PARIS — When Kering was planning a makeover for the second season of its podcast “Fashion Our Future,” it looked for a new voice in TikTok influencer and author Andrea Cheong.
It was just after the release of her book “Why Don’t I Have Anything to Wear? Spend Less, Shop Smarter, Revolutionize Your Wardrobe” at the end of last summer.
She was given carte blanche to invite a range of guests from across the fashion spectrum, from independent designers to activists.
The Alexander McQueen and Gucci parent company had been tuned in to Cheong by an assistant who was following her on TikTok. But instead of promoting the latest “trends,” Cheong dissects clothing items in the most literal sense — turning them inside out, examining seams, buttons, linings and deep diving into material mixes to determine if a garment has good value and sustainable staying power.
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“When I started it, I was just so fed up with the industry and the lack of information,” she said. Her grandmother was a tailor so she understood construction and wanted to call out companies on ideas like quality and cost.
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“Soon a lot of fast-fashion brands are not going to be able to hide. You can’t hide behind really cool e-commerce photos or celebrity campaigns when people are turning your clothes inside out,” she said.
Cheong began her career as a fashion influencer and writer, before becoming disillusioned both emotionally and environmentally with the fashion industry and social media scene.
That work exacerbated a “mental health crisis” surrounding the industry and her role in promoting it. “That’s when I started asking difficult questions internally, personally, and also when I was doing these meetings with brands, with PRs, with people behind the scenes, if I ever got the opportunity to I would ask them more technical questions. I would keep pulling that thread.”
Cheong launched the Mindful Monday Method to help people better understand their own wardrobes in 2019, and started her TikTok in 2021.
In the process, she learned about production, went on factory tours and spoke to seamstresses and other garment workers behind the scenes.
“I found so many people who were really, actually the backbone of the industry [but] were so invisible,” she said. “It just opened so many doors, because you’re never going to get the story only talking to the creative director or the marketing director.”
Thus her diverse slate of guests for the “Fashion Our Future” podcast includes independent designers Emily Adams Bode Aujla, Marcelo Gaia and Ksenia Schnaider, alongside FIT’s Fashion Museum director Valerie Steele and Fashion Revolution founder Orsola de Castro.
Aujla and Schnaider are known for their work in crafting and upcycling. Gaia runs independent label Mirror Palais, the cult celebrity favorite spotted on Bella Hadid and Dua Lipa.
Gaia speaks frankly about what it takes to pay a fair wage with everything produced in New York’s garment district.
“He is so unapologetically himself, even though sometimes that gets him into a bit of trouble,” Cheong said. He breaks down the true cost of a garment and explains it to his customers.
“That’s literally how I wish more brands would communicate, because you have to stop sugar coating everything and you have to be honest about your production,” she said.
De Castro’s Fashion Revolution calls for accountability in the fashion industry, and advocates the environment and people over growth and profit, and later in the season Cheong deep dives into tougher topics, including supply chains and regenerative agriculture.
Cheong took care to understand that the audience would not be experts in sustainable fashion, and strived to start from scratch tackling each topic.
“Because when anyone enters the fashion conversation, it’s like at level 10 and you are expected to catch up, so a lot of misinterpretation and confusion comes about. I think this breeds this culture of apathy or, at worst, mistrust,” she said. “It’s not as simple as ticking boxes, but it’s very much in the way that we understand how important it is that everything is interconnected.”
Cheong hopes that the podcast sheds light on the inner workings of the industry and gives a younger audience the tools to think critically about consumption, as well as a new understanding of sustainability for those that want a career in fashion.
“So many people exclude sustainability from the idea of fashion because it might look a certain way to them, or it might be so out of reach, but I really hope that the sort of everyday way that we’re presenting this makes others feel included,” she said. “It’s really about presenting a different perspective.”
The podcast launches Monday and will drop in five series of three episodes each, with one featured video episode available on YouTube each month.