Interview with Orsola de Castro

by Kat Sark

Orsola de Castro, 2023, photo by Dvora.Photography

Kat Sark: Dear Orsola, thank you kindly for taking the time to talk to us! Most people know you as the founder of Fashion Revolution and your last book Loved Clothes Last (2021). Could you please tell us more about your current work and some of your current projects?

Orsola de Castro: So, I left Fashion Revolution and I re-formed Esthetica, which was originally the sustainable fashion area for the British Fashion Council (BFC) at London Fashion Week, and we are now back to the original team, but working and operating differently. We support emerging talents in their journey towards sustainability, we do a lot of mentoring, but it’s really early days, as I said, we have just restarted with the original team. As for my personal work right now, it feels like I’m back in a very introspective period of creativity. I’m doing an awful lot of mending and repairing, which sounds probably quite small, but, in fact, it is where I dig deep inside myself and find both my peace and my inspiration. I have to say, looking at the world right now, this is precisely where I want to be: repairs and reparations.

K.S.: What are some of your favourite clothing care practices?

ODC: I write and talk a lot about clothing care, but I’m scattered and messy and disorganized, so it’s not the care of clothing that excites me, it’s the repair of clothing that excites me, it’s the re-use, the transformation. Care, for me, is just a very mechanical gesture, whereby, as a professional in fashion, but also I hope most people would know the properties of the clothes, so because I know the properties of my clothes, caring is instinctive. I don’t wash unless i need to, I do a lot of spot cleaning, I do a lot of refreshing, but I’m not tidy, you know, I keep clothes on the floor, then I pick them up, dust them off, and that’s it, that’s my clothing routine, to be honest with you. It’s not what I focus on, it comes very naturally, and as far as I’m concerned, clothes need the same attention as other objects around the house. When they’re dirty, you wash them, when they’re not, you pick them up and put them back into the drawer. 

K. S.: What makes you happy about fashion and what makes you anxious about fashion?

ODC: What makes me happy about fashion is my own clothes, the history of them, the incredible tradition that we have created as humans when we stopped wearing clothes for warmth and we started wearing clothes for adornment and practicality. Obviously, what makes me anxious about fashion is the fact that it is one of the most polluting and socially exploitative industries in the world.

K.S.: If you could reform fashion education, what would you change?

ODC: So, these questions are complicated because I will never reform fashion education, so why would I even think about something I would never do? This isn’t me. I am within the system, and I do the best I can within that system, which I think is what every teacher, mentor, professional does. So, I hope to impart some kindness and some common sense to the students I teach. I think the word kindness is completely forgotten in times of fashion and fashion industry, it’s a very competitive industry, but competing is also a word that, if you look at the etymology, has anything to do with rivalry, it’s actually a combination of the word “com,” which means “together” and the word “petere,” which means “to seek.” So, competing really does mean to seek together. But everything I do, I do within the sphere of my capacities, and therefore what I bring to fashion education, which is different than what I would do if I could reform it, is that I bring a perspective of somebody who cares about clothes, that cares about fashion, that cares about the people who make our clothes, and cares about our environmental resources. I do that with everything that I do.

Orsola de Castro, 2021, photo by Tamzin Haughton

K.S.: In your last book you talk about a cultural change we need for fashion - how would you reimagine and reinvent a new fashion culture?

ODC: If I were to reinvent fashion culture, it would be so unsuccessful, nobody would ever know, this is not something a human can do, it’s not about an individual, it’s about the collective. It’s never about the one thing, so I’m completely delighted and grateful that I don’t have that problem, that it’s not on my lap to reform anything or rethink anything. What I can do is operate within my pathway. What I can do is have a vision for what I can give. What I can do is to be consistent with my own principles and my own values. That is all that I am trying to do, and it’s as it should be. This is what people who work in an organism should do, work together to make the improvements that are needed. So, I work together with others, sharing my opinion, learning about other opinions, learning about what is needed, and trying my best to be of use, while using fundamentally and primarily the one instrument that I do have, which is my creativity and my thinking.

K.S.: What advice do you have about creativity for young people interested in fashion?

ODC: So, my advice for anybody who is interested in fashion is to start slow and small. We live in a culture that gigantifies everything for no need. You know, the cult of celebrity, becoming an incredibly famous designer, this is how we think we will find our personal satisfaction as well as our success. I keep and I always have kept my ambitions closer to home. So, although I have a vision, my ambition is different to that vision. My ambition is to achieve small things that are meaningful and changes that are tangible. I have been in a position with organizations that I have been a part of or founder of, such as Fashion Revolution, I have been of huge influence to several thousands if not millions of people, and I can tell you that it is still way more important for me to be fully understood by one, than it is half-seen or half-heard by hundreds of thousands. So, if we take our hashtag #whomademyclothes in terms of reach, the numbers of reach that you write down on a piece of paper when you do a report, that is millions. And yet, it is still more relevant to me if a student comes after a talk or if somebody sends me a message saying “I fully understood and appreciated your book.” So, it’s about where does one find one’s purpose and even though I am attracted by my own vision, and I follow my own vision, the fact that I walk slowly towards it implies that I never reach it alone, that I reach it with other people, that I walk towards it always with the possibility of changing my mind and finding another pathway, and keep walking straight forward. So this is what I also recommend others do: have a vision, but take your time to reach it, and be intelligent, and efficient, and creative in your journey.  

Bio:

Orsola de Castro is an opinion leader in sustainable fashion, a mentor, curator and author.

Her multi-award-winning brand From Somewhere (1997-2014) was pioneering in the field of upcycling and sold in some of the world’s best boutiques, including collaborations with Tesco Clothing, Robe Di Kappa, Topshop and Speedo. In 2006 she started Esthetica, the highly acclaimed Sustainable Fashion Showcase at London Fashion Week (which she has recently reformed), and in 2013 she co-founded Fashion Revolution, now the world’s largest fashion activism movement, with teams in over 80 countries. She is a regular lecturer at Central Saint Martins BA and MA, Associate Visiting Professor for the faculty of the Arts at Middlesex University, and Visiting Lecturer on the Distance Learning MSc Humanitarian Intervention at the University of East London (School of Psychology). Her first book, Loved Clothes Last was published by Penguin in 2021, and translated into Italian (Corbaccio Editori), French (Edition Marabou), and German (Doerlemann Verlag).