Libsyn Directory

TAMARA CINCIK in conversation with #20 CHARLIE PORTER

Release Date: 12/05/2023

ALIX COOMBS in conversation #25 AMELIA TWINE

Front Row to Front Bench

For this episode of the Front Row to Front Bench podcast, Alix Coombs speaks with , Founder of Following a decade working in sustainability in food systems and hospitality, Amelia now works in campaigning for a just transition to an equitable, regenerative fashion industry. Amelia ran a sustainable womenswear platform before founding Sustainable Fashion Week (SFW) in 2020. SFW works in creative community engagement to inspire consumer behaviour change, highlighting the different entry points to sustainability in fashion to make it more relevant and accessible to people from all...

HARRIET FLETCHER-GILHUYS in conversation with #24 KATE TURNBULL

Front Row to Front Bench

For this episode of the Front Row to Front Bench podcast, speaks with from where they discuss the world of natural dyes and how they can be incorporated into supply chains and regenerative practices. Kate Turnbull is natural dyeing practitioner, educator and advocate. She divides her time between Headington School, Oxford as Eco Lead and in her dye house in Oxfordshire, working either on her own projects or collaborations. Recent collaborations have included suspending naturally-dyed plant based fibres above the Chelsea Flower Show ‘Dye Garden for Fashion Revolution’, producing a unique...

TAMARA CINCIK in conversation with #23 BARONESS LOLA YOUNG OF HORNSEY

Front Row to Front Bench

For this episode of the Front Row to Front Bench podcast, speaks with , a crossbench peer in the about the release of her memoir '', published by Penguin. Eight Weeks is a deeply moving and inspiring memoir that tells the remarkable life story of Baroness Young of Hornsey, from her childhood in foster care, to becoming one of the first Black women in the House of Lords. Lola Young has been an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner for social justice, and a crossbench peer. But from the age of eight weeks to eighteen years, she was moved between foster care placements and...

TAMARA CINCIK in conversation with #22 GREAT BRITISH WOOL REVIVAL

Front Row to Front Bench

For this episode of the Front Row to Front Bench podcast, speaks with , and , the team behind our collaboration with and for the , the . This October marks , which celebrates British Wool. This discussion includes the background into how the team got together and why there is a need for a Great British Wool Revival.

TAMARA CINCIK in conversation with #21 WAYNE HEMINGWAY

Front Row to Front Bench

For this episode of the Front Row to Front Bench podcast, speaks with designer about his bi-annual event the , which returns to Kings Cross, London on 27th & 28th April 2024. The weekend will give the public a last chance to see Paul McCartney's iconic before it is auctioned to find a new home as well as celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Ford Mustang. The popular festival also includes quality sustainable shopping, entertainment, street food and DJ’s. Wayne founded the hugely successful British fashion brand Red or Dead in the 80’s, which went on to win the British Fashion...

TAMARA CINCIK in conversation with #20 CHARLIE PORTER

Front Row to Front Bench

For this episode of the Front Row to Front Bench podcast, speaks with writer, fashion critic and curator about his new book, ‘Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion' published by . Charlie is one of the most influential fashion journalists of his time, and has written for the likes of the Guardian and iD magazine, as well as co-running the London queer rave . The book, rather wonderfully, uses clothing as a way to look at six iconic Bloomsbury figures, while seamlessly addressing the evolution of how we dress today. This leads on to the fact that clothing...

MEG PIRIE in conversation with #19 VICTORIA JENKINS

Front Row to Front Bench

co-chairs our and is a garment technologist with 14 years of experience in the fashion industry who became Disabled in her 20s. She is behind the sustainable adaptive fashion brand . The idea was born after a chance encounter with a woman with cancer that changed the course of her life. As she watched the woman during her own hospital stay, she realised that there were no adaptive clothes on the market and this is how Unhidden was born. Now Victoria is listed as one of , redefining Britain and co-presents and designs on . A must-watch where inclusive...

TAMARA CINCIK in conversation with #18 SIMON COSTIN

Front Row to Front Bench

journey into fashion might be described as a happy accident – when a student at Central Saint Martins wanted to borrow some of his conceptual jewellery – little did Simon realise the designer would turn out to be the eponymous #AlexanderMcQueen and the start of a firm creative working friendship. Simon talks of other industry heavyweights he has collaborated with, from legendary artist and filmmaker #DerekJarman, to his work more recently with and and existing within this highly creative oxygen. As well as his work as a leading British fashion-set-designer, Simon runs two museums: the...

TAMARA CINCIK in conversion with #17 ALDEN WICKER

Front Row to Front Bench

In 2019, Alden Wicker was asked to comment on a lawsuit that was being filed by a Delta flight attendant against Lands’ End, because the newly introduced uniform had caused a myriad of health issues, such as skin rashes, shortness of breath, hair loss, anaphylaxis and in one instance death. In her book, ‘’, award-winning journalist and sustainability expert, , decided to break the story of unregulated toxic chemicals in fashion and their impacts on health and wellbeing. Historically, in The Victorian era, women garment workers dyed fabrics using arsenic green...

TAMARA CINCIK in conversation with #16 PETER FOSTER

Front Row to Front Bench

An honest and thought-provoking conversation – Public Policy Editor of the Financial Times, speaks with Tamara Cincik about his book, ‘What Went Wrong With Brexit: And What We Can Do About It’. Foster is one of the few editors who is tracking Brexit and the ever adjusting life after the single market. A fashion-centred conversation of what leaving has meant for business; the realities of the barriers to trade; the confrontational relationship which ‘Brexit at all costs’ has created between ministers, civil servants and industry; and the need for policymakers to make decisions...

More Episodes

For this episode of the Front Row to Front Bench podcast, Tamara Cincik speaks with writer, fashion critic and curator Charlie Porter about his new book, ‘Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion' published by Penguin Random House.

Charlie is one of the most influential fashion journalists of his time, and has written for the likes of the Guardian and iD magazine, as well as co-running the London queer rave Chapter 10.

The book, rather wonderfully, uses clothing as a way to look at six iconic Bloomsbury figures, while seamlessly addressing the evolution of how we dress today. This leads on to the fact that clothing can be an intellectual and sexual liberation, or conversely an instrument for patriarchal power.

The book came about after Charlie was asked to curate an exhibition called ‘Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and Fashion,’ at Charleston in Lewes. Through the inaugural exhibition Charlie explored the dynamic relationship between the Bloomsbury group. Here, clothing provided a route into learning more about the key figures in the Bloomsbury group and how, for some, fashion provided a language with which to explore their break away from tradition. This ultimately fed into the process of researching and writing his book.

The conversation centres around the beginnings of the Bloomsbury group, who were at the vanguard of a social and sartorial revolution. Virgina Woolfe and her sister Vanessa Bell escaped to Bloomsbury from an oppressive and abusive upbringing, rejecting the fashions of the time for something new and this is unpicked.

Homosocialism comes into the conversation where Charlie discusses his own experience of being gay from a working class background, and connecting this to E. M Forster and his struggle to be gay. The connection between Isabella Blow and Lady Ottoline Morrell is also explored by Tamara and the similarities of how they hosted and nurtured talent, but were mocked relentlessly.

Finally, Charlie and Tamara talk about Vanessa Bell and the way she made her own clothes and how this has played out in a life-changing way for Charlie where he now makes his own clothes with a new philosophy of living and consuming fashion.

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