WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

Welcome to the first episode of our new series all about workers' rights.

My guest this week is Christina Hajagos-Clausen who is the IndustriALL Global Union’s director for the Textile, Garment, Shoe and Leather Sector.

Our interview was recorded during the organisation's 4th Global Congress held in Sydney at the end of last year, at "a critical moment. Workers everywhere are being hit by converging crises, growing inequality, the climate emergency, digital disruption and the increasing concentration of corporate power."

So how can workers ensure get to help shape a future that is fair, democratic and just?

This is an expansive conversation that covers everything from: Why are trade unions necessary to the New Industrial Revolution, automation and AI. We explore what unions doing in the global textile & garment sector to shape a just transition. We look at specific garment producing countries and stories - including whether or not to boycott Made in Myanmar - plus the whole idea of the Labor movement as a check on fascism everywhere.

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
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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 soon with Series 13!

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