March | Take 5
Clare Press
Forget the doom and gloom: the future of fashion is positive – and journalist, podcaster and author Clare Press wants you to start imagining how
Emma SellsWhen Clare Press began planning her new book she set herself a challenge: make it overwhelmingly positive. After years spent immersed in the world of sustainability and calling out the fashion industry’s most damaging practices while working as a journalist, podcaster and activist (she was Vogue Australia’s first sustainability editor), Press decided it was time to channel her natural optimism and look on the bright side.
“I’d started to feel that, while it’s absolutely essential that we hold the industry to account, we were potentially doing that so much that we were drowning out the space for good-news stories,” she says from her home in Sydney. “So I decided to focus on moments of joy and look to where people are doing good stuff. I want to give people the space to really vision, hold and imagine what the future of fashion could be if they had their way; to say: what could we do if we put our minds to it?”
The result is Wear Next: Fashioning The Future, an uplifting blueprint for a new and thoughtful way of making and consuming clothes in the coming years. From upcycling projects and wardrobe sharing initiatives to innovations in technology and materials, it’s firmly rooted in the exciting, creative and often grassroots work that communities, designers, activists and scientists are already doing – and dares to dream about the brilliant places these solutions could lead. And, while Press talks to game-changing designers like Ronald Van Der Kemp, Vin and Omi and Bethany Williams, its focus is on changing mindsets and approach rather than which label you should buy from. “I don’t think that sustainability should be about brands,” says Press. “I do think that they can do better, and that we cannot decouple fashion from business, and that the business of fashion is important as an enormous employer of women, for example, around the world. But, when we think about the ideas and cultural shifts that we need to promote in order to make a truly sustainable future, it’s not actually about shopping. It’s much bigger than that.”
Photography: Lily Clatworthy
On an individual level, that means taking a step back and working out what’s really important when it comes to your clothes and where they come from. “I would encourage you not to start by thinking about shopping and what you’re going to buy,” says Press. “Tap into the personal and think about what sort of future relationship you want to have with your clothes. Complete the sentence: ‘The future of fashion will be…’, then think about what you care about, whether it’s people, animals or the planet, and about what sort of wardrobe would make you feel happy.”
That doesn’t mean sticking to neutral shades and basic shapes, either. Press has discovered a way to find joy through her wardrobe in a way that doesn’t compromise her values. “Aesthetically, I’m a really bad minimalist,” she says. “I really care about fashion and sustainability but I could never go with less. I like to wear ruffles and sparkles and patterns. But I long ago figured out that I care about how my clothes are made, and I want to fight fashion waste. So I buy either vintage and secondhand, or I buy very carefully from brands that I know a lot about when it comes to how they make things.”
Photography: Romina Introini
Above all, the book is a reminder that connection is everything, whether it’s with clothes themselves, the people who make them, the environment they’re created from or the labels behind them, something that Press would encourage brands to remember as much as those of us who are shopping them. “If you have a story behind the clothes at the centre of what you’re doing, that’s what makes it amazing,” she says. “Once you make it humanised, people feel absolutely connected in a way that they don’t when they buy fast fashion online.” The future of fashion is personal, powerful and, with any luck, beautiful. And that’s something we can all look forward to.
Wear Next: Fashioning the Future by Clare Press (Thames & Hudson Australia, £17.99)
