Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

The many myths of fast fashion, with Venetia La Manna

Listen on

Episode notes

Have you ever wondered what greenwashing is? You know that fast fashion is bad for the planet, but you’re hazy on the details? Like, where do the clothes go the charity shop doesn’t want? If so, this episode is for you. 

 

I’ve been wanting to do an episode on the many myths of fast fashion since I wrote an essay titled Get The Look, for my 2020 essay collection, HDWKWDIR (which this podcast series first spun off from). And Venetia La Manna, a presenter and podcaster campaigning against fast fashion and advocating for more mindful consumption, is the ideal guest to explore this issue with. She regularly organises protests against fast fashion brands, lobbying for them to pay fair wages and her Instagram account is a vital trove of statistics about what really lies behind that “sustainable” clothing tag.

 

Venetia and I discuss overproduction - she says that brands need to produce 95% less clothing than they are currently - why luxury is as bad as the high street at underpaying their workers (80% of workers in the garment industry are women of colour, who earn under a living wage), the stigma of second hand (and how we can make it more inclusive) and why this isn’t an individual issue, but a corporate one. We also discuss the role of social media and influencer culture in maintaining fast fashion’s stronghold - after we recorded this episode, it was announced that Kourtney Kardashian had collaborated with BooHoo, whose worker conditions have been compared to modern slavery, on a ‘sustainable collection’. 

 

 

Get 20% off OTO sleep drops with the code pandora20 

 

Hosted & Exec Produced by Pandora Sykes

Production by Joel Grove