PODCAST · arts
WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press
by Clare Press
WARDROBE CRISIS is a fashion podcast about sustainability, ethical fashion and making a difference in the world. Your host is author and journalist Clare Press, who was the first ever Vogue sustainability editor. Each week, we bring you insightful interviews from the global fashion change makers, industry insiders, activists, artists, designers and scientists who are shaping fashion's future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
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"I was a garment worker. I know how the system works." - Beth Macpherson on Empowering Fashion Workers through Ethical Clothing Australia
"Oh, but we buy Australian-made. Exploitation is something that happens elsewhere!" Time to bust that myth, says this week's guest, Australian union organiser - and former garment worker - Beth Macpherson. In this warm and enlightening conversation we discuss: the evolution and changing shape of...
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Hope in Times of Oppression with Khalid Mahmood from Pakistan's Labour Education Foundation
On the surface this is our first episode on the textile, clothing and footwear industry in Pakistan. The industry is major player in the country’s economy, contributing significantly to exports and employing more than half of its workforce. And in this interview with labour rights expert Khalid...
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Who Made Your Clothes? Cambodia Edition
H&M, Inditex, Adidas, Gap... Some of the world's most famous apparel brands source from Cambodia, where 1 million people are employed by the garment, footwear and travel goods industry. Low-paid work, work in the informal economy, even work without pay is sadly widespread. By some estimates, half...
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Happy 20th Birthday Copenhagen Fashion Week! A catchup with Cecilie Thorsmark
All fashion eyes on the Danish Capital! We interrupt our series on workers’ rights to bring you this warm and lovely chat between friends. I have been on the sustainability advisory board of Copenhagen Fashion Week since 2019, and it’s by far my favourite fashion week. As the SS27 runaways happen...
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How Ethical are My Sneakers? Niki Gamara on Speaking Out for Workers
How much do we really know about how our clothes and shoes are made? Or even where? While the latter is routinely included on care labels, that’s often the end of the story, at least the one the brands want to tell you. Despite years of campaigning by groups like Fashion Revolution, Labour Behind...
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Distressed Denim - Why Four Dutch Consumers Want to Take Levi's to Court
There's a long history of exploitation in the denim supply chain, as our first guest this week, Bego Demir, can attest. He developed incurable silicosis in the 2000s as a result of his sandblasting job in a Turkish factory producing jeans for a famous American brand. These days Bego coordinates...
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How to Make Fashion Fair - Johnson Yeung from Clean Clothes Campaign
What are the biggest issues facing garment workers globally today? How can we most effectively advocate for them if we've never walked in their shoes? What do we mean by solidarity, and how does that work in action? Is the compliance and social auditing industry the answer? (Spoiler alert: no!)…
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Christina Clausen on Unions, Workers' Rights and the New Industrial Revolution
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...
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Encore - How Michael Preysman Built Everlane
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...
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Do You Know the History of Cotton? Artist Nikesha Breeze on Honouring her Ancestors and the Story of Colonial Cotton
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…
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Helena Norberg Hodge - Globalisation Has Failed Us. What Now?
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…
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Dark Matter Labs' Indy Johar on Planetary Civics and a new Vision for Fashion's Future
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...
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A Forest Story - Adventures in Tasmania's Magical Temperate Rainforest
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...
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Ethics, Embroidery and Which Stories Get Told, Wafa Ghnaim on the Power and Practice of Palestinian Dress
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…
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A Wardrobe Crisis Listener on Learning Tatreez Embroidery to Connect with her Palestinian Culture
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…
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The Unreal Awesomeness of Amanda Cobbett's Embroidered Moss Sculptures
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…
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Sew Good! Learning Embroidery at Hampton Court Palace
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...
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The Absolutely Fascinating History of Secondhand Everything, with Robin Annear
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...
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How to Co-Create with Artisans, with Karishma Singh-Kelsey
The global handcraft market is worth more than a trillion dollars. Yet, particularly in rural areas, many highly skilled craftspeople live with inconsistent incomes, no social safety nets and ongoing threats to their cultural heritage. There is rising interest their wares, for some of the same...
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The Rise and Rise of Secondhand Fashion
We’re all secondhand shoppers these days. But where? How? And more importantly, why? Online marketplace platforms have grown exponentially (making billionaires of some of the founders in the process) but there’s also a surge happening IRL, where the indie dealers hold the power. And the more…
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Expert Advice on the Vintage Life with Fashion Impresario Phillip Boon
In the first of a mini-series on the rise of second-hand fashion, my guest is the very charismatic and knowledgeable Aussie vintage fashion guru, Philip Boon. I'll leave it to him to tell you his story, and that of the late Mary Lipshut, the extraordinary Melburnian vintage doyenne, whose...
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Commercial Break - A Lovely Conversation on Noticing Birds
We know the struggle to resist the January sales is real! So this week's pod is for anyone who needs a reminder that some of the best things in life are free. Or, maybe you could use bit of encouragement to take a moment to ground yourself. Consider it permission to forget capitalism, scary news...
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With Love From's Lizzie Dibble Wants Local Libraries to Lend Clothes as well as Books
Lizzie Dibble wants libraries to lend clothes as well as books. Not just any clothes though. A carefully curated selection of donated second-hand fashion, imbued with the stories of former wearers, and volunteer-run. With Love From… has built a collection of occasion-wear, mostly for women…
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Inside Shein - How the Ultra Fast Fashion Brand Makes Clothes So Cheap
Despite Shein’s new sustainability rhetoric, workers are still paying the price for the ultra-fast fashion giant’s success. To 75-hour working weeks, piece rates and no contracts, we can add secrecy, opaque financial operations and a general air of mystery around its billionaire founder and how…
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"Brands Should Stop Overproduction!" Yayra Agbofah's Advice for Big Fashion
Listen up! Yayra Agbofah is the founder of Ghanaian non-profit, The Revival. He's seriously stylish a poet, a creative upcycler, and one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders, as well a 2025 winner of the H&M Foundation's Global Change Award. And he's got some advice for the...
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She's Serving Fabulous! Notes on Dressing Confidently with Samia Benchaou
We're back! And excited to be kick off Series 12 with this fabulous interview with Copenhagen-based Moroccan Danish stylist, and excellent dresser, Samia Benchaou. Clare and Samia met at fashion week when they got talking about the power of a great outfit. Can you relate? Bet you have a story of...
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Cut Above - Inside Savile Row with Edward Sexton's Dominic Sebag-Montefiore
Construction! Proportion! Craft! What lies behind the enduring power of the suit? Of great tailoring? How is that amplified when it’s bespoke? What makes a good suit? Does it still matter? Why? And how much should it cost? All these questions, and many more are on the (cutting) table this week…
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Trade Secrets - Pattern Making 101 with Glen Rollason
This week's guest, Glen Rollason, describes pattern making as the architecture of fashion. It's the bones, the structure, the technical process that gives our clothes shape, moves them from the 2D to the 3D, and helps them fit. Pattern making is drafting, design, and highly skilled technical...
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Made in Melbourne Pt 4: Australia's National Designer of the Year, Amy Lawrance on Artistry and Authenticity
In the last of our mini series, Made in Melbourne, we meet Australia’s National Designer of the Year 2025, Amy Lawrance. Amy launched her namesake label just a couple of years ago, but she's highly experienced - working for other labels, teaching at RMIT, and she is an extraordinary,...
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Made in Melbourne Pt 3: Less Stuff, More Meaning with Saskia Baur-Schmid
What do your favourite clothes mean to you? How connected are you to most of what's in your wardrobe? If you had to start from scratch, what would you prioritise? This interview is the third in a mini series of four about made in Made in Melbourne. This time, it's actually made in Ballarat, which...
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Made in Melbourne Pt 2: Jude Ng - How to Make in Fashion in Your Own Hometown
In the second of our mini series on emerging designers based in Melbourne, my guest this week Singaporean-Aussie designer Jude Ng. Jude started out selling at design markets, and we talk here about how some people might view that as not elevated, somehow not fashion enough. And what rubbish that...
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New Designers to Know: Made In Melbourne, part 1 - Isabelle Hellyer, All Is Gentle Spring
A new generation of fashion designers is rejecting the current system, but what are they building in its place? In the first of our mini-series, Made in Melbourne, Isabelle Hellyer, the designer behind All Is Gentle Spring, discusses her vision for small-scale, skills-based fashion trade we can…
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Is Luxury Fashion 'Sustainable by Nature' - Lessons from Loro Piana
According to Antoine Arnault, CEO of Loro Piana: "Luxury products are sustainable by nature." Hmmm. What do we think of that, then? Just because it's expensive doesn't make it ethical. In case you are not across these names, Arnault is a member of the LVMH dynasty (his dad, Bernard, is one of the...
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Too Hot to Handle - Garment Workers in the Era of Extreme Heat
We've all had tough days at work, right? But I'm going to bet your last one didn't involve multiple colleagues fainting from heat stress. My guest this week is researcher and academic Cara Schulte, author of an important new report, for Climate Rights International, that looks into the effects of...
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Indigenous Star Knowledge and Changing the Narrative with Cultural Astronomist Ghillar Michael Anderson
To mark NAIDOC week in Australia, which officially celebrates & recognises the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, we bring you this interview with activist, astronomer and knowledge holder Professor Ghillar Michael Anderson, who was central in the...
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After the Kantamanto Fire - Resilience, Creativity, Community
This week's episode is an update from Accra, Ghana, and the situation at Kantamanto markets. It was recorded during the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen, where I met up with Liz Ricketts from The Or Foundation. Liz was with several community members from Kantamanto, including market trader…
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Wine Waste, Algae and Co-designing Bacteria - Welcome to the World of Future Fabrics
Over the past few weeks, we've been diving into the world of weaving with natural fibres, exploring local textile traditions and capabilities, and don't get us wrong - we will always love that. But there's also a whole world of sciency possibilities shaking up the future of fabrics and fabulous...
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Old-School Sustainability - A Visit to Australia's Longest-Running Weaving Mill
Welcome to another episode about why it matters that we can make stuff locally. After last week's ep on Yorkshire's centuries-old wool recycling expertise, this time, as promised, Clare's taking you back to Australia, to see another inspiring mill in action. We're in Launceston, Tasmania to visit...
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Waste Not, Want Not - Mungo, Shoddy, the History, Process and Modern Times of Mechanical Wool Recycling
Ever wondered how mechanical textile recycling actually works? What shoddy and mungo is, and why we called it that? What the rag n' bone man collected back in the day and how the trade grew up, then scaled back? And what it will take to bring it back and keep what's already here, going? Wonder no...
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A Love Letter to Local Textiles Skills, with Julia Roebuck
What if the best place was the one you're already in? Meet Julia Roebuck, the powerhouse organiser behind Thread Republic Textile Reuse Hub and social enterprise in Huddersfield, UK. We're talking about textile skills, mending, repair, sewing, the wellbeing economy and what that might look like -...
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Clare's Take: 5 Lessons from Australia's First Big Sustainable Fashion Conference
How do you feel about competition? Do you think it’s healthy? Natural? Are you that person who has to win at Scrabble or tennis or the pub quiz? Or maybe you've read your Gaia theory and are hooked on the idea of a harmonious, post-patriarchal ecosystem that's all about balance and working...
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Human Rights and the True Cost of Fashion - it's time to get real on this persistent issue
Want a side of modern slavery with that? Didn't think so. Modern slavery is organised crime, and no one wants that lurking in their supply chain. Yet fashion and textiles are key industries implicated in this travesty that traps an estimated 50 million people worldwide in forced labour, debt...
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Fab Scraps, Clever Pattern Cutting and Why Apparel Factories Need Design Thinkers, with Industrial Upcycler Agustina Comas
Continuing our theme of fashion's crazily wasteful ways, and our focus on Latin America, this week, more Brazilian goodness, as Clare sits down with São Paolo-based industrial upcycler Agustina Comas. We're talking fast fashion, big business, athleisure's reliance on synthetics and rethinking...
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"Don't buy, rescue!" Fixing the Trash Pile of Clothes in Chile's Atacama Desert
Hello! What are we actually doing? Our unwanted clothes don't belong dumped in Chile's beautiful Atacama Desert... Everyone knows reasons why the global north exports used clothing to the global south - it's because fashion is too fast, quality is too low, volumes are too high, and for rich...
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"23 billion pairs of shoes every year and we're throwing out 22 billion!" - Chandni Batra on What the Sneaker Giants Don't Tell You
Twenty-two billion! What are we playing at?! Things get worse when we look at the materials most commonly in use. The sports shoe category in particular is a giant, influential sector, yet its waste footprint and chemical inputs tend to fall under the radar. And don't get us started on the...
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Everything's Better When the Sustainability Team is in Charge - the Inspiring Tale of Lafaani
In the third of our four-part mini series on sustainable fashion in India, Clare sits down with Drishti Modi and Rashmick Bose, the duo behind slow fashion brand Lafaani. It's focused handcraft, handloom weaves, and natural dyes, and their clothes are gorgeous - we want them all! But the founders...
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From Vintage Seller to Artisanal Manufacturer: Is Ritwik Khanna India's Most Promising New Designer?
More from our visit to India! If you listened to the last episode with stylist Daniel Franklin, you'll have heard Clare promise more to come from India's burgeoning sustainable fashion scene. This week's chat is with one of Delhi's most promising young designers, who's just shown his collection…
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Lakmé Fashion Week Special: Styling India's New Wave Designers, with Daniel Franklin
Mumbai and New Delhi take turns to host Lakmé Fashion Week, and this season it's the former that will be exploding with creative runways and high-craft fever, starting next week. To get you in the mood, we're bringing you an Indian mini-series of the Wardrobe Crisis podcast, starting with this...
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Woke! Anti-Woke! What's with all the Corporates Ditching DEI?
A disturbing shift away from diversity, equity and inclusion is spreading through the corporate world. Following US President Donald Trump's lead, some of the world's most powerful companies have rushed to dismantle years of positive work that's been done in this area. Race and gender are central...
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Oh Hey Ripu Daman Bevli... Meet The Plogman of India
It's time for some more trashtalk, my friends. Remember plastic pollution? Of course you do - because it's still with us. According to the UNEP, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic enter the world's oceans, rivers and lakes EVERY SINGLE DAY. And while there was a great deal of...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
WARDROBE CRISIS is a fashion podcast about sustainability, ethical fashion and making a difference in the world. Your host is author and journalist Clare Press, who was the first ever Vogue sustainability editor. Each week, we bring you insightful interviews from the global fashion change makers, industry insiders, activists, artists, designers and scientists who are shaping fashion's future.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
HOSTED BY
Clare Press
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How many episodes does WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press have?
WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press currently has 283 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press about?
WARDROBE CRISIS is a fashion podcast about sustainability, ethical fashion and making a difference in the world. Your host is author and journalist Clare Press, who was the first ever Vogue sustainability editor. Each week, we bring you insightful interviews from the global fashion change makers,...
How often does WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press release new episodes?
WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press publishes regularly with 283 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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Who hosts WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press?
WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press is created and hosted by Clare Press.
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