An Al Jazeera talk show called The Steam asked me to join a discussion on fast fashion as the contrarian or as “the economist.” The found me because of the my article “Fast Fashion, Global Trade, and Sustainable Abundance”
Episode website: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2025/3/25/trends-trash-and-truth-fast-fashion-phenomena
“Trends, trash and truth: Fast fashion phenomena”
The guests were
Venetia La Manna – fair fashion campaigner
Walden Lam – president and co-founder, Unspun
Katia Osei – lead researcher and bioengineer, Or Foundation
Joy Buchanan – associate professor, Samford University
I am a small part of the 25-minute show. You can hear me from about minute 9:20 to 11:35 and then at the end from 23:30 to 24:45.
The points I made are that “fast” fashion has a good side for consumers, even though people are worried about the environmental impact of clothing waste. I got a few seconds to talk about my ideas for solutions which include labels about clothing durability and AI help with sorting. At the end I said that, as people become more aware of the downsides of fast fashion, we could stop putting social expectations on each other to wear a new outfit to every party and buy a custom shirt for every club event.
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