In Conversation With Safiya Allaf

Welcome to All Change Please. The third episode in this monthly series highlighting individuals (from students to C-suite) who are reshaping their industries and communities by going against the grain, or carving out alternative paths to meaningful change.

The words we choose matter.

So who better to speak to than copywriter, content strategist and storyteller Safiya Allaf. In the fashion industry, greenwashing is painfully hard to spot and terms like "sustainable" risk losing their meaning, so the language we use to communicate about ethics and environmental impact matters more than ever. As a copywriter specialising in ethical fashion brands and B2B businesses, Safiya plays a crucial role in helping brands connect with their audience.

Taking a slightly different approach this month, Safiya and I recorded our chat so you can listen in on us discussing the evolving language of circularity, the challenges of crafting meaningful narratives, and how intentional communication has the power to drive real change in fashion.

More of a prolific reader? Here’s the transcript below which has been edited for easier reading. Enjoy!

Thank you so much for joining me. I’m really excited to do this and to have this conversation together. So let's start at the beginning: Obviously you are a fantastic copywriter, content strategist, specializing in more ethical fashion brands and B2B businesses. But of course that's not where you began.

Was there a specific moment for you that sparked that shift, that change to niche down into this area?

Yeah, I think I've always been interested in sustainability and sustainable fashion because my mum is an eco warrior. So I just grew up around her and watching how she interacted with nature and was just very thrifty, very environmentally minded and forever in her garden growing vegetables and all that.

And when I was at school, I didn't really have a lot of money to spend on clothes. So I used to shop in charity shops. And that's really where my love for sustainable fashion started. But then as I went to university and got a little bit more disposable income, of course I dabbled in fast fashion. It had to be done.

My first job was actually working in PR for a luxury travel PR agency. And whilst I was there, interacting with people and seeing how they shopped versus how I shopped, suddenly I was exposed to those people that were shopping in a different way. And also travel, like the luxury travel isn't always necessarily the most sustainable thing. And then from there, moved across a few different PR agencies before settling into a content role and then going freelance and working for myself a couple of years ago.

And I just had this realization that words are so powerful and I don't want to use my my words and talent, shall we say, to make rich corporations richer that are also damaging the planet. So that's really where I was like, you know what, if I'm going to work for myself, I'm going to be really picky about who I work with. And I'm really grateful to all of the clients I work with now within sustainable fashion, whether they're like a brand, B2B, or even like sustainable fashion tech.

They're all doing incredible stuff and I'm so just like really excited to be able to help them tell the world about what they do and you know improve their impact and like spread it to more people.

Exactly as you say, the words that you choose have weight, they matter. And being a copywriter, somebody who is really all about the words, that's so great to be able to take that decision and say, no, I'm going to be very, very specific about who gets to use this skill.

And I want to continue on that actually, because the words that we use to talk about change, to craft that story, it can be hit or miss. How do you go about this?

How do you craft the right narrative that's still engaging for customers as well?

You mean by like keeping the sustainability message within that?

Yeah, I think, I think when people were first starting to talk about sustainability and it became more mainstream, it was tied with this zero waste movement. I don't know if you remember that Trash is for Tossers and what was her name? I'm forgetting now. She had a zero waste home book and it was all quite extreme. And I think the, people who are already passionate about sustainability, people like my mum, they love that. They completely resonated with that and took it on board. Whereas I think the mass like public probably found it quite alienating and it felt very like pointing the finger and a bit blamey. And I think sustainability messaging had to go through that stage of sharing a lot of stats and facts, making people feel, you know, the shocking reality of seeing how their day-to-day decisions and day-to-day choices could massively impact the planet.

Whereas I think now that messaging has mellowed and people are realizing that it needs to be a lot more about what the consumer wants first.

So I always say to my clients or any bit of writing that I'm doing is that it really has to come from a place of thinking about the consumer, thinking about the customer in terms of what problems are you solving? What are their fears? What are their desires? What are their dreams? And leading with that and then adding the sustainability messaging afterwards.

Which I know sounds a little bit counterintuitive as someone who like is so passionate about sustainability to have it as like a secondary focus, but you could have the most sustainable product out there, but if it's something that nobody wants, if it's ugly, if it doesn't work, nobody's gonna buy it. And then your mission really is kind of pointless because you're not gonna have that impact. So it's really gotta be like, you've got to have a good product, a good story and actually solve a problem.

Yeah, I think that's actually really interesting. We all want to do better and we want to minimise our impact but at the end of the day, “Sustainability” is not the thing that's going to like pull the trigger and move that behaviour as well.

So I love to hear that you're kind of saying, OK, it seems counter-intuitive but the messaging needs to be secondary to the actual product.

I mean, of course, it still needs to be there. Like, you have a lot of then genuinely sustainable and ethical companies or brands that are scared to share their sustainability initiatives. So you end up with a lot of green hushing, which I think is also not helpful because then people who do want something sustainable are unable to find you as easily if you're not talking about it. So I think yeah, you're right when you earlier asked this question about finding the balance, it's like how do you tell your message authentically enough that you're not diluting your sustainability message but you're also not like shoving it down people's throats.

I think that's the key thing there.

Yeah. And do you find that there's still a reliance on certain buzzwords like sustainability or is that evolution taking place anyway quite naturally?

I think certain words are seen as a little bit dirty now.

So people say something's green or eco-friendly. What does that actually mean? Or clean, clean is another one that's like, what does that mean? I would hope that this item that I'm buying is clean and isn't being sold to me dirty, but it's those wishy-washy phrases that have been associated with the sustainability movement, but don't actually really say a whole lot. What's a lot better for brands to do is to be specific as possible and to be as transparent as possible. So for example, if your item is made from organic cotton, then say it's made from organic cotton, because it's organic. Rather than saying it's green or eco-friendly.

Yeah, and shift past that being just a buzzword that you pull out and expect everybody to do the maths and understand the subtext.

Yes, yeah. And it's the same with branding, there's a lot of - especially cleaning products - that will just have a green leaf on them or say ‘clean ingredients’ or saying it's all natural ingredients and all chemical free.

But that just doesn't make any sense because everything is a chemical, right? It's just some are harmful and some are not. Water is a chemical, but you wouldn't say, this water bottle is chemical free. (Although if it's in a plastic bottle, then it probably isn't.) So it's then really confusing for the end consumer to understand, okay, well, what is this? You know, this has got green leaves on it, it says it's clean. That means it's good, right? Or plant-based, that's another one that gets thrown around a lot. And it’s bigger brands that potentially aren't sustainable jumping on that sustainability trend because they know it sells. People want an easy option to do something good and to feel good about themselves. So they think, I'm going to pick this off the supermarket shelf because it's got green on it and it's leaves and you know. Yeah, so you can see that little dopamine-led thinking of “I am doing something good.“ But it's making a fool out of the consumer, which I really don't like it when brands do that.

Yeah. You have to treat your consumer with respect and meet them at eye level and actually help them along their journey. Which is actually something I wanted to talk to you about in terms of the balance between educating and inspiring people.

How do you manage to balance that in a way that is not overwhelming? Especially you were mentioning at the beginning, things started out really shocking and perhaps overwhelming. Today, we open the news, it's crazy out there, the world's on fire, nobody really wants to have the finger wagged at them again. So my question I suppose is really, how do you take all of this knowledge, meet the customer at eye level and craft something that's still engaging and exciting?

I think it's about helping people realise the value of their actions, realise their own power, right? Everyone thinks, well I'm just little old me, what difference am I going to make? Or there's that kind of like, you're just pissing in the wind. Like whatever I do is not going to make any difference.

So you have these two camps of people who feel like “I can't make a difference” versus others also saying “I can't make a difference” but seeing it is from a much more nihilistic point of view and it's funny because my partner is actually in latter camp and I'm in the former camp. I'm like no every little thing helps and he's like it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. So yeah, it's tricky to navigate when you're trying to speak as a brand or as a business, when you're trying to speak to that big group of people that do have those different viewpoints. But it's about empowering people to make them realize that they do have a stake.

There are so many moments in recent history where people have prevented new oil rigs being built, that have saved woodland, that have prevented roads being built, that have managed to change the way that brands create their products. So it's reminding people that little small daily actions do have a big impact. And how you do that with your content and your messaging is really like inviting them into be part of a movement, inviting them in to be part of a solution.

It's not just...here's a sustainable product that you should buy if you want to be a good person. It's here's a sustainable product that you can buy to make a difference in your life as well as other people's. And I think nowadays there's a rising trend in being more health focused. I think a lot of people are getting more and more aware of PFAs, BPAs and different things that are in our water, different things that are in the products that you use and realizing that actually it's not good for your health, it's not good for yourself, for your body, for your pets, for your animals.

So I think leading with that as well is another angle that brands can work with although try not to be too scary about it because I think we all kind of as you say the world is on fire we're reading about it all the time but as again empowering people to be able to make that decision to help themselves.

I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned about inviting consumers to take part in the solution. While we're talking about health and trends and all these different conversations going on, another thread that's really prominent right now is the role of community and how brands can create more community.

Is that something that you're actively building as well or helping brands to do?

Yes and no. And I only say that because I recently read a post I agreed with, which was saying how a lot of brands and businesses want to build a community, but they want to build it because they want to sell to them. And I think there's a distinction between building a community and building a sales funnel. And there's no shame in building a sales funnel. Building a community is something that takes time, is something that nurtures and is ultimately a separate beast in itself because the community ends up being run by the community, right? It's attached to the brand, but it's more of a...As you say, it's a community. It's not a selling space. Yeah, of course you can then sell to your community and get them to buy into your products or your ethos or your brand or service or whatever it is that you provide. But it is, a separate entity. And I think a lot of brands will be like, yeah, we want to build a community. And it's like, well actually how?

How are you planning on doing that? How do you want to be intentional with that? What do you want the community to look like? What do you want it to provide to your people? And it's the difference between a community and a set of fans, right?

But yeah, community is something that we, I say we, me and my clients, we do try to build. And I'm actually part of, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I'm part of a collaborative brand called Sanja Storiesand there's six of us and we're creating a pair of regenerative trousers made from organic regenerative cotton and we had our launch party last week it was really good fun. But the whole thing is really built on community and it's built on collaboration so that we don't have a founder, we don't have a CEO, we don't even have any funding. We're all just putting in in our time collaboratively.

And we're completely equal partners in it. And the whole way that we're selling these trousers is by building a community buying club. So we're very specific on the fact that this is a community buying club, and people can join it. We want the first 200 people to sign up before we start creating the first batch to reduce as much waste as possible and not have any unsold or you know, unused stock. And I think it's been great as people feel like they are then building the brand with us. And so that's how we're building community. It's a different take on the traditional.

OK, how how can people find or are we is it too early to to let everybody know?

No, no, no, they can join.

They can join the Community Buying Club. It's Sanja Stories. And Sanja actually means collaboration and partnership in Hindi. It's all circular design. They've got an adjustable waist, replaceable pockets, replaceable knees. Really, really cool.

So we spoke a bit about storytelling, talking about change, how to actually engage with customers in a way that's a bit more inspirational and not overwhelming. But I want to go back to your career and your journey. Because a lot of the reasoning and the idea behind talking about change is also for anyone who's thinking about it, maybe a bit curious about starting something new, maybe going against the grain or taking a new journey.

And obviously everybody has a different path and there might be all kinds of challenges, there might be very little. (Unlikely) Are there any challenges you've had to overcome or any big messages, lessons that you're like, okay, I wish I'd known that before I went into this.

Yeah, I mean, starting my own business has probably been the hardest thing I have done for my career, but also the best thing. And I think I didn't realise how much it would challenge me on a personal, spiritual, physical, emotional level that it did. I just thought, yeah, I'm just gonna work for myself. I'll find the clients, I'll do the work, I'll get paid, end of.

There's so much more than that. It's really pushed me outside of my comfort zone and actually given me the opportunity to do things that I have always been passionate about. I love public speaking. I love talking to people. So even this, being invited on this is amazing. And like I spoke at Pure London last year, which was incredible to be able to speak at such a good, you know, well-established industry event.

Now, starting Sanja Stories, well, joining the team and joining Sanja Stories has also been incredible. I'm a co-founder, a collaborative founder of a fashion brand. That's something that I never would have thought a couple of years ago, really. So I guess the lesson is to push yourself outside of your comfort zone a lot more than...well, a lot more often really, because you never know what's going to happen. And learning to be comfortable with rejection and learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I wouldn't have had the clients I have unless I put myself out there and I said, no, I'm going to commit to this. I'm going to write about sustainable fashion.

I don't have any qualifications in fashion. I'm not a designer, I didn't go to fashion school. I'm just really passionate about it and my skill set is in communications and writing.

So using that and something I'm already passionate about and I already read about myself just made sense. But yeah, it was a lot to let go of the imposter syndrome and be like, well, you know, I've only ever worked for travel or hospitality or, you know, I can only write about burgers and I was writing about radiators as well at one point. Radiators, padlocks. But what all of that experience taught me is that if I can write about cyber security and padlocks and radiators, then surely I can write about sustainable fashion, you know?

The thing that you are most passionate about. Definitely.

I've spoken to a few people where this is a common thread on both sides of the coin i.e. “I don't have an extensive background, certification, education in this area, but I'm really passionate about it. And I'm gonna go out and create it and be successful” - and then be successful like yourself in it. But then there's the kind of other side of the coin of “I don't have the certification, therefore I can't do it.” And I would love for more people to feel like, no, like, go for it. Exactly as you say, put yourself out there and get comfortable with being uncomfortable and doing new things.

Are there more new things that you're working on and getting out there and trying out now?

So as well as doing my copywriting and content strategy for different clients and then working on Sanja stories, clearly that wasn't enough. So I've also started a clothes swap event. They're hosted every other month in my local area, just my local town. And people bring in their clothes, I give them tokens in return for their clothes depending on like the quality. So I've got a bronze, silver and gold category just to keep things fair. And then they can use those tokens to shop the swap. And it's just been so wholesome and lovely and everyone's so excited about it to have something that's just in our local area as opposed to having to go all the way into London for it. It's just early stages but I'm really really excited about it.

Your local area, where's your local area? Maidenhead, okay, cool. So people in Maidenhead can come and join in. How can they join in?

So I am on Instagram as Saf's Swap Shop. It's a bit of a mouthful, you know. Yeah, and Facebook and I've got an eventbrite and they're hosted every other month, last Saturday of that month. And I'm gonna be doing maybe some ‘End of Swap Sales’ in-between, because the nature of swaps is you do end up having way more clothes at the end than you actually started with. Just because people tend to take less than they actually bring. So I'm going to try and do some swap sales to try and kind of keep that clothing in circulation. In case people who don't necessarily have anything that they want to bring to swap then they can just buy something for like you know a couple of quid. It's not gonna be extortionate. And my aim really with it is as much as possible I want to be 0 % landfill. I don't want anything going into landfills and I don't really have any control over others, with what happens when people take it from the swap. But anything that is still left over I'm thinking of doing upcycling sessions, like workshops, just something to keep it in circulation for as long as possible and anything that really really doesn't get picked up or just nobody wants.

And I have actually just connected with someone that has a local textile to textile recycling.

Amazing. I love the whole boom of upcycling with Loom and is it Della Yellow? Yeah, the whole premise is basically ‘duolingo for sewing’ which is great. I feel like the whole world of upcycling needs a rebrand. It's like hungry for it.

Yeah definitely a rising trend, think, like personalization, like the Birkinification of bags, everyone wants the charms and stuff.

And I think it really is in opposition to like the clean girl aesthetic of the very polished, very minimalist look. And I think now it's kind of the pendulum swinging back the other way. And honestly, I'm so here for it because I am a little bit of a maximalist at heart, like more is more.

Okay, so I'm just like keeping my eye on the clock. And although I genuinely just would love to just chat all day about fashion and sustainability and these kinds of topics we should wrap it up.

But I do want to ask one last question, ending on a high.

What advice would you give for anybody that's thinking about starting something, thinking about enacting some change, but maybe is feeling a bit of the social pressure to conform? Yeah, what kind of advice would you give them?

Just go for it.

And the more that you trust yourself, trust your intuition and take action on that as well. So it's like listening to yourself, but then acting on what you're listening to, the easier it is to drown out like the external noise and like not listen to others, you know, not having to conform. I think the biggest leaps that I've taken forward with my business have been when I have listened to my inner voice, that intuition and have been like, no, this is the right thing that I need to do.

Much to my friends and families…you know, against their advice. I think sometimes even your loved ones can well, they want the best for you, but they can also be maybe a little bit more risk adverse. And unless you do take some risks, then you're not ever going to learn any lessons. And lessons are really, really valuable because they help you realize what not to do, but also help you strive towards what you do want.

So if you're looking around your local area and you're thinking “I really I really wish we had something that was a bit more sustainable or I really wish we had a litter picking group or I wish that we hosted a clothes swap” you know I'm all for it. I think everyone should try it out and and that's the reason why I did mine: it’s because someone hosted one months ago and then it never happened again and I was really sad about it so I just thought, well I'll just do it myself.

It’s about taking a risk and taking the initiative.

It can be scary and it can be a bit lonely, especially if you feel that you're the only one that's singing from that that hymn sheet. Then find the community, find people that are willing to join you on your endeavor, whether that's online, whether that's in person.

I've got a local zero waste shop and we have a WhatsApp group that's just called Chats and Banter. And it's great. There's always people like, “I've read this article” or, “would anyone want to do this?” Or someone's bought too much of something and wants to share it.

And that is what lights me up. It's amazing.

I really love what you said about kind of listening to your intuition, your inner voice, and then taking action on it. Because I feel that act of not taking action, I feel that's where a lot of frustration can come from of, Why is nothing changing? But exactly, to just do something, anything is the way to go.

So thank you so much for your time, for your conversation. I've absolutely loved it. Any final words?

No, just thank you so much was really like, I feel like I learned a lot as well, just chatting to you. And it's always nice to talk to like-minded people that are just as obsessed with sustainable fashion and like sustainability. And they just get it. So that's always nice.

Same! Thank you.

Thank you.