How to rethink your emotional attachment to clothes (w/ Diarra Bousso)

We often think donating clothes is a sustainable act, but when tons of garments are shipped to places like West Africa, it creates environmental waste and disrupts local artisans’ livelihoods. Diarra Bousso, a mathematician and sustainable fashion designer, joins Chris to unpack the hidden cost of global textiles waste and how she founded her lifestyle brand Diarrablu. She shares how she designs with emotional sustainability in mind – creating clothes that adjust to our changing body while showcasing Sengalese’s bold colors and prints. They also discuss how mathematical concepts influence her work, how technology and AI might help designers reduce waste, and why it’s important to make clothes that make you feel good. Follow Host: Chris Duffy (Instagram: @chrisiduffy https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en | chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/) Guest: Diarra Bousso (Instagram: @thediarrablu https://www.instagram.com/thediarrablu | LinkedIn: @diarrabousso https://www.linkedin.com/in/diarrabousso/ | Website: diarrabousso.com/ https://diarrabousso.com/) Links diarrablu.com https://www.diarrablu.com Subscribe to TED Instagram:@ted https://www.instagram.com/ted/?hl=en YouTube:@TED https://www.youtube.com/@TED TikTok:@tedtoks https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks?lang=en LinkedIn:@ted-conferences https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences Website:ted.com https://ted.com Podcasts:https://www.ted.com/podcaststed.com/podcasts http://ted.com/podcasts For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:34Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court, and that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human, and your gift will be matched five times.

• 1:22Chris Duffy?

  This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today, we're going to be talking about fashion. We're going to be talking about math. We're going to be talking about West Africa and Norway and artificial intelligence. And as unlikely as it sounds, we're going to cover all of those topics in the same conversation with one person. And that is because our guest today is the multifaceted, multi-talented Diarra Bousso. Diarra is the founder of the fashion technology company, Diarra Blue. But as she explains in her TED Talk, this was not a career that she expected.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  I actually didn't intend to work in fashion. I started my career on Wall Street in my early twenties, was obsessed with being rich. And back then, I probably preferred fashion brands that supported my wasteful shopping habits. But in July 2012, my life completely changed, after a life-threatening accident that left me in a coma.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  When I woke up in a blank room with a blank memory, I had no opportunity to start over. I no longer saw life as a race to just consume and accumulate things, but rather felt a deep desire for meaning and impact. As I recovered, surrounded by my family in Senegal,

• 2:46Speaker 02

  I was fascinated by a culture of longevity, where philosophically, it's not really about the word sustainability, but the active act of sustaining everything we love: traditions, resources, culture. See, growing up, getting a new outfit was not really an impulse purchase, but rather a very intentional process rooted in love and longevity. You'd go to the market, get just the right amount of fabric needed, and then work with a local artisan to get your clothes made to order. Styles were often convertible and adjustable

• 3:29Speaker 02

  so as to fit you across different body changes over time. And then at the end, you'd just pass it down to someone else. The concept of waste wasn't even conceivable for us. See, sustaining things is not just what we do. It's a love language about who we are. I decided to channel this inspiration to create my own fashion brand, Diarrablu, with the goal to produce clothing more responsibly.

• 3:57Chris Duffy?

  What does it take to create clothing that is beautiful and responsible? We're going to be getting real deep on that question today on the show.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Hi, everyone. I'm Diarabu So. I'm the founder of Diarrablu, a fashion and lifestyle brand rooted in sustainability. And my work focuses on how to use technology and humanize artistic expression.

• 4:19Chris Duffy?

  Can you tell us about your background and what got you interested in sustainable design in the first place?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  I grew up in Senegal. That's where my family is from. And I grew up in an artisan family. So like, my dad was a banker, but like, he was the only one who's ever gone to school in his whole family at the time, like, elementary school. And he made it as far as, you know, being a banker and being very successful. But all his siblings, all my cousins, worked in the artisan world, especially leather. So I grew up around the word of sustainability. As a matter of fact, in my, in my, in my culture, there is no word for it. The closest thing is maybe life or common sense, because you just, if you love something, you protect it. So I grew up seeing resources, I grew up seeing people, you know, producing everything by hand, reusing every single part of like, if you wanna make a leather bag, you use the,

• 5:05Speaker 02

  the cow skin for the bag, the meat is using for food, the horns are gonna be used for something, like, nothing goes to waste. And things were also made to last for a very long time. So like, if a dress was being made, it was made intentionally to be size inclusive and adjustable, so you'd have extra straps or elastics, so that you could pass it across different people or generations. I would say sustainability was just something natural in terms of how I was raised. And growing up, I always wanted to be in the creative world, but I didn't have the courage, so I went and pursued finance and math, because I was like, if my daddy's so successful and he's a banker, if I'm a banker, I will be successful too. So kind of buried my creative dreams and pursued that route and started on Wall Street. And I think I went through a quarter life crisis for five years, between twenty three and twenty eight,

• 5:49Speaker 02

  where I became a painter, then I became a photographer, then I became a world traveler, then I became a cook. And then I became a math teacher and I was like, this is it, this is what I wanna do. And little did I know, being in the math classroom and teaching math is what would connect my two worlds in terms of science and art. And I started using math to design textiles and that's what led to this company.

• 6:10Chris Duffy?

  Tell me more about the connection between math and textiles, because I think that's often really surprising for people.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  At the end of the day, textiles are just patterns, right? Art, drawing, sketches, everything is just a pattern. And I think for me, who didn't get trained formally in the art world, I got trained very formally in the math world and geometry and all of that stuff. But even as a student or in finance, math was very much like related to the finance world. I, I never saw it as a creative thing. And then I became a teacher and I realized that most students absolutely hate math. My first job was an assistant, I was working in a school where all the kids who were failing math from six to twelve grade would come to me instead of going to math class. So I would like help them with their homework. And I started realizing, they don't hate math, they hate how they are taught. When you make it fun and make it creative and it's like, you know, if somebody likes music, I'd be like, okay, let's look at the lyrics of this song and count and look at the pattern there.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  If somebody likes drawing, okay, let's look at this flower and see what equations create this curve. So I kind of just found a way to gamify the whole math experience. And in the process of doing though, I realized that I was teaching myself how to connect math to patterns. And on my free time, I would use the same math I was teaching them to create shapes. It's how it started. It was honestly just for fun and the intention was to help kids like math better. And then it turned into using it for work.

• 7:26Chris Duffy?

  I, I taught fifth grade at an elementary school and I, I loved being in school as a student, but I always just really struggled with math. That was my hardest topic. And I was surprised as a teacher to find that actually math was my favorite thing to teach because the fact that I had struggled with it made it so that I really understood like how to explain it because if I could understand it, then they would too. There's something really nice about how with math, the pieces click into place and you understand like this builds on this builds on this.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of like a puzzle. I think the satisfaction of understanding something is universal, right? Like when somebody struggled with something and then they find a way to make it click. It's like when you're solving a puzzle for hours and then finally it works and they match. It's such a big feeling and I think I was able to get them to feel that way with art. It's like connecting math to patterns and art. And I think I just became addicted to that and my kids loved it as well. So it just became a thing like on the weekends, I would just sit and sketch and use equation to get them to work. So I would show them on next Monday at school to get them excited. And all these patterns I was creating on the side were actually really beautiful. So I started posting them on social media, on Instagram and just sharing them with people and they were voting and saying, oh, we want this in a dress and we want this in pants. I was like, oh, wait, what?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Are you saying that I should go back to the fashion thing? But yeah, that's kind of what started this whole thing.

• 8:48Chris Duffy?

  So Diarra Blue, you do things really differently than other fashion companies. And part of that comes from your unique background, both in math and in having grown up West Africa and Senegal, and then also in Norway. But part of it is also just, I think you have this value of thinking about things that are built to last and future mindedness and you highlight in a way that many other people don't, how.

• 9:17Chris Duffy?

  Making something easy doesn't actually mean you're making it better. I think often fashion is very easy, but it's not better.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that in fashion, we've kind of trained ourselves for convenience. Like, you know, the fastest way you can get something, producing in mass, creating so many sizes. For example, like you'll have a dress going from size zero to fourteen and each numerical size is a new iteration. And just creating so much like ease, but it's actually not easy at all. It's easy for the customer, but it's a very complicated system. It's very wasteful. I think it's a lazy system because it's a system that has existed and it's easy to plug into, but people don't really question it. And, you know, why, why are there four seasons a year? They do fall, winter, spring, summer. Why, why are there two seasons? Why are there four seasons? Why are they like, everything is actually not a rule. Like you can change it and you can do it your own way.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  I think for me, it's because I didn't come from this industry. I didn't even know what these rules were. One of my favorite quotes from Picasso is, uh, learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. But for me, I'm like, I don't even know the rules, so I break them all the time. So it's not even like I'm trying to be rebellious. I genuinely don't know and I'm really embracing it now because I think in the beginning I had a little bit of imposter syndrome. Cause I was like, oh, I didn't go to fashion school. I'm not based in New York. I don't have art background. And then I started realizing it's a huge strength because I'm starting from a blank canvas. And I'm challenging so many things and only after I started getting noticed by the press or the buyers, I realized, oh, this is really special. But there's a side of just like having values around waste and not being wasteful and preserving things.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  But also I think it's just being super naive from the start because I didn't really have a mold to follow. And that ended up being my biggest trend because I, I will question absolutely anything. And sometimes people who are like, you know, heritage fashion brands or people who are from the industry will question it at first be like. Why not? And not just in fashion, but with any system.

• 11:11Chris Duffy?

  The approach that you take is a really important one regardless of the industry that we're in. To say like, well, what would it be like if we rethought this? And why do we do it the way that we do? What if we did something that was better for you, for the environment, for the community, rather than just the least frictionless thing? So it's interesting to me to have that conversation with you because you're currently based in Silicon Valley. And I think you're in a part of the world that many of us associate, I certainly strongly associate with a place that is trying to remove as much friction as possible from life. Right? Everything is like one click. It immediately arrives, things show up really fast. And you're kind of not in that mindset at all. So tell me about that, being a rebel in the place that you're in.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  So I went to Stanford to get my master's in math education. And it's funny because coming from Wall Street, everybody who wanted to go to Stanford wanted to go to the business school. And like, you know, build a massive company and raise tons of capital and all of it. So that's the first thing I did. I actually applied to business school because I wanted to just be able to show off on LinkedIn and feel cool. And when I got in, I realized, actually, I'm not doing this for the right reason. Because I'm going back to the world that I didn't want to be a part of to begin with, which was this Wall Street fast-paced life. So I turned it down at the last minute and it created this massive crisis in my family. Like, oh, my God, you're so spoiled, blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, it's not for me. And a year later, I realized I wanted to be a teacher. So I went to Stanford for teaching. So I still went to the business school and took a few classes, same for the design school.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  And I remember in the business school, there was a pitch competition where I was working on the Arab Blue at the time. It was not a company yet. And at the end of it, the professor was like really supportive because like, you know, I had one of the best results in the competition and it was really good. And he's like, the next step is to go and raise a lot of capital and build this factory and stuff. I was like, I'm not doing that. And he was kind of disappointed. And I went like, no, I'm gonna go and be a math teacher and keep learning. Because the more I'm gonna learn from the outside, the more I'm gonna, I have my whole life to build this. And I think that was so weird. It almost felt like I was wasting his time to be doing all of these classes to say, no, I'm not gonna pursue it right away and raise a ton of money. And it's like, The moment I raise money right away, it's gonna be very easy for me to make mistakes because I'm not spending my money.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Like, I can waste somebody else's money and make these mistakes, but I really wanna keep learning because I'm not trying to just build a fashion company. I'm trying to create change, like structural change in an industry that I'm learning from the outside. And that's not gonna follow a blueprint. This blueprint of raising tons of money, starting a factory, producing inventory, stocking it somewhere, like, I'm not doing that. And I went and pursued the teaching route, but in my heart, I knew I was gonna pursue this eventually. So I'm teaching in the daytime and in the evening, I'm using my equations to create prototypes and sending them on Instagram. And every twenty-four hours, I'm getting all this feedback, literally, like, of what I should produce. I learned how to design textiles the formal way, so I would create these patterns, show them, and I'll actually get them printed in factories.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  And I would buy all the textiles and send them to our factory in Senegal, but not produce anything. The opportunity for inventory was limitless, but there was no cost. All I had was raw materials. Little did I know that business model was gonna be what made my company successful. And I still haven't raised any funding, and we're still cash flow positive five years later. And it's because I don't have inventory. Like, a typical fashion brand spends a lot of cash flow on inventory. I can launch a collection today. If it flops, I definitely don't lose anything. I'll be like, okay, fine, let's launch something new next week. Like, that whole model allowed me to, you know, get into massive partnerships with other retailers and create a very risk-free way of working with us because, you know, it's all drop ship. Like, you can order something on our website today and then you receive it in seven days, but it actually gets made tomorrow.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  We operate like a restaurant, so everything is modular.

• 14:52Chris Duffy?

  It's not only a really effective business model for making it so that you're able to have this successful business, but it's also a business model that creates a lot less waste.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  What we don't realize that waste is not just about the environment, and it's also financial. Like, if you think about it, you're wasting money. And the industry is built into wasting money. Like, you're meant to overproduce to sell a certain percentage because the rest is gonna go on markdown or get sent to the trash or something. So it's built into the process. So you're basically making a business model in which you have a waste factor, which is ridiculous to me. It's like, why would you do that? Versus, the model we've built is super reactive. So when I think about a supply chain, we don't have a supply chain. Actually, we have a demand chain. So everything we do starts from the demand. And as a result, everything we produce, we are not guessing anything. Like, we produce what we produce today because it was demanded yesterday or last week.

• 15:44Chris Duffy?

  Hmm.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  So the, the whole, the whole like operations work this way. And the factory, the one I started in the car and now he works as partner factories, it's like a restaurant. We buy all the raw materials based on what we see in the crowdsourcing that people like, and we live it there. And every day, like you go to a restaurant, you can order chicken parmesan or you can get a Caesar. You can get any assortment of it, but the materials stay the same. The difference with the restaurant is that our materials are not perishable. They are the fabrics. I mean, there's always going to be waste from like scraps and cutting and stuff. But we don't have the typical waste in this industry where it's like one garbage truck full of clothes goes to a landfill every second. That's how this fashion industry works. We don't have to do with, deal with that, both financially and environmentally, because we are being responsive.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  And community is also super important because in this whole process, you have to build relationship with your customers. You're constantly asking them what they want to see. It's also humbling because as a designer, I'm like, oh, I have this, I'm so smart. I have all these ideas, you put it out there and they're like, no, we hate it. It's like, I'm really glad you're telling me right now before I spend all this money on it. Thank you. I'll do something else and I'll come back to you. It's very humbling and I really like that experience too.

• 16:49Chris Duffy?

  We're going to take a quick break for ads and then we will be right back.

• 16:59Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination and research and initiatives relating to environmental change.

• 17:42Chris Duffy?

  In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:52Speaker 03

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• 18:50Chris Duffy?

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• 19:51Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. We're talking with Diarra Bousso of Diarra Blue about her clothes, her company, and her process. For the people who are listening on the podcast, can you describe what the style of your clothes is or what they look like?

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say in the beginning, it was really much like I was stuck on Wall Street and I was daydreaming of being on vacation. That's how this whole thing started, like from a dream. So I would say most of the collection was very resort focused at first. Now it's full ready to wear. But at first it was like kaftans. And if you watch The White Lotus, what all those rich ladies are wearing in these hotels and I just super relaxed and everything is loose and flowy and you can eat everything you want and you just look great in all of it. And you just look rich and relaxed all the time. That is the brand's aesthetic, literally. I think White Lotus is the way to visualize it. I come from a culture that's very colorful. So like prints are important. Everything is a print. I mean, we have a few solid pieces, but even when it's solid, it has a bit of texture or something

• 20:51Speaker 02

  exciting to it. But Senegalese people are not plain at all. We like color. We like prints. We like geometry. We like flowers. So like, we have a lot of that. And I would say it's just clothes that make you feel beautiful and happy. Like every time I see someone wearing our clothes, or just I am wearing it, it just lifts my mood because it's such a beautiful energy behind it. It has to be beautiful because people vote and we know what they want.

• 21:13Chris Duffy?

  They're really beautiful works of art, but also I think the flexibility of them, that they aren't just for one size and that they are designed to last for you. You know, sometimes you have like a piece that you buy that it's a really well made, say a sweater, and you're going to keep this for years. But if your body changes, the sweater is probably not going to fit you as well. And I think you have a really interesting thing, which is also very much embedded in Senegalese fashion, which is that because they're flowing and because they are, they're not tightly fitted, they can accommodate different changes in your body and in different, if you need to be warmer or more covered, or if you need to be looser and less covered, that they're able to adjust.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  I think there's something called emotional sustainability that we don't think about, or like emotional durability. And it's like when you buy something and you get attached to it. To wear it longer. And I think the more your clothes make you feel happy and good about yourself, the more that's gonna happen. If you buy a set of jeans that are a size two and you get pregnant and they can't close anymore and the zipper breaks, the emotions around those jeans are really bad. Like you just feel bad about it. It's like the jeans just insulted you. But if you have a dress that no matter what your body does, it just embraces you. There's this emotional thing of like, this is my friend. Like this dress is my friend and I'm, and there's love here. And we, we think about that when designing. When I'm designing things, I mean, we have our fit models and everything, but I like to, me and my mom try everything on.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  And see how we live in it. Like there are clothes that I wear for like six months before actually putting them in the line, just to see how I feel, how do they wash? What is it doing with my body? How it does in different climates? And there's this experience around how I want people to feel in the clothes is super important. And how long we want you to be wearing them. And there's also a convertibility element. I would say a lot of our clothes are convertible or adjustable. Like you'd have a dress that has a like attached shawl into it, but the shawl can be removed. So you can just wear the shawl by itself or the dress by itself. We have these jumpsuits that are convertible to be pants or to be tight nineteen different ways. Like that element is super important. Because you can wear it ten times and each time it looks different. Versus wearing it once and be like, okay, people have seen it. I cannot wear it anymore. But every time it's gonna be like, oh, are you wearing a new dress?

• 23:18Speaker 02

  So we, we think about all of that from like a durability standpoint.

• 23:22Chris Duffy?

  Okay. So I want to talk about um some of the philosophical parts of this. And I also want to talk about the Senegalese parts of this. But um I personally have a, a connection to Senegal. I, I lived there and worked there. And so I, I have some things that I want to, yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  This is how we should have started.

• 23:35Chris Duffy?

  I know. I wanted to, I wanted to start with you and then I, I studied at uh Université Chequeta-Jeune.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Oh my God. Yeah, that's my hometown.

• 23:42Chris Duffy?

  Oh, really? You, you were from Dakar originally?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  I'm from Dakar. Yeah.

• 23:44Chris Duffy?

  Okay. Where in Dakar?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Marmoche.

• 23:47Chris Duffy?

  Oh, wow. That's like where I lived. I was in um

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Oh my God!

• 23:50Chris Duffy?

  City de Professeur. Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  That's literally, okay. I, that's like a five minute walk.

• 23:54Chris Duffy?

  Oh, yeah. I walk fast every day.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, when was this? What year?

• 23:57Chris Duffy?

  It was, um, let's see. It was two thousand eight and then I went back in two thousand and Ten.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Yeah, you are in my home, literally, probably pass in front of my house every day.

• 24:07Chris Duffy?

  Well, so I wanted to ask you about a couple of things that come to mind with me. There's this very big part of culture is, you know, having fun colors and making a statement with how you dress. And for me, as a person who like wasn't always a super confident person and also was a teenage boy and then a young adult man, a lot of the way that I would have said I related to fashion was trying to be invisible. Right? Like, wearing something that's just like, no one's gonna comment on this.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:36Chris Duffy?

  And so it was really interesting to then go to Senegal and like my Senegalese friend one day, like as a president, bought me like a big, a big boo boo and I put that on and I walked down the street and people were like, hey, looking good. You know, like people were like giving me compliments and I was like, oh, that's actually really fun. I never experienced that piece before. And I feel like that spirit of like, celebrating how you look and complimenting a stranger is so apparent in the clothes that you design. Like, they're the kind of things where people are gonna go, I love that.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:06Chris Duffy?

  You look great. You know, it's not quiet clothing.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Not at all. We don't wanna be quiet about anything. And that's the part of my culture that I wanted to bring. I have this group chat with my family. I would say 90% of the conversation are us complimenting each other. Like, my dad will be going to a business meeting and, you know, he will take a selfie, a dad selfie. Like, he doesn't know the angles and everything, but he will take a selfie and be like, oh, killing it with that hat. Crushing it since 1958.

• 25:31Chris Duffy?

  Oh, I love that.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Everybody's, then you have to add a comment and a compliment.

• 25:36Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  And that's what all we do all day. It's hilarious. It doesn't matter how sad you are. You open that group, there's like 50 matches every hour and it's just compliments, emojis, ridiculous laughter. And that's our culture. Like, if you have an event in Senegal, it's not about you, it's about the guests. You have a poet called the Griot, I'm sure you know, who's basically singing your praises. So you'll come in and be like, hey, Chris, and they'll make a poem about you and the boo boo and it's gonna have a rhyme for each verse and they'll name you and praise you in front of everyone with a mic and drums. And you cannot, you cannot erase yourself. You have to be really much like, you cannot be self-effacing in any way. So your outfits have to hit, you know, the way you carry yourself, your attitude, your smile, your energy. And I wanted to just put all of that into the clothes we design and like, you know,

• 26:21Speaker 02

  whenever I get feedback from customers or they tag us on Instagram, it's always, oh, we got so many compliments. I'm like, yep, that was the plan.

• 26:29Chris Duffy?

  That's the like really good part. I also want to say a piece that I noticed while I was in Senegal that I think is a darker side to the fashion industry in the United States and in Europe that I think is invisible to many people, but is very visible when you're there, which is that, let's say you're just the regular consumer of clothes in the United States and you're done with a t-shirt or a dress or a pair of pants. You think that you're being responsible because what you do is you go and you give it to a charity that says they're gonna reuse it, right? And often, those big pallets of clothes then get shipped into other parts of the world, like West Africa. And, you know, I'd be walking around in like rural Senegal and I'd see a kid wearing like, "I won the best clam bake in Rhode Island." And I'd be like, "What? How did you get that shirt?"

• 27:13Chris Duffy?

  But there's also this huge amount of textile waste that is just polluting the water, polluting the land, is just actually being shipped to a place that did not create the waste.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I think that's the part that's so unfair, because I think people don't see, it's like, "Oh, charity, I'm donating my clothes, I'm being a better person." But you're donating it to a person who didn't ask for it. And you're also killing the local economy where you donated, because these clothes coming in from the US, from these charities, they sell for close to nothing. But then meanwhile, you have local artisans there who are making good quality clothes from locally grown cotton, handmade, with heritage, with all of the history, but they have a hard time selling them because we're being flooded with all this secondhand clothing that people here just are throwing in some container. And also, cheaply made stuff from like, you know, other manufacturing countries like China, etc. So I think it would be good for people from the Western world to actually understand

• 28:06Speaker 02

  really the impacts of this, because it does affect us significantly. And a lot of those clothes are not wanted. I think people assume, "Oh, I'm sending it to the poor country and they'll wear it." I'm sorry, we have style. Because the country is poor doesn't mean there is no sense of, like, the fashion level I've seen in Senegal and the scrappiness of people, regardless of their social class, is unmatched. So like, that big sell Rhode Island t-shirt, if you send us a million of those, we don't want to wear them. We want to wear something beautiful, we want to wear something that fits, that looks good, that we chose. So that's something that I think it's worth talking about, for sure.

• 28:42Chris Duffy?

  That is something that is worth talking about, for sure, and we are gonna talk about, for sure, right after this break.

• 28:57Chris Duffy?

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• 30:44Chris Duffy?

  Hey, everyone. Thank you for making our podcast a part of your routine. We really appreciate you listening and we want to make the show even better. We want to make all of your favorite TED podcasts better. So we put together a quick listener survey. We would love for you to take it. Tell us what's working. Tell us what we can do better. Tell us things that you're interested in. It just takes a few minutes, but it helps us to shape all of these shows and to get to know you a little bit better, which is really fun. Head to the episode description and there's a hyperlink in there. Click that link and take our survey. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And we are back. So Diarra, I think that in addition to all the amazing things about your creative and artistic and personal story, I think another thing that's really interesting about your work is the political story here. And I think it's quite subtle, but it's really

• 31:27Chris Duffy?

  important. I read this book by the Zambian economist Dembisa Moyo. It's called Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is A Better Way For Africa. And I'm summarizing her point, but it's basically that the Western world has often really undermined local economies and undermined local independence by charity. So like, they send 10,000 tons of free rice to an area. Well, that's great for the people who get the rice. It feeds them. But then, the local rice farmers are completely put out of business and they can't produce rice anymore because how could they ever compete with free rice? And then, when the free rice doesn't keep coming, now there are no longer rice farmers in the area. So it creates this

• 32:08Chris Duffy?

  cycle of dependence. And something similar has really happened in the fashion industry, where cheap clothes are sent to Africa, and then the clothes that were produced locally that were much higher quality, they can't compete with that free, low-quality clothing. And so people get put out of business. But you are consciously breaking that cycle. You are employing these skilled craftspeople who live in Senegal, and you're changing that whole narrative.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And I think even culturally, there's also the erasure of fashion by doing that, because you're sending donated clothes that are, I mean, they're still going to get sold, but at very low prices. So like, local artisans do suffer, and you're erasing them and their skills, because it's like, how am I going to sell something that I took hours to make in good quality versus something that just came in from Rhode Island that's like, a few cents? And there's also like, just this idea of, if you want to help someone, like, don't give me free fish. Teach me how to fish. So like, yeah, all of that is great, but what about you support our economies? What about you buy from African brands like Dior Blue? What about you, you know, support in a way that's creating human sustainability? The donation of a shirt from a charity standpoint, it makes you feel good. You just went to Goodwill

• 33:19Speaker 02

  or wherever, dropped something, and you're like, oh, I did a good act. I donated my shirt. But what about you do something that's more sustainable and you actually empower and support those industries or those people in a way that they can continue to self sustain?

• 33:32Chris Duffy?

  You know, it also goes to an idea and a phrase that I learned while I was in Senegal, a Wolaf phrase that I thought was very powerful and I think about a lot, embolo modole, which is like, together we're strong, right? Like, the union creates the strength.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  The strength, exactly.

• 33:48Chris Duffy?

  That's not something I often think about when I'm buying clothes, is like, how is this clothing purchase an act of unifying with other people? Or how is it an act of just being about me? That even the purchase of clothes can be a way of demonstrating that care for each other and that virtue of community mindedness.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  We are all connected. I mean, yeah, we can have boundaries between us and countries and languages, but at the end of the day, we are one people. I mean, that's how I think about the world. And if you think about yourself, not as this tiny little aunt in the system, but like, you are the system. Every choice you make impacts the system. And when you think about your purchases, not just for clothes, but it may sound heavy, but like, I think it can become almost second nature. Like, how is all these decisions affecting the overall system? Are you adding to it? Are you taking away from it? Just having that mindset will help, I think, make a lot of better decisions in general, especially with purchasing and sustainability as a whole.

• 34:42Chris Duffy?

  For someone who is thinking about their clothes or their fashion differently, what advice would you have for them? What are maybe three things that they should think about differently when they go about looking in their closets or purchasing new clothes?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  I would say, I think it's important to have a capsule wardrobe. And what I call a capsule wardrobe is like your essential basics that you could wear all the time. Like, for me, it's like a black pair of jeans, black pants, a plain white or black shirt, things that are just timeless. And then have your, like, dramatic add-ons that really make the statement. Like, I will always wear all black with a dramatic Diablo kimono on it, or a dramatic jacket, or a denim jacket. Like, there's all these accessories. So I would say, I'm sure everybody looking in their closets and saying, oh, I have nothing to wear. You can always find some capsule pieces there that are timeless and focus on those. And then make that decor, and then see what you can add to it. We should think about shopping in a way of buying things that are complimentary. So like, how can you get, you know, these colorful, beautiful pants you bought last

• 35:38Speaker 02

  year? How can you bring them back to life this year, but with another way of styling it where it looks completely different? How do you make your purchases complimentary? Where, and I think about this a lot with our collections as well, like, how can you buy five things? But you know, a mix of sets and dresses and whatnot, but for those five things actually create ten to fifteen outfits because permutations, computation, there's no math in me. And then the third one is just kind of be mindful about everything you're doing with your wallet, you're voting for something, right? So everything you purchase, always ask yourself, what am I voting for here? Like, I'm voting with my dollars for something. Yeah, it could be beautiful style, but what is the tag inside saying? Like, for me, buying something, a dress for eight dollars on some fast fashion website, you're voting for exploitation.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  You're voting for waste. Like, there is no way somebody can produce a dress for eight dollars with the right fabric and we paid the right wages. If that happens, it's because somebody has been exploited in the supply chain and you are voting for that, right? So like, just ask yourself those questions and I think it's just common sense, like, do these numbers actually make sense? Like, oh yeah, I just did a shopping haul with fifty dollars and I got twenty dresses. Like, how does that even make any sense logically? And like, what had to had happened for these dresses to get to you? I think those are difficult questions and conversations to have with yourself, but I think they are important.

• 36:53Chris Duffy?

  Another thing that I think is really interesting about you and your work is, in some ways, you are supporting these very old fashioned, traditional ways of making things, having a skilled artisan making something on demand rather than creating a ton. But in other ways, you are very much using your, you're using these very new technologies as well, right? Like, there's artificial intelligence is involved in your work. So can you talk about the blend between old and new and how you think about that in, from a values perspective, I'm actually really interested in too, right?

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Oftentimes, the moment you drop words like AI and tech and what is the antithesis of artisan craftsmanship, like, it's just two words that don't talk to each other. Technology is just a tool. It doesn't matter, like, it's just like you're using a typewriter before and now you have a printer. But ultimately, what matters is the quality of the letter you're writing. If you're writing a love letter, it doesn't matter if you write on a typewriter, on a printer. On a printer, you can make more of them and send them out faster and maybe meet your love faster, but the letter content has to be good. You have to have passion in your love letter, you have to write it well, you have to have skill, you have to understand language. So that was the kind of example I like to give. And I think in fashion, for me, technology is what allows me to actually humanize this whole thing. Because, think about it, if an artisan takes forever to make a dress manually, because

• 38:07Speaker 02

  you don't have an industrial factories, or like, workshop, I call it a workshop, right? And If you're gonna take all this time doing all this work, it better be the right work. I don't wanna guess. I wanna give them exactly what they need to produce. And to do that, technology helps me crowdsource really fast. I could use AI or math or whatever to create these prints or like these ideas of the prints and the tones and the things I wanna put out there. I can put them on digital avatars. Within 24 hours, I know what to do. And that's the part that for me that is super strong because technology allows me to test and learn and figure out what is right fast. And then the production and all of that can take its time and be done right. Versus if I didn't have technology and I still wanted to do this artisanal way of things, now I'm subjecting them to all this work with a lot of waste.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Because they'll be producing all these things that nobody likes and then what do we do with it? So that's kind of how I blend the two words and I think they can be very complementary if used the right way. I don't see a word where I'm gonna be like 3D printing dresses and all of that. Like it's just, I want human hands touching the products. So as long as the tech is more from a data, information, accuracy, like I wanna know I'm wrong faster than everyone else.

• 39:14Chris Duffy?

  There are these incredibly powerful new technologies that are being developed, but they are often being developed by, and I would say not just by, but for, people with one very specific background, right? Like wealthy white men who went to one of 20 different colleges in the United States or maybe a few in Europe. What happens when a powerful technology then gets used by someone who can bring a completely different perspective, right? Like you have this history of understanding how fashion works in Senegal, of understanding the, what it looks like on the ground and how could technology change that?

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think this is something that honestly I learned in the classroom. It was like how having a different perspective can really shift things. Same for fashion. Technology for me was I'm working all the time. I don't have time to make all these drawings and create all these textiles and then have them made and pay all this money and create all this waste. How can I use technology to get to my answer quicker? And still make people feel confident? That's good technology. That's like humanizing the whole experience. I was using AI before AI was cool and I thought it was such a weird thing because it was just like, is this gonna ever be used at scale? Because it took, back then like rendering images took forever and it was just super, super slow. But it was all generative stuff that was faster than sitting down and taking three days to draw one textile

• 40:30Speaker 02

  versus being able to create 100 iterations in one day and get answers. I think perspective is a super important and I think intention too. Like, technology oftentimes is thought about in terms of efficiency and saving money and making money and all of it. But for me, it was honestly about how do I use technology to not waste my time and to not waste the resources and people's time? And naturally, saving money and making money comes with it because you're saving resources.

• 40:54Chris Duffy?

  Some of my discomfort with AI is often that it seems like it's built where at its core, it is taking human work and then devaluing it, right? Like, it is anonymously built on all this work that people put their blood, sweat and tears into. And it kind of makes a lot of people's work invisible. Are we buying into a framework that says these few powerful people can take the work of less powerful people? And that that's something that is okay to build the future on? And I don't know the answer, but I'm curious what your perspective is.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  And I fully agree with you. I think when I first started seeing like these AI art models in the very beginning, I don't know if you remember, it would take a picture and tell you the Picasso version of it and then the Monet version of it. And it was just so lame, to be honest. And I remember talking to a museum here that I was working with. And they mentioned that what they hate about AI art is that a lot of art is about history and sources and citing. Like, you put a work and then you have to cite the references. You have to cite the hint inspiration, the history, and AI kind of erases all of that and just create derivative stuff.

• 41:56Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  The way I use it in particular is that, I don't know, let's say I want to do something about a flower garden as a print. I can easily sketch a flower garden in like 30 seconds with doodles and it's going to be hideous. But I can plug that into AI and say, take my sketch and add green and purple and make the flowers fill up the screen and blah, blah, blah. So in a way, it's kind of based on my work or like on old prints I've designed and things. And I think my work has a very clear signature when you look at it, where you can see it's consistent. But I think with all these technologies, you have to be really mindful and you have to be very clear in like, what is the message that you're trying to give? Like, the message I'm trying to give is, hey, I want to develop and work on things. But before I put so much effort into it, I want to know if you like it. For me, it's a prototyping tool. Prototyping and testing.

• 42:42Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  And then understanding what do I want to put human sweat and tears into.

• 42:46Chris Duffy?

  That tracks for me. And I also think that, look, it would be relatively easy for someone to set up a shop that's called like Mara Blue. And then they could use AI and copy a lot of your stuff, your story and the care and the thought and the philosophy behind it. I think that actually imbues the physical objects with value in a way that someone's copy would not. I really believe that. And I believe that about a lot of people's work as artists.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I believe it too. I think that's what makes art, like what makes something stand in the museum be worth so much and print copy on the street is not. It's because people feel that energy. I think authenticity is is value. And it's something you cannot explain, but you can feel. And I think that's what with art. I love this quote that's saying art wasn't supposed to look nice. It was supposed to make you feel something. And that you can't explain it. And I think when something is done authentically with the right intention and the right way, you will just feel it. Because yeah, in this world of AI, it's getting a lot easier to copy people and replicate, but you cannot replicate authenticity.

• 43:48Chris Duffy?

  One barrier for people is that a lot of times ethical, artistic and sustainable clothing is significantly more expensive. How do you think about that balance of affordability and also the values?

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's very difficult. And that was one thing of my brand. I wanted the positioning to be premium, but not like inaccessible. And I think that's what allowed us to grow really fast is because we were having things sitting next to brands that are selling like $500 dresses, $600 dresses. And our dresses were like 195, 225. And that felt like, is this for real? And it was 25 and made to order. You get it in seven days and it's adjusted to your height. Like, is this even for real? And it was like, yeah, it's for real because those brands that sell $700 dresses, they've put all their cash in inventory. They are producing this big volume. They have to build in all the ways they're gonna have. They're gonna sell on markdown, 70% off at some point to survive. We build in not doing all of that. So we can have a lower price because we're taking less risks in the beginning to begin with.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  And we have more cash flow for when we are wrong, we can shift right away. And yeah, maybe our margins are not as great as those ones, but maybe with scale, we can do better. And as the brand grows, obviously, we, you know, sometimes you have to introduce more high end products that are going to be fancy fabrics and fancy construction. But I always want to keep the core products in the brand at a price that's at least an entry level price point. I mean, it's still not cheap. We're not selling $50 dresses because it's just not possible in the model we have. But you cannot be sustainable if you're only talking to the top 1%. Like, it just doesn't work. If you want to do something to make change, you have to reach people. It's a tough decision to make. Financially, sometimes it's hard and we take a hit, but it's super important to me.

• 45:31Chris Duffy?

  Diarra Bousso, thank you so much for being on the show. It was such a pleasure.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was fun.

• 45:39Chris Duffy?

  That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Diarra Bousso. You can find more about her work and see photos of her clothes online at diarrablu.com. That's D I A R R A B L U dot com. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is assembled by a team who together creates strength. On the TED side, we've got the fashionable Daniela Balarezzo, Banban Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Lainey Lott, Tansuka Sungmanivong, Antonio Lei, and Joseph DeBrine. This episode was fact checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who dress themselves in the truth.

• 46:21Chris Duffy?

  On the PRX side, they design audio so beautiful, it is internationally recognized. Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. Hey, share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it. Send it to a person who you think looks great. Tell them, hey, I sent you this episode because you have a great fashion sense. We will be back next week with more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care and thanks again for listening.

• 46:53Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human and your gift will be matched five times.

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