I’m delighted to share with you a new entry into my Sustainability Advocate interview series, this time with Joss Whipple. Joss is one of those people whose work reverberates through the sustainable fashion space, and it’s hard to define her role within the confines of a job title. Joss is an all-encompassing responsible fashion and materials specialist, consultant, activist, and champion of local makers and menders. As a founding member of Fashion Revolution, Joss was instrumental in highlighting the need for transparency and accountability across fashion’s dirty supply chains. Her journey began with a foray into the world of natural fibres, and this year, she returns to her roots with the launch of The Linen Retreat, a new, four-day, creative retreat hosted at La Belle Eco in October.
I truly envy you if you plan on attending The Linen Retreat; it promises to be a grounding, soulful experience, offering a re-connection to nature and textiles through a meaningful, local and global lens. But first, take a moment to jump into Joss’ beginnings and motivations here:
1. What sparked your interest in sustainable fashion?
I first started to think about fashion and sustainability in 1996 when I was a BA design student. I felt compelled to understand the sustainability credentials of the materials I was using. It was at this point that I started working specifically with hemp and linen, based on their sustainability credentials. I wrote my dissertation entitled ‘Hemp for Textiles In Britain in the 1990s’ and I basically haven’t looked back.
2. You wear a number of (metaphorical) hats. How do you best define the work you do – and what’s your mission within it all?
Once I had decided to commit to working in a sustainable way I decided to look for the gaps where this type of expertise was most needed. I don’t really follow convention, I’m an initiator and this commitment has lead me to fill or create multiple roles, related to where I lived and what the needs were.
For example, from 2000-2006, I was based in California and there was an emerging need for production and sales within the pioneering brands using organic and sustainable materials. So, I jumped in and started making product myself, working in production in LA’s garment district, learning everything I could about how to manage sustainable materials through production and sales.
After that I moved back to the UK and I found a need for sales representation for some wonderful emerging sustainable womenswear brands. In response, I created the UK’s first sales agency specialised in sustainability. This led to increasing requests for advice on fabric sourcing, product design and I started to do consultancy, eventually teaming up with Roxanne Houshmand-Howell to form The Right Project. Today, we offer full package bespoke consultancy for all types of fashion businesses, and I hold a strong focus on product sustainability and strategy.
In 2013, I was invited to join the founding team of Fashion Revolution and within that movement I created the role of growing and managing the global network, a role I held for over six years. It involved working with fashion professionals around the globe, and together, we created the world’s largest fashion activism movement.
In 2020, I felt pulled to address the issues of localism and the rapidly disappearing informal skills around sewing and making in our communities. In response I founded Mend Assembly, a collective studio concept based in Totnes, Devon. It offers programming, services, and membership all centred around localised makers, community know-how and sustainable textiles practice. There are now three other spaces who have adopted my methods and established spaces in the UK and France.
Now, I live in rural France and I find myself returning to maker-ship and to my original fibre category of choice, Linen and Hemp. For me, this practice ticks all the boxes, and through my studio practice here, as an artisan and sustainable textiles specialist, I’m creating a holistic slow fashion offer that reflects my expertise at the intersection of craft, sustainability and wellbeing.
3. Slow fashion is often touted as the antithesis of fast fashion, but it can be so much more than that. What does slow fashion mean to you?
For me, slow fashion is about everything before and after purchase. It’s about care, it’s about reclaiming knowledge, reclaiming craft, and most importantly, reclaiming personal identity which has been so utterly eroded from our cultures in the past 50 years and replaced with hyper consumption, exacerbated by the digital era. It’s about developing a highly individual approach to wardrobe choices that integrates craft, sustainability, and wellbeing, and connects to the wider global movement which respects our planet and our communities.
4. You’ll be leading your first residential retreat, The Linen Retreat, this autumn. Can you share with us the focus of the retreat and what attendees will gain?
I came up with the concept of The Linen Retreat after many conversations and by following what felt like the best progression of my experience and work in the slow fashion space. The focus of the retreat is very much experiential, as opposed to knowledge-cramming. The idea is to create a space where participants can explore and discover new ways of relating to this specific material and its qualities in a very open and personal way.
I’m a big believer in hands-on practice and individual learning, and I hope that each person will come away with unexpected new relationship to the fibre, with knowledge on how to handle the materials, on the history of the fibre. I also hope everyone will take home inspirational information that can only be absorbed through direct contact and connection with the material and with others on the same journey.
5. Finally, what, or who, inspires you?
I have to say I am most inspired, on a daily basis, by the incredible women in my life of all ages and all walks of life, practicing mother hood, sisterhood, demonstrating localism, walking their beautiful values, sharing knowledge and wisdom in so many diverse situations. I have such a beautiful genuinely nourishing network of incredible friends, colleagues and family women, local and far flung who I am so blessed to have around me.
Thank you Joss! Discover more and book onto The Linen Retreat on Joss’s website.
