Dressed: The History of Fashion · Dressed Media

How to Start a Fashion Revolution, an interview with Carry Somers

November 5, 2025·59 min·5 clips

Carry Somers faced death threats in Ecuador while challenging exploitative middlemen in the wool trade.

This episode of Dressed: The History of Fashion features an interview with activist and author Carry Somers. Hosts Cassie Zachary and April Calahan speak with Somers about her three-decade career advocating for environmental and human rights reform in the global fashion industry. Somers founded the fashion brand Pachacuti in 1992 and later co-founded the global activist movement Fashion Revolution. Somers recounts designing her first knitwear collection in Ecuador, where she witnessed cooperatives face arson attacks from middlemen controlling the wool trade. She describes pioneering the concept of fair trade in fashion, recalling that journalists showed little interest when her brand received its first certification in 2009. A European geotraceability project measured the environmental impact of a Panama hat, finding its production used the equivalent of 13 days of drinking water. The 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse directly inspired Somers to establish Fashion Revolution, which uses the hashtag #WhoMadeMyClothes. She joined a scientific sailing voyage in 2020, trawling remote Pacific waters and consistently finding plastic microfibers. A Fashion Revolution research project at a local lake in England recovered sediment containing natural fibres like cotton and wool that had persisted for at least 140 years. Somers notes over 15,000 different chemicals have been used in clothing production, affecting the biodegradation of even natural fibres. Her book, *The Nature of Fashion*, is structured as a series of historical vignettes, inspired by Eduardo Galeano's *Memory of Fire*. One vignette details 12th-century Japanese women in Echigo weaving with ramie fibre in a snowbound landscape, using meltwater rivers and sun on snow to bleach the cloth. Another story describes a woman in Myanmar discovering how to weave with lotus fibres, which must be used the same day they are harvested. Somers explains that the rift between fashion production and nature began millennia ago, citing the ancient city of Çatalhöyük where oak trees were felled for textile fibres and fuel. She argues that fashion's problems are deeply connected to a broken relationship with nature itself. The episode is conversational and educational, weaving personal narrative with historical and scientific insights. Listeners interested in sustainable fashion, global supply chains, or material history will find this episode compelling. Those seeking a light discussion of fashion trends or a single, simple solution may find the complex systemic analysis less engaging.

As heard by us

A clear-eyed fashion discussion that connects cloth, chemistry, and nature without losing its thread.

This episode is at its best when it makes the case that fashion is part of the natural world, not apart from it. It ties Fashion Revolution to that idea, then gives it weight with lake sediment, fibers, and chemical treatments.

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An environmental fashion interview that moves from lake sediment to a textile garden at the Chelsea Flower Show.

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