Pod Insights TED Radio Hour The state of fashion About this episode Whether you love or hate fashion, we all have to get dressed in the morning. And the industry affects us in complex ways. This hour, the outrageous, environmental and seedy sides of fashion. Guests include designer Machine Dazzle, supply chain expert Aparna Mehta, journalist Amanda Mull and supermodel Cameron Russell. Original broadcast date: September 6, 2024
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:24 Speaker 01 Our job now is to dream big.
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0:48 Manoush Zomorodi? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, the state of fashion: what we wear and why we wear it. Over the last few years, minimalism has been in. Pairing back a few simple chic pieces, keep the look clean. The idea of dressing efficiently has always resonated with me. So I was a little terrified at the prospect of embracing the exact opposite, which is... Oh, my lord. It's my... Whoa. Maximalism. This is my studio.
1:33 Manoush Zomorodi? This is where the magic happens.
1:35 Speaker 07 This is where the magic happens.
1:36 Manoush Zomorodi? A little while back, I visited the artist and costume designer Machine Dazzle at his workshop in Jersey City for a maximalist makeover.
1:47 Speaker 07 And as you can see, it's a large space, but it still could be bigger. You know what I mean?
1:51 Manoush Zomorodi? It's like walking into the most glittering, dazzling closet I have ever seen in my entire life. There are mannequins dressed to the nines. There are reams of fabric. The 1,500 square foot space is packed with supplies. Wigs, a sewing machine, racks and racks of clothes.
2:17 Speaker 07 Well, right now, it's extra crazy. Like, while you're here, but now that I have a photo shoot tomorrow. Most people know me as a costume designer, but I'm also a fine artist, photographer, sculptor.
2:29 Manoush Zomorodi? Machine grew up all over the US. Then about 30 years ago, like many young people who feel out of step with mainstream America, he moved to New York.
2:40 Speaker 07 I moved to New York so that I could actually start my life.
2:44 Manoush Zomorodi? Over those past three decades, he has built a reputation for creating wild, whimsical, and over-the-top outfits for the stage.
2:52 Speaker 07 Maybe it's opera. Maybe it's dance. Maybe it's theater. Maybe it's me just walking on a street for the sake of something at a protest. I need a reason. There has to be a reason.
3:03 Manoush Zomorodi? But it wasn't until 2022, when he had an exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, that his style got a name, thanks to the curator.
3:13 Speaker 07 Yes, Elizabeth Auther. When she curated my show, she decided to call it queer maximalism. I was aware of maximalism before, but I never called myself a maximalist. I mean, yes, am I maximal? Yes, but I'm so much more than that.
3:31 Manoush Zomorodi? Of course you are.
3:32 Speaker 07 Yeah, so I mean, I change. I'm constantly changing. I go with the tide.
3:36 Manoush Zomorodi? The museum chronicled how, as they put it, "a closeted suburban kid from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania turned into Machine Dazzle, the queer experimental theater genius." There was an apple pie headdress, a skirt made of candlesticks, a blouse that looked like giant typewriter keys. So while he may not exactly embrace the term, Machine believes his take on maximalism promotes something very specific.
4:06 Speaker 07 It's about sharing your vision. Queer space is about sharing. Yes, we're making space for ourselves, but we're also sharing ourselves and we're inviting people into our circle. We're being generous. Maximalism is generous. It's everything. It's the cake. It's the flour, the eggs, the sugar. It's the oven. It's the heat. It's the love that was put into all of it. It's the mouth. It's the smile. It's the party. All of it. Because you can't have one without the other. Can I get an amen up in here? Amen! Where's that a gay men? Can I get a gay men up? Oh!
4:54 Manoush Zomorodi? Depending on your perspective, fashion can be frivolous or make a big statement. It can bring out our creative side or our consumer side. But whether you love clothes or could care less, we all have to get dressed in the morning. So how can we do it better? On this episode, ideas about taking style to the extreme, the environmental impact of our shopping culture, and how our obsession with beauty built an industry with an ugly underbelly. But first, back to Machine Dazzle. To get a better sense of what his maximalist outfits look like, it helps to hear about the 2016 performance he did with the artist Taylor Mack.
5:39 Manoush Zomorodi? We are about to venture into uncharted territory. It was called "A 24-Decade History of Popular Music",
5:49 Manoush Zomorodi? a spectacular queer take on American history that lasted for 24 hours, featuring 24 costume changes.
6:01 Manoush Zomorodi? The HBO documentary about the performance, "One Machine: An Emmy in Costume Design".
6:07 Speaker 07 It starts in 1776 and goes to the present day.
6:11 Manoush Zomorodi? Here's Machine Dazzle on the TED stage.
6:13 Speaker 07 For every decade, I created a costume that is conceptually adjacent, not historically accurate, because traditional historical costume already exists. And I like to break traditions and invent new ones.
6:30 Speaker 07 So it's the top of the show in 1776, right after we freed ourselves from the British and the United States. And inspiration came when I was passing this laundromat. What were they doing? They were taking down these old, plastic, grand opening flags. And I noticed how weather worn and brittle and fragile they were. And I got to thinking about the end of the American Revolution and how tattered and torn and broken everything must have been. And then it hit me. This costume wants to tell a story.
7:08 Manoush Zomorodi? The outfit feels like a sports uniform on acid. The headdress is made of cheerleaders pom poms fashioned into a massive wig. There's a big 13, for the 13 colonies, jersey number over metallic streamers. Sparklers are shooting off the back of the outfit like fireworks. The whole thing is one big party.
7:30 Speaker 07 This is maximalism. Not only is it layer upon layer aesthetically, it's idea on top of idea conceptually. It becomes its own story, almost, that you can almost read like a book.
7:45 Manoush Zomorodi? Another particularly memorable outfit commemorates the Civil War era.
7:50 Speaker 07 So when it came to the Civil War decade, I had read somewhere along the way that the American hot dog evolved out of this time by, you know, German immigrants selling their sausages on the streets. And so I wanted to include it in the costume.
8:08 Manoush Zomorodi? To create the costume, machine paired hot dogs with another invention from the 1860s: barbed wire.
8:16 Speaker 07 I love what barbed wire kind of stands for. It's a barrier. And, you know, what we were doing in the Civil War was trying to break down those barriers.
8:24 Manoush Zomorodi? So the costume features a huge barbed wire skirt adorned with hot dogs that almost looks like a cage, plus a headdress of hot dogs and a Civil War-style soldier's jacket with red and yellow streamers flowing off of it like ketchup and mustard.
8:42 Speaker 07 And it's also almost grotesque. It's like, well, is it ketchup or is it blood? And we're talking about the Civil War here. On stage, we often deal with dark things, heavy subject matter. I will say that humor is good. Humor is healing. So, audience gets to decide what it is.
9:09 Manoush Zomorodi? There was no audience back at Machines Workshop in Jersey City. Nonetheless, he was hard at work on my maximalist makeover, putting together quite an outfit for me.
9:21 Speaker 07 Looks really good on you.
9:23 Manoush Zomorodi? Thank you.
9:23 Speaker 07 Yeah, these are good colors for you.
9:25 Manoush Zomorodi? So, right now, I have a wig made of hair, red hair, but also plastic bags, yarn, flowers, all sorts of things, a bolero jacket that's vintage with very poofy sleeves. And then the crinoline short skirt just pops out. And we're not even fully dressed yet.
9:45 Speaker 07 And it's like this, you know, we're not even fully dressed yet. We haven't even really done accessories. And also, you're not in your heels.
9:51 Manoush Zomorodi? I'm not in my seven-inch Prada heels, yeah.
9:53 Speaker 07 No, you're not. And I might want to add a bit.
9:55 Manoush Zomorodi? By the time I got in my heels and rhinestone gloves, put on some copper lipstick with many dashes of glitter layered on top.
10:05 Speaker 07 It's just like a little something.
10:07 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, plus, some cat eye sunglasses. Something kind of transformed inside of me. I think we were headed at one point into a direction where it was like, too much, like Halloweeny, but then you like, took us in a different direction. And now I actually feel super chic.
10:24 Speaker 07 All of a sudden, because you're so outrageous, it's like you have a license to say almost anything and do almost anything.
10:33 Manoush Zomorodi? But I never would have thought I could wear this many colors, this many accessories.
10:36 Speaker 07 It's the way you put things together. There's sophistication involved. There's effort. I think there's a lot of minimalism that, you know, it's effortless. There's nothing to think about. And I understand why people do that. You know, we live in a crazy world. Life is stressful, and I can't handle, I mean, I can handle it. I'm having fun. A miniature me running through the mountain that is your headdress. And then like, your shoes are just like, propping you up. It's like putting a painting on a wall.
11:08 Manoush Zomorodi? I figured, at this point, as we get ready to go out to get a coffee, that I would be embarrassed and terrified. But I don't. I feel like I need to be seen because I look amazing.
11:23 Speaker 07 And now you're gonna want to do this all the time. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of each other.
11:28 Manoush Zomorodi? Can I buy you a coffee?
11:29 Speaker 07 You sure can, babe. Let's go.
11:31 Manoush Zomorodi? All right, let's do it. We took our outfits for a spin by going to the local cafe. And surprise, surprise, we turned some heads.
11:40 Speaker 07 Oh, they just said, you look amazing, and you just cheered me up. See, I told you. We look like a celebration of life, you and I. We do.
11:48 Manoush Zomorodi? I was finally embracing the maximalist mindset, and it felt good. And maybe Machine is right. Maybe we're attracted to minimalism because it's a way of taming the madness of modern life. Whereas Machine's approach is to run joyfully towards the chaos.
12:12 Speaker 07 I'm trying to give light to it. And sometimes a thing of beauty can be a hand that you hold through a dark time.
12:23 Manoush Zomorodi? I feel like a walking piece of art. It's really special. It is a flash. It is a moment.
12:29 Speaker 07 You are taking joy in it.
12:30 Manoush Zomorodi? I really am.
12:34 Speaker 07 Most people would not leave their homes wearing what I wear. It's an offering of changing the way people see the world, changing what is possible.
12:48 Manoush Zomorodi? Machine Dazzle is a costume designer and performer. You can see his full talk at ted.com. The HBO documentary featuring his incredible outfits is called Taylor Max's 24-decade History of Popular Music. You can also go to ted.npr.org and my Instagram to see photos of me and Machine all dressed up. On the show today, the state of fashion. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.
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14:46 Manoush Zomorodi? It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zamirodi. On the show today, the state of fashion, which of course includes shopping. And for many of us today, that means shopping online. I have shopped for every single thing online. Anything and everything that I can purchase, I look at it online first. This is Aparna Metta. A few years ago, when she was a busy, working mom, online shopping was a huge time saver, especially for buying clothes. And I work 12 to 16 hours a day. I don't have time during the week to go out and look for things. So in the evenings, she'd scroll and shop.
15:32 Manoush Zomorodi? My daughter's in bed. I'm relaxed. I'm watching TV. I start browsing. I'm like, hmm, you know, let's look at Nordstrom's today. Look at Anthropologie. What do they have there? I start seeing these things and...
15:46 Speaker 06 I'm like, oh, that looks really good. And wherever I would go on any website, they would say returns are free. I would intentionally buy the same item in a couple of different colors, a couple of different sizes with the intent of keeping only one.
16:01 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, that's what I've been told as well is like, you know, you're a busy person, you're a mom, save time, just order it in various sizes, then ship back the ones you don't want. And that's perfectly fine. Is that what you understood as well?
16:16 Speaker 06 Yes, I mean, I would try on six, seven, five, six, whatever, and then keep one if I liked it and return the rest.
16:24 Manoush Zomorodi? At your peak, how many deliveries would you say you were getting of clothes per week?
16:30 Speaker 06 Oh, per week?
16:33 Speaker 06 Twelve, fifteen?
16:34 Manoush Zomorodi? Whoa.
16:35 Speaker 06 Sorry.
16:36 Manoush Zomorodi? You were serious.
16:37 Speaker 06 But I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. Look, the store is making it possible for me to order as many as I want and return back what I don't want. Sometimes I would return all of them because you can't check the material when you're buying online. My daughter, she was a teenager at that time, and she said, Mom, you have a real problem. And this is the daughter telling me. I'm supposed to be telling her, but it was instead her.
16:59 Manoush Zomorodi? Aparna's shopping habit was definitely out of control. And she started to realize that it was a problem for the environment, too.
17:08 Speaker 06 There were packages showing up at my doorstep almost every day. I have all these empty boxes. I mean, yeah, I recycle it, but oh, my God, so much cardboard.
17:17 Manoush Zomorodi? And there's some irony here because at the time, Aparna was a Global Solutions Director for UPS. Part of her job was to help retailers make their operations run more smoothly. So she knew a lot about how shipping works.
17:34 Speaker 06 So think about supply chain design, supply chain optimization, carbon impact analysis. That's the kind of work I did.
17:43 Manoush Zomorodi? But one day, in a meeting with a client, she heard a statistic that put her shopping habit in perspective.
17:50 Speaker 06 I was at a meeting with one of our largest retailers. You know, one of the key members from the customer side said, the largest opportunity we have right now.
18:01 Speaker 02 Is with returns. Last year, they had 7.5 million pieces of clothing returned to them. Wow. I just circled that number on my paper. I'm like, oh, my God. In one year, one retailer. This is not a small problem. This is a big one. The return situation online, it is a problem entirely of the Internet's making and of Internet retailers making.
18:27 Manoush Zomorodi? Amanda Mull is a senior reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek, where she covers consumerism.
18:34 Speaker 02 The idea that you go into a store and plan already to just return half of it, that is a behavior that before the Internet was considered like pretty maladaptive. Like, if you were doing that regularly, that would be sort of like characterized as like a compulsive shopping issue. But now that is just how the Internet has trained us to shop.
18:53 Manoush Zomorodi? Amanda says that when people buy things online, they tend to return them at a very high rate.
19:00 Speaker 02 On average, brick and mortar stores have like a single-digit return rate. Online, it can range from usually 15 to 30%. And for certain types of products, especially during the holidays, it can get up to 50%. And that's because online shopping is not designed to produce good decisions in the people who are making purchases. It's designed to make it as easy for you to buy things as possible.
19:25 Manoush Zomorodi? This all began back in the early 2000s, when online shopping debuted and shoppers were skeptical.
19:32 Speaker 02 People understood really well at the time that a lot of the goods that they wanted to buy just weren't ideal for online shopping. Things that you have to try on, things that have to fit your body, things that have to be comfortable in some way. Like, there's all kinds of stuff that you just can't really know with full certainty online, and you still can't. You certainly couldn't in, you know, 2004. So, early online retailers had to figure out some way to overcome these objections in order to encourage people to change their habits.
20:02 Manoush Zomorodi? Enter Zappos, the online shoe store, and the first online retailer to offer free returns.
20:09 Speaker 02 Ending up with a pair of shoes that doesn't fit is like a big risk. So, they made returns free. That is what got people to shop online. That is what created this set of habits in people. It also was really, really unprofitable for the companies doing it. Amazon, Zappos, a lot of early online retailers did not turn a profit for a very long time. Like, they...
20:28 Speaker 05 We're investing money in creating habits in the American population that would, in the long term, be advantageous to them.
20:35 Manoush Zomorodi? Has it worked, would you say?
20:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's worked really, really well because it's created these behaviors that, you know, a lot of people have now, like buying a size up and a size down from what you'd normally buy. Or adding something random to your order to get past a free shipping threshold. They created a set of incentives for shoppers, for people to buy stuff with the intent of returning it. Because if people didn't really start trusting this process and start seeing it as convenient, they were never going to peel off a considerable amount of, like, market share from in-person retailers.
21:08 Manoush Zomorodi? Shoppers came to rely on that online convenience, exactly as retailers had hoped. But now, as we buy and return, buy and return, the cost of processing all those packages is hurting retailers' bottom line.
21:24 Speaker 05 Last fall, I went to visit a returns facility run by Inmar Intelligence, which is the largest returns processor in the United States. They process hundreds of millions of packages per year in their different facilities across the US. The one that I went to was one of their big ones. It's a few hours outside of New York City. It's a sort of a regional facility that collects a lot of returns from the sort of, like, New York City, Philadelphia metropolitan area.
21:52 Manoush Zomorodi? So I've probably sent something back to this warehouse without even knowing it.
21:55 Speaker 05 Oh, almost certainly. Almost certainly.
21:59 Manoush Zomorodi? This one facility processes about 100,000 packages a day.
22:05 Speaker 05 It is just like a perpetual motion machine of taking stuff out of your taped-up polymailer and figuring out what's going on.
22:13 Manoush Zomorodi? A real-life person opens each package.
22:16 Speaker 05 They try to ensure that what you've returned matches what it says on your order.
22:21 Manoush Zomorodi? They check the product for defects.
22:23 Speaker 05 For signs that it has been used.
22:25 Manoush Zomorodi? They even have to do things that are kind of gross.
22:28 Speaker 05 Especially if it's apparel. They're supposed to sniff it.
22:31 Manoush Zomorodi? Sniff it?
22:31 Speaker 05 Yes.
22:32 Manoush Zomorodi? Like, smell?
22:33 Speaker 05 Yes, to see if it smells like it's been worn. If you return a pair of pants, they check the pockets.
22:39 Manoush Zomorodi? The guy who was showing me around told me that the most common item to find with returned pants is somebody's underwear. Oh, no. Not great. No, like, that seems like pretty time consuming. Oh, yeah. It's really, really time consuming and labor intensive. And, you know, they, Inmar and its competitors, all have technologically advanced systems that use whatever, you know, machine learning or AI capabilities they can. But like, there is no replacement for human eyes and human noses and human hands. After that, sometimes clothes do go back to the retailer and are resold. But Amanda says there's a very high bar for getting clothes back on the shelf.
23:20 Manoush Zomorodi? Some retailers only take back things that are in perfect, like, new, unworn condition, sometimes in their original packaging. Otherwise, the item might go to an outlet like TJ Maxx. But again... If there's any indication that something has been worn, it is very hard to resell anything like that in any channel. So instead, it might be donated or recycled. But textile recycling is like, pretty difficult. The more, like, embellishments, the more types of material there are on a garment, the less likely it is to be easily recyclable. So not everything can be recycled, not everything that's donated can be used. And pretty much everything that can't be slotted into one of those categories is destroyed
24:05 Manoush Zomorodi? in some way. It is incinerated, landfilled. At every step, this process just sort of sheds waste. It's funny, it's reminding me of a time that I tried to return something to Amazon, and they were like, you know what, just keep it, we'll give you your money back. Yes. At that point, what was happening? They're making a calculation that it's not worth it for them? Yes, absolutely. Returns, on a per-return basis, can cost retailers anywhere from like, $5 to $25. Especially, fast fashion has a really short shelf life. That becomes a real problem when taking returns, because maybe it takes you a week or two weeks to actually drop it off at the post office, maybe it takes a full month for you to drop it off at the post office.
24:48 Speaker 05 When a company takes that return, like your dress might not have been available for sale in any capacity on their website for two weeks by the time it gets back to them and gets processed. So there's like no way for them to resell it. And they've had to pay a returns processor to look at it. They've had to pay the logistics service to bring it back to them. They have already just been leaking money. So the last thing they want to do is take a return.
25:11 Manoush Zomorodi? So what would happen, though, if each of us just returned a few fewer items per year?
25:17 Speaker 05 Well, I mean, we're about to find out. A lot of retailers are trying to change the system ever so slightly to prevent us from returning so much stuff because it has started to eat into their bottom line. And if they want to, you know, extract the profit that they've spent so much time encouraging us to create, then they need us to return less stuff. Like, they have set up a system that is not inherently profitable anymore. So this reintroduction of returns fees, of restocking fees, of shipping fees, of the concept of the final sale and you can't return something, I think does make a meaningful difference in the amount of stuff that people return. The system is in like a state of flux
25:58 Speaker 05 right now. They are trying to figure out the correct combination of incentives and fees to institute in order to keep more products sold. You know, I have been writing about retail logistics and returns for a long time now. And every time getting a conversation with somebody about it, I see people have this feeling of horror that you've just discovered that you've been participating in something that you don't feel good about. You really start to think about like all the times that you procrastinated taking a package to UPS. And I think sometimes people feel a little bit dumb for not thinking about it. But like, the system is designed to ensure that they don't think about it as much as possible.
26:41 Manoush Zomorodi? We've talked about, you know, the problems for these businesses. But what about the environmental impact? Is there any way to calculate just how bad the problem is?
26:52 Speaker 05 So there is this EPA stat that gets thrown around a lot, which is that The average US consumer throws out approximately 81.5 pounds of clothes annually. That doesn't mean that like every single person is taking 81 pounds of clothing to the trash. But it means that for every American, the amount of textile waste that gets created within this country is about 81 pounds. That works out to a little bit over 11 million tons as a country. And it's like, yes, returns create a real issue and a real waste in the process. But the much bigger waste is just the volume at which these companies manufacture clothing that nobody wants or needs and nobody buys. I think that's even more the case for the slightly older model fast fashion retailers,
27:37 Speaker 05 where you're creating a lot more stuff upfront to see if it sells. And that is the cost of doing business at that volume, at that scale. There are dumping grounds all over the world in poor countries where a lot of these, this cast off clothing tends to go. In Ghana, in Chile in particular, just sort of like these trash mountains of clothing. Which just, I think, illustrates like the real overproduction problem that we have in these types of goods. You know, that much is thrown away every year as a country and we're not missing any of it.
28:13 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, as someone who's tracking this, you must have imagined what could be done systemically to make a difference. What would that look like?
28:22 Speaker 05 I think it's regulatory. There is a real capacity for responsible regulation and responsible oversight to change the behaviors of these companies. But, you know, the companies that populate this industry are very, are very, very powerful. They have very powerful lobbying arms. The Biden administration has made some important steps in the past few years, but it's hard to say exactly how much anybody is going to be willing to do.
28:47 Manoush Zomorodi? All right, so I'd love to end our conversation with sort of best practices. Let's say someone is like, well, I am not going to be part of this online shopping machine that is hurting our planet. What are some of the things they can do? I think one of the best things that you can do is, is when you decide you want or need something, to try to buy it secondhand. I think that like, if you're looking at a system where you've got just like this massive oversupply of consumer products, then it makes sense, both systemically and just like
29:27 Manoush Zomorodi? price-wise for you, to look for, you know, opportunities to buy something that is not brand new. But we live in a consumer economy, and the system is set up to prompt us to buy as much as possible. Like, that's, that's the economy we have. And like, the amount of like, personal resilience you need to say no to that all the time is just enormous. Like, nobody can be expected to say no to these prompts 100% of the time. You have been, as a consumer, sort of like, herded toward the least friction possible. If you can add some friction back in for yourself, in whatever way makes sense for you and what you're looking for, then you're probably going to make better decisions, you're
30:09 Manoush Zomorodi? going to save money, you're going to be less wasteful, your house is going to be less cluttered. Like, you were just going to have an easier time of things in the long run. Which brings us back to Aparna Mehta, the now-retired UPS executive and former online shopaholic. As Aparna learned more and more about where her online returns were actually going, she knew she had to make a change.
30:38 Speaker 02 Because I saw the wastage that happens in the supply chain. You think about the amount of fuel you consume, you're talking about labor, you know, every time you touch a package, it's a cost.
30:51 Manoush Zomorodi? As a supply chain expert, Aparna focused on solutions to reduce this kind of waste. She worked with her retail clients to optimize their shipping routes, consolidate shipments, and use less packaging.
31:04 Speaker 02 And you start thinking about your supply chain in different ways.
31:08 Manoush Zomorodi? In her own life, she joined a clothing reuse initiative within the Indian American community. But most of all, Aparna changed the way she shops.
31:18 Speaker 02 Yes, significantly. It takes me a lot longer now to make a decision when I'm doing online shopping. I really think about it. I'll put the item in the cart. I'll go back the next day and see if I still want it. And I try, I try very hard to keep the returns to a minimum. I don't buy with the intent to return. So that's the number one change. I don't buy multiple items of the same item with the intent of only keeping one. That's like my way of saying, I'm going to minimize this as much as I can.
31:53 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, there's also the question of fashion, right?
31:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:57 Manoush Zomorodi? Were you very sort of trendy previously when you were shopping more often? Were you more up on style? And have you decided to go, I don't know, more classic or go back into your closet?
32:08 Speaker 02 No, so that part hasn't changed, unfortunately.
32:12 Manoush Zomorodi? OK.
32:13 Speaker 02 I still, I still like trendy stuff. What I don't do is I don't buy fast fashion. So if I purchase stuff, it is to keep. I take some time to buy. My daughter and I, we have a phrase. She points to her heart and says, Mom, does it hurt you here if you don't get that? And I say, no. She goes, then don't buy it.
32:37 Manoush Zomorodi? That was Aparna Metta, former vice president of Global Customer Solutions at UPS. You can see her talk at ted.com. We also heard from Amanda Mull, who writes for Bloomberg Businessweek. And on our next TED Radio Hour Plus episode, you can get more expert advice from Amanda on how to be an intentional consumer. She's got some great tips. Today on the show, the state of fashion. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zamirodi. Stay with us.
33:19 Manoush Zomorodi? Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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34:35 Manoush Zomorodi? It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, the state of fashion. And a warning, this next segment contains an offensive word, and we talk about sexual misconduct. So, we can't talk about fashion without including the perspective of a very select group: supermodels. Back in the 90s and 2000s, they were hot. Cindy, Linda, Kate. We knew them by their first names. They made modeling the goal of many a tween or teen. And shows like America's Next Top Model furthered the fantasy that it could happen for anyone. But it actually did happen for Cameron Russell.
35:22 Speaker 03 I was scouted when I was 14 or 15. I was swimming in Maine and a talent scout saw me swimming and then gave me a card for an agent in New York City.
35:38 Manoush Zomorodi? Eventually, Cameron ended up walking the runways of Versace, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Victoria's Secret. She appeared on the covers of countless magazines. Now, 20 years later, she's written a memoir documenting her experience.
35:53 Speaker 03 I think that we have this sensibility that if you are a model, the life is very glamorous and you are famous. But of course, the job doesn't always look like that.
36:06 Manoush Zomorodi? So, models have written tell-all memoirs before. But Cameron's book chronicles her life as she grows to understand the industry's seedy economic underpinnings, including labor conditions, the environmental impact, and the exploitation of models themselves.
36:24 Speaker 03 In some ways, this should not be a surprise. It's an industry that relies on the exploitation of gender labor from top to bottom. So it would make sense that that extends to women at the very top.
36:36 Manoush Zomorodi? And while she calls out a lot of people, Cameron also calls out herself. It all goes back to the very first gigs she booked. Because even though she grew up in a feminist household and had no interest in fashion, the opportunity was too good to pass up.
36:54 Speaker 03 I was offered, very quickly, a couple thousand dollars for a single day of work. You know, any other job I'd had, I'd taught like after school and been a babysitter for way less than minimum wage. You know, like, so on the eve of going to college and thinking about saving money and what am I going to do? That was a massive opportunity. And then I think there's this other piece of what fashion is. There are so few women with access to media. And so that idea of being able to access a large platform, a large audience, I even at 16 was thinking, wow, this is so unique. And so I was thinking about that particular type of access.
37:39 Manoush Zomorodi? There's a moment where you start to, well, there's many moments in the book, which I will say is a gripping read, but also a very hard read because you are a girl. I'm the mother of a 14 year old and the thought of my daughter being in these situations, really treated like an adult because you look like an adult, but with, you know, not a ton of emotional maturity, you look back on those years and feel what?
38:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, I guess I, the way that I ended up writing this book is there was a word that I just couldn't get out of my head, which was the word tolerate. I thought it was so much more complicated than the word consent. And it also seemed to me more complex than complicity. So as I was thinking about how to write a book about working as a model, I started just making lists. And the first list that I made was just a list of things that I had tolerated.
38:48 Speaker 03 And the very first item on the list is a story of showing up at my first photo shoot and the stylist telling me to wear this bikini with a belt around my neck and telling me it's an S and M vibe. And when he says S and M, I think of like, you know, three letters, S and M. I didn't know what it stood for. I had just turned 16.
39:15 Speaker 03 On my second shoot, the makeup artist paints my lips red and they tell me that I have [BLEEP] sucker lips. I've never heard this word before. It's so jarring. I'm trying to make sense of what that means. I talk about, you know, having a photographer that I shoot with for a couple of months, who is calling me sexy. And no one's ever called me sexy, right? I'm a kid. And I was inside, you know, other people's fantasies that I had no understanding of.
39:46 Speaker 03 And I tolerated it, you know, I went along with it because I was thinking, "Well, this is a wild opportunity." And, you know, it's an industry where you are standing in a casting line with 400 other young women. And you just are thinking, "You can be replaced in an instant." And so figuring out what to do in this really competitive environment really was figuring out how to make myself agreeable to everyone that I encountered.
40:17 Manoush Zomorodi? In 2012, after modeling for about a decade, she decided to be a little less agreeable. She gave a talk acknowledging some of the uncomfortable truths about her career. It was called "Looks Aren't Everything: Believe Me, I'm a Model."
40:34 Speaker 03 I feel like there's an uncomfortable tension in the room right now because I should not have worn this dress.
40:40 Manoush Zomorodi? Cameron walked out onstage looking like the quintessential supermodel. Short black dress, sky-high heels. But then...
40:49 Speaker 03 Luckily, I brought an outfit change. This is the first outfit change on the TED stage, so you guys are pretty lucky to witness it, I think.
40:57 Manoush Zomorodi? She pulled on a long skirt, stepped out of her stilettos and into a pair of loafers.
41:02 Speaker 03 These heels are very uncomfortable, so good thing I wasn't going to wear them.
41:06 Manoush Zomorodi? Next on, a comfy cardigan.
41:08 Speaker 03 The worst part is putting this sweater over my head because that's when you all laugh at me, so...
41:12 Manoush Zomorodi? At the time, this onstage costume change seemed revelatory, that a supermodel was willing to drop the glamour and look, well, average.
41:23 Speaker 03 So, why did I do that? That was awkward. Image is powerful, but also, image is superficial.
41:38 Speaker 03 I just totally transformed what you thought of me in six seconds. And of course, barring surgery, or the fake tan that I got two days ago for work, there's very little that we can do to transform how we look. And how we look, though it is superficial and immutable, has a huge impact on our lives. I am on this stage because I am a model. I'm on this stage because I am a pretty, white woman. I won a genetic lottery, and I am the recipient of a legacy. And maybe you're wondering, what is a legacy? Well, for the past few centuries, we have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we're biologically programmed to admire,
42:22 Speaker 03 but also as tall, slender figures, and femininity, and white skin. And this is a legacy that was built for me, and it's a legacy that I've been cashing out on.
42:34 Manoush Zomorodi? So, your talk ends up being, and is still, one of the most-watched TED Talks of all time, over 40 million views. But you say in the book, afterwards, at the moment, you feel like you have power, like you're writing your own story, except, once you go off-script, you say, "I don't know what to say." So, talk me through how you started to figure out what you wanted to say.
43:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that was hard to figure out was how to talk about an industry that, particularly for me, was both privileging and oppressing. And I felt I just did not share, you know, what does it mean to be complicit and tolerant of an industry that is very exploitative?
43:30 Speaker 03 You know, both claiming responsibility and shame and blame for some of that. And then also, you know, not taking responsibility for everything, right?
43:42 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, it's interesting because in the book, you really characterize your upbringing as the kind of household where you were steeped in issues about social justice, privilege, racism, labor rights. And you describe, or you say that as your career grew, you became very aware of how the fashion industry makes those problems worse. There is a section that I think really sums up the sort of confusion that you were feeling at the time. It's the story you tell about a photo shoot you did on the grounds of a former plantation in Georgia. And I wonder if you could read it for us?
44:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:22 Speaker 03 An hour outside Atlanta for a job, we drive up to the location and the production assistant points at some rubble in the woods and tells me, "That used to be slave housing." Then he points where we're headed and says, "And the same white family still owns the big house." The woman who answers the door tells us this again. "The plantation has been in my family for hundreds of years," she says. It's the first thing she tells us, and she says it with pride. I sit on the porch, waiting for the team to set up. How different is what we're doing, celebrating this place, celebrating my white face over and over while women of color make, pack, ship, and sell the clothes for nothing close to a livable wage?
45:04 Manoush Zomorodi? There are many scenes in the book where you are sort of at the center of a industrial system that wants to put a pretty face on it, but literally makes you sick. I'm remembering another scene where you describe reading the headlines about hundreds of Bangladeshi garment workers being killed in a fire in a factory. And that you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and have diarrhea and describe yourself reading these stories on the can. And I almost feel like you're trying to say to the reader,
45:47 Manoush Zomorodi? It is ugly. I can be ugly. There's a visceralness that you go into in the book that sort of shocked me, and I think that's what you were trying to do.
45:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, I guess I thought a lot about telling a story where, as you say, my body was being used to make this, in many ways, really grotesque industry beautiful, enticing, aspirational. And I thought the way to begin to dismantle that is actually to return to the body, just this really repulsive human experience of being sickened by what was happening.
46:36 Manoush Zomorodi? There's a quote in the book where you say, "Each day I become less of a witness and more of an accomplice."
46:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think, you know, it's really hard not to be in an industry where 20 conglomerates own 97% of profits. The negative climate impacts, the negative impacts on labor, it's really hard to not work for companies that are doing those things. I think that there's like this sort of fantasy sometimes that feels like if you don't like it, then quit. But it's true in nearly every industry. And a solution, to me anyway, is not really to just live off the grid. It is to actually acknowledge I am and have been an accomplice
47:25 Speaker 03 to some really egregious things that this industry is doing. And I want to take responsibility and be part of a group of people that try as hard as we can to transform the industry. At the same time, To acknowledge that there are systems which have been in place that are so much bigger than us that we cannot shoulder responsibility for.
47:52 Manoush Zomorodi? Cameron has spent the last decade organizing her fellow models and speaking out about the industry. Like in 2017, when the Me Too movement started. And Cameron was reminded of the early experiences she had in modeling.
48:06 Speaker 03 I think we looked at that and said, wait, if this is unacceptable in Hollywood, why is it the norm over here in my industry? And so, of course, that led to this very different theory of change, which is just that we can't make change without each other.
48:21 Manoush Zomorodi? She got hundreds of models to share their stories with her. Stories of abuse, of boundaries crossed, people telling them to just suck it up. She anonymized the stories and then posted them online.
48:35 Speaker 03 Together, I think the power of sharing them all out was really to introduce norms about what was acceptable and what was unacceptable. And what it broke was this expectation that this job is a fantasy. And I think it also built this sort of camaraderie or solidarity across the supply chain and across women. You know, 80% of the fashion industry is women and most of those women don't make a livable wage. That actually includes models. Most models don't make a living wage.
49:15 Speaker 03 So I think it introduced this idea that actually that gendered exploitation is something that is happening across the supply chain. And it shouldn't surprise us that it's happening across the supply chain because it's an industry that is really relying on exploiting women and using cheap labor to make profits.
49:36 Manoush Zomorodi? To somebody listening who's saying, I feel confused by fashion. I get told that I should invest in pieces that are ridiculously expensive, but really I can only afford fast fashion, which I hear is destroying the planet. And I feel...
49:57 Manoush Zomorodi? The need to connect with friends on social media that is also objectifying people. Like, I think people feel confused in some ways by fashion, and part of them just wants to enjoy it for the pure pleasure it can give people. But what do you think they need to keep in mind when they get dressed every morning?
50:15 Speaker 03 I guess one piece that makes it simple for me is trying to pull apart fashion from industry, which, in this particular moment, is such a rampant exploitative type of capitalism. And when we can pull those things apart, we just see fashion in a whole different way. I think fashion is familial. You know, when we take it apart from industry, it's long been the work of women where we really can access creativity and culture. And it's just always been in the home. It's been for people that we love.
50:58 Speaker 03 And it is our responsibility, as people who work in fashion, as people who consume fashion, who are excited by this industry, to try to hold those two things, grief at being an accomplice to the system, at working inside this, and grounding in that and using that as motivation to turn towards and grasp onto the ways that fashion can be really beautiful and powerful.
51:30 Manoush Zomorodi? That was Cameron Russell. Her book is called How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone. You can see her full talk at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone, Rachel Faulkner White, Harsha Nahada, and Fiona Guerin. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkhanpour, Rachel Faulkner White, and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Matthew Cloutier and James Delahoussaye. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Gilli Moon. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxane Hylash,
52:14 Manoush Zomorodi? Alejandra Salazar, and Daniela Bellarezzo. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you have been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.
52:24 Speaker 06 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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