If you’ve ever dipped your toe into the world of sustainable fashion, you’ve probably come across Orsola De Castro’s words of wisdom before. Orsola is a leading voice for a more fair and slow fashion industry. She co-founded Fashion Revolution, now a global movement, that was launched in response to the Rana Plaza factory disaster in 2013. Orsola has also just become a GFF Global ambassador, and we’re so excited to work with her and learn more from her.
To celebrate Fashion Revolution Week, which starts today, sustainable fashion journalist Megan Doyle sat down (virtually, of course) with Orsola to talk about greenwashing, the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement on sustainable fashion, practical solutions to change the way we wear and mend our clothing, as well as the critical role that fashion graduates play in making sustainable fashion a priority as they start their careers.
MD: Hi Orsola! Thank you for joining us. GFF is all about supporting new generations of fashion talent as they cross over from education to employment, so I’m interested to hear your thoughts on young people’s approach to sustainable fashion. How is it different from previous generations?
OdC: I’m obsessed with speaking to this generation because I have children of that age. Everybody else is telling them to throw fast fashion away and never buy it again, but what I’m saying is: If you do, buy it with the intention to keep it. When they hear this, I think young people feel a sense of relief. They think “I’ve got fast fashion in my wardrobe and I don’t have to throw it away, but instead I can mend it and honour the people who made it.”
Young people are finding their own system within a very flawed industry to be able to buy fashion. Depop, Vinted, these platforms aren’t being used to save the planet. But young people are innately practising what we’ve been suggesting they do for sustainability reasons. I think if something is spontaneous, it probably works better than if it’s prescribed, for this age group.
We need to keep encouraging buying pre-used and passing clothes on. But if we also encourage young people to mend that tear, or use a different coloured thread to sew a button, we’re beginning to show them how to customise and make fast fashion unique to them.
MD: The sustainable fashion movement has really boomed in the last year, why do you think that is? Have you noticed a shift in perspective on the fashion industry?
OdC: I think it’s down to the Black Lives Matter movement and the conversation around colonialism. This is something which we’ve been speaking about – the fashion industry and exploitation – since Fashion Revolution’s inception, but it was really difficult to make that content understandable. With Black Lives Matter, you have a whole load of young people turning around to their parents and teachers saying: “You taught me wrong. You didn’t explain to me the implications about enslavement, colonialism, imperialism, expansionism.”
This is the foundation on which the fashion industry is built. So suddenly, it’s easy to connect the dots between industrialised fashion (which is the only fashion really that we know now) and its roots in cotton picked by enslaved people in America. These are the foundations of fashion that still define this industry.
Finally, people are starting to look at the fashion industry’s past. Believe it or not, the majority of campaigners still think that in the past, fashion was perfect and that it’s only fast fashion that has destroyed it. Finally, we can say no, the root of the problem is mainstream fashion. Fast fashion is only 20 or 30 years old, but mainstream fashion is 300 years of deliberate exploitation of the environment and people. Understanding this has really helped to deepen the conversation.
MD: On a wider scale, how can we bridge the gap between understanding that our relationship with fashion is flawed and actually implementing practical solutions? What societal changes do you want to see that would help this happen?
OdC: If every single fast fashion store or supermarket – anyone that produced cheap clothing – also facilitated affordable mending, the mending mindset would be in our community. How long does it take to pick up the hem of a skirt? 3 minutes? My point is, I don’t want to call fast fashion “badly made” I want to call it “simply made” because that means it’s very easy to repair.
At the end of the day, it’s about normalising things that aren’t normal. It’s something we already do every day with food. You check the sell-by-date, whether it’s organic, whether it’s local, whether it’s recyclable plastic or not. We need that knowledge to be normalised on a cultural level with fashion.
Think of the amount of time it takes a customer to find the right piece of clothing. You’re looking for all sorts of things – is it big enough for my waist? Does it make my legs longer? Is it the right colour? Imagine asking all those questions about the brand’s principles. If you don’t find the information, you know they’re greenwashing. If you do find it, you’ll know if it’s enough to quench your thirst for information. It’s about taking the time to ask the questions.
MD: Speaking of greenwashing, how do we combat rampant misleading marketing when the industry is almost entirely unregulated? How do you tell what’s greenwashing and what isn’t?
OdC: Everything is greenwashing right now! Every initiative, big or small, has an element of greenwashing to it because there’s no way that anyone is in a position to resolve hundreds of years of human and environmental exploitation in one go.
When you’re trying to spot greenwashing, company size is a good indication. If a brand is really small, you can pick up the phone and ask them. The truth is, the only way to define greenwashing is with knowledge. I want as much information as I can possibly get. If you have doubts, first of all, you have to check what the brand is claiming, and you need to discern whether you believe them or not.
MD: Our graduates are currently looking at starting their careers in the industry – what job roles and skills do you think are going to be crucial to the future of fashion?
OdC: The jobs I think are interesting are dictated by excess production. Some of them will be focused on recycling, and some will be very manual. I’m always joking that we need creative waste engineers in brands and factories.
For someone at university, I’d say the two things you need to look after are your own waste and your eco-design. These are complicated things but they’re also very young. It’s not like anyone in the world is an expert on eco-design yet, so you can make your own expertise as you go along.
Upcycling means being as zero-waste as you can. Zoom in on everything else that’s around you. How can you use what someone else has discarded? How do you discard your own offcuts? Can you immediately design them back into something else? When we think of eco-design, it’s about understanding the techniques around fibres, different components that makeup clothes and designing everything to be disassembled.
Don’t obsess with designing clothes, because you could be a brilliant designer of systems. Can you be a person who brings unwanted fabric from one place to the next? Can you be a repository for ideas that are then shared with designers on other sides of the world that wouldn’t have access to that kind of knowledge? There is so much that goes with the creativity of making clothes that can be explored.
MD: In reality, many fashion graduates will go on to work for big companies, and they may struggle to align their sustainability values with the reality of the fashion system. What would your advice be for young people taking their first steps into the industry who may end up working for a company that isn’t sustainably minded?
OdC: I’m contacted all the time by so many graduates five years on who have entered the industry and they say to me: “I can’t stay in this company any more, it doesn’t reflect my principles.” My question is always, so what else? It’s only one in a million that will have the talent, commitment and sadly, the financial support not to work in fast fashion. To start something else is not a solution, it’s a tiny drop in the ocean.
I say: Stick like glue. We need people inside those companies to make a career there because in 10 years time they’ll be in a position of power. They are recruiting the next generation, and we want them to stay where they are and keep increasing their knowledge, that’s what needs to happen within these companies. I believe that the people who show this level of commitment, interest and open-mindedness will rise faster in the company.
MD: Great advice! I like the idea of graduates influencing positive change in the industry from the inside out. Finally, let’s talk about Fashion Revolution Week 2021. What’s in store this year?
OdC: The theme for this year is Rights, Relationships and Revolution. For us, it’s a very old concept but intersectionality is all the rage this year. What I’d love people to experience is our Fashion Open Studio. This is where we talk about slow fashion, slow news, slow acceleration, slow everything. We have a brilliant cohort of international designers, from Christopher Raeburn, Bethany Williams, to completely new, unknown designers. Last year we had 13 countries and 53 designers, this year it’s 17 countries and almost 60 designers. It’s a really unique way of showcasing fashion – it’s very innovative.
The sustainable fashion community is in an echo chamber, and we need to spread the message. Fashion students play an important role here, because they often become interested in sustainability a little bit before the rest of their community, friends and family, so they can be pivotal in spreading the message. We need students to celebrate Fashion Revolution Week in whatever way they want – just pass it on, talk about it with people, bring people who are remotely interested into the conversation. After all, 100% of the population wears clothes, so we might as well do something with the clothes we wear and make them helpful rather than a hindrance. Fashion Revolution Week is about passion, it’s not about doom and gloom, it’s about doing it joyfully.
You can get involved with Fashion Revolution Week HERE and follow along on social media HERE.