Essential Reading
Ready to level up?
Happy Monday (I hope)! Just briefly popping in with a little reminder that while your free monthly newsletter offers a broad overview of topics to catch up on, The Ethical Fashion Roundup includes a weekly deep-dive that you can subscribe to for £5 a month, or £45 a year. Each paid signup helps support my work to keep writing about the issues that really matter in fashion (amidst a rather hairy time for freelancers), and of course offers you bucketloads more value. Do drop me a line if you’re a student or have lost work during lockdown for a discounted subscription too.
Also, here are three links to some in-depth explorations of fashion’s current state of confusion and chaos amidst the pandemic which I’ve enjoyed recently, and I think you will too:
Sweatpants Forever by Irina Aleksander for The New York Times
A longread on luxury fashion’s reckoning with the downright ridiculous pre-pandemic production cycle, profiling Band of Outsiders’ Scott Sternberg to explore the unravelling of the traditional fashion system and where the industry goes from here, now that none of us want to dress up.The Power of #PayUp by Elizabeth Cline for Atmos
“The #PayUp campaign has shown me what consumer power, citizen action and coalition-building can look like, but more importantly what it can achieve.” I referenced this incredible piece about one of the fashion industry’s most monumental activist movements in my latest paid subscriber edition of this newsletter about where we are now with #PayUp.The Conversations Podcast by Jason Campbell and Henrietta Gallita
I’m devouring every episode of this laid-back lockdown show about fashion and culture, particularly recent debates on leadership, influence, privilege and total system overhaul in the aptly named Has Fashion Lost Its Centre? and Will There Be a Mass Exodus From Fashion?
Fancy some more podcast listening? We’ve been sharing more weekly episodes over at Common Threads about issues like diversity, representation, inclusivity and social justice. Today’s new episode is all about vintage fashion, and features two fabulous vintage sellers called Rachel Valentine and Lapoze MacTribouy. You can listen now on iTunes, Spotify and Google Podcasts. Also, Alice and I finally got to meet in person in Edinburgh over the weekend for a socially distanced catch up. At last, no more Zoom calls! (also here is my People Tree £10 organic cotton mask if you need a cute reminder to wear a damn mask)
Have a wonderful week!
Ruth x
Header image by Ellie Morag