Welcome to Series 3! This Episode is a treat! It features Orsola de Castro, is one of the warmest, most generous, most knowledgable people working in sustainable fashion today. You may know her as the cofounder, with Carry Somers, of Fashion Revolution. But did you also know that she is the queen upcycling?
In the that 1990s, after crocheting around the holes in a much-loved old jumper that she couldn’t part with (although it was literally falling apart), she founded the fashion label From Somewhere. Her designs used only discarded, unloved, unwanted materials and turned them into the opposite: treasured, loved, wanted, and highly covetable.
From Somewhere was stocked in stores like Browns in London, and Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, Orsola and her man Fillipo, who was also her business partner, did collaborations with the likes of Topshop, Jigsaw and Tesco. Later, they ran Esthetica, London Fashion Week’s hub for sustainable for fashion.
These days, Orsola teaches at Central St. Martins inspiring the next generation. She’s an in-demand international speaker on ethical fashion, and is the Creative Director of Fashion Revolution. She is passionate about making, mending and loving clothes, and of course about upcycling, but also about treating workers with dignity, and about fashion justice.
In this conversation, we talk about it all - from seeing the world in colours, through inspiring designers, from how to reconnect with your clothes to what sort of fashion future we want to create for ourselves. Enjoy!
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