The state of fashion

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I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes! Do you feel that way? Ideas Worth Spreading from TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, the state of fashion, what we wear and why we wear it. Over the last few years, minimalism has been in. Pairing back a few simple chic pieces keep the look clean. The idea of dressing efficiently has always resonated with me. So I was a little terrified at the prospect of embracing the exact opposite, which is— Oh my Lord. My God. Whoa.

Maximalism. This is my studio.

This is where the magic happens.

This is where the magic happens.

A little while back, I visited the artist and costume designer Machine Dazzle at his workshop in Jersey City for a maximalist makeover.

And as you can see, it's a large space, but it still could be bigger.

You know what I mean? It's like walking into the most glittering, dazzling closet. I have ever seen in my entire life. There are mannequins dressed to the nines. There are reams of fabric. There are humongous— The 1,500-square-foot space is packed with supplies, wigs, a sewing machine, racks and racks of clothes.

Well, right now it's extra crazy, like, while you're here, but now that I have a photo shoot tomorrow. Most people know me as a costume designer, but I'm also a fine artist, a photographer.

Sculptor. Machine grew up all over the U.S. Then about 30 years ago, like many young people who feel out of step with mainstream America, he moved to New York.

I moved to New York so that I could actually start my life.

Over those past 3 decades, he has built a reputation for creating wild, whimsical, and over-the-top outfits for the stage.

Maybe it's opera, maybe it's dance, maybe it's Maybe it's me just walking on a street for the sake of something at a protest. I need a reason. There has to be a reason.

I'm not just— But it wasn't until 2022, when he had an exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, that his style got a name, thanks to the curator.

Yes, Elizabeth Arthur. When she curated my show, she decided to call it queer maximalism. I was aware of maximalism before, but I never called myself a maximalist. I mean, yes, am I maximal? Yes. But I'm so much more than that. Of course you are. Yeah. So I mean, I change. I'm constantly changing. I go with the—

The museum chronicled how, as they put it, a closeted suburban kid from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania turned into Machine Dazzle, the queer experimental theater genius. There was an apple pie headdress, a skirt made of candlesticks, a blouse that looked like giant typewriter keys. So while he may not exactly embrace the term, Machine believes his take on maximalism promotes something very specific.

It's about sharing your vision. Queer space is about sharing. Yes, we're making space for ourself, but we're also sharing ourselves, and we're inviting people into our circle. We're being generous. Maximalism is generous. It's everything. It's the cake. It's the flour, the eggs, the sugar. It's the oven. It's the heat. It's the love that was put into all of it. It's the mouth. It's the smile. It's the party. All of it! Because you can't have one without the other. Can I get an amen up in here? Amen! Or is that a gaymen? Can I get a gaymen up? Oh!

Depending on your perspective, fashion can be frivolous or make a big statement. It can bring out our creative side or our consumer side. But whether you love clothes or could care less, we all have to get dressed in the morning. So how can we do it better? On this episode, ideas about taking style to the extreme, the environmental impact of our shopping culture, and how our obsession with beauty built an industry with an ugly underbelly. But first, back to Machine Dazzle. To get a better sense of what his maximalist outfits look like, it helps to hear about the 2016 performance he did with the artist Taylor Mac. We are about to venture into uncharted territory. It was called A 24-Decade History of popular music. A spectacular queer take on American history that lasted for 24 hours, featuring 24 costume changes. Happy Days are here again. The HBO documentary about the performance won Machine an Emmy in costume design.

It starts in 1776 and goes to the present day.

Here's Machine Dazzle on the TED stage.

For every decade, I created a costume that is conceptually adjacent, not historically accurate, because traditional historical costume already exists, and I like to break traditions and invent new ones. Ah! So it's the top of the show in 1776, right after we freed ourselves from the British in the United States, and inspiration came when I was passing this laundromat. What were they doing? They were taking down these old plastic grand opening flags. And I noticed how weatherworn and brittle and fragile they were. And I got to thinking about the end of the American Revolution and how tattered and torn and broken everything must have been. And then it hit me: this costume wants to tell a story.

The outfit feels like a sports uniform on acid. Acid. The headdress is made of cheerleaders' pom-poms fashioned into a massive wig. There's a big 13—for the 13 colonies—jersey number over metallic streamers. Sparklers are shooting off the back of the outfit like fireworks.

The whole thing is one big party. This is maximalism. Not only is it layer upon layer aesthetically, it's idea on top of idea conceptually. It becomes its own story almost, that you can almost read like a book.

Another particularly memorable outfit commemorates the Civil War era.

So when it came to the Civil War decade, I had read somewhere along the way that the American hot dog evolved out of this time by, you know, German immigrants selling their sausages on the streets. And so I wanted to include it in the costume.

To create the costume, Machine paired hot dogs with another invention from the 1860s: barbed wire.

I love what barbed wire kind of stands for. It's a barrier. And, you know, what we were doing in the Civil War was trying to break down those barriers.

So the costume features a huge barbed wire skirt adorned with hot dogs that almost looks like a cage, plus a headdress of hot dogs and a Civil War-style soldier's jacket with red and yellow streamers flowing off of it like ketchup and mustard.

And it's also almost grotesque. It's like, well, is it ketchup or is it blood? And we're talking about the Civil War here. Onstage, we often deal with dark things, heavy subject matter. I will say that humor is good. Humor is healing. So audience gets to decide what it is.

There was no audience back at Machine's workshop in Jersey City. Nonetheless, he was hard at work on my maximalist makeover, putting together quite an outfit for me. Looks really good on you. Thank you.

Yeah, these are good colors for you.

So right now I have a wig made of hair, red hair, but also plastic bags, yarn, flowers, all sorts of things. A bolero jacket that's vintage with very poofy sleeves. And then the crinoline short skirt just pops out. And we're not even fully dressed yet.

And it's like this, you know, we're not even fully dressed yet. We haven't even really done accessories. And also, you're not in your heels.

I'm not in my 7-inch Prada heels yet.

No, you're not. And I might want to add a little—

By the time I got in my heels and rhinestone gloves, put on some copper lipstick with many dashes of glitter layered on top— It's just like a little something. Oh, plus some cat-eye sunglasses. Something kind of transformed inside of me. I think we were headed at one point into a direction where it was, like, too much, like, Halloween-y. But then you, like, took us in a different direction, and now I actually feel super chic.

All of a sudden, like, because you're so outrageous, it's like you have a license to say almost anything and do almost anything.

But I never would have thought I could wear this many colors, this many accessories.

It's the way you put things together. There is sophistication involved. There's effort. I think there's a lot of minimalism that, you know, it's effortless. There's nothing to think about. And I understand why people do that. You know, we live in a crazy world. Life is stressful. I can't handle— I mean, I can handle it. I'm having fun. A miniature me running through the mountain that is your headdress. And then, like, your shoes are just, like, propping you up. It's like putting a painting on a wall.

I figured at this point, as we get ready to go out to get a coffee, that I would be embarrassed and terrified. But I don't. I feel like I need to be seen because I look amazing.

And now you're going to want to do this all the time. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of each other. Can I— can I buy you a coffee?

You sure can, babe. Let's go. Let's do it. Okay. We took our outfits for a spin by going to the local café. And surprise, surprise, we turned some heads. Oh, they just said, "Um, you look amazing and you just cheered me up." See?

I told you.

We look like a celebration of life, you and I. We do. I was finally embracing the maximalist mindset and it felt good. And maybe Machine is right. Maybe we're attracted to minimalism because it's a way of taming the madness of modern life. Whereas Machine's approach is to run joyfully towards the chaos.

I'm trying to give light to it. And sometimes a thing of beauty can be a hand that you hold through a dark time.

I feel like a walking piece of art.

It's really special. It is a flash. It is a moment. You are taking joy. I really am.

Most people would not leave their homes wearing what I wear. It's an offering of changing the way people see the world, changing what is possible.

Machine Dazzle is a costume designer and performer. You can see his full talk at ted.com. The HBO documentary featuring his incredible outfits is called "Taylor Mac's 24-Decade History of Popular Music." You can also go to ted.npr.org and my Instagram to see photos of me and Machine all dressed up. On the show today, the state of fashion. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

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I know that your inbox is full of junk and reply-alls. Let's put something actually interesting in there. Subscribe to our newsletter for a handpicked guide to the stories and podcasts that really matter. It's world-class reporting delivered straight to you No paywalls, no digging around required. Just sign up at npr.org/newsletters. Okay, back to the show. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, the state of fashion, which of course includes shopping. And for many of us today, that means shopping online.

I have shopped for every single thing online. Anything and everything that I can purchase, I look at it online first.

This is Aparna Mehta. A few years ago, when she was a busy working mom, online shopping was a huge time saver, especially for buying clothes.

I work 12 to 16 hours a day. I don't have time during the week to go out and look for things.

So in the evenings, she'd scroll and shop.

My daughter's in bed. I'm relaxed. I'm watching TV. I start browsing. I like, hmm, you know, let's look at Nordstrom's today. Let's look at Anthropologie. What do they have there? I start seeing these things and I'm like, oh, that looks really good. And wherever I would go on any website, they would say returns are free. I would intentionally buy the same item in a couple different colors, a couple different sizes with the intent of keeping only one.

I mean, that's what I've been told as well is like, you know, you're a busy person, you're a mom, save time, just order it in various sizes, then ship back the ones you don't want. And that's perfectly fine. Is that what you understood as well? Yes.

I mean, I would try on 6, 7, 5, 6, whatever and then keep one if I liked it and return the rest.

At your peak, how many deliveries would you say you were getting of clothes per week?

Oh, per week? 12, 15.

Whoa! Sorry. You were serious.

But I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. Look, the store is making it possible for me to order as many as I want and return back what I don't want. Sometimes I would return all of them because you can't check the material when you're buying online. My daughter, she was a teenager at that time, and she said, "Mom, you have a real problem." And this is the daughter telling me. I'm supposed to be telling her, but it was instead her.

Aparna's shopping habit was definitely out of control. And she started to realize that it was a problem for the environment too. There were packages showing up at my doorstep almost every day.

I have all these empty boxes. I mean, yeah, I recycle it, but oh my God, so much cardboard.

And there's some irony here because at the time, Aparna was a global solutions director for UPS. Part of her job was to help retailers make their operations run more smoothly. So she knew a lot about how shipping works.

So think about supply chain design, supply chain optimization, carbon impact analysis. That's the kind of work I did.

But one day in a meeting with a client, she heard a statistic that put her shopping habit in perspective.

I was at a meeting with one of our largest retailers. You know, one of the key members from the customer side said, "The largest opportunity we have right now is with returns." Last year, they had 7.5 million pieces of clothing returned to them. Wow. I just circled that number on my paper. I'm like, "Oh my God." In one year, one retailer. This is, this is not a small problem.

This is a big one. The returns situation online, it is a problem entirely of the internet's making and of internet retailers making.

Amanda Mull is a senior reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek where she covers consumerism.

The idea that you'd go into a store and plan already to just return half of it, that is a behavior that before the internet was considered like pretty maladaptive. Like if you were doing that regularly, that would be sort of like characterized as like a compulsive shopping issue. But now that is just how the internet has trained us to shop.

Amanda says that when people buy things online, they tend to return them at a very high rate.

On average, brick-and-mortar stores have, like, a single-digit return rate. Online, it can range from usually 15% to 30%. And for certain types of products, especially during the holidays, it can get up to 50%. Hmm. And that's because online shopping is not designed to produce good decisions in the people who are— who are making purchases. It's It's designed to make it as easy for you to buy things as possible.

This all began back in the early 2000s when online shopping debuted, and shoppers were skeptical.

People understood really well at the time that a lot of the goods that they wanted to buy just weren't ideal for online shopping. Mm-hmm. Things that you have to try on, things that have to fit your body, things that have to be comfortable in some way. Like, there's all kinds of stuff that You just can't really know with full certainty online, and you still can't. You certainly couldn't in, you know, 2004. So early online retailers had to figure out some way to overcome these objections in order to encourage people to change their habits.

Enter Zappos, the online shoe store and the first online retailer to offer free returns.

Ending up with a pair of shoes that doesn't fit is like a big risk. So they made returns free. That is what got people to shop online. That is what created this set of habits in people. It also was really, really unprofitable for the companies doing it. Amazon, Zappos, a lot of early online retailers did not turn a profit for a very long time. Like, they were investing money in creating habits in the American population that would in the long term be advantageous to them.

Has it worked, would you say?

Yeah, it's worked really, really well because it's created these behaviors that, you know, a lot of people have now, like buying a size up and a size down from what you'd normally buy, or adding something random to your order to get past a free shipping threshold. They created a set of incentives for shoppers, for people to buy stuff with the intent of returning it, because if people didn't really start trusting this process and start seeing it as convenient, they were never going to peel off a considerable amount of, like, market share from in-person retailers.

Shoppers came to rely on that online convenience, exactly as retailers had hoped. But now, as we buy and return, buy and return, the cost of processing all those packages is hurting retailers' bottom line.

Last fall, I went to visit a returns facility run by Inmar Intelligence, which is the largest returns processor in the United States. They process hundreds of millions of packages per year in their different facilities across the US. The one that I went to was one of They're big ones. It's a few hours outside of New York City. It's a sort of a regional facility that collects a lot of returns from the sort of, like, New York City, Philadelphia metropolitan area.

So I've probably sent something back to this warehouse without even knowing it. Oh, almost certainly. Almost certainly. This one facility processes about 100,000 packages a day.

It is just like a perpetual motion machine of taking stuff out of your taped-up poly mailer and figuring out what's going on.

A real-life person opens each package.

They try to ensure that what you've returned matches what it says on your order.

They check the product for defects.

For signs that it has been used.

They even have to do things that are kind of gross.

Especially if it's apparel, they're supposed to sniff it. Sniff it?

Yes. Like, smell?

Yes, to see if it smells like it's been worn. If you return a pair of pants, they check the pockets. The guy who was showing me around told me that the most common item to find with returned pants is somebody's underwear. Oh! Yeah. No!

Not great. No. Like, that seems, like, pretty time-consuming.

Oh, yeah. It's really, really time-consuming and labor-intensive. And, you know, they— Inmar and its competitors all have technologically advanced systems that use whatever, you know, machine learning or AI capabilities they can, but, like, there is no— replacement for human eyes and human noses and human hands.

After that, sometimes clothes do go back to the retailer and are resold. But Amanda says there's a very high bar for getting clothes back on the shelf.

Some retailers only take back things that are in perfect, like, new, unworn condition, sometimes in their original packaging.

Otherwise, the item might go to an outlet like TJ Maxx. But again—

If there's any indication that something has been worn, it is very hard to resell anything like that in any channel.

So instead, it might be donated or recycled.

But textile recycling is, like, pretty difficult. The more, like, embellishments, the more types of material there are on a garment, the less likely it is to be easily recyclable. Hmm. So not everything can be recycled. Not everything that's donated can be used. And pretty much Everything that can't be slotted into one of those categories is destroyed in some way. It is incinerated, landfilled. At every step, this process just sort of sheds waste.

It's funny. It's reminding me of a time that I tried to return something to Amazon, and they were like, "You know what? Just keep it. We'll give you your money back." Yes. At that point, what's happening? They're making a calculation that it's not worth it for them?

Yes, absolutely. Returns on a per-return basis can cost retailers anywhere from, like, $5 to $25. Especially fast fashion has a really short shelf life. That becomes a real problem when taking returns because maybe it takes you a week or 2 weeks to actually drop it off at the post office. Maybe it takes a full month for you to drop it off at the post office. When a company takes that return, like, your dress might not have been available for sale in any capacity on their website for 2 weeks by the time it gets back to them and gets processed. So there's like no way for them to resell it. And they've had to pay a returns processor to look at it. They've had to pay the logistics service to bring it back to them. They have already just been leaking money. So the last thing they want to do is take a return.

So what would happen, though, if each of us just returned a few fewer items per year?

Well, I mean, we're about to find out. A lot of retailers are trying to change the system ever so slightly to prevent us from returning so much stuff because it has started to eat into their bottom lines. And if they want to, you know, extract the profit that they've spent so much time encouraging us to create, then they need us to return less stuff. Like, they have set up a system that is not inherently profitable anymore. So this reintroduction of returns fees, of restocking fees, of shipping fees, of the concept of the final sale and you can't return something, I think does make a meaningful difference in the amount of stuff that people return. The system is in like a state of flux right now. They are trying to figure out the correct combination of incentives and fees to institute in order to keep more products sold. Hmm. You know, I have been writing about retail logistics and returns for a long time now, and every time I get in a conversation with somebody about it, I see people have this feeling of horror that you've just discovered that you've been participating in something that you don't feel good about. You really start to think about, like, all the times that you procrastinated taking a package to UPS. And I think sometimes people feel a little bit dumb for not thinking about it, but, like, the system is designed to ensure that they don't think about it as much as possible.

We've talked about, you know, the problems for these businesses, but what about the environmental impact? Is there any way to calculate just how bad the problem is?

So there is this EPA stat that gets thrown around a lot, which is that the average US consumer throws out approximately 81.5 pounds of clothes annually. That doesn't mean that, like, every single person is taking 81 pounds of clothing to the trash, but it means that for every American, the amount of textile waste that gets created within this country is about 81 pounds. That works out to a little bit over 11 million tons as a country.

Hmm.

And it's like, yes, returns create a real issue and a real waste in the process, but the much bigger waste is just the volume at which these companies manufacture clothing that nobody wants or needs and nobody buys. I think that's even more the case for the slightly older model fast fashion retailers where you're creating a lot more stuff upfront to see if it sells. And, um, that is the cost of doing business. At that volume, at that scale. There are dumping grounds all over the world in poor countries where a lot of these— this cast-off clothing tends to go. In Ghana, in Chile in particular, just sort of like these trash mountains of clothing. Hmm. Which just, I think, illustrates, like, the real overproduction problem that we have in these types of goods. You know, that much is thrown away every year as a country, and We're not missing any of it.

I mean, as someone who's tracking this, you must have imagined what could be done systemically to make a difference. What would that look like?

I think it's regulatory. There is a real capacity for responsible regulation and responsible oversight to change the behaviors of these companies. But, you know, the companies that populate this industry are very, are very, very powerful. They have very powerful lobbying arms. Yeah. The Biden administration made some important steps, but it's hard to say exactly how much anybody is going to be willing to do.

All right. So I'd love to end our conversation with sort of best practices. Let's say someone is like, well, I am not going to be part of this online shopping machine that is hurting our planet, what are some of the things they can do?

I think one of the best things that you can do is when you decide you want or need something, to try to buy it secondhand. I think that, like, if you're looking at a system where you've got just, like, this massive oversupply of consumer products, then it makes sense both systemically and just, like, price-wise for you to look for, you know, opportunities to buy something that is not brand new. But we live in a consumer economy, and the system is set up to prompt us to buy as much as possible. That, like, that's the economy we have. And, like, the amount of, like, personal resilience you need to say no to that all the time is just enormous. Like, nobody can be expected to say no to these prompts 100% of the time. Hmm. You have been, as a consumer, sort of, like, herded toward the least friction possible. If you can add some friction back in for yourself in whatever way makes sense for you and what you're you're looking for, then you're probably gonna make better decisions. You're gonna save money. You're going to be less wasteful. Your house is gonna be less cluttered. Like, you, you are just going to have an easier time of things in the long run.

Which brings us back to Aparna Mehta, the now-retired UPS executive and former online shopaholic. As Aparna learned more and more about where her online returns were actually going, she knew she had to make a change.

Because I saw the wastage that happens in the supply chain. You think about the amount of fuel you consume, you're talking about labor, you know, every time you touch a package, it's a cost.

As a supply chain expert, Aparna focused on solutions to reduce this kind of waste. She worked with her retail clients to optimize their shipping routes, consolidate shipments, and use less packaging.

And you start thinking about your supply chain in different ways.

In her own life, she joined a clothing reuse initiative within the Indian American community. But most of all, Aparna changed the way she shops. Yes, significantly.

It takes me a lot longer now to make a decision when I'm doing online shopping. I really think about it. I'll put the item in the cart. I'll go back the next day and see if I still want it. And I try, I try very hard to keep the returns to a minimum. I don't buy with the intent to return. So that's the number one change. I don't buy multiple items of the same item with the intent of only keeping one. That's like my way of saying, I'm going to minimize this as much as I can.

I mean, there's also the question of fashion, right? That were you very sort of trendy previously when you were shopping more often? Were you more up on style? And have you decided to go, I don't know, more classic or go back into your closet?

No. So that part hasn't changed, unfortunately. I still, I still like trendy stuff. What I don't do is I don't buy fast fashion. So if I purchase stuff, it is to keep. I take some time to buy. My daughter and I, we have a phrase. She points to her heart and says, Mom, does it hurt you here if you don't get that?

And I say, "No." She goes, "Then don't buy it." That was Aparna Mehta, former vice president of global customer solutions at UPS. You can see her talk at ted.com. We also heard from Amanda Mull, who writes for Bloomberg Businessweek. And on our next TED Radio Hour Plus episode, you can get more expert advice from Amanda on how to be an intentional customer. Consumer. She's got some great tips. Today on the show, the state of fashion. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manousheh Zamorodi. Stay with us.

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I was scouted when I was 14 or 15. I was swimming in Maine and a talent scout saw me swimming and then gave me a card for an agent in New York City.

Eventually, Kameron ended up walking the runways of Versace, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Victoria's Secret. She appeared on the covers of countless magazines. Now, 20 years later, she's written a memoir documenting her experience.

I think that we have this sensibility that if you are a model, the life is very glamorous and you are famous, but of course the job doesn't always look like that.

So Models have written tell-all memoirs before, but Cameron's book chronicles her life as she grows to understand the industry's seedy economic underpinnings, including labor conditions, the environmental impact, and the exploitation of models themselves.

In some ways, this should not be a surprise. It's, it's an industry that relies on the exploitation of gender labor from top to bottom. So It would make sense that that extends to women at the very top.

And while she calls out a lot of people, Cameron also calls out herself. It all goes back to the very first gigs she booked, because even though she grew up in a feminist household and had no interest in fashion, the opportunity was too good to pass up.

I was offered very quickly a couple thousand dollars for a single day of work. You know, any other job I'd had, I'd taught like after school and been a babysitter for way less than minimum wage, you know, like, so on the eve of going to college and thinking about saving money and what am I going to do, that was a massive opportunity. And then I think there's this other piece of what fashion is. There are so few women with access to media. And so that idea of being able to access a large platform, a large audience. I, even at 16, was thinking, "Wow, this is so unique." And so I was thinking about that particular type of access.

There's a moment where you start to— well, there's many moments in the book, which I will say is a gripping read, but also a very hard read because you are a girl. I'm the mother of a 14-year-old, and the thought of my daughter being in these situations, really treated like an adult because you look like an adult, but with, you know, not a ton of emotional maturity. You look back on those years and feel what? Yeah, I guess I—

the way that I ended up writing this book is there was a word that I just couldn't get out of my head, which was the word "tolerate." I thought it was so much more complicated than the word consent, and it also seemed to me more complex than complicity. Hmm. So as I was thinking about how to write a book about working as a model, I started just making lists. And the first list that I made was just a list of things that I had tolerated. And the very first item on the list is a story of showing up at my first photo shoot and the stylist telling me to wear this bikini with a belt around my neck and telling me it's an S&M vibe. And when he says S&M, I think of like, you know, 3 letters, S-N-M. I didn't know what it stood for. I had just turned 16. On my second shoot, the makeup artist paints my lips red, and they tell me that I have fuck sucker lips. I've never heard this word before. It's so jarring. I'm trying to make sense of what that means. I talk about, you know, having a photographer that I shoot with for a couple months who is calling me sexy, and no one's ever called me sexy, right? I'm a kid. And I was inside, you know, other people's fantasies that I had no understanding of. And I tolerated it, you know, I went along with it because I was thinking, well, this is a wild opportunity. And you know, it's an industry where you are standing in a casting line with 400 other young women, and you just start thinking you can be replaced in an instant And so figuring out what to do in this really competitive environment really was figuring out how to make myself agreeable to everyone that I encountered.

In 2012, after modeling for about a decade, she decided to be a little less agreeable. She gave a talk acknowledging some of the uncomfortable truths about her career.

It was called "Looks Aren't Everything: Believe Me, I'm a Model." I feel like there's an uncomfortable tension in the room right now because I should not have worn this dress.

Cameron walked out on stage looking like the quintessential supermodel: short black dress, sky-high heels. But then—

Luckily, I brought an outfit change. This is the first outfit change on the TED stage, so you guys are pretty lucky to witness it, I think.

She pulled on a long skirt, stepped out of her stilettos and into a pair of loafers.

These heels are very uncomfortable, so good thing I wasn't gonna wear them.

Next on A Comfy Cardigan.

The worst part is putting this sweater over my head, 'cause that's when y'all laugh at me, so.

At the time, this onstage costume change seemed revelatory, that a supermodel was willing to drop the glamor and look, well, average. So why did I do that?

That was awkward. Image is powerful, but also image is superficial. I just totally transformed what you thought of me in 6 seconds. And of course, barring surgery or the fake tan that I got 2 days ago for work, there's very little that we can do to transform how we look. And how we look Look, though it is superficial and immutable, has a huge impact on our lives. I am on this stage because I am a model. I'm on this stage because I am a pretty white woman. I won a genetic lottery, and I am the recipient of a legacy. And maybe you're wondering, what is a legacy? Well, for the past few centuries, we have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we're biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures and femininity and white skin. And this is a legacy that was built for me, and it's a legacy that I've been cashing out on.

So your talk ends up being, and is still, one of the most watched TED Talks of all time, over 40 million views. But you say in the book afterwards, at the moment, you, you feel like you have power, like you're writing your own story, except once you go off script, you say, "I don't know what to say." So talk me through how you started to figure out what you wanted to say.

Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that was hard to figure out was how to talk about an industry that, particularly for me, was both privileging and oppressing. And I felt I just did not share, you know, what does it mean to be complicit and tolerant of an industry that is very exploitative? You know, both claiming responsibility and shame and blame for some of that. And then also, you know, not taking responsibility for everything, right?

I mean, it's interesting because in the book, you really characterize your upbringing as the kind of household where you were steeped in issues about social justice, privilege, racism, labor rights. And you describe, or you say that as your career grew, you became very aware of how the fashion industry makes those problems worse. There is a section that I think really sums up the sort of confusion that you were feeling at the time. It's the story you tell about a photo shoot you did on the grounds of a former plantation in Georgia. And I wonder if you could read it for us.

Yeah. An hour outside Atlanta for a job, we drive up to the location, and the production assistant points at some rubble in the woods and tells me, "That used to be slave housing." Then he points where we're headed and says, and the same white family still owns the big house. The woman who answers the door tells us this again. The plantation has been in my family for hundreds of years, she says. It's the first thing she tells us, and she says it with pride. I sit on the porch waiting for the team to set up. How different is what we're doing, celebrating this place, celebrating my white face over and over, while women of color make, pack, ship, and sell the clothes for nothing close to a livable wage?

There are many scenes in the book where you are sort of at the center of an industrial system that wants to put a pretty face on it but literally makes you sick. I'm remembering another scene where you describe reading the headlines about hundreds of of Bangladeshi garment workers being killed in a fire in a factory, and that you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and have diarrhea and describe yourself reading these stories on the can. And I almost feel like you're trying to say to the reader, "It is ugly. I can be ugly." There's a visceralness that you go into in the book that sort of shocked me. And I think that's what you were trying to do?

Yeah, I guess I thought a lot about telling a story where, where, as you say, my body was being used to make this, in many ways, really grotesque industry beautiful, enticing, aspirational. And I thought the way to begin to dismantle that is actually to return to the body, just this really repulsive human experience of being sickened by what was happening.

There's a quote in the book where you say, "Each day I become less of a witness and more of an accomplice." Yeah, I think, you know, it's really hard not to be in an industry where 20 conglomerates own 97% of profits, the negative climate impacts, the negative impacts on labor. It's really hard to not work for companies that are doing those things. I think that there's like this sort of fantasy sometimes that feels like if you don't like it, then quit. But it's true in, in nearly every industry, and a solution to me anyway is not really to just live off the grid. It is to actually acknowledge, I am and have been an accomplice to some really egregious things that this industry is doing, and I want to take responsibility and be part of a group of people that try as hard as we can to transform the industry. At the same time, to acknowledge that there are systems which have been in place that are so much bigger than us that we cannot shoulder responsibility for.

Cameron has spent the last decade organizing her fellow models and speaking out about the industry, like in 2017 when the MeToo movement started and Cameron was reminded of the early experiences she had in modeling.

I think we looked at that and said, wait, if this is unacceptable in Hollywood, Why is it the norm over here in my industry? And so, of course, that led to this very different theory of change, which is just that we can't make change without each other.

She got hundreds of models to share their stories with her, stories of abuse, of boundaries crossed, people telling them to just suck it up. She anonymized the stories and then posted them online.

Together, I think the power of sharing them all out was really to introduce norms about what was acceptable and what was unacceptable. And what it broke was this expectation that this job is a fantasy. And I think it also built this sort of camaraderie or solidarity across the supply chain and across women. You know, 80% of the fashion industry is women, and most of those women don't make a livable wage. Wage. That actually includes models. Most models don't make a living wage. So I think it introduced this idea that actually that gendered exploitation is something that is happening across the supply chain. And it shouldn't surprise us that it's happening across the supply chain because it's an industry that is really relying on exploiting, um, women and using cheap labor to make profits.

To somebody listening who's saying, "I feel confused by fashion. I get told that I should invest in pieces that are ridiculously expensive, but really I can only afford fast fashion, which I hear is destroying the planet. And I feel the need to connect with friends on social media that is also objectifying people." Like, I I think people feel confused in some ways by fashion, and part of them just wants to enjoy it for the pure pleasure it can give people. But what do you think they need to keep in mind when they get dressed every morning?

I guess one piece that makes it simple for me is trying to pull apart fashion from industry, which in this particular moment is such a rampant, exploitative type of capitalism. And when we can pull those things apart, we just see fashion in a whole different way. I think fashion is familial. You know, when we take it apart from industry, it's long been the work of women where we really can access creativity and culture. And it's just always been in the home. It's been for people that we love.

Mm. And it is our responsibility as people who work in fashion, as people who consume fashion, who are excited by this industry, to try to hold those two things: grief at being an accomplice to the system, at working inside this, and grounding in that and using that as motivation to turn towards and grasp onto the ways that fashion can be really beautiful and powerful.

That was Cameron Russell. Her book is called How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone. You can see her full talk at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone, Rachel Faulkner-White, Harsha Nahada, and Fiona Guerin. It was edited by Sana Zmeschkin-Poor, Rachael Faulkner-White, and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Matthew Cloutier and James Delahoussaye. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Gilly Moon. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxane Hailash, Alejandra Salazar, and Daniela Alirezo. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you have been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

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