Conscious Style Podcast

For this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Cynthia Power, an expert in brand resale programs. Cynthia currently helps brands build and optimize their resale programs at Recurate, a full-service recommerce partner for brands, whose clients include Mara Hoffman and RE/DONE. Before that, Cynthia worked as the Director of Eileen Fisher's take-back and resale program. And as you may know, Eileen Fisher has been a major trailblazer in the brand resale space.

Cynthia is also an avid thrifter and self-proclaimed vintage fanatic herself, so she has a lot of great insight into the secondhand fashion space.

In this episode Cynthia is addressing topics like:

• What are the differences between brand-led resale programs vs. third-party platforms like a ThredUP or Depop?
• What do the logistics look like for a brand's resale program? And what are the challenges to getting a resale program off the ground?
• And how can brands design for resale from the very beginning?

Cynthia is also addressing some of those big difficult-to-answer and hotly debated topics, like:

• How can we start to get fashion to *finally* talk about reducing new production?
• And does resale give brands an "excuse" to continue to overproduce since they have a home for that unsold stock?

Let's dive into this conversation with Cynthia to get the answers to all of these questions, and more.

Quick reminder: If you enjoy this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app! so that you don't miss future conversations like this one.

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/fashion-resale-recurate/

WATCH THIS INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE (coming soon):

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIKaxSd78Hqa8XA6cQf8tvg

LINKS MENTIONED:

• ThredUP 2021 Resale Report
• Recurate's Brand Partners
• CS Podcast Episode about Clothing Rental
• The Sustainability EDIT 2021 Report
• CS Podcast Episode with Natasha Halesworth of The Consistency Project
• Brass Clothing Case Study

CONNECT WITH RECURATE:

• Website
• Instagram

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter
• YouTube

To celebrate 10,000 downloads and thank you all for subscribing and tuning in to the show, I have a very special bonus episode for you today.

As you may know by now, this season of the podcast is all about circular fashion. But home goods actually have a LOT in common with fashion.

First off: a lot of home goods are made with textiles: meaning they too can be made from linen and cotton, recycled materials, or virgin synthetic oil-based fabrics like polyester.

And interior design has always evolved over the years. But also just like the fashion industry, it has been following faster and faster trend cycles. And this is due in part to furniture and home goods getting cheaper, both in price — and quality.

But, another similarity that home furnishings and decor has to fashion, is that we can follow a lot of the same principles for conscious home as we can for conscious fashion.

And in today's bonus episode, I'm chatting with a secondhand and sustainable home expert to teach us all about how we can decorate and design our homes more mindfully: Nina Verduin of Homebody, which is a slow living interior design studio.

Nina started Homebody to show how to intentionally style beautiful, cozy homes that encourage us to slow down, let go of stuff, and make conscious decisions.

In today's episode, Nina is sharing:

• Why sustainable furniture & home decor matters
• How we can get started with sustainable interior design
• How to make the most of the furnishings and decor pieces we have
• The benefits of choosing secondhand home goods
• Plus, her tips for secondhand home shopping
• And, advice for making all those existing pieces and secondhand pieces feel cohesive in your space

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/secondhand-home-nina-verduin-homebody/

WATCH THIS INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIKaxSd78Hqa8XA6cQf8tvg

RELEVANT LINKS:

• 5 Easy Ways to Update a Space
• Tips for Using Color in a Room
• 27 Brands with Sustainably Sourced Furniture
• Ethical Home Decor Brands

CONNECT WITH NINA & HOMEBODY:

• Website
• Instagram

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter
• YouTube

With so much talk about circularity in the fashion industry today from big fast fashion brands, circularity has been co-opted and greenwashed.

These brands are using mass produced recycled polyester clothes to advertise their sustainability credentials with no mention of fair wages or safety for workers. They're using take-back programs as a way to continue to overproduce and encourage overconsumption. They are advertising textile recycling technology as a silver bullet solution that will solve all of the industry's problems.

Does this mean that circular fashion is a lost cause? That circularity is meaningless?

Well, I still have hope for the concept, especially when I look at small, conscious brands that think about every single stage of their process. Brands like Anne Mulaire.

In this episode, I'm chatting with Andréanne Mulaire, the founder of Anne Mulaire, about how this label is building a truly circular fashion business model that is also ethical and local.

Andréanne will be telling us about her brand's intentional production practices to minimize leftover inventory, as well as their innovative zero waste design processes, tailoring and mending services, and the upcoming launch of their resale program.

Andréanne is of Ojibwa / French Métis ancestry so she's also going to talk about how she continues to explore her Métis heritage through her brand and about the designs in Anne Mulaire's Heritage Collection.

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/indigenous-circular-fashion-brand-anne-mulaire/

CONNECT WITH ANNE MULAIRE:

• Anne Mulaire's Website
• Anne Mulaire's Instagram

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter
• YouTube

How can we slow down fashion, get more use out of clothes, but also have clothes that fit us — literally and figuratively speaking — at the current point in our lives?

Well, that's something that clothes swapping is ideal for! Swapping allows us to responsibly re-home our existing garments that no longer suit us while being able to access different pieces that would fit us better, size wise, color wise, style wise or otherwise.

Swapping is a great way to extend the lives of clothes, so I knew that I wanted to cover this topic in our second season all about circular fashion and slowing down consumption.

In this episode, I am chatting with Nicole Robertson about all things swapping. Nicole is the founder of Swap Society, an online clothing swap shop for women and kids making it easy —and affordable — to switch up your wardrobe more sustainably.

Nicole is sharing:

• The benefits of swapping — from an environmental impact perspective and also in our own lives
• How swapping might change the relationship we have with our closets and our personal style
• The impact that evolving fashion trends have on the secondhand market, including swapping
• And what online swapping through Swap Society looks like

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/clothes-swapping-swap-society/

RELEVANT LINKS:

• Swap Society Styling Services
• Swap Society's Collection

CONNECT WITH NICOLE & SWAP SOCIETY

• Swap Society Website
• Swap Society Instagram
• Swap Society Twitter
• Swap Society TikTok
• Swap Society Facebook

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter
• YouTube

Have you ever wondered what really drives consumption? What the motivations are — on a psychological level — that drive people to consume.

Can psychology help explain this rapid increase in consumption that we've seen in recent years and help us understand why it's so difficult to shift towards more conscious consumption habits?

And then on the flip side of that, how could we potentially use behavioral psychology to help us communicate about sustainable fashion in the most effective way possible?

These are big questions that I am definitely not qualified to answer but our guest is! I'm talking with Shakaila Forbes-Bell, a published Fashion Psychologist, writer, consultant, and owner of FashionisPsychology.com, a platform dedicated to making academic research into Fashion Psychology more accessible.

Shakaila is also going to explore:

• How representation in fashion and media influences behavior and beliefs,
• What the impact of virtue signaling or performative inclusion in fashion is,
• And why people might actually buy MORE when they perceive something to be sustainable, and more.

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/fashion-consumer-psychology/

WATCH THIS INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIKaxSd78Hqa8XA6cQf8tvg

RELEVANT LINKS:

• 6 Reasons Why You Really Buy Sustainable Fashion
• The White Coat Effect (Enclothed Cognition Explained)
• Shakaila on Why Black Models Need to Be More Represented in Fashion
• How This Founder Uses Fashion to Understand Consumer Behavior

CONNECT WITH SHAKAILA & FASHION IS PSYCHOLOGY

• Fashion is Psychology Website
• Instagram: @fashionispsychology / @shakailaelise
• Twitter: @fashionispsych / @shakailaelise
• TikTok: @shakailaelise

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter

Is fashion rental actually sustainable? Are there ways to make it more sustainable? This episode is a deep dive into the various elements of the fashion rental system.

In this episode, I'll also interview Eshita Kabra-Davies, the founder and CEO of the world's first social fashion rental app, By Rotation.

Eshita is sharing:

• How By Rotation's peer-to-peer rental model works,
• How peer-to-peer sharing models can be more sustainable than an inventory-based renting model,
• And her perspectives on that viral study that inspired those "throwing away your clothes is greener than renting them" headlines.

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT:

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/renting-clothes-sustainable/

LINKS MENTIONED:

• Inside Rent the Runway's Secret Dry Cleaning Empire
• Rent the Runway's Filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission
• The Finnish Study Evaluating Five Types of Clothing Ownership and End-of-Life Scenarios
• Renting clothes is 'less green than throwing them away'
• How Sustainable is Renting Your Clothes, Really?
• Eshita Kabra on The BBC World Podcast

CONNECT WITH ESHITA AND BY ROTATION

• Website
• Instagram
• Eshita's Instagram
• App

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter
• YouTube

In this episode, I'm chatting with the one and only Aja Barber, a sustainable fashion thought leader, consultant, writer, and new author. Her debut book is called Consumed, The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism.

Aja is sharing:

• How the fashion industry been shaped by colonization, and what its lasting legacies are;
• Why fast fashion isn't actually affordable (for the planet, the people in the supply chain, and even for us as consumers); and
• Her advice for how we can begin to address the issues in the industry.

Aja is also breaking a lot of the myths perpetuated by fast fashion brands, like that shopping fast fashion is improving the economies in other countries, that sweatshop jobs are at least better than no jobs, or that these brands really have no control or awareness of the exploitation happening in their supply chains. She's also diving into why Depop (or any other secondhand site) isn't to blame for the reduced quality standards and higher prices at thrift stores.

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/consumed-colonialism-consumerism-aja-barber/

WATCH THIS INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE (COMING SOON):

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIKaxSd78Hqa8XA6cQf8tvg

GET THE BOOK:

• Bookshop.org (US)
• Indiebound (US)
• Waterstones (UK)

CONNECT WITH AJA:

• Website
• Instagram
• Twitter

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter

What are the connections with overconsumption and the rise of fast fashion with social media and influencer (and haul) culture?

In this episode, Lily of Imperfect Idealist explores how social media influences consumption and why overconsumption + overproduction are such big problems in fashion.

Lily also shares:

• Why fashion hauls are so problematic;
• What some of the solutions are — on both an individual level and system level — for overconsumption and overproduction;
• What she sees as the biggest misconceptions about sustainable fashion;
• How we can make the space more inclusive; and
• Her tips for talking to others about the problems in the industry without sounding preachy or judgmental.

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/overconsumption-fashion-imperfect-idealist/

WATCH THIS INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIKaxSd78Hqa8XA6cQf8tvg

LINKS MENTIONED:

• How to Make Your Clothes Last Longer
• Our Dangerous Obsession with Fashion Hauls
• 9 Common Misconceptions with Sustainable Fashion
• Sustainable or Greenwashing? How to Evaluate Fashion Brands
• TikTok is Roll Out In-App Shopping Features

ABOUT LILY:

Lily advocates for inclusive and realistic sustainable fashion on her blog and social accounts. She shares everyday knowledge along with ways to use your voice for systemic change.

CONNECT WITH LILY:

• Website
• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter

Between the overflow of cheap clothing, schedules packed to the brim, and a decline in sewing education, torn and ill-fitting clothes are far more likely to be tossed than mended or altered.

But fashion tech entrepreneur Josephine Philips is on a mission to change that with her clothing repair and tailoring app, Sojo.

Sojo makes it more convenient than ever to get your clothes mended or modified — and I have no doubt that it's going to transform the industry.

Josephine is going to give us many more details about how Sojo works, as well as the future plans for this company, in this episode. You'll also hear Josephine talk about:

• Why mending is the "forgotten" circular fashion solution
• How we can make mending more mainstream
• The importance of sustaining local tailoring and seamster businesses
• And more!

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

WATCH THIS INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE

ABOUT JOSEPHINE & SOJO

Josephine Philips, 23, is a recent graduate turned Fashion Tech entrepreneur

working to make the fashion industry circular with her startup, Sojo, which is modernising the clothing repair and tailoring industry. Sojo is the UK’s first clothing alterations and repairs App and it connects customers to local seamster businesses to ensure that getting your clothes fixed or fitted is an easy and hassle-free process.

CONNECT WITH JOSEPHINE & SOJO

• Website
• Instagram

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter

Natasha Halesworth is the founder and owner of The Consistency Project, which is a shop that curates pre-loved fashion and designs reworked clothing while working to break the stigma of secondhand.

In this episode, Natasha is giving us a glimpse inside what it's like to run a secondhand and reworked clothing brand.

She's also sharing:

• What her sourcing process is like and what she keeps in mind when shopping for secondhand textiles;
• What deadstock is and how the deadstock system really works in the fashion industry today;
• What the production process looks like for reworked garments — and if that process can or should ever become scalable;
• And her advice for other small businesses focused on pre-loved fashion and reworking.

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/reworked-upcycled-clothing-consistency-project/

WATCH THIS INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIKaxSd78Hqa8XA6cQf8tvg

CONNECT WITH NATASHA & THE CONSISTENCY PROJECT

• Website
• Instagram
• TikTok

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter