Last Friday, at the Post Growth (?) Fashion Futures webinar, I talked to a dear colleague, Dr. Meital Peleg Mizrachi from Yale University.

Meital’s recent work and publications have been making waves in sustainable fashion research community. Findings from her study on the consumption of second-hand and new fashion in the U.S., for example, revealed a counter-intuitive correlation between the two: people who buy more second hand also buy more new fast fashion… Whaaaaat….

We had a long discussion as to why this may be the case, how second-hand fashion consumption has been evolving across geographies and how policy is lagging to address its impacts. And, of course, how fashion could look like post-growth:)

Give it a listen - the recording is available below to all paid subscribers of Post Growth Fashion!

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As someone based in Europe, I strongly believe we have much to learn from non-Eurocentric perspectives.

My latest conversation was with Awino Dina, a researcher from Kenya, who shared an African perspective on fashion, sustainability and her interpretation of how fashion “post growth” could look like in Kenya and in the African context more broadly.

We spoke, among other things, about local Kenyan textile production and its main consumers - schools, hospitals, and religious organizations. There is strong demand for locally-made textiles, although cheap imports from Asia jeopardize and in some cases even bankrupt local mills.

And, of course, second hand - there is a lot of it flooding Kenya in recent years, and imports are poorly regulated, which allows textile waste enter the country. I genuinely appreciated Dina’s perspective on fashion policy development in Kenya and how it is intertwined with policies in agriculture, water and waste management.

A really inspiring talk - check it out in full below!

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I met Karishma Singh Kelsey through the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion years ago. But it was not until this June that we had met in person and I could listed to her talk about her work at the Degrowth Conference in Oslo.

And, boy, it was EXCITING!

I love learning about different perspectives, and what Karishma researches is definitely something most people in Europe have little idea about.

About Karishma’s work

Karishma Singh Kelsey is a systems designer, educator, and researcher working at the intersection of fashion, education, and enterprise through Indigenous systems thinking and post-growth futures.

👉 Based in 𝐴𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑎 New Zealand, she teaches entrepreneurship, sustainable design, and economics at Manurewa High School through an Indigenous lens, embedding values of 𝑘𝑎𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑎 and collective responsibility.

👉 Founder of Karishma Design and the style activism initiative Miraculous Me, she advances “Defashioning” as a practice of mindful reconnection. Karishma is completing a Master’s in Indigenous Educational Leadership and developing her PhD on rewilding business education through Indigenous systems thinking, spirituality, and degrowth economics.

👉 She is Secretary of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion (UCRF) and a founding member of Fashion Act Now (FAN) working on creating a fashion commons as the new north star of fashion.

The Conversation

We recorded our exchange for Post Growth (?) Fashion Futures series last Friday, and it was full of new words and ideas for me. When you stop looking at the world through your habitual lens, it may get uncomfortable. Karishma talked about the diversity and agility of indigenous wisdoms and a monorail logic of capitalism that is only a few hundred years old. She talked about desired and needs and how our relationship to clothes and nature could look like if we were the custodians of the planet and not users.

A truly inspiring session, from which I learned a lot.

Here are several books that Karishma mentioned:

Snake Talk (2025) by Megan Kelleher and Tyson Yunkaporta

Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Recording is available below for paid subscribers of the Post Growth Fashion substack - sign up for instant access to this session and all the previous episodes of the Post Growth (?) Fashion Futures series.

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Feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with corporate lingo, upcoming regulations and constant greenwashing?🤯🤯🤯 Want your brain to have a intellectual "spa break"?😇😇😇

Recording of the final webinar of the Post Growth (?) Fashion Futures series is out!

Step out of your frustration zone for an hour and listen to a conversation about positive futures and indigenous wisdom and knowledge that has not (yet) been corrupted by corporations.

✨ Jennifer Whitty has a fascinating career in fashion research spanning three continents. Her research cuts deep into systemic change but also into our relationships with clothes, crafts, and fashion.✨

In our chat, we discussed how (k)new economics and indigenous ideas could shape the future of fashion post growth. Jennifer talked about how clothes makes us feel, body and spirit, how there are many ways of interpreting these relationships and nurturing a healthier attitude to our garments than that of over consumption.

A must listen for those who are tired of the dominant corporate narrative on “sustainable f

ashion”.

Sign up to this channel to listen to the recording - and to support my work on post growth fashion! THANK YOU!

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What a warm and heartfelt hour! I really loved talking to Hakan Karaosman, an Associate Professor at Cardiff University, about his work on justice for workers in fashion supply chains.

Throughout the conversation, it turned out we had a lot in common in our backgrounds. We both chose to focus out professional attention on fashion based on personal connec…

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In February, we got together with Prof. Dilys Williams - Director of the Center for Sustainable Fashion of the University of Arts London. Dilys is a true pioneer in sustainable fashion research, which she approached through her background in fashion design. Influenced by feminist and de-colonial thinking, Prof. Williams led multiple research projects that take a more holistic and practical perspective on the fashion-sustainability nexus - some of which she shares in her talk.

Listen to the recording below and share your thoughts in comments!

The recording is available to paid subscribers - THANK YOU for supporting my work on post growth fashion!

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Ok this was… Wow. Talking to Kate Fletcher, one of the key voices steering fashion-sustainability discourse since late 1990s, was a really meaningful and deep experience for me. Kate comes from a working class family and as someone with similar background, I really appreciated how her ideas and actions are anchored in real life - while offering conceptual depth and grounded deeply into systems theory.

Letting a conversation flow rather loosely allows people to express thoughts and reflect on the go, which usually brings fantastic results. And this webinar was no exception. I learned so much in such a short time. Kate’s views are well thought-through and articulated. And questions from the audience rocked - as always with these webinars (I am so humbled and happy to have attracted such a nice crowd to these topics). A few topics that Kate addressed (and it goes deep):

• What is the relationship between slow fashion and democracy?

• What are the moral limits of the market when it comes to fashion?

• Which de-growth practices has Kate adopted in her daily life and careers?

Ejoy the recording below. It’s a gem.

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On Friday, December 13th, we got together with Ingun Klepp, Professor at SIFO (National Institute for Consumer Research Norway) and Tone Tobiasson, author and journalist, board member of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion, for another webinar in the Post Growth (?) Fashion Futures series.

The goal of these webinars is to shed light on current sustainable fashion research, especially its consumption aspects, and bring it closer to discussions amongst policy makers, advocacy groups, and change makers on the ground.

Ingun and Tone are one of the most passionate and influential tandems in the textile research / policy space, with a long track record of pioneering research projects that changed our understanding of the use phase of garments, post consumer textile flows and plastification of fashion.

Ingun and Tone have been admiraby vocal during the preparation and adoption of the EU Strategy on Circular and Sustainable Textiles. They keep engaging with the policy makers through all the appropriate channels - but it seems that these efforts are still falling short when it comes to confronting a very well-paid lobby of the fashion industry that delays and dillutes upcoming legislation.

One of my favorite points from Ingun’s talk was that currently, legislation for the fashion system is based around the assumption that our consumption of fashion (clothing, shoes, bags) is like our consumption of washing mashines: we buy a new one as soon as the old one stops working. The EPR schemes, the durability and repairability discourses are all missing a major point - consumption of fashion does not follow the same pattern, and the instruments that are based on the flawed assumptions that do not take scientific research into account arebound to fail.

To hear more about the uphill battle of making research influence policy in fashion, listen to this conversation and the discussion with the public that followed. Join this substack as a paid subscriber - for a symbolic price of $6 a month you will get access to all the webinars recorded and all the premium content - some of which has already been cited in Vogue and in scientific discussions around sustainable fashion.

Post Growth (?) Fashion Futures is a project I am doing on my *unpaid* time and it requires quite a lot of effort in terms of organising and preparing. By joining as a paid subscriber, you're not only helping bring research findings closer to those who need to know them, you are also helping me personally by paying for the time and work I put into this project.

Listen to the recording here:

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On Friday, November 8th, we got together with Kirsi Niinimaki, Professor of Design at Aalto University, for another webinar in the Post Growth (?) Fashion Futures series.

The goal of these webinars is to shed light on current sustainable fashion research, especially its consumption aspects, and bring it closer to discussions amongst policy makers, advocacy groups, and change makers on the ground.

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Kirsi has been in charge of fashion research at Aalto for almost two decades and her contribution to the field is enormous. From leading a work steam for the New Cotton project on fiber to fiber recycling to closing the loop in circular policies in the EU, Kirsi's team has been doing critical research that has impacted European policies and business strategies alike.

Questions for Kirsi included:

🌺 What are the most interesting recent findings from your research on fashion consumption / social change - or that you are aware of?

🌺 How has research on fashion and sustainability transformed since you started working on these topics?

🌺 Are there any research strands that are not captured by policy today? "Forgotten" studies that should be brought to light?

🌺 What are your thoughts on fashion post-growth? What kind of re-thinking would be required? What kind of changes and by whom?

I must say, it was a surprisingly and refreshingly optimistic conversation. Kirsi talked about the evolution of the field since the early 2000s and how she moved from design focus to consumption patterns and nature based materials. She also shared her views on how the post growth fashion future could look like and I was so pleased to hear that our thoughts on that align as we talked about creativity under scarcity and how to make better things with less.

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

To listen to this conversation and the discussion with the public that followed, join our substack as a paid subscriber - for a symbolic price of $6 a month you will get access to all the webinars recorded and all the premium content - some of which has already been cited in Vogue and in scientific discussions around sustainable fashion.

Post Growth (?) Fashion Futures is a project I am doing on my *unpaid* time and it requires quite a lot of effort in terms of organising and preparing. By joining as a paid subscriber, you're not only helping bring research findings closer to those who need to know them, you are also helping me personally by paying for the time and work I had put into this project.

Subscribe now

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