Conscious Style Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

For our first-ever Conscious Fashion Collective Membership panel discussion, we discussed a topic that is often taboo in the slow fashion space — money! We believe that financial sustainability is essential for creating a more just, and sustainable, fashion ecosystem with thriving businesses that care about people and the planet.

💰 WE DISCUSSED:

• Taboos/misconceptions about making money in the slow fashion space,
• What alternative business models and revenue streams can be successful for slow fashion brands who don’t want to follow the traditional fast fashion trajectory,
• Slow fashion pricing and forecasting,
• How freelancers can go about finding clients, retaining clients, and creating a client rotation that allows for financial sustainability,
• How to diversify your slow fashion skills and develop alternative streams of income/business offerings,
• And SO MUCH more!

This episode was brought to you by…

Conscious Fashion Collective Membership: the global community for sustainable fashion professionals, freelancers, and entrepreneurs.

Doors will be closing to new members on Friday, March 29th as we prepare to add even more value to the membership.

When we reopen, we'll be increasing the price to account for the additional value. If you sign-up this week, you'll lock-in our current pricing for the lifetime of your membership.

Learn more + join us: consciousfashion.co/community

LINKS:

• Picnicwear
• Kismet Concept Studio
• MAHDIYYAH
• Devinto
• Jacqueline Schumann
• Picnicwear DejaVu Dress Pattern
• YouTube video: NYC Tailor Aims To Reduce Fast Fashion Waste

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

📧Newsletter: https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/subscribe

🌐Website: consciouslifeandstyle.com

📸 Instagram: @consciousstyle

Financial sustainability is essential for creating a more just, and sustainable, fashion ecosystem with thriving businesses that care about people and the planet. But how do you go about actually making money in this space, especially when you care about not overproducing? Money-making is a topic that is all-too-often taboo in the slow fashion space, but our panelists Dani Des Roches, Mahdiyyah Muhammad, Jacqueline Schumann, and Aiste Zitnikaite are unpacking their experiences, transparently, in this episode!

Note: This is a recording from a Conscious Fashion Collective Membership panel discussion, so you may hear references to the membership and “CFC". You can learn more about CFC's membership community here: consciousfashion.co/community

💰 WE DISCUSSED:

• Taboos/misconceptions about making money in the slow fashion space,
• What alternative business models and revenue streams can be successful for slow fashion brands who don’t want to follow the traditional fast fashion trajectory,
• Slow fashion pricing and forecasting,
• How freelancers can go about finding clients, retaining clients, and creating a client rotation that allows for financial sustainability,
• How to diversify your slow fashion skills and develop alternative streams of income/business offerings,
• And SO MUCH more!

LINKS:

• Conscious Fashion Collective Membership
• Picnicwear
• Kismet Concept Studio
• MAHDIYYAH
• Devinto
• Jacqueline Schumann

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

📧Newsletter: https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/subscribe

🌐Website: consciouslifeandstyle.com

📸 Instagram: @consciousstyle

What if fashion brands put garment workers first? What if a fashion brand set the prices they pay to their suppliers based on ensuring workers were making a living wage, rather than negotiating the prices as low as possible to maximize profits? 

This is part of implementing more responsible purchasing practices — purchasing practices meaning not how the consumer buys something, but how the brand purchases their orders from their suppliers, since most brands do not produce their own clothes. 

The reality is that right now the system is set up with the wrong incentives. For example, Buyers at many fashion brands receive bonuses if they achieve larger margins with their orders they purchase from their suppliers — larger margins meaning they pay their suppliers less, and thus the supplier will have less money to pay their workers fairly or invest in sustainability initiatives like transitioning to clean energy. 

So we need a paradigm shift. True systems change. 

And one proposal for doing so is worker-centric pricing, which Stella and I are going to dive into in this episode!

>>> TRANSCRIPT

*****

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Sustainable Fashion Career Platform: Conscious Fashion Collective
• Community: Conscious Fashion Collective Membership
• Article: What If Fashion Prices Put Garment Workers First?
• Doc: Worker-Centric Pricing Model
• Organization: Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion
• Instagram: Aja Barber
• Podcast Episode: EP71: Is Sustainable Fashion Always More Expensive?
• Podcast Episode: EP60: Living Wages for Garment Makers with Anne Bienias of Clean Clothes Campaign
• Podcast Episode: EP45: Are Better Brand-Supplier Relationships The Missing Link to Ethical Fashion?

***

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

📧Newsletter: https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/edit

🌐Website: consciouslifeandstyle.com

📸 Instagram: @consciousstyle

📹 YouTube: @consciouslifeandstyle

📌 Pinterest: @consciouslifeandstyle

In this episode of the Conscious Style Podcast, we're going to be talking all about the secondhand fashion ecosystem with Emily Stochl, the producer and host of Pre-Loved Podcast, which is a weekly interview show that explores the vintage, thrift and secondhand industry.

In this interview, you'll hear (or read!) about:

• What pre-loved fashion encompasses and how you can get started not only with conscious shopping secondhand, but with secondhand fashion activism;
• What the concern about gentrification of thrift stores is all about and what this conversation is currently missing;
• How charity shops really operate and what this means for the global secondhand trade;
• What the recent $1 billion+ IPO (initial public offering) of ThredUP might mean for the future of secondhand;
• And more!

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

consciouslifeandstyle.com/better-secondhand-fashion-system

QUICK LINKS:

• Atmos Article: How to Build a Better Thrifting System
• OR Foundation
• Eileen Fisher
• Patagonia Worn Wear
• Liz Rickets of the OR Foundation on the Pre-Loved Podcast
• OR Foundation on the Pre-Loved Podcast Part 2
• Patagonia Worn Wear on the Pre-Loved Podcast
• Remake Website
• PayUp Campaign
• No New Clothes Campaign
• Garment Worker Protection Act (SB62)

ABOUT EMILY

Emily is a writer, journalist, and podcast creator, with expertise in the vintage and secondhand fashion industry, sustainability, and labor rights activism. She is the producer and host of Pre-Loved Podcast, a weekly interview show exploring the vintage, thrift and secondhand industry: all its stories, and all its angles.

She is also Remake’s Advocacy Manager. Remake is a global nonprofit that aims to make fashion a force for good. As Remake's Advocacy Manager, Emily helps lead ambassador engagement and community management, specifically around the SB62, #PayHer, and #NoNewClothes campaigns. Her goal is to make policy information and industry topics easy to understand, and to communicate to others, believing that we all have a role to play in making fashion a force for good.

CONNECT WITH EMILY & PRE-LOVED PODCAST

• Website
• Pre-Loved Podcast
• Apple Podcasts
• Instagram
• Twitter

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

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

In this part two of our conversation with Sophia Yang (check out episode 8 for part one!), we discuss how we can create a more equitable and intersectional fashion ecosystem.

Sophia, who is the Founder & Executive Director of ethical fashion organization Threading Change, is sharing:

• How we can get started with or continue fashion activism,
• What artivism is and how it could bring more people into the sustainable fashion and social justice movements,
• The importance of engaging youth in ethical fashion,
• and more.

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

https://www.consciouslifeandstyle.com/intersectional-sustainable-fashion-future/

QUICK LINKS:

• Fashion Revolution: Take Action
• Remake
• Textile Talks: Threading Change's Webinar Series
• Threading Change's Current Campaigns
• Clothes Busters Webinar Series
• Contact Threading Change

CONNECT WITH SOPHIA:

• Website
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Soundcloud

CONNECT WITH THREADING CHANGE:

• Website
• Instagram

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

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

In this powerful and illuminating two-part conversation, Sophia Yang of Threading Change discusses how colonialism has not only shaped fashion, but how colonial systems are deeply embedded in the industry today.

Sophia also shares what equity really is and how we must address exploitation in fashion at its core; the realities of racism and colonialism in not just fast fashion, but the conscious fashion space as well; and why we need to decentralize and decolonize the Eurocentric understanding of land and labor in the fashion space.

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT:

consciouslifeandstyle.com/fashion-colonial-roots-and-realities

QUICK LINKS:

• The OR Foundation
• Kantamanto Market in Ghana
• Zara deletes statement against forced labor from website 
• Background on China and forced Uighur labor
• The brands implicated in report on forced labor in China

CONNECT WITH SOPHIA:

• Website
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Soundcloud

CONNECT WITH THREADING CHANGE:

• Website
• Instagram

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

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

Get expert tips from Jess Atkins, the co-founder of Stylebook (a closet management app), on how to plan outfits, assess your closet, and actually wear the clothes you have in your wardrobe more!

Plus, get Jess’ insights on:

• How organizing our closets (digitally or IRL) can help us wear our clothes more
• What is so universally appealing beyond the slow fashion bubble about wardrobe organization and how this can help us achieve a more sustainable fashion future
• How to realistically calculate your cost per wear of a piece
• The importance of taking a shopping break on a conscious fashion journey
• The benefits of investing in quality clothes — and how to identify a quality garment in the first place
• And more!

QUICK LINKS:

• Stylebook App
• Looking Good Every Day book
• TheMedianModa on Instagram

FULL SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

ABOUT JESS & STYLEBOOK:

Jessica Atkins is the co-creator of Stylebook Closet App, a virtual closet app for the iPhone and iPad, and author of The Whole Closet Method. She graduated from Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Photography and Imaging and a minor in Art History. 

As a student, she interned at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and in the fashion closets of Vogue and Modern Bride. After graduating, she worked for several years in the Lucky Magazine art department before starting her software company with her husband, Bill Atkins. She now works full-time on their primary product, Stylebook, where she does product development and writes content to help people become conscious clothing consumers while maximizing the clothes they already own using Stylebook’s tools.

CONNECT WITH JESS & STYLEBOOK:

• Stylebook Website
• Stylebook App
• Follow Stylebook on Instagram
• Whole Closet Method book

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Conscious Life & Style Website
• Conscious Life & Style Pinterest
• Conscious Style on Instagram
• Conscious Edit Newsletter Sign-Up

This episode is a bit different from previous ones! I'm sharing my journey from being somewhat addicted to fast fashion, shopping all of the time, to becoming a conscious consumer then sustainable fashion blogger and now a fashion activist and online business owner.

I'm also answering YOUR questions in this episode that some of you sent in via Instagram, like how to talk about ethical fashion without sounding pushy and how to declutter your closet in a conscious way.

There will be future Q&A bonus episodes, so be sure to subscribe (or follow) so that you do not miss those! And if you'd like to ask a question, follow Conscious Style on Instagram and watch out for question stickers in Stories :) 

QUICK LINKS:

• 65+ BIPOC Conscious Creators To Follow
• Sustainable Fashion Courses Newsletters, Podcasts, YouTube Channels, and More
• Fashion Is a Feminist Issue — Here's Why
• Conscious Brand Guides
• Conscious Fashion Collective
• Remake Ambassador Program
• Contact Page

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

• Website
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Conscious Edit Newsletter

From "sustainable fashion is expensive" to "sweatshop jobs are better than no jobs", I'm busting some of the MOST common sustainable fashion myths in this episode.

Sustainable fashion is a journey involving unlearning, learning and perspective shifting. 

This episode is certainly not about saying that I know it all — I believed many of these myths and even promoted a couple of them before — and I'm sure there will be more myths that I'll unlearn on my journey.

That said, these are some of the misconceptions that I've seen throughout these years in the conscious fashion space that I wanted to clear up! 

Have another myth to add to this list? DM me on Instagram.

LINKS MENTIONED:

• Clothing Poverty book
• OR Foundation
• OR Foundation Instagram 
• Fashion Revolution Transparency Index
• FashionChecker.org
• Garment Worker Jobs at Risk from Automation
• PayUp Fashion

TEXT VERSION OF EPISODE + MORE LINKS: 

consciouslifeandstyle.com/sustainable-fashion-myths

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

Website: consciouslifeandstyle.com

Instagram: instagram.com/consciousstyle

Conscious Edit Newsletter: consciouslifeandstyle.com/edit

This episode breaks down the 7 main types of greenwashing (or "greenwashing sins"), in which ways each type is being used in the fashion industry today, and how you can spot them to avoid them! You'll also get a bit of history on greenwashing and tips to keep in mind about identifying greenwashing in the fashion industry.

LINKS MENTIONED:

• List of Fashion Certifications
• Remake's Brand Directory
• Good On You Directory
• Good On You App: App Store or Google Play

TEXT VERSION OF EPISODE + MORE LINKS: 

consciouslifeandstyle.com/how-to-identify-greenwashing

CONNECT WITH CONSCIOUS STYLE:

Website: consciouslifeandstyle.com

Instagram: instagram.com/consciousstyle

Conscious Edit Newsletter: consciouslifeandstyle.com/edit

*If you're enjoying this podcast so far, don't forget to subscribe and rate the show!