Ecosessions: The Crisis of Stuff

The fashion industry is now producing 150 billion garments per year - so many clothes and nothing to wear. Our closets are overflowing and too many garments are ending up in the landfill. What can we do? This EcoSessions focuses on the crisis of a consumerism and consumption and our opportunity for change. Our panelists will give the audience a fuller, richer and more honest picture of our current crisis of stuff

Schedule:

18:30 - doors open

19:00-20:00 - Panel Discussion between Steven Bethell, Prof. Rebecca Earley and Orsola de Castro, moderated by Kate Black

20:00-20:30 - Conversation and networking

Featuring:

Steven Bethell: Beyond Retro CEO Steven Bethell has been in the recycling business for over 20 years, starting out with glass, cans, and paper before moving on to textiles. As an offshoot of his Canada-based textile trade company Bank & Vogue, Beyond Retro was an early pioneer of the east London vintage scene at its inception 13 years ago, and remains a seminal retailer for savvy secondhand shoppers across the UK and Sweden. The brand comes to Pure with its eponymous Beyond Retro Label, a fully-fledged fashion brand of apparel and accessories crafted from reclaimed materials. Bethell's career-defining passion for sustainability makes him the perfect candidate to advise retailers on successfully integrating this message into their marketing strategy.

Prof. Rebecca Earley: Trained as a printed textile designer (BA Hons, Loughborough, 1992) and fashion print designer (MA, Central Saint Martins, 1994), Becky set up the B.Earley studio in 1995 with help from the Prince's Trust, Arts Council and the Crafts Council. She is also a design researcher at University of the Arts London and an industry consultant. She divides her working life between Central Saint Martins where she is Director of TFRC, Chelsea College of Arts where she is a principal and co researcher in TED, and Sweden where she is key part of the research consortium work for MISTRA Future Fashion and the EU Horizon 20202 project, Trash-2-Cash. Prof. Earley also supervises PhD researchers who are exploring sustainable textile design and material innovation.

Orsola de Castro: A pioneer and internationally recognised opinion leader in sustainable fashion. In 1997 she founded From Somewhere, a label designing clothes made entirely from pre-consumer waste: disregarded materials such as surplus and production cut-offs. The label combined sustainable thinking with fashion-forward design, bringing quality and craftsmanship to ‘exquisite rubbish’. From Somewhere collaborations include Jigsaw, Tesco, Speedo, and a series of best selling capsule collections for Topshop. In 2006, she co-founded the British Fashion Council pioneering initiative Estethica, which she curated until 2014. Estethica was London Fashion Week’s showcase for labels designing sustainably: ethics and aesthetics combined. It nurtured new generations of like-minded designers and supported more established brands who are mindful of their supply chain. In 2014, with Carry Somers, she founded Fashion Revolution Day, marking the disaster in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 24 April 2013 when the Rana Plaza factory collapsed killing and injuring thousands of workers. Raising public awareness of the continuing social and environmental catastrophes in our global fashion supply chains, Fashion Revolution has become a global campaign with participation in over 85 countries around the world. Orsola is a regular key note speaker and mentor as well as a Central Saint Martins Visiting Fellow and Practitioner in Residence for Central Saint Martins Fashion MA.

Kate Black: Recognized as an expert in ethical fashion and sustainable living, Kate Black is the founder of Magnifeco.com (launched ’09) and author of ‘Magnifeco: Your Head-to-Toe Guide to Ethical Fashion and Non-Toxic Beauty’ (published 10/15), which has been featured in The Guardian, Vogue Italia, Metro, NO