Author Orsola de Castro's lecture is part of this year's Fashion Talks at AUP entitled: Between Despair and Hope, organized by Professor Renate Stauss and Professor Sophie Kurkdjian, where she will discuss her book Loved Clothes Last: How the Joy of Rewearing and Repairing Your Clothes Can Be A Revolutionary Act. (2021).
Love Clothes Last is a call to creative action.
Running out of space for the clothes you can't stop buying? Curious about how you can make a difference to the environmental challenges our planet faces? Join Orsola's care revolution and learn to make the clothes you love, last longer. This book will equip you with a myriad of ways to mend, rewear and breathe new life into your wardrobe to achieve a more sustainable lifestyle. By teaching you to scrutinise your shopping habits and make sustainable purchases, she will inspire you to buy better, care more and reduce your carbon footprint by simply making your loved clothes last longer. Fast fashion leaves behind a trail of human and environmental exploitation. Our wardrobes don't have to be the finish line; they can be a starting point. We can all care, repair and rewear.
Orsola de Castro is a pioneer and internationally recognised opinion leader in sustainable fashion. In 1997 she founded From Somewhere, a label designing clothes made entirely from preconsumer waste: disregarded materials such as surplus and production cut-offs. 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 2013, with Carry Somers, she founded Fashion Revolution, marking the tragedy 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 60 countries around the world.
Orsola is a regular keynote speaker, educator and mentor, a judge and mentor for the British Fashion Council New Gen initiative, Associate Lecturer at UAL, as well as a Visiting Fellow at Central Saint Martins. Her book Loved Clothes Last is published by Penguin Life in February 2021, by Corbaccio Editore in Italy March and later by Edition Marabou in France.