Thinkings: On fashion disconnect

“Fashion’s current feminist question is an intersectional one - when a rich, white woman buys a t-shirt with a feminist slogan on it, but that t-shirt was made by an underpaid Bangladeshi woman working in a factory like Rhana Plaza, it cannot possibly be a feminist act...the physical and geographical distance between where clothes are produced and, and where they’re presented, exacerbates the disconnect.” 

- ‘How did we get here?’ journalist Bri Lee (of Hot Chicks with Big Brains) interviews Clare Press for the Arts Centre Gold Coast newspaper supplement promoting Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast (November 25 - February 18). Clare Press will appear at the Arts Centre Gold Coast talking about her book Wardrobe Crisis with author/editor Alison Kubler and “how we make, sell, and market clothes” on Saturday November 25, 2017, from 1:30pm to 2:30pm. 

Mrs Satchel: Let's grow old together

Photo by Sabine Bannard, Tugan Beach, Australia

If I can get to the end of my married life and still desire to just sit and be with him as the tide rolls in, then I would consider that a true accomplishment. The journey is fraught with trials to overcome; waves of worry, hardship, disappointment and grief threaten to overwhelm, but if you can somehow move together as one, and have your sights set on the same horizon, the view is surely sweeter when taken in with a true companion.

Essay: The precarious nature of the self

This is a longer version of an original piece published in issue 34 of White magazine.

 Photo by Amelia Soegijono - Pictures and Hearts Photography

It’s risky business, this writing about the “self” because it is always in a state of flux. Many a time an author has penned a book, having arrived at some conclusion about life, only to have found that what they thought their life to be would soon take a turn: a divorce, for example, or, in Elizabeth Gilbert’s case, a divorce, change in gender preference, and a new girlfriend.

All this is only to say that when considering yourself, you have to be a bit wary, cautious, perhaps even coy, at the very least discerning, because, oh boy!, can the self do a turn when least expected. It is wise to consider what can be made public and what should remain private. In this age of the over-share and rampant media speculation, I wonder that perhaps there will be a swing back to discretion?

Lore Ferguson Wilbert recently wrote in an online piece of “the personal narrative that readers, writers, and publishers worship at”. But at what cost? “All together, we’ve grown fat on a feast of viral blogs, short-lived bestsellers, and pithy articles,” she wrote. Sometimes we need to go “offline” in order to get the deeper self-work done; and it’s simply not for public consumption.

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Book Shelf: Wardrobe Crisis: How we went from Sunday best to fast fashion by Clare Press

Anyone who has ever wrestled with wanting to do the right thing, ethically speaking, at the shops, but who has then been confronted with the very limited options that "doing the right thing" apparently entails, will be enamoured to find a friend in Clare Press and her second book, Wardrobe Crisis: How we went from Sunday best to fast fashion (Nero, $29.99).

A former features editor for Vogue Australia, one-time 'Chictionary' columnist and current fashion editor-at-large for Marie Claire Australia, Press is well versed in fashion speak, but also has the wonderful ability to convey her ideas with lucidity, humility and disarming candour. This is less a treatise, more an investigation to which we are all invited to take part.

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