Orsola de Castro photo: Annie Johnston
Orsola de Castro is the global creative director of Fashion Revolution a not-for-profit organisation formed in response to the Rana Plaza factory disaster in 2013. We first met at London Fashion Week a year earlier, when Orsola was managing Esthetica the showcase for sustainable designers – and I (very superficially) stopped to ask her about the fabulous gold trousers she was wearing. A leading pioneer in the sustainable fashion world, 54-year-old Orsola created the label From Somewhere in the late 1990s, making upcycled clothes and items from off-cuts and end-of-roll fabric from factories in Italy. Now, a fully fledged fashion revolutionary, together with co-founder Carrie Somers, she leads a global movement calling for change in the fashion industry.
Orsola de Castro is an outstanding speaker on sustainability and now an author. Her first book Loved Clothes Last (How the Joy of Rewearing and Repairing Your Clothes Can Be a Revolutionary Act) has just been published by Penguin. Full of practical tips on how to lengthen the lifespan of your clothing and reveal your inner craftivist, it also contains staggering facts and figures on the impact of fast fashion on the workforce and the planet.
Orsola’s new book
Born in Rome, Orsola loves pizza and is reading Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other. On taking a more sustainable approach and making loved clothes last she says, ‘ Our wardrobes don’t have to be the finish line; they can be the starting point. We can all care, repair and rewear.
Do you accept the challenge?’
Fashion Revolution Week happens once a year, in April. Find out more HERE
PODCAST LINKS
Listen to the podcast on Spotify HERE
Listen to Apple Podcasts HERE
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We’re also on Stitcher, Podtail, Poddtoppen, and Google Podcasts.
The That’s Not My Age podcast is now recorded using a web-based application on my computer due to Covid-19 restrictions.
PODCAST CREDITS
Producer and audio engineer: Linda Ara-Tebaldi
Host: Alyson Walsh
Guest: Orsola De Castro
Music: David Schweitzer
Artwork: Ayumi Takahashi
Coordinator: Helen Johnson
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