can we learn for First Nations people about stewardship? And how are creative activists stepping up action to save these vitally important places?

Featuring: Bob Brown Foundation campaigner Scott Jordan, Palawa activist Cody Gangell, microbiologist Lana Mišić, field ecologist Janey Ogilvie, and artist Imogen Yang.

If you find the interview valuable, please help us share it.

Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.com

Support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A child's dress rescued from the roof of a bombed-out museum. A mother teaching her daughter her ancestral embroidery techniques. A Miss Universe contestant confused over just whose traditional clothes she's trying on on a field trip. Cultural appropriation, erasure, silencing. Joy, close looking, reframing perfection.

On International Women's Day, it feels timely to publish this important episode with Palestinian dress expert Wafa Ghnaim, as we look through the textiles lens to ask: who decides which stories get told, and from what angles? Where do colonial narratives lurk, how can we challenge them and why should we?

Wafa is an art and dress historian, fashion researcher, embroiderer, curator, and the founder of the Tatreez Institute, specialising in Palestinian embroidery, dress, and adornment. In this compassionate, nuanced conversation we start behind the scenes at the museum, and end on every woman's right to tell her story, pass it down - and live in peace.

If you find the interview valuable, please help us share it.

Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.com

Support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the third of four episodes about embroidery. They're all very different perspectives, but each asks in their own way, what is the significance of these stitches? What are they saying, what's their message? It's never just, 'I'm gorgeous.'

Textiles, as we know, can have deep meanings.

In the case of Palestinian tatreez embroidery, it speaks of culture, belonging and exile, documenting stories of family, land and identity. Here, a Wardrobe Crisis listener details her own experience of learning the practice as a way of connecting with her Palestinian roots, and finding comfort and community in these trying times.

If you find the interview valuable, please help us share it.

Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.com

Support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wait, what? That's not real moss?!

Occasionally, you come across something that blows your tiny mind. That's what happened when, flicking through a World of Interiors magazine in my local library, I discovered the blisteringly brilliant work of my guest this week. It lodged itself in my psyche and I determined to track her down.

I did! And here is the resulting conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

In this Episode, I go and visit extraordinary textile artist Amanda Cobbett in her Guildford, UK studio to see exactly how she machine embroiders her magic realist sculptures inspired by the moss and lichen fragments she collects from the forest floor.

If you find the Episode valuable, please help us share it.

Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.com

Support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine learning embroidery in the home of Henry VIII's famed Abraham Tapestries, which have hung on these hallowed walls since 1547. Turns out, it's a thing. The Royal School of Needlework is based at Hampton Court, and offers Europe's only degree program specialising in hand-embroidery.

We meet three students from the class of 2025. Featuring: hard work and failing eyes, the marvellous crusty vibes of sea creatures, melted plastic, rock animism, Indigenous wisdoms and a possible haunting... who said embroidery was quiet pursuit?

If you find the Episode valuable, please help us share it.

Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.com

Support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What's new about the current secondhand obsession?

Trick question! Nothing.

For most of human history, there really was no such thing as waste. As my guest this week, Robin Annear writers in her fascinating book, Nothing New, A History of Secondhand, "Common sense dictates that used must have always followed new." Used stuff had value and there was always a market for it.

But how much do you actually know about the history of all this?

Were you aware, for example, that Shakespeare bequeathed his wife his second-best bed in his will?

Or that it was once considered normal to pawn your winter coat in summer to free up cash?

Or that many servants were part-paid in the master’s cast-offs?

From linen rags in high demand by the paper industry, to the British exporting their military uniforms to Holland (they were cut down to make flannel undergarments); from the posh ladies who patronised the revendeuses (the original preloved fashion dealers of Paris) hoping to nab royalties cast-off couture, to the origin story of the great Aussie opshop - this Ep is chock full of re-fashion stories that will blow your mind. Enjoy!

If you find the Episode valuable, please help us share it.

Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.com

Support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.