29/04/2022
After graduating with a Masters’s Degree in Fashion and Business, Niamh wanted to start her own company, based on her own principles, values and way of doing things. We talk about studying fashion, how the obvious path goes into fast fashion, the difference between making things quick and easy versus taking your time to do it properly, how a career…
22/04/2022
Today’s guests are Barbara and Nick, the due behind the small Hackney-based brand, A State of Nature. Heavily into the small-scale, well-crafted, detail-oriented, natural fabrics and direct sales school of business, building the business from the ground level with a focus on longevity and happy customers. We talk about the joys and frustrations and how coming from luxury fashion means…
15/04/2022
When you start a brand based on your admiration for the last great hero of exploration, you want to make sure you live up to the legend. Martin Brooks of Shackleton guests to talk about his decades-long obsession with Ernest Shackleton and his Antarctic quest, his values and leadership, the understated heroics and achievements. Oh, and how they are going…
08/04/2022
This week I have the pleasure of talking to someone I’ve enjoyed countless hours of seeing on tv, Patrick Grant. Known to many as one of the judges of The Great British Sewing Bee, Patrick has many more things going on, such as owning a traditional Savile Row tailor and a Lancashire garment factory. He’s also working to revitalise manufacturing…
01/04/2022
Journalist Symeon Brown visits to talk about his new book about the world of influencers, “Get rich or lie trying”. We cover the rise of the modern influencers, how social media has enabled new ways of guerilla marketing using young fans, the fashionable surgery and Brazilian butt lifts, the dropshipping and financial trader scams and at the end of the…
25/03/2022
After getting busy writing during the lockdown, Holly Swinyard returns to talk all things cosplay. We get into the history of cosplay and how while the name is recent, it has much older origins, how humans have maybe always been into dressing up, the potential benefits of taking on a character, the work that goes into costumes, how things changed…
18/03/2022
Following up on last week’s Japanese theme, this week I’m joined by Ian Haydock, Lancashire born, Tokyo resident. We talk about his family history in the Lancashire textile industry, the joy of sifting through the Tokyo second-hand shops, especially finding forgotten British brands, how the ecosystem of vintage and secondhand garments works in Tokyo and the collector mentality. You can…
11/03/2022
Today’s guest is Takè Sato, former fashion editor of Smart magazine in Japan and fashion editor of Monocle magazine. Today Takè is based in London and works as a creative director and fashion stylist. He recently published “An obsession made in Japan”, about the “happy victims”, fashion victims, as documented by Kyoichi Tsuzuki. We talk about the Japanese otakus (aka…
04/03/2022
This week we venture down a more scientific route with Dr Joshua M Bluteau, aka @anthrodandy, and his field studies within menswear and social media. Adopting the persona of @antrodandy, he went deep into the field to study how we present ourselves on social media, what we might gain and lose from it, what it does to us and how…
25/02/2022
My guests this week are Marie and Will from Old Town, micro makers of contemporary clothing with references to the past. We talk about the Blitz scene of the ’80s and the twisty way Old Town started off, why they’re not about nostalgia, where the inspiration comes from, how their customer base has evolved over time and the celebrity gardener…