A vision of a world built with integrity.

With the year and decade coming to a close we open the way for a new time and new ideas. Aiming to take the best of the past with us and move forward in a positive way. For our last podcast of 2019 we wanted to gather all our previous guests together in one place.

I also wanted to use this opportunity to ask you,

How can we help you find what you are looking for.
Do you want more interviews with sustainability and fashion pioneers

Have you got your sustainability knowledge on lock down or are you finding it harder to navigate than ever?Do you want practical business tips on how to embed sustainability and into your product and business?

Want us to explore street culture or other areas of the country and overseas for different viewpoints on business, sustainability and innovation?

Would love us to do more events and workshops?

Please do let us know via email info@blackneondigital.com or head to our instagram @blackneondigital and drop us a message.

Looking ahead to 2020 we have already recorded some wonderful guests and we’re very much looking forward to sharing more about our own projects that we have been working hard on behind the scenes.

We’re also excited to help our wonderful clients grow and reach their dreams. I feel we have set the foundations and can how flourish. I’m feeling very positive and can’t wait to get stuck into 2020! Hope you are too!

www.blackneondigital.com

Looking in from the outside Grace Woodward appeared to ‘have it all’. Her fashion career encompasses raising cult lingerie brand Agent Provocateur into the spotlight as their PR agent, working with leading clients and magazines as a stylist, a judge on Britain’s Next Top Model, as Fashion Director at X-Factor and as Brand Director, reviving the fashion house of Dame Zandra Rhodes. However, behind the smoke and mirrors, Grace’s life was far from perfectly styled.

Working relentlessly towards a version of success that had been devised by those at the top of the ladder whom it benefits the most, was beginning to take its toll on areas of Grace’s life. Growing up in an eating-disordered house (with her mum struggling with anorexia) and working in the fashion industry, where being thin is often a prerequisite, you could say that issues with food and body image were inevitable. Beginning to reassess her role in fashion, Grace found herself greatly conflicted by the story she had told herself and the ‘tricks of the trade’ advice she was giving others.

Sadly, at a time that is usually associated with joy - that of spending time with her son just weeks old - Grace’s mum died as a result of her eating disorder. Suffering physically (due to her ‘go-to diet pills’), mentally and financially (trying to keep up with the fashion machine) Grace decided to move out of London.

Leaving her career behind and embarking on an incredible journey of self-reflection, Grace has analysed every aspect of her life and also how her actions have impacted others. For her latest project entitled ‘Body of Work’, she is revisiting photographers she has worked with over the years and asking them to shoot nude portraits of her with a strict rule of no pre-shoot diet and absolutely no post-production retouching. The aim of this is to face her own body image internal voices and questions of ‘can I age naturally?’ and also to support other people exploring their own #bodypositive journey.

In this podcast, we talk to Grace about her incredible journey of heartfelt passion, pain and self-discovery that is opening the door for acceptance and love.

In addition to this interview, we are honoured to have a listener question from Jade McSorely who is a model and co-founder of Loanhood a peer-to-peer fashion rental company. Jade who has previously appeared on Britain’s Next Top Model (as a contestant, not during the time when Grace was a judge), raises some great points around ethics in modelling and what we can do to encourage a healthier industry.

www.instagram.com/gracewoodward

www.blackneondigital.com

We are living in unusual times, with access to a wealth of information, yet increasing levels of confusion and diminishing levels of trust. We are told our viewpoint and opinions count, however, we do not feel they are reflected in what we see in front of us. In striving to take control of our own destiny we end up working around the clock, our lives becoming more rather than less demanding.

You may think, how on earth can we talk about fashion at a time like this? Well, the answer is, fashion drives immense cultural and economic value. Also, when we consider that women, many of whom want a shift in work-life balance, work in the fashion industry and are increasingly owners of SME businesses we can see why what we wear really does matter.

Fashion through the ages has shown times of change in one of two ways. By offering an alternative view of maximalism and escapism, or by stripping back and holding close the essence of what we believe to be true and essential.

Hanna Fiedler is a contemporary British fashion designer who identifies with the latter approach. Her namesake brand’s understated, contemporary tailoring and captivating minimalist style is exactly what we want to wear right now. With a capsule collection ‘Prologue’ and her first full collection ‘Chapter I’, Hanna’s poetic narrative and meticulous attention to detail coupled with a purist fabric selection makes today’s woman feel confident she can navigate her day with ease and elegance.

We met Hanna at the recent London Fashion Week, Positive Fashion Showrooms and instantly fell in love with her luxury womenswear. Made to order in London, from pattern to execution, Hanna’s garments are a beautiful example of uncompromising craftsmanship.

In this podcast we find out what impact growing up in Germany’s Bavarian countryside still has today on Hanna’s approach to her life and work. We also discuss her training at the Berlin Opera House and London College of Fashion, plus what she has learnt from working with Mary Katrantzou, Maria Grachvogel, Gabriela Hearst and on Alexander McQueen’s McQ collection.

We are very happy to share Hanna’s first-ever podcast interview.

www.hannafiedler.com

www.blackneondigital.com

Human interaction can appear unrelated to processes and technology systems yet, they are in fact inextricably linked. I have been told previously in relation to fashion supply chains and transparency tools that ‘people are messy and you can’t make them conform’. However, I believe with the right tools, support and motivation people can enjoy working efficiently. If technology can make our lives and businesses more effective and profitable then, what’s not to love.

Issues arise when technology has been created without a deep understanding of the complexities of why and how people carry out their work in a certain manner. For example, is tradition or culture driving a process, or is there no access or desire to use alternative machinery, electricity or the internet. No matter how good your real-time data-driven technology platform is, if there’s no internet it’s not going to work.

Fortunately, Flora Davidson Co-founder of SupplyCompass, a transparent fashion sourcing platform, made sure she did her research before launching her business. Living in India for two years and spending time with people at all job levels in over 200 garment factories has givenFlora a unique insight into the way factories work. She understands the cause of any production issues and how to help solve those issues, not only for the factory but for the SME fashion brands they work with too.

SupplyCompass act as a ‘matchmaker’ between factory and brand. Capability and longterm vision are taken into consideration before a match is created. This ensures the right factory is paired with the right brand to develop a great product and strong relationship. Both factory and brand work in a standardised and transparent way that cuts down miss-understandings and speeds up production.

We have come to associate the term ‘fast’ in relation to fashion as negative. However, speed is not necessarily a bad thing. Speed can mean more efficient, better use of resources and fabrics resulting in less waste. And it can also mean that businesses make more profit. SupplyCompass aims to make sourcing faster, leaner and more responsible. Their product development (roadmap) is driven by problem-solving, rather than purely to innovate. They have built a product people genuinely want and will use. If we applied this approach to all fashion design - rather than creating collections then marketing and selling them to customers who up until now have not been involved in the design process - we’d see fewer returns and arguably a more sustainable fashion industry.

Both quantitative and qualitative research has been key to the success of SupplyCompass. Flora’s research approach was honed whilst working at Flamingo, a global strategic insight consultancy, who ‘believe that culture is essential to understanding your business, your opportunities and your future, not only because it’s fascinating, but because it’s genuinely useful’. During her time at Flamingo, Flora worked for clients including Adidas, across Brazil, America and France.

Being able to navigate the intricacies of people’s behaviour and turn those intricacies into a unified system, technology platform and business is forming a firm foundation for SupplyCompass’ future. Perhaps this is why Flora and Co-founder & CEO Augustus (Gus) Bartholomew have recently secured £1.5m in Venture Capital (VC) funding from Episode 1 Ventures, who have previously invested in Zoopla, Triptease and Shazam.

Join us for this podcast where Flora and I talk about:

• Why strong relationships are at the heart of the SupplyCompass’ business and product development
• How Flora has built a business that supports transparency in fashion
• The future of Supply Compass and how they plan to use £1.5mil funding
• What will fashion sustainability look in 5 years time
• How Flora balances the pressures of being an entrepreneur, seeing friends and her wellbeing

Karinna Nobbs approaches her life in fashion with three guiding pillars; investigation, conscious innovation and education. Someone whom we may consider a Futurist, she has recently felt the need to turn her attention to the present rather than striving to create the future. So, it stands to reason that Karinna recently entitled herself a Nowist, rather than a Futurist. The current pandemic has made us consider all aspects of our lives and work out what’s essential and important to us. For Karinna, that has led to her making a conscious decision to move more into the present, and be more connected to nature, living in Ibiza where she moved just before lockdown.

Karinna started her career as a visual merchandiser and moved into fashion academia when she realised how addictive researching and teaching could be. During her 15 years full-time academic career she has taught in more than 25 institutions, spoken at 87 conferences, across 19 countries and currently lectures at London College of Fashion, the Antwerp School of Management, ESA, Istituto Marangoni, Hyper Island and was awarded an affiliate Professorship at ESCP Europe in 2018 where she teaches Innovation and Trends.

Since 2017 Karinna has also has worked alongside agencies including Holition, Sunshine and Wednesday, for media brands such as the Business of Fashion, Decoded Fashion and Frieze plus with luxury brands including La Prairie and The Vampire’s Wife.

We visited and featured Karinna’s self-funded project HOT:SECOND, which brought to life the world’s first circular economy concept store where she traded physical products for digital experiences. This project brought together various digital and sustainable applications, concepts and brand into one place for the public to play with and contemplate a different kind retail experience.

Turning her attention to what kind of support and inspiration creative professionals may need post-pandemic, Karinna has been working on creating a transformational experience designed to enable both personal and professional innovation. The Think (Re)treat offers a carefully constructed seven-phase programme delivered intensively over 48 hours in an exclusive environment on the island of Ibiza, due take place in October 2020.

In this podcast, Jodi Muter-Hamilton talks to Karinna about:

• What it’s like to follow your instinct to a place that has yet to be defined
• Her future plans for HOT:SECOND
• Working on The Dematerialised with another incredible woman in innovation, Marjorie Hernandez, Co-founder LUKSO
• Why she felt it’s time to help others develop both personal and professional innovation roadmaps http://karinnanobbs.com www.blackneondigital.com