Psst! Mushroom leather is not actually made from mushrooms – but it is fabulous! Much Like our guest this week. Merlin Sheldrake is the biologist and author of the extraordinary book, Entangled Life, How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures.

You might not give fungi much thought, but mycelium networks are working their wonders all around us. And we need them! Together with bacteria, fungi are responsible for breaking down organic matter and releasing carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus into the soil and atmosphere. Without fungi, nothing would decay. We partner up with fungi to make some of the foods and drinks we love the most (hello, bread and beer). And fungi is also causing quite the buzz in fashion, thanks to the invention of new leather-like materials and plastic alternatives derived from mycelium. Forward-thinking designers from Iris Van Herpen to Stella McCartney have been inspired by fungi’s wonderful properties and intriguing life.

Prepare to be wowed by this enlightening conversation that might just change the way you think about everything around you.

Essential listening this Earth Day! Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress

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Whether it’s the joy of dyeing cloth with pomegranates, the age-old practicality of turning sheep wool into felts and knits, or the rich legacy of complex embroideries and silk Ikat weaving, Central Asian textile traditions are bonded by cultural meaning and a respect for the natural world. And resources: nothing gets thrown away, as this week’s guest Aigerim Akenova explains through her love for patchwork - her nomadic ancestors' answer to upcycling.

Aigerim is the country co-ordinator of Fashion Revolution Kazakhstan. With a global outlook (studied in Milan, lives in California), she's also a contemporary Kazakh designer determined to centre sustainability in the national fashion conversation, as the country she was born and raised in scales up its design and creative industries. Still, the big money in this former Soviet territory of 19 million people, is still in mining. The economy is based on oil, coal, gas, but also things like copper, aluminium, zinc, bauxite and gold. As Aigerim puts it: "We've got the whole periodic table." And Kazakhstan is the world's largest uranium producer.

What role could sustainable fashion play in growing newer, lower carbon industries here in line with SDGs? What do young urban Kazakhs and Central Asians in neighbouring countries want from the fashion today? As well as its craft heritage, Kazakhstan also has a vibrant modern fashion scene, its own fashion week, and (doesn’t everywhere?) fast fashion - so how can these two sides find balance in future? Aigerim says we have much to learn from nomadic traditions of sustainable clothing systems.

THIS IS OUR ANNUAL FASHION REVOLUTION SPECIAL BE CURIOUS, FIND OUT, DO SOMETHING. This year's theme is Manifesto for a Fashion Revolution - check it out here.

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How much do you know about the chemicals you're exposed to through every-day things like cosmetics and skincare, clothing or even food packaging, and food itself? How about what chemicals might be contaminating air, soil and water from industrial processes? Do you ever even think about it? We often presume governments and companies will protect from harmful substances, but history is full of examples where the advice over what's safe and what's not changes over time (from asbestos to cigarettes to talc) - the science moves on, new studies are published and one day something everyone presumed was just fine turns out to have grim consequences. Can anyone really say what levels of chemicals with potentially harmful healthy effects are definitively safe for people, animals and the environment, given the variables involved?

Andrea Rudolph is a sustainability pioneer, and a much-loved Danish cultural force. A former TV and radio presenter, she started her organic skincare company Rudolph Care back in 2009, after taking part in a Greenpeace activation that tested the blood of eight Danish volunteers for chemicals present. What Andrea discovered rocked her world, and changed the path of her career.

Now she’s on a mission to raise awareness about toxic PFAS. Andrea wants to see “forever chemicals” banned from consumer products, and to stop any more of them from building up in our environment. This is also the story of one woman’s battle with breast cancer, the power of Nature and how life gets even more precious when you fear losing it. A heart-felt and ultimately hopeful interview, about activism, vulnerability and what really matters. Andrea's message to the consumers: We can change things - but first we have to know what we're dealing with.

Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress

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A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, over 8 million Ukrainian refugees have been registered across Europe. According to UNHCR, the vast majority of civilians who have fled the war are women over 35 with one or more children. Men aged between 18-60 are not permitted to leave (except under special circumstances).

This week, instead of the regular fashion angles, I’m bringing you this very personal conversation with Olena Braichenko, a Ukrainian refugee who, with her six-year-old daughter, is currently staying with my best friends in London. When I go to visit them, they joke that I never want to leave. How must it feel when you can’t?

Finding refuge in a new country is obviously a wonderful thing - and we acknowledge the many millions who aren’t so lucky - but what’s it like to try to make your way somewhere far from home, with strangers? To have to learn a new language? When your husband, parents and many of your friends are back home, and you’re watching the war on the news? When your life, as Olena puts it, feels “on pause”?

This is also a story about sustainability and food culture, Ukraine’s famous černozëm black soil, long traditions of foraging, pickling, small family farms and growing your own veggies. It's a story about home, what we love, and how we live.

Olena is a food writer, publisher and academic, who with her husband, Artem, founded Yizhakultura – a project dedicated to Ukrainian cuisine, where scholars, chefs, food critics, and food anthropologists discuss its history, culture and heritage. She believes in the power of culinary diplomacy, to help get beyond the single story. War is devastating, but people, she reminds us, are more than their experiences of displacement. “I am firmly convinced that everyone who has survived occupation needs to be seen not as a victim, but first and foremost as a person.”

Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress

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Fashion doesn’t exist in a vacuum. As Coco Chanel once said, it’s “in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what’s happening.” So how, as a designer, you do respond to what’s going on in the world when that's a tragedy close to home or heart?

On February 6, 2023 a magnitude 7.8 earth quake hit south-eastern Türkiye, and northern Syria. It was catastrophic - causing unfathomable damage and loss of life. Official figures put the death toll beyond 50,000 people. And to make matters worse, it was bitterly cold winter. Against such a backdrop, fashion’s concerns may seem trifling, but the region is a textiles centre, while and the many garment factories on the other side of Turkey will also feel the effects, with huge numbers of people displaced and vulnerable. Plus through all this, fashion month went on.

What do you do as a creative from an affected country, when you’re reeling from this but not there on the ground? Or not physically impacted? How do you just carry on as normal? Should you even try? If not, then what? On a practical level, do you cancel your fashion show? Realistically, what good would that do?

Do you try to compartmentalise, or block it out, or use your platform to speak out and raise money? Probably all of the above, at the same time! There’s obviously no correct answer, but these are the questions. And also, the context for this week’s interview with London-based Turkish designer Bora Aksu, who shares candidly about what it means to be a creative trying to navigate all this.

But while this is how the conversation begins - it's not how it ends. At it's heart, this is a warm, hopeful and inspiring interview about fashion, family, craft, heritage, upcycling and the practical work of trying to choose the most sustainable textiles as a fashion designer – Bora has been has doing it for years, long before sustainability became the next big thing.

If you’d like to make a donation to the ongoing relief and humanitarian work in Türkiye and Syria, please see the shownotes at www.thewardrobecrisis.com

Value the show? Please help us spread the word by sharing it with a friend, and following, rating and reviewing in your fave podcast app. Got feedback? Tell us what you think! Find Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress

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How do you feel about trends? In sustainable fashion circles, that word can have negative connotations. After all, it's the sped-up trend cycle delivers us fast fashion. Flipping between different, and often conflicting, fashion trends, it's easy to lose control, buy and waste too much. But there's more to trend forecasting than predicting that next week you'll be wearing blue. Or Barbiecore. Or whatever momentary madness TikTok is serving.

Mapping cultural, lifestyle, economic and societal trends helps us form a picture of where we are headed and shape our strategies for everything from new business models to reaching our chosen audiences.

Want to know how the metaverse will impact retail? Or if consumers are really likely to spend more on sustainable solutions going forward? Keen to figure out how Gen Z thinks, or if that's even a thing? Some predict generational terms will soon be a thing of the past...

This week, Clare sits down with Christopher Sanderson, co-founder of London-based trend-forecasters, The Future Laboratory, to ask, what's around the fashion corner - and how they heck do they figure that out anyway? What's the role of intuition, and how can you hone yours? A must-listen for anyone in business who doesn't want to fly blind.

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Find Clare on Instagram & Twitter. Find extended shownotes on www.thewardrobecrisis.com

P.S. In Australia & want to book a presentation for your company? Here's the link to Chris's March 23 speaking tour.

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No doubt you’ve heard the buzz about regenerative agriculture. But who’s actually putting it into practice for the textile sector? At the soil level? Brands can say they want it, regulators can try to incentivise it, chemical companies might resist it, but at the end of the day, it’s the grower who has to actually do it.

What’s it really like for a small-scale Indian cotton farmer trying to make a living? What challenges do they face? And what’s in it for them if they do decide to transition their fields and methods back to the old ways? Yes, the old ways... because, guess what - regenerative agriculture is not at new idea!

This week, Clare meets Nishanth Chopra, founder of Oshadi, a "seed to sew" fashion supply chain, contemporary womenswear brand, artisanal textile company and regenerative cotton farm in India.

This is a story about how the future of textiles and modern artisanship relies on learning lessons from the past. It’s also about one extraordinary young man’s drive to make a difference, and his galvanising tactics - let’s just say, he’s not someone willing to take no for an answer. Nishanth is proving that it can be done.

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As New York Fashion Week rolls around again, it’s the perfect time to listen to this interview with Hillary Taymour, founder of the much-talked-about NYC label Collina Strada.

Collina Strada is produced locally in small runs, using mostly deadstock. They’ve been working with the Real Real to upcycle unsold items, and with Liz Ricketts at the Or Foundation to upcycle and divert T-shirt waste in America before it heads offshore, and ends up in places like Kantamanto Market in Ghana.

Known for shaking up the sustainability conversation stateside, this CFDA/ Vogue Fashion Fund finalist is also often heralded for its work around diversity and inclusion, and championing representation in their shows, but Hillary has no time for that. She says, they simply cast their community; their friends and artists they admire. Whether that’s the label’s co-designer Charlie’s septuagenarian mum; the model Aaron Philip (self- described “a black woman in a wheel chair who happens to be trans”); or a musician like Dorian Electra - it's not that Collina is doing something radical. Rather, that the conventional fashion system is super out of touch.

This is a candid conversation about going your own way, finding joy on creativity, and the frustrations of trying to be a sustainable fashion designer inside an unsustainable system.

*Note: We've been saving this one up - this conversation one was recorded before the break after Series 7.Also before Alessandro Michele’s departure from Gucci was announced.

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On the surface, this is the story of Samorn Sanixay’s epic adventure to map Australia through a colour study of its natural eucalyptus dyes. Last year, she set out to do just that, spending a year travelling around the country collecting leaves from these wonderfully diverse trees wherever she went.

But that's just the starting point of this feel-good interview with the natural dyes expert and co-founder of artisanal weaving studio Eastern Weft in Vientiane.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about belonging, forming friendships and connections to country, and the idea that we have more in common than we think.

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Forget Vogue. Sourcing Journal should be required reading of you really want to know how the business of fashion works. Clare’s guest this week Edward Hertzman founded this trade journal (now part of FairChild, which owns WWD) out of frustration that no one in media was telling the full story about how supply chains operate. A former apparel sourcing agent himself, with a degree in economics, the tough-talking New Yorker tells it like it is.

In the garment game, suppliers and manufactures take most of the risks, while brands wield most of the power. “It’s a very one-sided relationship,” he says. Add in unfair purchasing practices (which are way too common) and downward pressure on prices, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster - as we saw during the pandemic. And who do you think has to invest in all these new sustainability initiatives brands are talking up? Often, it’s the manufacturer. Remember what brands always say: “Well, of course we don’t own the factories or the mills …”

Can the industry change? Who's doing it right? What does a true partnership - as opposed to a purely transactional relationship - between brands and suppliers look like? And what should we expect to happen this year when the cost of living crunch meets the realities of overstocked warehouses? Because many brands, particularly in the US, says Edward, are sitting on giant piles of unsold stock ...

Required listening for anyone working in the fashion sector.

Don't forget to check the shownotes for all the links. Find Sourcing Journal here.

Enjoying the podcast? We are proudly independent, and rely on our listeners to help us stick around.

Can you share the episode on social media, or write us a glowing review in Apple podcasts?

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