SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hello and welcome to the Men's Wear Style Podcast. I'm your host, Pete Brooker, and this is episode 35. This week I'm talking to CEO and founder of Clothes Doctor. What is Clothes Doctor? I hear you ask. Well, guys, we've all been there, right? We try and undo the ladies' dress like Roger Moore in Live and Let Die, but instead of having a touch that's pure magnetism, you magnanimously screw it up. Fiddle with it for five minutes before breaking the damn thing. And that's why you don't get the sweet, sweet love. Well, Close Doctor is a place where you can send all those garments that would otherwise end up in landfill, and God only knows landfill is already running in the red. 300,000 tons of textiles get taken to landfill every year. Fashion, and did you know fashion is second only to oil as one of the biggest polluters on our planet? I mean, I say we need to get to number one. Come on, people, keep buying those 30-pound polyester blazers. Seriously, it needs a radical rethink what we're doing here, and the Cloves Doctor is an awesome company that sustains the life of these products that would otherwise get disseminated and make its way into our oceans, where David Attenborough will be documenting how much of a scourge humans are on our planet. As Bill Hicks would say, we are a virus with shoes. Well, stay tuned, it's a fascinating interview. We'll also be talking to Beck Lodes, editor at large for Men's Wear Style, but before we get into all that, make sure you're following Men's Wear Style on the social app MenswearStyle. You can download the Men's Wear Style app from the app store where you'll be updated with all the latest reviews in fashion, lifestyle. At the minute we have a £350 LeHure watch that we're giving away, bags of stuff, and it can all be found at www.menswearstyle.co.uk. And if you'd like to get in touch and be a guest on the show, simply write to us at info at menswearstyle.co.uk, okay? Here is that interview with CEO and founder of Cloves Doctor, Lulu O'Connor. Well, it's my great pleasure to introduce to the podcast Lulu O'Connor, CEO and founder of Cloves Doctor. How are you doing today, Lulu?

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Hi, I'm great. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

The Cloves Doctor, your company, is an award-winning five-star-rated digital clothing maintenance service that launched in 2017 with the aim to shake up a dated industry and tackle fashion waste. The company provides tailoring and repairs for its digital portal or buy-in store services. If you are just kind enough to give us a thumbnail sketch of how you got involved with this, how you started it, and what brought you from there to now.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Yeah, sure. So I used to work in finance. I was working in the city for about nine years. Um, and I think a lot of it started as a I guess as a customer, as a consumer, and I realized, you know, I was buying a lot of clothes, I needed to look really smart for work, I was, you know, basically shopping entirely online from places like anywhere from ASOS to Neta Porta in filling my wardrobe. Um, and I started to realize basically that as stuff was getting damaged, which was pretty common, there wasn't really just a service that you could send it to or you know get it mended in a in an efficient, sort of easy-to-use way. And I started looking at the industry overall, this kind of repairs and alterations industry, which is a sort of very, very fragmented, old-fashioned type of business where you know you see you see guys sitting at their sewing machines in the shop window of dry cleaners and things like that. And you know, it just occurred to me that this is a this is not how the modern-day consumer surely wants to consume that type of service. You know, everybody is shopping online, everyone wants things done quickly and efficiently, and um, and I just began to think there must be a better solution. There must be a way that we could create something that was really convenient, really easy to use, where you know you had a guarantee of the service where you had reviews that you could look at to sort of reassure you because sending something, sending an item of clothing that you really love, especially if you paid a lot of money for it, is it's quite, you know, it's quite a serious thing. You wanted to hand it over to someone that you trust. Um, and so that was where it started. I wanted to build a business that people would trust and people would, you know, become sort of regular users of and use it to maintain their wardrobe, look after their clothes, and hopefully along the way, also throw away less and contribute to a kind of a more sustainable lifestyle as well. So it it covers a number of things that I was interested in at the time, and um, and that's that's what we've done. It's exactly what we've done.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

So interesting. And how do you then, once you have the concept, what are your first initial steps? Is it right? I need to hire someone that's really good at stitching, I need someone to build me a website. Um, I mean, how do you formulate a plan from concept to market?

SPEAKER_03 5:10

Yeah, it was, you know, the first thing I did actually was spent ages stressing about what the name should be, which you spend a long time on it, and it actually probably doesn't matter very much, but you know, you can spend months on that. And um, I thought I I wanted something that was just really obvious what it did and didn't need explaining, you know, it's a something that doctors clothes, it mends clothes and and you know brings your wardrobe back to life. That was kind of what I thought. And then I went off and I trademarked the name and I also um found the websites and basically reserved the websites and and paid for kind of two or three years on. I actually chose a number of them. I put I got clothes doctor, I got clothes healer.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

It's very spiritual, I like that.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Yeah, I know. I got a few kind of around the the name as well, just in case you know someone might try and and buy that up instead of me.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

And out of morbid curiosity, see it's clothes. I should give out the website really, it's clothes hyphen doctor.com. So was clothes doctor taken?

SPEAKER_03 6:14

Yeah, I think clothes doctor was taken, yeah. Uh-huh. And actually, I think if you look at it, you might find not you might find a clothes doctor, but it's doing something completely different from what we do. But um, but yes, I think it was already taken. And I wanted .com ideally rather than .co.uk as well. Um but I think we've got clothes hyphen doctor.co.uk, and I think it redirects you to our our site. So anyway, so that's all the kind of initial things where you just want to get, you know, now that you've come up with the idea, you want to just sort of lock it in. Um, and then I think the next step really was kicking off with the website because I realized quite quickly that I wasn't going to be able to use a kind of WordPress or like a plug and play website that you know maybe any commerce business could use because it's quite specific what we're trying to do, and there's there's a different um flow of how people might select services. And you know, you you might select a service and then you want to tell us more about the item of clothing that you know the service that you know the service that you want done to effectively is is related to. So you might put in, you know, I want a zip replaced on my white dress or something like that. So it's quite a complicated thing, actually. And we spent a long time working out exactly how the website would be built and then and then building it all bespoke. Um, and that took three to four months actually after I had quit my job in the city um to get the website up and running. And then alongside that, I worked on getting the workshop ready, getting some seamstresses who are really, really good. Um, yeah, and piece by piece we got there.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

And so at some stage, was this a very was this a leap of faith, or was it completely starting from ground zero, applying all of your time and you know, you raising all the capital yourself?

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Um it was definitely a leap of faith, but I I I did do quite a bit of research before I started, and I um I sent out lots of questionnaires and things like that to friends and friends of friends, um, and I basically just tried to kind of assess what was the most important thing for people when they were shopping for this um, you know, this type of service. It's not something that's basically I wanted to not just assume that I, as my own target customer, knew, you know, that my experience was representative of everyone's experience. I really wanted to test out, you know, what other people thought about stuff. Maybe other people find repairs and alteration services really good. And I was just the one who, you know, found it a real nightmare. So I did do a lot of that. I did go and test out a lot of repairs and alteration shops around London.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_03 8:43

Um, I tried to see, you know, where the price points were, all that kind of stuff, you know, how competitive it was, um, how efficient it was as well. Like when I went in there, like how long did they take to turn the item around and finish it and that kind of thing. Usually I find a lot of the things that I went and asked about people in the tailors would say they can't do it, which I thought was really interesting and you know gave me sort of ideas that we could offer a much wider range of services as well. Um, and yeah, it was all kinds of stuff like that. Like the questionnaires would were were really useful because they basically told me that people care about convenience and they care about quality. Um, they want stuff to be mended well and they want it just to be done in a hassle-free way. And it also told me that the average person has about five items in their wardrobe that need to be repaired or altered. They don't bother doing it because it's too much hassle, and they just kind of leave them sitting in their wardrobe for months and therefore don't wear the items because you know they might just have a little rip or a zip that's broken, that kind of thing. So it told me a lot of interesting bits like that, and really then informed the decisions I made later about like where to set up the workshop and you know what I needed to focus on as as the kind of USP of the business.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

So once uh the business is up and running, what is the exact machinery of the business? So if I'm someone and I've just broken my girlfriend's zip on her skirt, which I have done by the way, um, so I'll be uh I'll be tapping you up after this interview. How how do you facilitate everything that goes on between um me breaking my girlfriend's dress and you fixing it?

SPEAKER_03 10:14

I'm based in Hackney, but our workshop is actually in Cornwall in the deep West Country because it's a lot cheaper to have the space there, and we felt that it doesn't actually firstly that um the time it takes to repair an item or alter an item isn't the number one priority for most customers. They they usually would rather it takes a bit longer and it's done really well. Um, and so we decided actually going a bit further away wouldn't hurt us because we can still turn it around in three days if we need to, um, but it just allows us to you know get more space and um everything's just a bit cheaper down there, basically.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Okay, good news.

SPEAKER_03 10:54

So yeah, so that was that was where we started out, and basically it's quite simple. If you book a um if you go onto our website and book a broken zip or a zip replacement on our site and check out, we have a minimum basket size of £20. But if assuming that you meet that, um then you can just choose to use Colette Plus, or you can have a courier come to your house and collect it from you. Um to be honest, most people use Collette Plus because um it's really straightforward, and and all that happens is once you've placed the order, we send out packaging straight away. So then the following day you receive a package and you open it up, and it's got a canvas bag in it that's with a zip and poppers, and you can put any items that you have that need repairing inside that, zip it up, and then you drop it at your nearest Colette Plus point, which is usually your local corner shop, um, and it comes down to us and we send it back within about a week.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

We'll take a hypothetical. I've broken my girlfriend's zip. Uh, I've described it the best way I can, you've accepted it, you receive it, and you go, Oh my god, there's no way that we can fix this. This is just a write-off. Is there imagine there must be a few variables when it comes to something of this nature?

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Um with zips, it's actually really straightforward. I mean, we have a we have a set price for a standard replacement, so like a short one is less than a long one. Um, and then sometimes if so, say it's like a sort of um a big um heavy overcoat zip and it's a double um metal, you know, or like a big brass zip or something like that that's quite specific and and bespoke, then we might charge a little bit extra because we'll actually source a perfectly matching zip for the customer and we'll put it in for them. So there might be a small extra charge if it's something really unusual, but all our kind of standard zips, there's a there's a set price that you can see on our website, and then you just book it and check out, and that's and it's really straightforward. Okay. Um I mean it's very rare. I think maybe one in a hundred items that we receive in the workshop, we then decide actually we can't really do that. It's really quite rare because the vast majority of stuff actually fits into a certain type of mend or alteration that it you know we can do it.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Moving on to the crowdfunding. So we're now currently as we're looking at this midweek, £148,790 raised, and we have a target of £200,000. Uh so effectively we're three quarters of the way there. Has this exceeded expectations? Are you encouraged by this? Um, what are the repercussions if you don't meet your target?

SPEAKER_03 13:30

Yeah, no, it's great actually. Um, funnily enough, it hasn't updated yet, but we've just we've just gone over 75% now. Wonderful, great. Yeah, just a little bit extra come in.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 13:39

Um you know, I think it's a funny one because I think um I have to say, fashion investing in fashion is not a hugely popular business at the moment. I feel like for at our stage of um development, a lot of investors are super excited by fintech and automated cars and you know, all those kind of really exciting, sexy things. Um, and I think in a way, you know, being in fashion probably puts us at funnily enough at a little bit of a disadvantage for the type of investors that might be looking on CrowdCube. But having said that, you know, we've had an amazing reaction from what we've done so far. We've been so delighted by the number of really like positive emails that have come in to us. Obviously, the investment coming in has been really exciting as well. Um, and you know, I think it's been really, really beneficial the whole process in in many respects. And yeah, I think it's I think it's unlikely that we won't fund. I mean, I think we're either way, we're we're we will fund. It's just a question of how we do it. And I think you know, to be at 75% after the in the first two weeks is is a really good uh place to be in, and I think it's it's you know, it we we will we've got another 15 days um and I think we'll it it will easily come in um in the remaining period. So I'm really excited by it. I think the process has has generally been pretty good. It is hard work and it is a bit of an emotional roller coaster as well, because you go through a day or two where things are quiet, right? You do have to try and just kind of keep calm and then suddenly you get 10,000 in and you know, 15,000 and it all looks rosy again. And yeah, uh yeah, so it's it is it's a bit of a roller coaster, and there are a huge number of companies on there that don't fund. Um, so you know, you do have to be very conscious of that. I think it's very easy to say, oh, we'll just go and crowdfund, you know, that's that's easy, everyone get everyone funds because you obviously hear all about the success stories, but there are lots and lots and lots of businesses on there that don't make it. So, you know, you always have to be aware that you have to do a lot of the work yourself, you really have to go after um people who you know might have been interested in your business for a while and try and get them involved and spreading the word. It's it's a it's a yeah, it's a big job, but um, but yeah, I think it's going well so far.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

And you've already got a good audience space and I'm guessing a good clientele that you can already approach. So if people that are satisfied with your service um that might have a quid or two lying round and they go, Well, this is actually a really good business because I've been using it for myself. On on the uh page here, it says you have close to six thousand unique visitors to your website. Um, your the orders are something over 300% year on year from September. So there's already something there to work with, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Exactly, yeah. And actually, we've had a lot of our customers have also um been investors, are now investors who've who've put money in on CrowdCube. So that's really nice. And obviously, they were the first people that we went out to when we decided we were going to do this, and yeah, the reaction's been great. I think we're very, very careful about GDPR, and we don't email we don't email all our customers, we just email the ones who've actually asked to hear from it.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

They're great winners, they're good ones, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

They're good ones.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

I got it, I got it.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

But um, yeah, just generally speaking, the reaction's been great from them as well. Um, and yeah, they're they're very supportive.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Your type of customer, I'm guessing, will be the people that uh either are quite sentimental about their clothes or they are looking to fix something from the luxury brand market. So now now correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing the people that are really into the fast fashion and buying the £20 pair of jeans or the five pound t-shirts, they're not the sort of demographic that you'll be aiming for.

SPEAKER_03 17:31

I think that's exactly right, yes. I think that that's not to say that we ne we never get kind of cheap fast fashion clothes. We definitely do. Um, but I think it needs to be, you know, something that someone's bought five years ago, they just love it, and yeah, they just keep wanting to get it mended or that kind of thing. We do also get we a lot of our customers are male, actually, probably it's about 50-50, male-female.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:57

Um, and a lot of our male customers, they don't they won't necessarily have bought really expensive clothes, but they it might be suit, trousers, or something like that, or even just jeans, but they are maybe quite they I don't know, they might have short arms or short legs or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

My arms have grown.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

And they just want to get everything done together. So I think often with the male customer base, it's just efficiency. They just, you know, they've got ten pairs of trousers, they need them all taken up by two inches or something like that, and we just do it all for them. Um, and then on the female side, it tends to be expensive items that somebody really loves, and they've you know, they they spend a lot of money on it and they really want to maintain it, and it might be mending broken zips or rips in seams, or darning, you know, beautiful cashmere that's had an attack of the moths, or all that kind of stuff, it's really, really varied, but it yeah, it definitely tends to be the higher value stuff that we that we do really well with, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Interesting. Well, it seems like like you're saying, how it's quite hard for your business to get initially recognized on CrowdQuil because of the type of industry you're in. But then once people, I guess, look at the project and realise that you're not really involved with like a supply chain, or you're not trying to promote a new brand, or it's not, hey, this is what I designed on the kitchen fridge and now I want it on a t-shirt, they can perhaps say, Well, this is not only a good business idea, but it also fits into this the the narrative at the minute of trying to dispel all this fast fashion, trying to bring more consumer awareness to the people that think it's just perfectly fine to blog about a ten-pound t-shirt and then buy ten of them in ten different colours. I mean, maybe you can tell me, has it all kind of come together at the right time at the right place?

SPEAKER_03 19:39

Yeah, I think it is very interesting timing, and I and I I think that is a tailwind for us, and you know, it there are there are I think probably two types of investors on on CrowdQ. There are the people who want to make money, and there are the people who want to make money whilst doing something good. And so I think we definitely, you know, it's a huge issue. It is probably I would even go so far as to say maybe what the biggest issue of our time, along with plastic, and I think it does really, really need to be addressed, and and obviously growing awareness around that has has got to be helpful on just simple ways that we can change our habits to you know be constructive and and live more sustainably. Um but at the same time, I think that there is a difference between what people say they want and what they actually, how they actually shop. And I think, you know, if you ask millennials, everybody says that sustainability is the number one factor that, you know, when they choose what they're buying.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

And they're all carrying HM bags at the time they're being surveyed.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

I think there's a long way to go between actually people saying that and people actually doing that. And it's not to say that there isn't there is a lot of indication that sustainable brands are growing much, much faster than unsustainable brands or mainstream brands, and there is a lot of good that is happening, but I think there's also a bit of rhetoric and a bit of people sort of still saying that this is a really important thing for them, and then and then just going out and buying something which fundamentally is so cheap that it cannot have been made in a sustainable way.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Exactly. Well, I I do feel I mean, and I'm really making up the numbers here, that a lot of the statistics and a lot of the stories that you hit you see hit the mainstream media just become just comes so much of a shock to a lot of people, and you're wondering why this wasn't in the public consciousness a lot earlier, maybe even when you get taught this in schools. I mean, we all heard about Burberry um setting light to about 30 million pounds worth of stock, but obviously Burberry aren't the only brand to do this. These are the first guys that come forward and do tell you. In fact, there is a countless amount of designers. I think only six out of thirty-five designers that were asked for an interview actually declared their transparency with this. So you just think, well, how many other brands are doing this? And it's only Burberry coming forward. How do we get this into the into the picture? People a lot quicker, how do we get people to realise these sort of things?

SPEAKER_03 22:03

Yes, exactly. And I think I d uh you know, I think it starts with awareness, it starts with having the information, definitely, and that's not to say I guess the information has probably been out there for a while. Like if I look, you know, there are charities like Rap and Trade who have published reports for years and years talking about the problem of fast fashion and the damage that it's doing, but unfortunately, just no one was reading them, or not a lot of people were reading them, and suddenly it's hit this sort of critical mass where people are really starting to take notice, and that's uh an amazing thing, and that's where it all begins, right? And that's what's happened with plastic, and then and then you start hopefully to get the combination of policy changes and you know, sort of what I would describe as micro-changes, people actually changing their habits and and making decisions based on that information that they have gradually, you know, has sort of sunk in and has become part of their consciousness. And I I think it it takes time, like you you just can't overnight, it's it's people actually say that for shopping for fast fashion can be really addictive, and it you know, you get a genuine sort of scientifically proven rush out of buying new stuff and trying things on. It's a great feeling, and then it sort of goes away quite quickly, and then you wash it and the thing shrinks, or you know, it doesn't look very nice anymore, and the whole feeling fades, and it's as again like similar to a drug, you know, that takes time to weed yourself off and think actually, you know, if I pay a bit more for something and I maintain it and I look after it, that could be something that looks great for 10 years and fits me really well, it's really stylish, it's classic, you know, whatever it is. But I think that that changing of a habit is gonna still take quite a long time for people to really sink in.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Yeah, it's interesting. I hadn't really thought about the different facets of something like this that you you're not just dealing with companies producing so much more cheap fabric clothes in order to earn a profit, you're also looking at the other end of the spectrum with people that have this addictive personality that want to go out and buy these products. So you can't you're not just trying to you're trying to put out a lot of fires all over the place at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

Um, and also it's so easy to do it as well. It's so impulsive. You can literally click a button and say, Right, I want you know, five dresses to my door tomorrow morning. Yeah, it's done, and you don't even need to, there's no cooling off, there's no what there used to be, which is oh, I'm I'll go down to the shops on Saturday and take a look and think about what I want to buy. You literally press a button and it's there. So it's also very hard to sort of push away that that urge to just buy something new.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Yeah, yeah. And also I don't think people are that interested in seeing a car skid around the road, they're only interested in seeing it wrapped around a lamppost. Um meaning that it has to come, like you say, it has to come to a head or some critical mass.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

For people to really take notice, it needs to be dramatic. And the sort of gradual build-up of, you know, landfill and sort of artificially basically plastic clothes that have been, or man-made fibres that have been filling landfill sites for the last 20 years is not headline worthy in the way that some of those yeah, some of those things that we saw on David Attenborough or that amazing documentary last month with Stacey Dooley going off to uh Fashion's dirty secrets, was it? Yes, exactly, going off to see that sea that had almost dried up, and I mean those are hard-hitting, that really brings it home in a much more effective way, I think, than anything we've seen before.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Yeah, um it was I think it was the uh reduced Kazakhstan's arrow sea, wasn't it, that they just brought to a dust bowl now. Um and I really liked that from a personal standpoint. I I mean the whole documentary is great. I think the how they describe or how Stacy described why your denim is destroying the planet because the amount of water that it takes to wash, stonewash, get get it through the process, and then it arrives on your doorstep for £20, and you see all of these huge tankers of water that it takes to actually produce this one garment. And then they get the fashion bloggers in afterwards to do a little bit of here's what here's what you're almost compounding. Um not saying it's all your fault, fashion bloggers, but look what you're promoting when you're doing you know the next fashion haul for you know £10 t-shirts, etc. Exactly. Getting it back to Clothes Doctor, people should definitely be checking out your site, Lulu. It's CloseHyphen Doctor.com, and there you'll find the details that will send you to the CrowdCube. We'll also be putting links to the Crowd Cube fundraiser on our page on menswear style. So um by the time this goes out, people will be able to click and apply and at least find out a little bit more about you and your website and the Lord's work you're doing over there.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

Brilliant, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Lulu O'Connor there, and you can find her at www.clovescor.com. Um thank you, Lulu. Now we're gonna have a word with our editor at large, Beckloads. Welcome to the podcast, BeckLodes, editor at large from Mentor Style. How are you doing today, Bex?

SPEAKER_00 27:13

I'm good to you. Thank you. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 27:14

I'm really good. So we just got off the phone to Lulu, CEO for ClothesDoctor.com. That is clothes-end doctor.com. She was uh well, she was a real sweetheart actually, and she looks like she's got a great concept and a great product going on over there. But I like the fact that it's also shrouded in the the narrative of sustainability, drawing attention onto the fast fashion, and basically what we're doing is creating havoc to our own world around us, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah, we are indeed. I think um there's been a couple of you know documentaries and things sort of highlighting the issue, but and more and more people are talking about it sort of uh influences and stuff because they're so they get so much thrown at them, I think. There's so much product out there, I think, um, and it's such fast fashion, as they say, you know, everyone wants something new, and it's so easy to go and buy an item of clothing, and if you don't like it, go and buy something else for the following day. It's like um it's just mental how much we are consuming, and I think it's great to have someone like the clothes doctor, you know, um encouraging people to you know uh recycle your clothing if it's falling apart, get it fit, rewear it. Like, you know, clothes and jeans and denim and stuff like that. It is mostly made to last, although the cheaper stuff isn't. But you know, you can still use it, give it to someone else, or um, if you've got a t-shirt that's looking a bit ragged, use it as a rag to clean your house.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Oh yeah, oh I definitely do. Well I I don't know if I've spoken to you about this, but I tell my girlfriend all the time that my sock drawer is the most anti-fast fashion sock drawer that you'll ever have in the universe. So it was at one point indexed by the least holes. And so the one that had the least amount of holes would be at the front, and then you kind of work gradually through that. So my sock drawer at the minute has been replenished because she's had enough of that shit and she's just decided enough's enough. We need to have some new socks in there. These these ones are ten years old. But then old socks, they don't just go into the bin, you know. I say to the old sock, Well, don't worry, sock. You'll be cleaning my car in a couple of weeks, you know. When I'll when I'm outside and the sun's good, you know, we'll put a nice wax lacquer over the beamer and it'll be fine. And the the car is uh the sock is then just put out to pasture.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

I love that. Brilliant. Socks have another meaning in life, you know. They do.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Well, I'm quite sentimental about socks and clothes in general. And and I think this is well, here's actually a good case in point. So you're not gonna see this on the podcast, but Bex, can you see this t-shirt that I'm wearing here? I hadn't actually planned on doing this, but I'm gonna show you this. But this t-shirt has sentimental value because it's a picture of a pin-up girl. Underneath is the tattoo.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Oh my god! The same graphic design, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:03

So I've got a tattoo on my chest of this. Right? So I uh obviously when I see this t-shirt, I get emotionally involved with it, so I buy it on the spot and I can't throw it away, even though it's oversized, it's got holes, and I I think when people get emotionally attached to products and to clothes, that's when it does start to have a life of its own, and it does carry on beyond the point of just throwing it away. Um I'm not like that anymore because my wardrobe's brimming with emotional clothes and you you know, and and you know, to the point where I'm now thinking of converting the bathroom into an extra walk-in wardrobe.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

It is, you get I think it's true. Like if you if you buy something, you feel good in it, and you get good wear out of it, you do get a bit attached to it, and that's what it should be like. You know, you should value the clothes that you buy, you should get more than one use out of it. It should you should see it through for at least a year. Um, and if you go through your wardrobe, have a clear out. If there's stuff in there you haven't worn for a year, take it to a charity shop. Someone else will get a use out of it. Just don't throw it in the bin. There's too much on landfill, it's just too much waste. It's yeah, shocking.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Yeah, and I I think I I mentioned in the interview some of the scary stats that are just flying around of how much goes to landfill.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Like three hundred million tons of clothes go to landfill every year. I mean, so it it it's all kind of systematic, right? Or systemic that we had all of this, all of these fast fashion clothes, people are just emptying their wardrobes because they're filling it up with ten pound t-shirts, what have you. So naturally you just take all your your crap down to Oxfam, down to Bernardo's, which is all well and good, except these clothes that go to the charity shops, then get resold to Rwanda or Uganda or places like that. But guess what? These guys aren't wanting your shit anymore because it's five pound t-shirts that don't have the quality of the clothes that they were getting in the past. So you're now seeing uh a complete dip in in terms of sales of these clothes abroad. They're not just then they're just not having it anymore. They're just saying, Enough, enough, we don't want your crap. And so as a result of that, they're now uh producing their own textile farms, so you'll actually have more clothes and more mass-produced, poorly cheap cotton clothes out in the universe. So one thing uh kind of begets the other, it's a bit like the butterfly effect happening and rippling all the way through our industry. Uh and it's scary times. I just wish that they had something like this. Early on in school, people teaching us this. Yeah. That documentary by Stacey Dooley on Fashion's Dirty Secrets was you know just a complete eye-opener. And and for this and an eye-opener, by the way, for people that like me that are even in the trade. So, you know, I'm I'm quite close to the the nub of fashion, I'd like to think. You know, I read a lot of fashion articles, I'm I'm in the industry, but a lot of the stuff that she explained in that documentary was a complete eye-opener to me. So if it's a complete eye-opener to me.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Definitely, and I think you you've hit the nail on the head there. I think it needs to be it needs to be started from a young age, and I hope hopefully schools will use things like Stacey Looley's documentary to show kids like what effect it's having. Like, you don't need to have a different t-shirt every week, like you j you just don't. Like, vintage is cool, like keep it going. Um, so yeah, I think as you said, it was seriously eye-opening, and hopefully, yeah. I mean, I didn't know what damage I was having from a young age, we just had no idea. You just go down to ETAM at the time or Miss Selfridge and things like that, and buy a new dress for the school disco. But yeah, it's just I think as you said as well, it's the quality of the product, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

And also how one feeds into the other. So, for example, uh, what was quite interesting in the interview was how Lulu mentioned that you now get addicted to shopping because you get that renewed high of buying something, you know. You everyone knows what that feels like. I know what it feels like when you when you go down and you and you you know you buy something, you have that kind of almost orgasmic feel, right? Because it's feeding all the dopamines and all that all that great things and the wiring that goes on in the brain, and you're constantly chasing that new high every time that you go buy something. And so by enabling people to do this and by giving them a product and a platform, you're then accelerating this. This is becoming the catalyst for what is becoming the biggest crisis in modern times. Uh I was listening to a podcast by Russell Brand, and uh one of his guests said, you know, uh having an addictive personality is really interesting because there's just not that many ways of solving these sort of things. So, for example, being a sex addict, if uh if you're a sex addict, you'd think the best way of solving that is just by marrying another sex addict, but that's not actually the case because you know the what a sex addict needs is sex with a lot of different people to get that renewed high. If you were just having sex with the same person, then you wouldn't be experiencing what you wouldn't be getting that fix. Again, with with shopping and going out and buying all a lot of these stuff and these new products, it's a it's a real issue. It's a real issue for people and how we're gonna kind of completely change the narrative and rewire people's brain patterns so that they don't go out and get all of this new crap that's just ready and available at a single click of the button.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

But that's the thing. I think you've got to look, I mean, definitely consumers play obviously a big part, but it's also gotta look at the industry and the fashion world because I guess they are um feeding to what the consumers want, but um they are producing so many more like seasons of clothing now. Like, you know, it's like six seasons from a designer a year now, you know, and it's not needed. Like, you know, why not create a bit more hype and have like three seasons and cut down the amount that people are you know wanting to buy? Like it it would be great if people look, you know, designers looked at that and thought, okay, we don't need to produce this this ridiculous amount of clothing and and availability for new clothes every year. It's just yeah, worrying, worrying.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Thank you, Beckloads. Thank you, Lulu O'Connor as well from Clothes Doctor. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Remember, it's only fashion people, and you're never fully dressed without a smile.