Can small local makers compete with the big guys today, and should they try? Or is it time to build new networks that create a totally different playing field?

Meet one woman going her own way - and sharing what she’s learned along it. Simone Agius is the Melbourne maker behind Simetrie - a disruptive, hand-crafted accessories brand that's challenging norms. This a bright conversation about sharing, being a maker not a marketer - and how together we might reset fashion’s values.

CALLING ALL TREE-HUGGERS! Nicole Rycroft founded Canopy Planet at her kitchen table with a small budget and a big idea - to protect the world’s precious forests. Twenty years later, Canopy is one of the leading organisations protecting last frontier forests.

This not-for profit organisation works globally to protect our forest ecosystems, and engage business to ensure supply chains don’t use trees unsustainably. What’s all this got to do with fashion? You’re about to find out.

Do we really use ancient trees to make trivial things? Try pizza boxes and party frocks.

It’s an outrage - but it’s also an opportunity for change, and Canopy is doing something about it.

Vintage and second-hand is in the news more than ever before. It's set to eclipse fast fashion within ten years. The designer re-commerce sector is booming. But as shopping pre-loved becomes more aspirational, are those who rely on thrifted clothes being licked out?

What’s not up for debate, however, is that the piles of discarded fashion and textiles keep growing. The excess is real. Where it ends up, who pays the price, what that price should be, what’s selling, what’s not, what should be ... in this week's episode we address all this and more as our listeners take a seat in the interviewee's chair. Featuring Julia Browne, Liisa Jokinen & Ali Dibley.

MEET GREEN THUMBS NIDALA BARKER & KOBI BLOOM. Who else talks to their plants? This week's joyful episode is a love letter to what we grow - in gardens, allotments, veggie patches and pots on our windowsills the world over. But also what grows wild - in the woods, hedgerows, fields and scrub, the verges by the freeways, even the cracks in city pavements.

Kobi is a regenerative forager, gardener and weeds-appreciator based in Byron Bay, Australia.

Up for discussion: How can learning more about plants, and their wonder, help us heal the planet? What exactly is a regenerative farmer or gardener (and how can you be be one)? What happens if we donʼt pull out the weeds? What can we do about food waste? And why is compost so often the answer to life's big questions?

SUSTAINABLE FASHION IS A LIE WITHOUT THE WORKERS AT THE TABLE. Nazma Akter, founder and Executive Director of the Awaj Foundation, has been fighting to improve workers’ rights in Bangladesh's garment sector for 30 years - and she started out as a garment worker herself, aged just 11. Nazma is also the President of Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation, one of the largest union federations in Bangladesh, and co-chair of Asia Pacific Women’s Committee of IndustriALL Global Union. Hers is a powerful, persuasive, brilliant voice from the workers’ side. So why have't you heard it before? Or if you have, why not more?

The answer is because fashion - yes, even sustainable fashion - operates with a power imbalance that too often shuts workers out. We rarely hear from the people who make our clothes, especially those in low-wage countries. Instead, we hear from brands talking about garment workers, or well meaning white people talking on their behalf. Mostly, we hear from those who make the decisions, rather than those who must live with them. But if we are to build a truly sustainable and ethical fashion industry, we must make space for the people who make our clothes.

Everybody's talking about degrowth. Does this mean we’ve finally woken up to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse? Are we ready to challenge capitalism’s obsession with GDP and perpetual expansion? If so, what’s the alternative? And how can we apply this to fashion, beyond simply "buy less"? How might we reimagine the whole system, and rethink how we measure success?

This week's guest is Jason Hickel author of Less is More - How Degrowth Will Save the World.

Jason is a rockstar economist (no grey suits here) focused on global inequality, political economy, post-development, and ecological economics. He teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London and serves on the Statistical Advisory Panel for the UN Human Development Report 2020, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe and on the Harvard-Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice.

Belinda Duarte is a former athlete and educator, current inspirational leader, formidable female exec, proud First Nations Australian and the inspiration for Series 5 - #sharethepodcastmic

As a sprinter and heptathlete, she trailed for the Commonwealth and the Olympic Games. She was the inaugural director of the Korin Gamadji Institute (more below), and integral to the establishment and development of the AFL SportsReady’s National Indigenous Program. In 2012, Belinda was voted Football Woman of the Year. Today, she is CEO of Culture is Life, working to empower young people through Indigenous-led solutions and cultural connection.

While this Episode is just in time for January 26th - a significant day in Australia; it's time to #changethedate - there is lots more up for discussion: from Belinda's family story, to sustainability and Indigenous wisdom, raising strong young people, ethical leadership and how we can use sport and culture to move towards reconciliation.

Model mentor. Charlee Frazer is a New York-based Australian model and a proud Awabakal woman from the mid-north coast of New South Wales. In 2016, she made her international debut on Alexander Wang’s runway, after Guido Paolo had chopped her long hair into a chic bob. That season, Charlee walked 40 shows including Prada, Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Lanvin, Givenchy and Céline.

Now Charlee is working with First Nations Fashion & Design founders Grace Lillian Lee and Teagan Cowlishaw to support Australia's first ever Indigenous fashion council. This is a beautiful conversarion about reframing the fashion discourse, connecting to country, and mentoring emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fashion talent.

60,000 years of sustainability. In this Episode Aboriginal journalist, speaker and advocate for the Indigenous fashion sector YATU WIDDERS HUNT interviews SHONAE HOBSON - a Southern Kaantju woman from Coen, Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland. She is the inaugural First Nations Curator at Bendigo Art Gallery. She catches up with first nations fashion designers JULIE SHAW and TEAGAN COWLISHAW. And explores the vibrant contemporary Indigenous fashion scene happening in Australia right now.

Why does so much fashion still cling to strict men's and womenswear codes? Is the industry finally ready to shake off these tired old binaries and embrace the trans and gender-nonconforming community? Or is Harry Styles' Vogue cover about as far as it goes?

For this week's #sharethepodcastmic episode, sustainable fashion journalist Aditi Mayer interviews Alok Vaid-Menon about their new book, Beyond the Gender Binary. Alok is a gender-nonconforming poet, author, performance artist and designer.

Up for discussion: everything from gender neutral fashion, to the limitations of representation to what it means to truly redefine beauty. Also, fashion has been largely silent on the rising wave of transphobia, says Alok, yet continues to draw inspiration from gender-nonconforming people.

This episode is a powerful call to designers "take it as an ethical imperative to de-gender their lines" and to "everyone, regardless of your gender, to make this an issue."

Kalkidan Legesse is the founder of Sancho’s - a pioneering Black-owned sustainable fashion store in Exeter in the UK. Sancho's sells ethical and fair trade clothing, gifts and accessories from sustainable fashion brands like People Tree, Armedangels, Lefrik and Just Trade. They also really innovate with their pricing accessibility - and you'll hear all about that in this interview.

What else gets unpacked in this important conversation? Kalkidan's Ethiopian roots and how returning to Addis Ababa as an adult sparked the idea for Sancho's. The million racist micro-aggressions people of colour face in the fashion industry (and everywhere else), who gets the power, and how to be an ethical leader.

DO THE WORK. EPISODE 129 FEATURES AJA BARBER. Aja is a London-based writer, stylist, fashion activist and cultural commentator. Her work focuses on sustainability, ethics, intersectional feminism, racism and all the ways systems of power effect our buying habits. Aja is passionate about social justice and rebuilding systems of oppression.

It's all up discussion today: from the COVID reset and garment workers to allyship (when brands get it wrong & how to get it right) and fashion billionaires. We’re unpacking white fragility, the dreaded Karens, and coddling vs. discomfort. This is a conversation about how the system is rigged but we have the power to change it. Aja's vision for a sustainable fashion future? Press play to find out. And don’t miss next week’s Episode, with Aja in conversation with Kalkidan Legesse.