Published in 2016
336 pages
Clare Press is the presenter of the Wardrobe Crisis podcast and Australian VOGUE’s Sustainability Editor-at-Large. In 2018, she was made Global Ambassador for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular initiative. She’s part of the Fashion Roundtable team in the UK, and has been a member of Australian advisory board of Fashion Revolution since 2014. She sits on Copenhagen Fashion Week’s Sustainability Advisory Board and is one of Global Fashion Agenda’s Content Experts. In 2019, she was named one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence and won the Green Globe Sustainability Champion Award.
A passionate advocate for the circular economy and sustainable, ethical fashion, she is the industry’s go-to journalist on the subject, globally.
She is the author of three books. Her first, The Dressing Table (2011), a collection of essays on style. Her second, Wardrobe Crisis, How We Went From Sunday Best to Fast Fashion (Nero), was named one of the Best Books of 2016 by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Clare’s third book, Rise & Resist, How to change the world is about activism was published by Melbourne University Press in October 2018.
What else? She’s a magazine junkie. A former Vogue features director, and Marie Claire fashion editor, Clare was also features director at the Australian edition of Sunday Style, where her “Fash Fwd” column reached 3 million readers weekly. For two years, she penned Daily Life’s popular Sustainable Style column. Today, she contributes to VOGUE Italia andThe Guardian. Previously, she was a columnist for InStyle, and was The Monthly’s first fashion critic. She began her career as a senior writer at Rolling Stone.
Over a career spanning nearly two decades, Clare’s byline appeared in: VOGUE, AnOther, Nylon, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Fashionista, the Sydney Morning Herald and more. She has interviewed the likes of Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian, Yvon Chouinard, Katharine Hamnett and Pharrell.
Once upon a time, she ran a vintage store.
What is this book about?
Who makes your clothes? This used to be an easy question to answer: it was the seamstress next door, or the tailor on the high street – or you made them yourself. Today we rarely know the origins of the clothes hanging in our closets. The local shoemaker, dressmaker and milliner are long gone, replaced by a globalised fashion industry worth $1.5 trillion a year.
In Wardrobe Crisis, fashion journalist Clare Press explores the history and ethics behind what we wear. Putting her insider status to good use, Press examines the entire fashion ecosystem, from sweatshops to haute couture, unearthing the roots of today’s buy-and-discard culture. She traces the origins of icons like Chanel, Dior and Hermès; charts the rise and fall of the department store; and follows the thread that led us from Marie Antoinette to Carrie Bradshaw.
From a time when Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein were just two boys from the Bronx, to the world of the global fashion juggernaut, where Zara’s parent company produces more than 900 million garments annually, Press takes us on an insider’s journey of discovery and revelation.
Wardrobe Crisis is a witty and persuasive argument for a fashion revolution that will empower you to feel good about your wardrobe again.
