← Dressed: The History of Fashion
Dressed: The History of Fashion
Fashion Animals, an interview with Joshua Katcher (Dressed Classic)
00:45:32
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- [00:02]
Joshua Koecher
What is Dax? Are you tracking all our cars on Carvana Value Tracker on all our devices? Yes, Kristen. Yes, I am.
- [00:09]
April Callahan
Well, I've been looking for my phone for.
- [00:10]
Joshua Koecher
In Dax's domain we see all. So we always know what our cars are worth.
- [00:15]
Cassidy Zachary
All of them?
- [00:16]
Joshua Koecher
All of them. Value surge trucks up 3.9%. That's a great offer. I know. Sell. Sell. Track your car's value with Carvana Value Tracker today.
- [00:30]
Kristen
Geico's motorcycle expertise gives me the coverage I need. Like 24. 7 claims, I'm on cloud nine.
- [00:37]
April Callahan
Clouds are wholly unable to support the.
- [00:39]
Joshua Koecher
Weight of an adult human.
- [00:40]
Cassidy Zachary
What's happening?
- [00:40]
April Callahan
Furthermore, clouds are not numbered.
- [00:41]
Joshua Koecher
Even if you procured a jetpack and.
- [00:42]
April Callahan
Searched, you'd find no cloud numbered nine.
- [00:44]
Joshua Koecher
However, at that altitude, you'd likely befriend a flock of migrating snow geese. Geese who'd encourage you to leave your 24.7geico motorcycle claims insurance behind, as they.
- [00:50]
April Callahan
Would take you in and even share their dinner of crickets and clovers with you. GEICO assumes no liability for any indigestion.
- [00:55]
Joshua Koecher
That may occur from a clover cricket dinner.
- [00:57]
April Callahan
GEICO expertise for your motorcycle dress listeners.
- [01:02]
Cassidy Zachary
Please enjoy this episode from the Dressed archive of over 500 plus shows. You have been very patient with us and we assure you Dressed will be back with all new content in the form of season eight very soon. We have so many wonderful things up our sleeves that we cannot wait to share with you, but until then, please consider heading to dressedhistory.com where you will find information regarding our upcoming fashion history tours of Paris and New York, which are both open for registration and selling fast. And while you are there, also consider signing up for our upcoming online course offerings, which include what Women wore to the revolution coming your way in May. More from Dressed coming your way very soon.
- [01:49]
Kristen
With over 7 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed.
- [01:54]
Cassidy Zachary
Welcome to Dressed, the history of Fashion, a podcast where we explore the who, what, when of why we wear. We are fashion historians and your hosts.
- [02:03]
Kristen
Cassidy Zachary and April Callahan. Cass, more than one of our listeners has written to us in the past suggesting that we invite today's guest on the show. And little did they know at the time when they wrote to us that this was already in the works and had been already in the works for quite some time.
- [02:20]
Cassidy Zachary
Sure was. And today's episode should be of great interest to all of our listeners who are animal lovers, as are we. Because between the two of us, April, we have three dogs and one cat.
- [02:33]
Kristen
We sure do.
- [02:34]
Joshua Koecher
And.
- [02:34]
Kristen
And on more than one occasion, they've actually been in the room with us when we were recording. And I don't even know, Cass, how many times have we had to pause recording in order to ask them to be quiet?
- [02:46]
Cassidy Zachary
I mean, I've lost. I've lost count at this point.
- [02:50]
Kristen
And I'm always like, yes, yes, yes, you're cute, but Mama's trying to work right now, and you're being slightly annoying at the moment. And I guess, I suppose that's like any other family member that we know and love, right?
- [03:03]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And, I mean, our pets are so much more than just our companion animals. Many of our listeners will agree with us when we say these animals are our family, and it's unfathomable to imagine them as anything but. However, history tells a different story. As we know, fur, feathers, leather have long been staples of the fashion industry.
- [03:25]
Kristen
Today, we are pleased to welcome to the show animal rights activist and menswear designer Joshua Koecher. His book, Fashion Animals, explores the relationship between humans and the animals they wear.
- [03:36]
Cassidy Zachary
Welcome to the show, Joshua. It is a pleasure to have you here, Joshua.
- [03:40]
Kristen
Welcome to the show.
- [03:41]
Joshua Koecher
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. And I'm excited because I think mostly in mainstream culture, people tend to look at fashion as something that's frivolous and silly and just about surface and vanity. And this is a place, I think, where fashion is taken really seriously. It's cerebral. It really highlights the intersections that fashion has with culture and politics and identity. And that is a conversation that is so important.
- [04:11]
Kristen
Yeah. And I think it's. I think it's something that we've had so many people write to us saying, I was never into fashion. I didn't realize all this other stuff, all these implications. So that's exactly why we do the show, and that's why we pick the topics that we pick for. For each episode. So, first off, I just want to say that your book that we're going to talk about today is exactly how you and I met. I don't even remember how many years ago this was now, maybe four or five years ago, something like that. And I remember very clearly when you came in to do a research appointment and you had on this fabulous quasi motorcycle jacket that wasn't leather. It was actually made of this really beautiful kind of schlubby, tweedy textile. And I just remember thinking, I'm not sure who this lovely human being is, but I'm pretty sure we're going to be friends. Which is kind of what happened immediately after that.
- [05:02]
Joshua Koecher
Yes. That jacket. I think I wore it here today, maybe. And it's made of all recycled fibers.
- [05:08]
Kristen
Exactly. Yes. And little did I know at that time that it was actually your design. And we are gonna talk about your company, Brave gentleman here in a little bit.
- [05:15]
Joshua Koecher
Yes.
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Kristen
But first, I wanna congratulate you on the publication of your book.
- [05:19]
Joshua Koecher
Thank you.
- [05:19]
Kristen
Fashion Animals. And it came out earlier this year, I think. January 2019.
- [05:25]
Joshua Koecher
Correct.
- [05:25]
Kristen
Yep. And it's a really beautiful testament to your commitment to the cause of animal rights at large. And enlists the lens of fashion to kind of really explore the way in which humans have negotiated their relationships with, and also use of animals differently throughout history. So what initially sparked the impetus to write the book?
- [05:51]
Joshua Koecher
I was looking through a fashion magazine and I came across an image that ended up becoming the opening page of the book. And it was a black and white image. Fashion editorial, I believe. The model is Constance Jablonski. And she's on the floor and she's got some kittens crawling on her, about four or five little white kittens. And she's in a fur coat. And it's lit beautifully. From an aesthetic standpoint, it's a great image. And there was something about it that bothered me. And it took a little while for me to deconstruct the image and understand what I knew. It was something to do with the cats and the fur coat. And I think that trying to deconstruct this image and look at it from the perspective of which animals are being validated here and which animals have literally disappeared into a fashion object, They've become objectified. That question sparked the entire book to go into this deep dive of looking at the relationship that we have to animals in fashion, in culture, in general. So asking the question of which animals do we validate and which animals do we wear? That question really sparked the writing of the book.
- [07:01]
Kristen
Yeah, and it's wonderful, I have to say. And I've read your manuscript in a couple different incarnations. And one thing that always strikes me is how you have a very specific point of view, but you also have this very gentle way and how you present information that is sometimes very, very difficult to hear and images that are very difficult to look at. So I want to quote you here quite early on in the book when you say quote. Ultimately, I dare say that it is never how animals are used in fashion. It is a matter that they are used at all. So sometimes, as we all know, within fashion history, items that have been made from Animals such as, you know, things using leather, things using fur, things using feathers, these things have really been considered the apex of the luxury pyramid. In your opinion, historically, what has been the lure of wearing these types of materials?
- [07:56]
Joshua Koecher
I think throughout history, there's a very big reason for wearing animal materials early on, and that was survival and functionality. And that's in a prehistoric context. It was about survival. So our contemporary understanding of things like fur and exotic skins representing luxury, I think it was really solidified in the Middle Ages in the royal courts. If you look at a painting like Louis xiv, where he's in that big powder blue ermine cape, and you analyze that painting, you can look at it as this very direct symbol of royal power. This cape is a symbol of access to arduous trade routes. It's a symbol of access to skilled laborers and craftsmen. It's a symbol of power over nature. And it was meant to be this otherworldly object that the common person would not have. So the use of animals is very much about the display of power and the display of royal power. And I think when we look at luxury fashion today, you can trace that lineage of that idea back. And it was enforced by laws.
- [09:16]
Kristen
Yeah. And we have had several requests for Sumptuary law episodes. So we will get to that at some point. Undressed. We've mentioned this before. This next question that I'm going to ask you is a little bit of a juggernaut. I realize it's a large question to throw at you, but prior to the 19th century, what was the kind of cultural attitudes within the West, Western civilization of the relationship between humans and non human animals?
- [09:44]
Joshua Koecher
Our understanding of nature and animals today is extremely different than it was even a few decades ago. I think we are now just realizing that the Earth has limits, that we can completely shift the planet's ability to sustain human life, to sustain a lot of plant and animal life. But it wasn't until very recently that that happened. Before that the view of nature and animals was that it was an unending supply of inexhaustible resources and that it was placed here for us and that if we were to take something, that it would always be replaced. And I think that that idea really permeates our view of animal materials and fashion today. That animals are little fabric factories that just will continue to produce inexhaustibly.
- [10:39]
Kristen
Yeah. You talk about this idea of carnism, and in the book, what exactly does that mean?
- [10:45]
Joshua Koecher
Carnism is an ideology that was identified and named by Dr. Melanie Joy, who is a psychologist and the Term Carnism is an unveiling of an ideology about our relationship to animals. It is looking at our use of animals as a choice rather than a given. And if we look at fashion through the lens of carnism, it would sound something like this. In animal wearing cultures around the world, we don't often question why we find the skins of some animals disgusting or unacceptable, or the skins of other animals normal or beautiful, or why we wear animals at all. I think wearing animals is seen as a natural given. We don't get up in the morning and say, today I'm going to wear animals. We see that as just natural. But if we take a step back and we look at cross many different cultures, we'll find that in certain cultures wearing animals that we find unacceptable here are perfectly acceptable in other places. So we have to start asking a deeper question about this ideology.
- [11:52]
Kristen
Right, right. And in my mind it kind of feels like carnism was kind of hanging out and being friends with Manifest Destiny, which was basically this kind of 19th century American specific ideology that like as you said, humans held this God given right of dominion over the natural world and specifically in North America. So how did this idea of Manifest Destiny play out very specifically in terms of fashion?
- [12:20]
Joshua Koecher
Manifest Destiny in fashion. You can look at some really interesting examples, one of which is the decimation of the American bison. During this time, as new railroads were being built and people were going further and further west, the trend in buffalo robes played a major and central role in the complete near extinction of the American of the buffalo. And you can look at the numbers. They went from 60 million in 1800 down to just 300 individuals in 1900.
- [12:57]
Cassidy Zachary
Wow.
- [12:57]
Joshua Koecher
And that was driven in large part by the financial incentives of, of buffalo robes, which are the skins of the buffalo being shipped very quickly on these new transportation systems right back to major city centers where the demand for this trend was pretty huge. And it was really a travesty because they didn't even harvest the meat from the buffalo. They would skin them and leave them to rot. So imagine old west, late 1800s, early 1900s. The landscape is just littered in buffalo carcasses and there are these mountains of buffalo skulls everywhere. And every train yard is just piles and piles of these buffalo pelts. And there were other forces at play. The government wanted to disempower the indigenous people and they were. The traditional lifestyle was very reliant on the buffalo. And so there were many imperialist and colonialist forces at play here.
- [13:54]
Kristen
And also too, I would say, say the beaver plays into this as well, right. The very strong fashion trend, particularly in Europe, for beaver skin hats.
- [14:05]
Joshua Koecher
Yes, the beaver felt hats.
- [14:06]
Kristen
Beaver felt hats, yes.
- [14:08]
Joshua Koecher
Thank you. In the 1500s, the need to have a beaver felt hat, societally speaking, was very important, and everybody had one. And if you were anybody who was anybody, you needed this very specific beaver felt hat. And it became such an important symbol that the beaver pelts, they were a currency. They were valuable just as much as gold. And it was the reason why explorers came to North America looking for more beaver pelts to exploit, because they had driven the European beaver to near extinction. And like the American buffalo, the European beaver and the American buffalo never really recovered. They aren't completely extinct, but they are considered functionally extinct.
- [14:50]
Kristen
Right, right. I think that's an important distinction to make. And we'll get into that, I think, a little bit more in a bit. And this wasn't just in the Americas that this was happening. And oftentimes there were actually matters of colonialism that were at play and harvesting resources from the animal kingdom that were gonna be used in fashion. Can you give us a couple of poignant examples of this?
- [15:11]
Joshua Koecher
I think there's a really striking example of this at play. And if you look at a place like New Zealand, which was a colony of England in the early 1900s, there was a trip that was taken by the Duke of Cornwall. He went to visit New Zealand in, I believe it was 1900 or 1901. And he was given a feather as a gift, a feather from the Huia bird, that's H u I a. And he was given this feather by the Maori guide, Maraketti. She was known as Maggie. And this was a symbol of friendship, a symbol of welcoming. And this hat that he was wearing, he put the feather in the hat and a photograph was taken. And it took me a really long time to find this photograph. I knew it existed. I had read about it and I was determined to find it. And I finally, after a couple of years of searching, I found it.
- [16:03]
Kristen
It's only a couple of years.
- [16:05]
Joshua Koecher
It's in the book. And I just. I can't tell you how excited I was when I found this image because it really. To see it is different than to just hear about it. So imagine there's this black and white image and he's sitting. He's sitting in a car and he's got his hat on. And the feather is this black feather with a white end. It's a beautiful feather. And this photographs circulated in the newspapers back in Europe, and the demand for this feather became so great that the bird was wiped out. Within just a few years, it was gone.
- [16:36]
Kristen
It's amazing. It's incredible.
- [16:38]
Joshua Koecher
And I think you can look at that example of how celebrity culture can impact the natural world through fashion trends. That's a very early example, and that still goes on. Imagine the impact that celebrities on Instagram have today when they post a photo of themselves wearing something that has real world impact.
- [16:57]
Kristen
Yeah, absolutely. And just earlier this week, it was the Met Gala, and I have to say, when Cardi B came out with the. With the top, first of all, it was a beautiful dress. It was sculpturally, but it had 30,000 cock feathers on it. And I was just like, oh, fail.
- [17:18]
Joshua Koecher
It's something that people don't quite think about. We see these fashion objects, these items, these materials, and we see them as materials. We don't have that connection to of whom they are made. And that, I think, is an essential story that needs to become part of the material story. The traditional material story starts at production, starts at the mill. And we need to take a few steps back and have a broader understanding of our definitions of beauty. I think, think and consider is the way that this was made beautiful. And that Cardi B gown, it made me think of the extinction of the Mamo honeycreeper, which was in Hawaii. This bird, it took about 80,000 birds to make one cape, one royal cape. And it was because they only used the yellow feather, and this bird only had a few yellow feathers. And so within a matter of just a few years, that bird eventually went extinct as well.
- [18:18]
Kristen
I'd like to fast forward us in time just a little bit about 150 years, because this ideology that we were talking about earlier, that we can really do no wrong to Mother Earth, that she remains this ever replenishable basket of abundance, this idea is very much alive and well in the American political landscape at the moment, if not around the world in certain countries. And I'm talking big picture here, not just in terms of animal conservation, but also energy resources and various other things. But there are really staggering studies that are coming out now. Some of them, I think, maybe have been misinterpreted a little bit in the press. I've read more than a few journalistic summaries of a recent World Wildlife report saying that we've killed off more than 60% of animal species in the last 40 years. And this was a huge red flag for me in more than one way. Now, I know that you know more about this than I do, and it Seems that some news outlets have kind of misinterpreted the nature of the complicated statistics in this report. So the situation might not actually be quite that dire, but there is still this very real need for measures of protection and conservation of the animal kingdom. Can you tell us a little bit about the early histories of the animal rights movements and how did their foundation relate to the fashion traits?
- [19:41]
Joshua Koecher
That is a real central focus of the book is looking at these early incarnations of what we now know as the contemporary animal rights movement, the contemporary conservation movement. These are founded in a fight over fashion. And I think a lot of people don't realize that specifically what was happening to birds at the turn of the 20th century sparked the formation of the Audubon Society, which is really the birth of modern conservation movement in Western culture. And this. This fight over what was happening to birds also resulted in what we now know as the modern animal rights movement. It raised eyebrows concerning sweatshops and what was happening to young immigrants working in plumeries here in New York City. It also was a place where Virginia Woolf was able to write this beautiful polemic that she used a term called sex antagonism. The term sexism didn't exist at the time, and women were being specifically accused of being the reason why all of these birds were going extinct due to fashion, due to women's vanity. So she wrote this really powerful piece and she said something like, could it be a graver sin to torture birds than to be unjust to women? And a lot of people during this time were very worried about what was happening to birds. They were being hunted to extinction. And not just birds. If you look back, the sea mink was hunted to extinction for their fur. The tulaq wallaby was hunted to extinction for their fur. The Tasmanian tiger and the Falkland island wolf were both driven to extinction, killed off as pests in the wool industry. The great auk was a bird that was driven to extinction for down. And the examples go on and on. The quagga, the Arabian ostrich. A lot of people don't realize how many animals have been driven to extinction because of the demands for their hairs and feathers and skins. But the birth of the animal rights movement was something that intersected with fashion in this field. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds used a technique that we now consider very normal in modern day, protesting the placard. Standing in the street with a placard, they wanted to show people what was happening to the birds that were being hunted. And they took images and put them on boards and stood out in the street and held them up. And that was an innovative thing at the time. So this, this history of fashion's impact on animals had long and far reaching impacts and consequences for activism in general, spanning many different, many different methods.
- [22:25]
Kristen
Yeah, absolutely. You also speak a lot in the book about this schism that exists between people who identify as animal lovers but also wear animal products. Why do you think this is such a prevalent cultural attitude?
- [22:39]
Joshua Koecher
There are a few main forces at play, one of which we talked about, which is carnism, which is this ideology that most, most of us live with. But in addition to that, there is something that's called aesthetic irrationality. And I don't believe that most people, if presented with a situation where an animal was being harmed, I don't think that they would like that or want that. I think most of us share similar values as far as we don't want to see innocent living creatures harmed.
- [23:12]
Cassidy Zachary
Right.
- [23:13]
Joshua Koecher
So what happens is in an industry where a lot of these practices are intentionally hidden, you'll notice that industries like the fur industry and the leather industry and even the wool industry, they don't use their production methods as a source of materials for advertising.
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Kristen
That's not a point of pride.
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Joshua Koecher
They're not, they're not posting videos of the slaughter process. You know, sometimes they have these very romanticized images of before, like the animals living in a field, lazing about. Even the fur industry today will try to have a few farms that they, that are the very best, that are used just for press, but they'll never show you the killing process. And that, that is what transforms the animal into the, into the material. So this disconnect, this aesthetic, aesthetic irrationality basically sounds like this ethical correctness rarely overcomes the perceived correctness of aesthetic beauty. We live in a culture where beauty is seen as goodness. So we have these beautiful objects and we see beauty as good. So those objects must be good. And our desire for goodness becomes very aligned with this idea that beauty is good. But if the process is ugly, if the process is bad, how does that change our perception of the final object being beautiful? I think that's a conversation that is very important to have. And I think that it doesn't just touch on the fashion industry, it touches on any visual industry where the way that something happens can be horrific. But if the final product is beautiful, we seem to be willing to disconnect, disassociate from that process. And this is something that the contemporary philosopher Lars Fensen writes about extensively in his book Fashion A Philosophy which I think is a fantastic critical analysis of fashion culture.
- [25:06]
Kristen
And so this idea of aesthetic irrationality, it plays itself out not only in the material, the garments or accessories themselves. We also see it manifesting itself in fashion advertising. And this is kind of going back to that point that we talked about at the very beginning, that image of the woman in the fur coat with the kittens. That kind of sparked you writing the book. There's so much fashion advertising out there of that nature. And your research has covered so many examples of these types of advertisements, historic and also both contemporary. Can you tell us about a few examples that you found the most significant?
- [25:48]
Joshua Koecher
Yeah, there is one advertisement from. There's two. One of which you found in the special collections, which was that fur catalog, the hand painted, beautiful fur catalog. And I'm forgetting the name of it right now.
- [26:05]
Kristen
It's the one with the woman with the tiger, right? Is that the one that you're referring to?
- [26:09]
Joshua Koecher
It's the one with the white foxes. Oh, oh, yes. And there's a beautiful French poem that goes with it.
- [26:15]
Kristen
That is a fur catalog for the company Youngman.
- [26:19]
Joshua Koecher
Yes, yes. So this catalog is hand painted beautifully. There's beautiful French poetry. And on one page, on the right hand side, you have the model illustrated wearing a fur garment. On the left hand side, you have the animal that becomes that garment. And the disconnect is less here because they actually show a little bit of the cruelty. They show the fox in a trap and there's blood on the ground, and he's sort of looking up off into the distance. And the poem essentially suggests that until the fox becomes a garment, his life is meaningless. He has no purpose, he will know no triumphs is what they say. And I think that this is a really dark and troubling look at animals in general. The idea that they have no inner life, that they have no social or emotional or psychological needs or desires, and that they are simply here wanting to become useful to human beings and that their lives are meaningless until they become useful to humans. So that, I think, is a really powerful example. That whole catalog is like that. And then there is one advertisement from Breve. Giuseppe, or Giuseppe Breve, is an Italian furrier from the early 1900s. And there is this advertisement where a woman is emerging from the woods and she is draped in fur and there's an ape angling a mirror towards her. And then on the right hand side, all of these animals have emerged from the forest to present themselves to her. And the fox is carrying a dead rabbit and he's handing he's offering it to her. And all of these animals are gathering around her and they are telling this story that I think is really important to our human egos. Our mythology of animals that they want so badly to become useful to human beings that if we can take them and kill them, they're suicidal at this point. They want to die. They want to sacrifice themselves and become martyrs for the cause of beautifying and empowering human beings. And that I think is something that's really prevalent throughout fashion advertising that uses animals in contemporary context. The use of animals in advertising and editorials I think is more subtle. We know much more about animals now and some stuff has had to change, but overall not that much has changed. I think the presence of animals in advertising and editorials is a weird form of permission granting permission that because there is a live animal alongside a product made from a dead animal, that that animal is somehow granting permission for use. And that I find to be especially manipulative.
- [29:20]
Kristen
Yeah, we're going to take a short sponsor break from that little bit of a grim moment, but when we come back, we're going to turn our attention to the future of fashion. Menopause, perimenopause. These can be some of the most uncomfortable phases of a woman's life. If you find yourself in either of these, well, Hormone Harmony is here for you. Hormone Harmony capsules contain science backed herbal extracts called Adaptogens. Now here's the beauty about Adaptogens. They help the body adapt to any stressors like chaotic hormonal changes that happen naturally throughout a woman's life.
- [29:55]
Cassidy Zachary
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- [30:10]
Kristen
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- [30:21]
Cassidy Zachary
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- [30:35]
Kristen
Wow.
- [30:36]
Joshua Koecher
What's up?
- [30:37]
Kristen
I just bought and financed a car through Carvana in minutes.
- [30:40]
Joshua Koecher
You, the person who agonized four weeks.
- [30:42]
Cassidy Zachary
Over whether to paint your walls eggshell.
- [30:44]
Joshua Koecher
Or off white, bought and financed a car in minutes.
- [30:46]
Kristen
They made it easy. Transparent terms, customizable down and monthly didn't even have to do any paperwork.
- [30:52]
Joshua Koecher
Wow.
- [30:53]
Kristen
Mm. Hey, have you checked out that spreadsheet I sent you for our dinner Options.
- [30:58]
Joshua Koecher
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- [31:00]
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- [32:02]
Kristen
Welcome back. Joshua, it really struck me when you write in the book quote, when considering how fashion reshapes ecological landscapes, we must see fashion not as an isolated genre, but as one manifestation of industrial civilization. Can you expound on this idea a little bit for us?
- [32:22]
Joshua Koecher
Absolutely. If we look at industrial civilization as a singular thing that is happening, that civilization itself is a choice. We've all. We're all participating in this civilization project. We're not living outside of the context of civilization here, talking on microphones in, you know, in a studio. There are. There are human beings that do live outside of the context of industrial civilization. And I'm not talking about them, but for the billions of people who are living in this context of industrial civilization, there are many manifestations of our political and economic and social activities. And fashion itself is one manifestation of that civilization project. And as technologies and developments increase in production capabilities and access to resources and impact, the way that fashion operates is also affected by that and is able to benefit from that. From an economic standpoint, if we look at fast fashion today, that is a direct result of the overall advancements in scalability in production technology, in engineering, transportation. Yes. And in regards to fashion being a manifestation of industrial civilization, we could really look at fashion as being only limited by our technological and industrial abilities to extract, confine, kill, or otherwise process animals into products and materials. And as the technologies and systems within civilization advance and enable us to scale up all of those things, more and more, the fashion industry benefits from that from a financial standpoint, and you can see the parallels of how that industry and Every other industry have similar, similar impacts. So, yeah.
- [34:26]
Kristen
When it comes to farming, can you tell us some of the surprising side effects to the environment that we're starting to see happening? Because you were the one that opened my eyes to this and I was like, wait, what?
- [34:38]
Joshua Koecher
Yeah, it's livestock production. Talking about cows and sheep, those are two huge livestock sectors. The impact of raising animals for food and materials is staggering. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization likes to remind us every few years that livestock industries have the single greatest cause of the worst environmental problems. When you think about the quantity of animals that are here, there are 1 billion sheep on the planet. There are a billion animals a year killed. For the leather industry, raising those animals requires the clear cutting of rainforests, requires enormous amounts of resources and water and land. And the impact from every one of those animals is a little methane factory. And methane has 20 times the global warming potential as carbon. So if you look at a place like New Zealand or Australia that have huge wool industry, those sheep are the top contributor to greenhouse gases in certain places, as well as loss of biodiversity due to the clearing of forests, like for cattle in South America. And these farming practices, when we get that final fiber. Yeah, it's quote, unquote, natural, it's biodegradable, it's a protein fiber. But if we don't consider where that fiber was grown, on whom that fiber was grown, that is a very, very small sliver of the full of the big picture.
- [36:15]
Kristen
Right.
- [36:16]
Joshua Koecher
So we can't really look at things like wool as a quote, unquote sustainable material. It presents a much more complicated and nuanced case.
- [36:25]
Kristen
Do you want to expound upon some of the aspects of the wool industry that are problematic?
- [36:31]
Joshua Koecher
This. Yeah. And this might be difficult for some people to hear because we like to think of our fantasies that are often plastered on the sides of dairy trucks when they go by, like the cows, just lazing about, a beautiful green field. And the same thing with the wool industry. Most people in their mind think that wool is just a friendly haircut. But the industrial wool industry at scale, those billion sheep, this is an industry that pays shearers by volume, not by hour. So there is an incentive to be quick. And those clippers are dangerous. They're sharp. And imagine that you are a shearer and your day in and day out job is to shear as many sheep as quickly as you can. These are prey animals. They don't like to be pinned down, they don't like to be held down. So they're fighting, they're struggling. And eventually you're going to lose your temper if you're one of these shearers. And what's happened in over 100 investigations, there have been over 100 undercover investigations into shearing facilities throughout the world, in the United States, in Australia, in South America. And what they've discovered is that sheep are being beaten, they're being slammed to the ground, they're having their bones broken, they're being lacerated by the shears, they're having their ears clipped off, genitals clipped off. It's horrific. And I'm not talking about somebody who has a couple sheep in their backyard and once a year they make themselves a sweater. I'm talking about the industry at scale. And whenever we're talking about animal cruelty within fashion, it's the cruelty is always happening in parallel with the scale. The larger the scale, the more cruelty exists.
- [38:10]
Kristen
And of course, just this idea of the clippers that they're using are shears. They're electric or battery powered, right? Yeah, they're electric because that's not the traditional method of combing sheep. Right. Didn't they use brushes historically in the past?
- [38:26]
Joshua Koecher
Well, firstly, I'll say that sheep, naturally, in nature, sheep shed, but we've bred them to not shed. I mean, think about that for a minute. We've intentionally genetically manipulated sheep so that in the hotter weather, they can't shed.
- [38:42]
Kristen
Themselves because you're losing valuable resources. It's money.
- [38:45]
Joshua Koecher
Right. So if you look at that from that perspective of how do we manipulate nature and animals to meet economic desires, the domestication of sheep is one where, especially today, when you have things like a practice like mulesing, where they've bred sheep to have too much skin, and because they've bred sheep to have too much skin, which benefits their wallets, they end up with these folds, and in the folds, they get infested. So they've come up with a way to cut off their rear ends. The skin. They just cut off the skin around their rear ends, and they do it without anesthetics. And it's incredibly painful. And this is to prevent something called fly strike. And that's just a product of the desire for more and more and more wool.
- [39:31]
Kristen
Yeah.
- [39:32]
April Callahan
Ugh.
- [39:33]
Kristen
Heart wrenching. So let's talk about some of the solutions to these issues, if we may, because, of course, you are yourself a designer. What do you think the most critical issues facing the fashion industry are today?
- [39:47]
Joshua Koecher
I think the most critical issues facing the fashion industry today are circularity and sustainability. I think that you can look at animal cruelty within the Context of sustainability. Some people define sustainability outside of that context, but I think it's an essential aspect. I think ethics, the way that we treat animals, the way that we treat people working in the fashion industry, these are all inherently part of a sustainable fashion model. How do we keep 7 billion people clothed? That is a huge crisis. And we know the impacts of conventional cotton, we know the impact of the leather industry now we know the impacts of the wool industry. We know what's happening with synthetics and plastics. Every material that we're producing at scale has impact.
- [40:41]
Kristen
So scale is a huge problem, period.
- [40:43]
Joshua Koecher
Scale is a problem. And it starts to get into that territory where people don't like to get too comfortable saying, like, oh, there's too many people, but we have solutions and we can clothe 7 billion people and we can do it ethically and sustainably. And we are on the verge of the most exciting innovations in material technology. And I think that if we'd only put more resources and incentives and training into this field, into this burgeoning field, not only would it solve a lot of issues of sustainability and ethics, but imagine a designer being able to work with materials that are infinitely customizable, that are able to do things that no materials today can do. That, I think, is the most exciting aspect of this, that this massive problem that we hopefully can overcome won't just be solved for the pure need of solving it, but it'll be solved in a way that makes design more beautiful.
- [41:46]
Kristen
Yeah, it's a win, win, win. And you are tackling head on these issues in your own brand. Can you tell us a little bit about the platform of your menswear line, Brave Gentleman?
- [41:58]
Joshua Koecher
Absolutely. Brave Gentleman started in 2010. It emerged from a blog that I was writing called the Discerning Brute, where I was talking about menswear, ethical menswear, vegan menswear from this standpoint of masculine fashion.
- [42:12]
Kristen
And.
- [42:13]
Joshua Koecher
And at the time in 2008, when I started it, no one was really talking about it. When we heard about eco fashion, it was much more geared towards a femme audience. And I think that today we've seen a lot of strides made in. I mean, this is a whole other episode. Masculinity, Masculinity and sustainability.
- [42:33]
Kristen
We'll bring you back to that one.
- [42:34]
Joshua Koecher
Yeah, we could really get in deep with our fragile masculine ideas of how we have to be brutal. But I digress. So Brave Gentleman started in 2010, and it's really. It's become a proof of concept. I think I wanted to make things that I personally wanted that didn't exist. I wanted really nice dress shoes that were classic and that didn't harm, didn't require the killing of an animal. And I wanted really fine tailored suiting that didn't require the shearing of a sheep. And up until I think my brand started, the perception of these alternative materials was that they are cheap and they are ugly and they are uncomfortable. And I have been striving to find the most beautiful and luxurious and tactile materials to work with in Brave Gentleman. And I'm continually expanding upon the library of materials that I draw from. There are so many things I wish I could work with today that are not yet commercially available. Whether that is mycelium leather being made from mushrooms or the bio silk that's being synthesized which is biologically identical to spider silk, or whether it's lab grown leather. It's coming soon, it's coming, all of these things. I mean, imagine there is a company, Furoid, that it's a biotech company that started up in Europe. They're growing pelts in the laboratory. Like we imagine. You're a designer and you want to have a customized pelt grown. The hair as long as you want, any color you want, the skin as thick as you want, and no living animal is attached to it. That I think. And it doesn't require a forest is cleared to let this animal graze and it doesn't require the paradox of having to do something that is quite ugly to make something quite beautiful.
- [44:32]
Kristen
Yeah, yeah. I was really impressed. When I was in Australia recently, there was a sneaker company that's using the apple leather.
- [44:39]
Joshua Koecher
Yes.
- [44:39]
Kristen
And the pineapple leather. And their shoes are super cute and I didn't have room for them in my bag, but I'm following them on Instagram and as soon as they start shipping to the U.S. i'm getting those metallic gold sneakers and apple leather.
- [44:52]
Joshua Koecher
Yeah.
- [44:53]
Kristen
And just so beautiful.
- [44:55]
Joshua Koecher
The materials that we have the potential to use that are made from waste, that are made from everything, from recycled fishing nets. Like Econil is pulling fishing nets. People don't realize that the top contributor to ocean plastic pollution, it's not straws, it's not coffee lids, it's fishing nets, it's abandoned fishing nets. And so this company, Econil, is taking all the fishing nets out of the ocean and recycling them into infinitely recyclable nylon.
- [45:25]
Kristen
Right. And because it's that circularity that we're looking for.
- [45:29]
Joshua Koecher
So there are companies that are coming up with all sorts of really visionary innovations. We are entering the next industrial revolution, I believe. And it's going to be all about biological materials, biosynthesis, biofabrication, and it's going to be about high tech recycling and it's going to be about plant based organics like these mushroom leathers and these pineapple fibers and orange fiber. Have you seen this orange fiber?
- [45:55]
Kristen
No.
- [45:55]
Joshua Koecher
So a company in Italy is turning the waste of citrus peels into a cashmere like fiber.
- [46:02]
Kristen
What?
- [46:03]
Joshua Koecher
It's really cool.
- [46:04]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah, we could not agree more, Joshua, about how cool some of these new emerging textile products are. April and I both tumbled down the rabbit hole a bit researching this orange fiber. And that's actually the name of the company, Orange Fiber. They are based in Italy and are using the waste byproducts from the juice industry of all places, to create a citrus based cellulose fiber which debuted on the market in 2014. So cool.
- [46:29]
Kristen
And since then it has been embraced by fashion brands, including Ferragamo, who was the very first major fashion brand to use the fiber. So a huge thank you to my friend, the ever amazing Joshua Koecher for joining us to talk about his book, Fashion Animals.
- [46:45]
Cassidy Zachary
Yes, thank you, Joshua. April, it is so clear how committed he is to the cause of animal rights, not only in his writing, but his everyday life. I mean, Brave Gentleman is an entirely vegan brand, so no animal materials are used and its focus is also on sustainability.
- [47:02]
Kristen
And as if that's not enough, he's also a vegan cheesemonger. He had me over a while back to prove that vegan cheeses are just as delicious as traditional cheeses. And he was right. You just kind of have to know what you're buying. So I stand corrected. And since then, he's parlayed his passion for vegan cheese into a new venture called Rind. And you can learn more about rind@rind.com.
- [47:25]
Cassidy Zachary
Okay, now I'm hungry. Although I actually have never tried a vegan cheese. I'll have to check it out. That does it for us today, dress listeners. May you ponder the weighty issue of animals and fashion the next time you get dressed.
- [47:41]
Kristen
Remember, we love hearing from you. So if you'd like to write to us, you can do so@hellodressedhistory.com or you can also DM us at on Instagram restorepodcast, which is of course where you'll find reels and posts accompanying each week's episodes. We get so many questions from you all about our recommendations for fashion history books. So if you're interested, you can always find a link in our show Notes to our Bookshop bookshelf. So that address is bookshop.org shop and there you can find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles.
- [48:20]
Cassidy Zachary
You can also find a link to that in our show Notes where you can find a link to dressedhistory.com which of course is our website where you can check out our latest offerings from the dress universe that includes our classes and our tours. So head over to DressedHistory.com and see what we have up our sleeves. Love dress but want to skip the ads? Consider subscribing to our ad free version of the show for just $3 a month and enjoy our eight new episodes a month ad free. That does it for us today. Dress listeners. Thank you as always for tuning in and more dress coming your way very soon. The history of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media.
- [49:03]
Joshua Koecher
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April Callahan
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Joshua Koecher
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April Callahan
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