You’ll find her cropping up on Instagram and Youtube, (she was wonderful for quotes, very acerbic and epigrammatic), but how long could it be till the Met Museum revisits her greatness? Possibly never, because despite being a prolific writer and successful designer in the 1930s, the author of nine books, (including “Fashion is Spinach” - time for a reprint), and a critic for the New Yorker, this American designer found fashion repellent. Fashion she said, is a “deformed thief”, one that is like “that horrid little man with an evil eye who tells you that your last winter’s coat may be in perfect physical condition, but you can’t wear it.”

Hawes much preferred style.

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This is the nexus of brand status anxiety: crashingly obvious codes for the unsophisticated salesman in new markets. Sorry, Gucci: you are in your Burberry check era.

If I sound like a crashing snob, then welcome to the world of luxury and status, where my taste is better than your taste.

Poor chap, I hope he likes his shoes, (and they last).

For women, it’s handbags that semaphore the same signals.

Mentioned below: Jonathan Akeroyd, Christopher Kane, Alexa Chung, the Princess of Wales and some Herdwick Sheep

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Why? Well it could, ironically, be the geopolitics. When sh*t is this real, you just gotta get your shirt sleeves rolled up and get on with it. No point waiting around for the big boys to get things done, because - they are not going to do it. Fine - we’ll do it ourselves.

I’m not being naive. The trajectories are not good, but the mood has changed. We’ve stopped whingeing, we’ve stopped having conversations that just go round and round, we’ve started doing.

Did you read last week’s post? Hot from a LCAW workshop, it illustrates perfectly the challenges we are facing with AI.

Before we dig into it, let’s see where it is all going wrong. No surprises, the big culprit in the room is fashion - or what sustainability wonks like to term a ‘hard to abate sector”. Once again, big brands are showing a tone deaf approach to where they stand in the world. Witness the unfortunately-timed Louis Vuitton menswear show in Paris which, synchronously with a European heatwave and LCAW, staged a surf installation with a tonne of real water. The backlash was uncompromising:

“It’s insane to bring a fake sea in the middle of an ecological crisis during the summer, even crazier when you consider they did it just for one day, during France’s worst heatwave.”

“Water restrictions are only for the rest of France, I guess.”

“39°C in Paris. The city is burning … turning public space into a luxury spectacle of waterfalls feels completely disconnected from reality.”

(For more on this see the latest stack from )

And then this from my mole on the inside of the British Fashion Council’s closed door roundtable. You may remember the BFC have copied Copenhagen Fashion Week’s (CPHFW) bar for entry, namely that all brands showing at London Fashion Week should meet a minimum of 60% preferred materials:

“We had the BFC at one end of the table and at the other end there were (in my view) direct complaints about lack of support (and a higher bar) for the (younger, smaller) brands doing the right things. And there was the unhelpful reminder that CPHFW is just a fashion week, not a council, and half the age of BFC and that minimum 60% “preferred materials” for entry into CPFW is not enough. I would say it was less solutions-oriented and more grievance offloading.

Personally it’s clear to me the problem with the entire ecosystem is the lack of focus on commercial viability since day zero of starting a brand. The obsession of this industry is to be cool, edgy and creative (at nature’s expense) and then when you’re big enough and finally doing well financially, it’s too late (and uncool almost) to care about your eco credentials. By that point, the gatekeepers only care about those with “clout” - the marketing dollars and “cool” factor (which is fuelled by the former).”

Here are a few more of my favourites:

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AI.

It’s the big, shiny object - the big, shiny, money-, water- and energy- intensive object - that finance people are chucking money at, when most of them don’t have the least idea what it is actually doing.

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At the other, we have luxury fashion, focusing on an UHNW client that has limitless cash to blow should the desire take her. Evidence the below dress, part of the new Dior Cruise collection. One cannot imagine a client wearing this dress to more than a couple of occasions, (quelle horreur she should be spotted wearing the same thing twice), which is all the more wasteful when you consider the dress costs US$140,000.

As wrote recently: “How can this dress cost the same as four New New Bottega skirts, four years of college tuition at a state school, or this boat billed as “the pinnacle of pontoon luxury”? And perhaps more importantly, what is this brand thinking selling this dress for the price of something you can mortgage, particularly when Dior CEO Delphine Arnault recently said the brand had been “very cautious” about prices?”

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Turns out my article was published alongside two excellent other pieces: (author of Rooted, the seminal book on regenerative farming) asked Who Are London’s Parks For?, while Hugo Cox profiled a tiny high street in East London where three local friends are keeping independent retail - and a sense of community - alive.

The rights of Nature loom large in both my and Sarah’s pieces, so it’s no coincidence that this week a district council upheld the rights of the River Wye to become the first river in the UK to claim rights from source to sea - not as a vessel for pollution, but a living ecosystem worth protecting. Thanks to the work of Paul Powlesland, founder of Lawyers for Nature (who also supported House of Hackney with the appointment of Mother Nature & Future Generations to their board) the River Wye now has a legal voice. As Sarah writes, the London parks row about whether they should be gated off for expensive festivals,

“underlines two philosophies: our need to access the natural world and the natural world’s need to be protected.”

The FT is often characterised as an establishment newspaper. Far from it. I find its pages (particularly on the weekend) quite progressive, and love the challenge of its esoteric fashion magazine, How to Spend It. It’s like going to stay with an intellectual aunt who is quite glamorous and has very acerbic, bohemian house guests.

My piece is a profile of the SME House of Hackney, which decided B Corp did not go far enough. They wanted to be part of a new movement to revitalise the landscapes and communities of the world, and have found a way to do this whilst supporting 50 staff - and still turning a profit. They share their story as a blueprint for other SMEs: they call themselves an incubator brand. If you want to know more, I highly recommend founder Frieda Gormley’s new book, In the Company of Nature, which details the journey in full. Part memoir, part business book, it’s a gripping read and full of ideas. It can be pre-ordered here.

( is also writing on substack and had fruity things to say about the recent AI campaign from Prada).

Can Mother Earth Be a Board Director?

When Interiors Brand House of Hackney moved to a castle in Cornwall, its founders gave the environment, and future generations, a voice in the boardroom.

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(Deep breath now.)

Everlane is the social responsibility focused basics label that hit cult status in the 2010s. Until yesterday, it was owned by private equity firm L. Catterton, which is backed by fashion billionaire overlord Bernard Arnault and his LVMH conglomerate. Everlane was sold for $100 million, making M. Arnault and his private equity cronies a little bit richer. Good for them. Now spare a thought for the employees at Everlane this week, who must have feelings close to despair.

Everlane has been a mission-driven company, built on ethical practices, premium quality and radical transparency. It is therefore hard to imagine a more inappropriate bedfellow than ultra fast fashion giant Shein. On Everlane’s website it states: “We’re on a mission to clean up the industry. It’s a movement we’re calling Cleaner Fashion.” Not this week, it would seem. Everlane worked hard and built a solid reputation for being ‘a good guy’: it collaborated and invested in partnerships exploring new, less impactful business solutions, it openly shared factory locations and production costs, it committed to and was transparent about fair pricing, and it made long lasting wardrobe staples at affordable prices.

But the truth is Everlane has been struggling. Rising costs, an increasingly competitive landscape, and the fact that we consumers are not voting for the world we want with our dollars, means it was carrying $90m of debt. (I mean my God, how does that happen?).

And so in came Shein: the ultra fast fashion giant that produces 1 billion items per day, with around 450,000 available in real time. Over 99% of Shein’s emissions come from its supply chain, which has increased 170% in the last two years, “showing a tendency that indicates absolutely no interest in changing its model for the environment’s sake,” as Forbes reported.

Who’s the winner here?

Clue: it’s not us. It’s the owners of L.Catterton who get to right off the debt and pocket the change, and its the owners of the ultra fast fashion monster that wants to own the West’s rapacious capacity to buy disposable fashion as a sop to feeling good.

In buying Everlane, Shein gets IP, customer data, product preference data, geographic preference and pricing sensitivity data, market share, and credibility - all extremely valuable fodder for the Shein machine.

Who’s the loser?

Those toiling in the Shein supply chain (labour abuses), the planet, (polyester, emissions, transport, overproduction), and you and me (choice is diminished).

Once again, it looks like the rich are carving up all the juicy bits for themselves and don’t give a damn about what they burn down in the process.

But here’s the thing: Everlane was forced into sale by chronic debt. No doubt there was mismanagement, but consumers were not supporting a business that prioritised doing good in the world.

When will we learn that every time we swipe to purchase on Amazon, Jeff Bezos gets another dollar in his pocket? When we buy another one of those polyester bras from Shein, the Kardashians climb a little higher on the Rich List? When we hit Tiktok shop, another store closes its doors on the high street? When we buy a cheap China-made poly-blend shirts from M&S we vote for an outsourced supply chain, rather than a locally manufactured one, where the money stays in an economy that badly needs it?

Shopping is political. Remember that.

The Global Fashion Circus

International fashion editors departed for LA last week on first class flights and a week of spoiling at the Chateau Marmont, all the better to enjoy the Dior Cruise show. Meanwhile Gucci took over New York and flew in those that were left over for a celeb-fuelled romp through Times Square.

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But then rising prices, falling employment, and multiple wars are something of a scene stealer.

However, there are businesses out there that are just getting on with the work anyway. We all know that our situation is not getting any better (happy birthday David Attenborough!), and it’s joyful to focus on those who are STILL DOING THE WORK. I love bringing them to your attention (yes, Reformation),

… and now I have another. This one, thrillingly, is a high street brand, very accessibly priced, and showing that remarkable things can be achieved with the right technology and an intentional and passionate leader and team.

It’s Nobody’s Child, and it did not come from a promising start.

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It’s the day after Earth Day and, according to Dr Toby Kiers, this will now be known as “Under Earth Day”. Toby is a Professor of the underground (soil, not the dark web) - and is as enthused by microbial networks as a Vogue staffer for the new Chanel pump. On stage at the Amsterdam Planetarium, she says that in just the top 10cm of soil, there are more microbia than stars in the observable universe. Moreover:

“What they do and how they behave gives us so much information about connection, communication, trade, and relationship.”

Do not imagine that microbia have nothing to do with fashion, or indeed the future of the planet, (easy to confuse the two in some conversations). But the science of this fascinating world has been largely ignored up to now. “There’s nothing more exciting than accepting you’ve been blind to something - we have been blind to the underground. Soil is the most misunderstood and complex ecosystem on earth,” says Toby.

You may have read about this in Merlin Sheldrake’s blockbuster The Entangled Life, a book that coined the phrase ‘wood wide web’ and went on to inspire an entire couture collection by Iris Van Herpen. Toby and Merlin are the front row for SPUN, (Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) and are on a mission to protect the 90% of mycorrhizal fungi they say are at risk - loss of which could lead to reductions in carbon drawdown, crop productivity and ecosystem resilience.

It’s a beautiful day in Amsterdam, all cerulean skies and crisp northern European air, making the city look even more civilised than usual. It is out of Amsterdam that Toby runs her research projects, and so it is to Amsterdam that the committee of the Tyler Prize have come to make the award to the youngest ever woman Laureate in the prize’s history.

If you are wondering why I’m here, and indeed the artists, poets, musicians and other non science-y types in the audience, well you can put that down to Toby’s inter-disciplinary ‘punk science’ (her phrase). This is science that “doesn’t haven’t to follow the norm - where creativity, messiness and rigour are a perfect combination”. Science mustn’t sit in academic silos, she says, but reach out across disciplines to get its message heard. And so accompanying the speech is an exhibition of artworks interpreting her work. I’m sitting next to the artist Kika Notten, who was inspired by Toby’s work for her exhibition Roots, and Salvador Breed, the sound artist married to designer Iris Van Herpen. Toby’s infectious enthusiasm for her beloved microbial networks frequently references how ‘cute’ and ‘beautiful’ they are - she’s competing with baby elephants and mighty whales for conservation money: most funding goes to mammals, but she thinks we’re missing a trick in the ground beneath our feet. Her communication is compelling.

She has a radical approach, and she’s moving fast. What Toby and her team of scientists are discovering could have huge implications for our understanding of the planet and how it works

“We are 100% challenging decentralised thinking and challenging the norms,” she promises.

It’s exciting. Here’s why.

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To celebrate, a good news story. Net Zero is possible, even for a brand in growth. Congratulations to one of the best behaved brands on the planet.

You may remember back in the mists of time, a moment when everybody thought it was very important we cut carbon emissions. Fashion, in particular, was very self-important about this, suddenly publishing annual carbon reports, signing up to the SBTi, applying to B Corp, appointing Sustainability Officers, slapping ‘green’ ‘eco’ and ‘recycled’ on anything they could find.

It didn’t last long. We all came out of lockdown and started shopping again, fashion returned to its business of creating unfettered desire, and all those agonising calls we had had about slowing the fashion circus, cutting collections to two a year, pursuing supply chain transparency and just transition, were quietly put to one side. The cycles and the circus were back, because growth was suddenly double digit again. (That didn’t last either, obviously).

But not everyone forgot about it. Certainly, consumers got tired of relentless sustainability marketing, (especially when so much of it was green wash). Many brands no longer saw the value in investing in something that consumers no longer wanted to hear about. And the finance departments never saw an upside, at least in the short term.

But some did stay true to their commitments. A handful, a very few.

“There were tears when we read the IPCC reports,” says Kathleen Talbot, Chief Sustainability Officer of US brand, Reformation. “When those climate reports came out in 2019, the ones that detailed the severe impacts of not holding to the 1.5 degree pathway, there was a feeling of deep anxiety and frustration. To us, it just didn’t seem like we were doing enough. We asked ourselves, what would it look like to respond appropriately?” Net zero by 2050, or even 2030, seemed too far away. So they set a goal to be ‘Climate Positive by 2025’. Last week, they reported that not only have they achieved this, but their new pathway - fully circular by 2030 - is even more ambitious.

Here’s how they did it.

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There are so many problems with shoes. It’s thought somewhere between 19 and 25 billion pairs are produced each year, of which over 95% go to landfill - there is little to no circularity in the industry, and while the second hand markets might be booming for clothing, shoes, less so. Most shoes are made of many component parts, which means disassembly and re-use is complex and mostly impossible, meanwhile most of those parts will not biodegrade. Added to that, shoes come in boxes, which makes them much more voluminous to transport and store than, say, a pile of t-shirts. Shipping shoes from the global south to the high streets of the global north is an extremely carbon intensive process.

A trip down Jermyn Street reminds you how it used to be - for men, anyway - one or two pairs of shoes in your wardrobe, made to last, easy to repair, with handmade lasts that ensure fit and function. That £89.99 pair of heels from Office? Not so much.

Two companies, Vivobarefoot and Been London, are pioneering brilliant, industry disrupting ideas.

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“Craft” is a word the luxury industry likes to fall back on. It inspires ideas of generational skill, ancestral knowledge, time and care. Hands should be in there and, as William Morris observed, it should achieve something useful and beautiful.

Paying subscribers get to read about the new Craeft prize marrying tradition and innovation, a clean fashion brand taking on foundational basics, and the first company that appointed Nature as a director

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This week I’m sharing a patchwork of things that have inspired me in the last few weeks. A plant-dyed jacket I’m dyeing for, inspiring words from Clare Waight Keller, a free link to my latest Financial Times article on sportswear toxicity and Netflix’s new series on microplastics.

The Surprising Hinterland of Celine’s Designer
The Creative Director of storied French fashion house Celine is not what you would expect. Turns out, the American in Paris has been taking time out from his macarons and macrame, to work with refugees caught up in Europe’s migrant crisis. This is categorically NOT normal behaviour for the designer of a major luxury brand. Fussy creative director types are more usually found in esoteric libraries, Berlin dungeons or thinning it out in longevity spas. Not Michael Rider. The clues keep coming:

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But it should be resisted. At the risk of a Pollyanna monologue, I think it pays to look for th…

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Do any of us have agency in the world right now? It’s hard to imagine this week, (or indeed this year), when the winds of change have been barrelling us like a furious Florida hurricane. I write here of those who are choosing to do things dif…

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Sound like the future? Well some of it’s here already. Which is just as well, because once you discover what really goes into your sweat-proof Lycra leggings and durable, odour-proof running vest, you’re going to want to know what your options are.

Luckily, a new exhibition at Mills Fabrica, Performance Without Toxicity, spells it out.

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