By Tia Rawlings
Sustainability, the world of a fashion journo, and maximalism
Olivia Pinnock is a freelance fashion journalist, lecturer and sustainable fashion advocate who founded @fashiondebates. She strives for making fashion better for people and the planet and has built herself a solid career around this aim.
She first fell in love with the fashion world during her journalism degree at university, where she recalled picking up a fashion magazine and wondering, “What is this weird world? And how do I be a part of it?”.
“I love shiny, colourful things. I’m a maximalist. I love it”
Olivia Pinnock
A career in fashion journalism might sound amazing, but Pinnock quickly became tired of the repetitiveness of fashion.
“Fashion journalism gets pretty repetitive after a while, and quite blah,” she admits. “And it’s like, Oh, it’s another trend. It’s almost exactly the same as the other trend that we saw last season.
“There’s only so many kind of stories, you can write about how to style ankle boots, you know,” she added.
Taking both the environmental impact of fashion into account, as well as the ethical problems surrounding the labour that produces it, became a talking point when she launched Fashion Debates, a series of events and discussions surrounding ethical problems within the fashion industry.
Sustainability emerged as both a clear problem within the industry – and a point of interest for her to embark on a journey of self-improvement.
“It’s everything, it’s our future, it is the biggest challenge we as human beings face right now. And that’s terrifying. But it’s also so exciting. Like, it’s a chance to start again, it’s a chance to be innovative, and creative”
Olivia Pinnock
Photo by: Wendy Sloane
Highlighting the industry issues
Pinnock, who recently spoke at London Metropolitan University on a panel discussing sustainable fashion, realised that the fashion industry was not as shiny as it initially appeared, and she wanted to target the issues that were often swept under the carpet.
“Fashion, I had realised from working on it, was so much bigger than people perceive it to be. And there was so much interesting stuff going on. And I was like, how do I write about that?,” she said in an interview with Holloway Express before the panel kicked off.
Even the casual observer knows that fashion has been through some ups and downs in terms of inclusivity. Having felt somewhat excluded from shoe brands – “I have ginormous feet. So I really struggled to find shoes that fit me” – Pinnock was keen to share that her boots were from Otto + Ivy who specialise in women’s shoes in larger sizes.
“My t-shirt is Katharine Hamnett, an absolute legend of the sustainable fashion game. My favourite thing I’m wearing. I love it,” she added.
Fact credit: The Round Up Infographic by: Tia Rawlings
Gen Z to the rescue
Gen Z is soon to be largely in charge of the mess of mass production and its climate impact. Pinnock thinks that members of Gen Z are passionate, but also should have more belief in themselves. Small changes are better than no changes, right?
“I see a lot of really passionate young people who are really asking the right questions, and who are not afraid to ask difficult questions and challenge things, which is awesome. But then also, they’re also the biggest drivers of like, really unsustainable fast fashion,” she said.
But it’s not all rosy. “And I see a lot of inertia, like a lot of problems that are just too big. And it’s too complicated, or I don’t understand it.
“So therefore, you know, the problem is the corporations and the governments,” she added.
“But I’m just really interested to see where all that energy and rethinking and anger and fire in the belly goes. Yeah. I think that’s gonna be really cool”
Olivia Pinnock
Sit back and relax
Whilst Gen Z may be passionate, the mess wasn’t necessarily made by them. But does that mean they can abdicate the responsibility to clean things up?
“From the older generations, there’s also a lot of, oh, well, it’s okay, Gen Z will sort it out. And I think that’s completely unfair as well,” she said.
“And I think we need to take responsibility and be like, we’re part of this too. We can’t place all of this pressure because it’s a huge responsibility. We’ve all been in this.”
Continuing our pandemic-surviving success
Pinnock added that the pandemic was not as catastrophic for the fashion industry as it could have been.
“The pandemic could have potentially been a real setback for sustainability. And I was really relieved to see that I don’t think that it has been that, actually,” she said.
“We’ve already made some progress, like so much progress with it, that we’ve kind of reached a point of no return.”
+With additional interviewing by Lorena Cristea
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