There is a rip in the armpit of Orsola de Castro’s jumper. She raises her hand high in the air so I can see it: a slash of pale skin peeks from tomato-red wool. This “memory hole”, as Orsola describes it, tells the story of the jumper’s long life. It was owned by her cousin, then her daughter. “It is very old Benetton, from when Benetton was still made in Italy. You can’t see it on Zoom, but this is really nice wool,” she says, arm still aloft.
Orsola, 54, is an activist, a lecturer, a former designer and a co-founder of not-for-profit movement Fashion Revolution. With the release of her book Loved Clothes Last, she has also become a kind of anti-Marie Kondo. She advocates “radical keeping”, not decluttering. “The only antidote to throwaway culture is to keep. So I am an obsessive keeper,” she says.
The book is full of startling facts about fashion’s impact on the planet and its people. It is “as much about mending systems as mending clothing”, says Orsola. She had just four months to write it, so her daughter Elisalex de Castro Peake, who runs the independent sewing-pattern label By Hand London, and her colleague
