“Can you share a bit about your career journey to date– how did you get to where you are now?”

I think I can define my career really as being about curiosity. That sounds incredibly nebulous, but I've always wanted to know about what's coming next, how it will affect us, what all it means and how we should start thinking about it. I love the idea of change and transformation and find it exciting to explore how things can be different. So I started out as a journalist reporting on exactly that within the fashion sector. Initially, given this was some time ago, it was about the industry's uptake of things like social media and e-commerce - the digital revolution if you will - the innovations and technologies that were really evolving what fashion looked like. 

Over time my work evolved into strategy and consulting, and that element of change moved into being about sustainability. At that point I had a real wake up call realising that this is the only sort of transformation that matters - that everything else I'd been feeding into was just helping to perpetuate and expand business-as-usual, which in turn was causing unintelligible damage to our planet and to the livelihoods of so many marginalised people around the world. Once you see that sort of thing you can't unsee it, so from there I made a really conscious decision that I would only say yes to work from that point on that was contributing to what I considered "systems change" - or in other words, really genuinely needle shifting stuff. That's easier said than done I realise, not to mention because of the fact there's a lot of 'sustainability-as-usual' work out there, meaning efforts that look on paper like they're doing good but are really just serving as a tick the box exercise all the while business continues to balloon.

I was very fortunate to land a role at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2020 leading their advocacy work on sustainable fashion, which has fulfilled a lot of what I was hoping for. This has been about shaping UNEP’s own strategy on sustainable and circular textiles as a priority sector in the fight against the triple planetary crisis (climate, nature, pollution), and overseeing the work focused on narrative shift as a primary lever for reducing overconsumption. This includes exploring greenwashing, redirecting aspiration and the power of citizen action. I also still work with a few other organisations like non-profit Textile Exchange and am really enjoying being focused on trying to reimagine and redefine what the model of fashion looks like.

“Last year, you started offering virtual 'office hours' to support students and young professionals looking to get into sustainable fashion careers, and have just launched a new platform - 'Owning it' on Substack - to empower people to work in this fast-paced and ever evolving industry. What inspired you to launch this platform?”

I'm in a very fortunate position of having a lot of people approach me to ask me about my career and the work that I do. I've always enjoyed mentoring and have thrived off of the peer-to-peer network I gained through the FashMash community I established with my friend (and then co-founder) Rosanna Falconer in the early days of my career. I wanted to sort of pay that forward in some ways. But I also realised that so many of the questions I was being asked in these conversations (the few that I was managing to fit in) were so very similar. So I asked myself what it would look like if they could be asked in a room together?

My theory was that it would mean I could respond to and engage with a much higher number of people on the one hand, but they could also learn from each other and build their own contacts and network from it simultaneously on the other. So my office hours started from there and have been both so successful as well as incredibly rewarding. 'Owning It' is my next phase in this experiment really - it's all about empowering people to work in the fast-paced and ever evolving world of sustainable fashion; aiming to paint a picture of what it's actually like, from the reality of the work - all the highs and all the lows - to the who to know and what to know and where to find out more about it. It's also intended to be for both those starting out as well as those starting over, given more and more people are moving into this side of the industry.

“In your role as the UN Environment Programme's Sustainable Fashion Advocacy Lead, you launched "The Sustainable Fashion Communication Playbook"– a guide for fashion communicators to take action and align efforts to sustainability targets. What do you believe is the role of the media / journalists in telling sustainability stories properly? And how important is legislation in ensuring honest and accurate communications in this space?”

Everyone has a role to play in sustainability. Truly. But if you're a storyteller, through the lens of the work I've done and indeed the Playbook I authored, that role is really quite significant. When we launched the Playbook it really was about serving as a call to action for anyone in the fashion industry that engages with consumers in any capacity to join us at the table. So marketers, journalists, the media, but also image makers, creative directors, influencers, you name it. Essentially what we're saying is that there is no way we can reach any of the sustainability goals before us if we don't shift the narrative of what this sector is about. Right now, it's based on a linear economic model (so we make items, we buy them, we throw them away), and a narrative dominated by newness, immediacy and disposability. Just think about all the ads you receive and social media posts you're targeted with encouraging relentless consumption.

The Playbook is a multi-layered entity but it shows that we have to first have honest and accurate communications as the foundation of anything we're saying on this - and policy will be really crucial here to ensure that indeed becomes mandatory. The main bulk of it though is where the truly creative storytelling comes in and that's about how we use it to drive behaviour change and help us all as consumers and indeed citizens reimagine what we consider to be of value. This is really about how we can redirect aspiration towards more sustainable lifestyles so that material items or the notion of retail therapy isn't our biggest signifier of wealth or how we believe we can find happiness. Communicators are so crucial here because they are capable of making us completely and utterly fall in love with things. In fact, that's the role of most fashion marketers and the media, so it's just about them putting that same effort towards this - towards sustainability and circularity, and the only side of fashion that should matter. 

"How can we get more people to engage with sustainability and ethical fashion, when the world is already so heavy?"

I feel this one a lot. It's really easy for me to spout everything I have before and make it sound as though the easiest thing to do - to stop overconsumption as that's the main focus of the work - is to just stop selling fashion. But it's not about getting rid of the industry in any sense. I've spent my whole career here, I adore it and would never want to be anywhere else, but it's not fit for purpose anymore so it's got to be about showing that a new way is possible. What that looks like is really up for grabs - as long as it's backed in science and it's truly sound both environmentally and socially - then it really could be anything we can dream of. 

The other reason I believe we need storytellers to be such a part of this is because we need people to help us paint a picture of what that future narrative could actually look like - it's hard to be what you can't see. What I do know though is that it can't of course be about doom and gloom, or about sacrifice. It has to be about positivity, about creativity and about showing there are so many different ways to engage with fashion outside of new ownership. But to get there I think we need to see a lot of work go into making it something we all desire and aspire to - something that is social proof-ed.

"For our shoot you wore some pieces from our collection. What are your favourite pieces from the MOP collection and why?"

The tailoring pieces are just beautiful so it has to be them. I speak on stage a lot for my work and I have been so lucky to wear Mother of Pearl to do so on a number of occasions. There is nothing better than a suit that makes you feel really confident and I love experimenting with how I can go to a much bolder place than perhaps I would typically do so with this sort of style so as to empower me in what I have to deliver. It's also possible to have that positivity of course because of knowing how the items are made, what they're made from, and the fact they will last a lifetime. I'm a really big fan of Amy's film and - talking about storytelling - how she shows that in such a positive way what is possible here.

"What is your biggest lesson learned as a Sustainability Advocate?"

My biggest lesson is that all of our work in sustainability addressing production impacts is so so important but it will mean absolutely nothing if the volume of new clothes that are produced and sold every single minute of every single day around the world don't also come down. It's as simple as that. But this means we have to completely recalibrate what we see as success. True change has to look like changing the rules of the game in which we're playing in and indeed the very system that fashion is built upon.

"How do you define sustainability?"

Sustainability to me is about how we leave the world in a better place than we inherited it. It's about enabling a future where everyone and everything on the planet can thrive. I really believe fashion can play an instrumental role here in helping us understand and envision what these new futures look like.

"What is your pearl of wisdom?"

My pearl of wisdom is that there is only ever right now. It’s not about what's to come, it's not about what went before, but what you can do right now in this present moment. Every single one of us can make a difference and in this line of work what really matters is just getting started. Action over intention is everything.