In Conversation with Orsola de Castro
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My guest today is Orsola de Castro, author of Loved Clothes Last, co-founder of Fashion Revolution, Esthetica and an absolute icon in sustainable fashion. She’s spent decades challenging the industry to rethink waste, value, and the way we consume. Honestly, if there’s a queen of sustainability in fashion, it’s her. In this conversation, we dive into creating and navigating Change, and she shares her perspective and advice for those considering change.
Let’s get into it.
Caitlin: So Orsola, you’ve been a trailblazer in the circular fashion movement for decades, inspiring so many people and driving legitimate change in an industry not known for being easy to shift. Looking back on your incredible journey, how has your vision for change evolved since you first started, and what do you see as the most urgent priority now?
Orsola: It's very difficult for me to look at my vision then and then where I am now and somehow follow through the serpentine journey that I have embarked on. So life is all about differences and changes and sustainability more so than anything else because, you know, it's a new science, it's a new concept and it has undergone so many changes since I started, which was over 20 years ago. So sometimes there's no connection between the two even.
And it's difficult to see one most urgent priority. The priority is to take people and planet seriously. And it's still not happening. The priority is to ensure that we don't overproduce to the extent that we're doing now, but we're not stopping. The priority is to pay all of our supply chain workers a dignified living wage, but that's nowhere near from happening. And the priority is to ensure that luxury goods actually impart luxury of life to the people who make them. And that is also completely far from the horizon. So it's a long struggle and it's a struggle that is so linked with society. And right now it seems to me that on so many levels we're all going backwards. So that's why when I look back at that vision, I think I've still got quite a lot to go. But certainly the conversation has enlarged. Certainly the bubble has become bigger. And certainly we will keep on trying.
Caitlin: So let's get into the process of change and start out with some of the more practical steps. For somebody who's looking to disrupt their industry from within, what are the first three concrete steps you would recommend that they take?
Orsola: This industry has absolutely zero intention of being disrupted. I used to say the same at the start of fashion revolution. That's disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. I have completely changed my tune and my tone.
Now I say that the only way is to construct. Let the mainstream fashion industry self-harm and auto-destruct and let us be the constructors of the alternative. And may this alternative be so enticing simply by virtue of being better.
Caitlin: And sustaining momentum, change, can be really slow. How do you maintain your motivation and momentum while pushing for systemic change?
Orsola: I don't know. I honestly don't know. And it's a daily job, maintaining the enthusiasm, picking it up when it falls, dressing myself with it, wearing it as an armour, wearing it as, you know, my style and my protection. It's pretty hard. Commitment isn't something that you can switch off overnight.
However, I have given up on hope. I don't want hope. I don't want some sort of fairy tale happy ending at end of this.
With or without hope, my actions won't change. I will still display my rigor, my commitment, my stubbornness for change. But I'm just going to walk my journey without necessarily looking for the rainbow at the end of it. I don't need it. It doesn't affect my behavior and as Shakespeare said, expectations end up potentially breaking your heart. He said something similar, I'm paraphrasing, but that struck a chord always. So here's to doing what we need to do, but without necessarily doing it for the impact, just because it needs to be done.
Caitlin: How important has collaboration been in driving change? Are there specific partnerships or allies that made a significant difference?
Orsola: I've never done anything alone. I am completely incapable of doing most things, although I know that I'm very good at doing the things that I know how to do well, and that's what I practice. I practice perfection, to be honest with you. I disagree with people that say that they can't be perfect. No one can be perfect. I'm pretty bloody perfect at mending.
I'm perfect at the way that I do so many of the things that are important to me. And if not for perfection, I strive to be very, very, very good. But this means that there are so many things in life that I know not how to do. And so, for me, the spirit of collaboration is that. It's the joy, the absolute infinite joy of having others around you complementing your skills. So...
It would be very difficult for me to give you any example of where collaboration has worked because I do not remember anything in my life in which I was not collaborating with somebody.
Caitlin: So now I want to get into some lessons that you might be able to share from challenges and failure. Obviously, it's kind of part and parcel of the process of creating anything really, change especially. So have there been any significant challenges or missteps in your journey? And what did you learn from them that others might benefit from?
Orsola: Again, an impossible question to answer. My entire life has been about challenges, certainly my career, 100%. I started out doing something that everybody thought was impossible, from my pattern makers to my peers when I started making clothes the way that I was making clothes, from remnants, from rubbish and so on and so forth.
Everything I've done has started with a massive, massive challenge and multiple failures, absolutely multiple failures, mistakes galore. I don't even call them that. I think they're part and parcel. I actually don't think that you could ever be satisfied about anything unless you've failed and you've learned from that, unless you've made a mistake and you've turned that mistake into your best career ideas. So yeah, part and parcel.
Life without them would be incredibly boring.
Caitlin: And last but by no means least, I think this is always my favorite part in these conversations, because they tend to give me some chills. So what advice would you give to someone who sees flaws in the way that things are, but feels the kind of enormous social pressure to conform or is just giving up on feeling that they even can?
Orsola: My advice would be don't do anything if you're hoping to have an impact. Because you won't. At the moment, with things going backwards, the type of society that we've got right now, I mean, even the noisiest activism movements aren't working properly. It's really a weird, weird time in politics.
So my advice right now is just do things for you. Do things because it's important that you do them.
But not because you're hoping to achieve something that will ameliorate the status quo, ameliorate your own status quo, ameliorate your heart, ameliorate your conscience. Everything that you do, do it in order to stand proud.
Leave your mark. Don't try and save the world, the planet, culture, or anything like that. The pressure for that is exactly what will make you want to stop doing it.
So go, forge, follow the things that really, really, really matter to you and do those as perfectly as you can for your own life, for the life of the people that are immediately next to you. It will extend.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I have. Change is a constant and a theme I’m really passionate about - enabling any and all to be a driver for positive change.
At a time when we accept "this is just how things are done," or feel overwhelmed by the amount of disruption in existence, or actively want to create a better future but just don’t know where to start, these stories seek to demonstrate that there are always ways forward - whether that's finding new solutions to old problems or questioning commonly accepted "truths" about how things must be done.