202: How to Build a Sustainable Wardrobe with Julia Dietmar, Co-Founder of OpenWardrobe.

Have you ever wondered what's really hiding in your wardrobe? Or maybe you've caught yourself thinking you have absolutely nothing to wear even though your closet's full. You are not alone, and that is exactly what we are digging into on today's episode. But before we dig in, I've got some exciting news for you crazy birds. Through hundreds of conversations I've been having with global experts around the world, Through thousands of chats with our Crazy Bird community, one thing was clear: people are looking for more than just advice. They are looking for some clarity. Both individuals and especially small business owners want sustainability to feel simple, to feel doable, and also guilt-free. So something that they can actually be proud of without the overwhelm. With that in mind, I've been actually working hard to try and find some solutions that can help you on that journey. And I am beyond excited to actually share that we are ready to launch our first products. So it is going to be some digital products like courses, and also a few physical tools that is designed to cut through the eco noise and really help you take real joyful steps towards a more sustainable life and business. If you are excited about this next chapter and you wanna be the first to know, I'd love for you to actually join our waiting list to make this extra special. The actual first 100 people that sign up to this will receive exclusive perks, added discounts, and a massive thank you for being some of our early supporters. So you can head on over to our Instagram, Mama Earth Talk, and you can find the link in our bio to actually join our waiting list. We also have a post that is pinned at the top of our account as well, and you can just reply on the comment there, just like, comment 'I'm in,' and we are going to send you some goodies how you can actually join our list. Hey, crazy birds, and welcome to another episode of Mama Earth Talk, where we dive into real conversations about sustainability, share honest stories, and explore practical ways to reduce waste, go green, and live more consciously. I'm your host, Mariska Now. Our guest today is a visionary in the fashion technology technology and sustainability. Julia Dettmar is the co-founder and CEO of Open Wardrobe, a platform helping people make the most of what they already own while reducing fashion waste. With a career spanning leadership roles, Julia brings deep expertise in both tech and retail. She's on a mission to make mindful fashion accessible to everyone. Crazy Birds, without any further ado, I would like to welcome Julia Dittmar. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much. Excited to be here with you.

I'm super excited to have you here because, yeah, we've been on a little bit of a journey and I'm excited to share that with our Crazy Birds as well. But let's dig into where your sustainable journey actually starts.

I got into that almost accidentally. And it's just kind of was a big aha moment for me when I was staring at my closet and it was a mess and I couldn't find anything and it was horrible. So I wish I could say that it was from, you know, I was consciously trying to be sustainable, but I was really trying to tidy up. Let's put it that way. So that was for me personally. Professionally, I got into it through a company. I used to work for a company that was selling— well, they still exist and they're actually pretty, pretty popular in the US. They sell secondhand clothing for women and children. So that was kind of my first professional journey into sustainable or circular economy, let's call it that way. The next company I was working for was in deep tech, and we were working with many apparel brands, helping them to build AI to personalize experiences for their customers, digital experiences. And there I kind of started learning about all the issues that apparel brands are dealing with, from overproduction, not being able to sell they have and not being able to put the right product in front of the right customer. That was kind of my next step. And then gradually from there, the idea of Open Wardrobe came up to really kind of help people to make better choices when, when it comes to clothing.

When you look at your wardrobe and things, it's really crazy to think we might have over 100 items in our wardrobe, which is a small wardrobe if you think about that., and we still feel like we don't have anything to wear. So that brings me kind of with the open wardrobe. Can you share a little bit exactly what is the open wardrobe?

I call it a platform for mindful dressing, but really what it is, is, is just a bunch of tools that help you organize yourself around getting dressed. It can start with digitizing your wardrobe so you can just take pictures or you can upload your online purchases to make it a little bit faster. So when you digitize it, then you have everything under your fingertips, and then you can pre-plan your outfits. You can play around with your clothes. You don't have to, you know, take anything out of your closet to figure out what works well, what you like, what you don't like. That's kind of one tool. And then we have a bunch of other tools that help you with managing what you already have. So for example, let's say you have a bunch of things that you are not in love with anymore, or it doesn't quite fit. So we have integration with resale platforms, and we have integration with alterations and repairs. So you can send it for alteration, or you can send it to find a new home. Another set of tools we have is powered by our AI, and it's around helping you get more creative on combining clothes together. So it's really designed to spark your creativity and really show you, you can wear this blouse or this skirt in so many different ways with so many different items. And it doesn't have to be always perfect. It basically just kind of gives you a lot of ideas on how I can put things together. So the feedback that we've been getting from our users around that feature has been very interesting because the best feedback was, I would have— and it's been kind of over and over again, right? I would have never, ever thought of putting these two things together in an outfit. But then I tried it, and oh my God, this is so great. And it's really giving me a lot of ideas on how I can put my outfits together. One more tool that we have that is super useful, and I use it all the time personally, is our browser extension that allows you to access your wardrobe and our AI from any e-commerce site that you're shopping on. So let's say you're shopping on H&M and you're looking at a blouse. You can immediately, through our browser extension, say, okay, how do I wear this with what I already own? And it'll start kind of spitting out ideas for you. And then the last one I want to mention is we have kind of a lot of educational tools that allow you to understand yourself better. So what colors suit you? What shapes suit you? What is your style personality? So it's a very fun little quiz that gives you answers, and then you can, you can take it as a signal. It's not a, you know, by any means, it's not a set of rules that you absolutely have to follow, right? It's just it kind of explains to you why certain colors may look better on you than others. It explains to you why certain silhouettes might look better on you than others. And you basically start understanding the why. And stop kind of trying to fit yourself into something that will never work, right? Or will not work as good as your friend, for example. So that's basically Open Wardrobe at a high level. Just think of it as a set of tools that help you or empower you to get dressed more mindfully. That's all it is.

Yeah, I love that. And I mean, kind of what inspired you? Obviously we've touched on a few things, but kind of to start Open Wardrobe and how do you feel like sustainability fits in into what your mission is with Open Wardrobe?

After working with so many apparel brands, I noticed that we've, we've been talking in the industry, right? The industry has been talking a lot about sustainability when it comes to production. There are so many publications and so many companies that are trying to help brands and manufacturers to be more sustainable. So starting from the supply chain, from sourcing materials and how you cut fabrics and reduce waste. So there's been a lot of tools over there, but when it comes to us as consumers, we've been kind of mainly told you need to buy from sustainable brands and that's going to make you sustainable. And that's not quite true because when I'm observing our users of Open Wardrobe, they still go and buy from Shein. They still go buy from Zara and other brands that are not considered purely sustainable, right? I basically realized that you can't really change consumer behavior by telling them buy from sustainable brands and oftentimes pay more, because at the end of the day, cute and cheap wins every time, right? Especially with younger generation. So what we've decided to address is how do we empower consumers to make better decisions and how consumers can control quote-unquote control, but really kind of be more mindful, right? So if you're buying online, returns, that, that have huge impact, environmental impact. If you're buying online and not wearing something, that also has environmental impact because it gives kind of wrong signals to the brands that you're not wearing it, but they're— they don't know about it, right? So exactly, it's really just, um, giving a lot more tools to consumers to make better decisions. So, so we decided, so if we give better education, easier ways to make these decisions before purchasing. If you're purchasing something, then returns should go down, right? You should be loving what you bought, what you brought into your closet more. And at the same time, we're giving you tools to deal with clothes that you already have, right? So how do you utilize it better? So either by wearing it more or by— if you don't want to wear it anymore, find it a second home very easily from the app. Or if it's still good and you love it, but it needs to be altered, you lost weight or something changed or zipper broke, whatever, you can repair it or alter it very easily. So that's, that's how we kind of approached it, empowering consumers, not really changing necessarily your total mindset and your behavior, but really giving you tools. If you want to become more sustainable, it's super easy with our set of tools.

And how would you kind of define that? What does sustainable fashion mean to you?

It's really wearing what you have, or if you're buying something new, doing it mindfully so that you will use it for years to come. For me, it's really increasing utilization of what you already own, because you've, you've heard the saying, right? The most sustainable clothes is the one already in your closet. And from statistics point of view, I mean, there are so many studies have been done and numbers out there. The magic number is 30. So if you can wear something 30 times, that's kind of where it starts to become sustainable. If you compare it to the averages, on average we wear things 7 times.

Oh, wow.

Wow. Right. So we have ways to go.

Yeah. Because, I mean, there's some items in my wardrobe where some people would always see me in those specific shirts. And I'm like, yeah, well, it works. So when I've got an event, I'm definitely wearing one of these three shirts. So if you've been to three of my events, you might have likely seen all three, or you might have seen the same one three times. But that's it. And, and I like to more invest in like quality items that I know I am— when I was actually documenting like my wardrobe, there were some of these things which I realized, wow, you know, I bought that back in South Africa in 2009. I still have it. And I'm still using it. So yeah, it does show you that sometimes, you know, you can get more than that 30 uses if you do actually buy something that is good quality, but you can also get maybe just one use out of something if it is really, really terrible quality. You might— it might have just gone through the wash once and then yeah, you're not gonna wear that again.

So quality and versatility, right? So if I'm sure those three shirts that you wear over and over again, you put them together in different outfits, right? So you don't get bored of them.

That's the point. Exactly. Or, you know, wear a different necklace or jewelry or something. But yeah, it is kind of bright color shirts. So it's like those shirts, like, yeah, if someone's seen you in it once, they'll probably remember it. But yeah, I love that. So how would you like see Open Wardrobe, Julia? Is it more of like a tech platform? Is it a sustainability movement?

It's a little bit of both. I honestly don't think of it as a sustainability movement, right? Because we're not trying to change you. We're helping you if you want to change. We're helping you. We have a bunch of tools. So think about it as a platform or as a set of tools that help you in your journey, whatever it is, right? You want to be sustainable, we're helping you. You don't want to be sustainable or you don't consciously want to be sustainable, but you want to just get a little bit better understanding of what suits you. We're helping you there. Yeah, I think about it more as a platform, as a set of tools rather than a movement.

Because yeah, I definitely feel, you know, it is one of those things and obviously been using it now for a couple of weeks, seeing how it can contribute to people being more sustainable because now instead of, you know, Friday night in front of the TV trying to do your online shopping and buy all of these things that you think you're going to wear and don't wear. Now you can actually pop it in your wardrobe and see, okay, that top is absolutely not my color, but even if it's on sale, you should not buy it because it's not gonna suit you as nice as something else. Or maybe you can get a better product, or maybe instead of buying 10 shirts, we only need one. So yeah, so I definitely think it can kind of lead to people unconsciously making more conscious decisions.

That's correct. Yeah, that's, it's a well, very well put.

How would you say open wardrobe has, and I mean, we've just kind of said, you know, it helps you make more of less, but how do you encourage people to actually then buy less and use more what they've got?

Again, it's like completely unconsciously, right? So I, and I, I'm going to give you an example for myself. Before I had this tool, before we built it, I was buying a lot of clothes, almost something every week. Crazy. I know. And now it's completely less, but not because I made a decision I'm not going to buy. It's just because I have so much versatility in what I already have and I can wear it so many different ways that I don't really feel this compulsion to go and buy something new. Right. And when I do, it's always with, okay, now I get this new sweater and I know that I can wear it so many different ways and I do know that it actually suits me. I feel for me, I always kind of knew how to dress myself, but it took took me years and years of trial and error and figuring stuff out. But for me, understanding this kind of theory, if you will, right behind why it works on me or why it shouldn't work on me or wouldn't work on me became so empowering so that when I go to a store, for example, and I try something on, I know there is always some very helpful salesperson that says, it looks amazing on you. Right. And you look at yourself like, really? I don't know. Does it?

Yeah.

And now I I feel like, you know, you can't really fool me anymore, right? That's how it kind of became a tool for me. So to answer your question, it's not like we're encouraging you, it's we're just giving you— we're empowering you more than we're encouraging you.

Yeah, because I feel not every single person knows how to dress and look good because, you know, I can look at some, I don't know, celebrities and think, wow, you know, J.Lo looks absolutely amazing when she wears that. But she might be a totally different body type, you know. And now I'm trying to like rock her outfit, and the colors might not even be similar to the colors that I'm doing. Because I found— and obviously we'll talk about the blueprint in a moment— but through that, I realized that pastel colors and things like that just like almost dulls me. And I never really realized that. And I was like looking at some of the colors and I'm like, I actually don't look really good in this. But then when you pop something bright, that's like some of my colors, I'm like, wow, I really look nice in this shirt. So you look good, you feel good. And it really kind of empowers me and then makes me want to wear the items that I have that makes me feel like that more and more.

Exactly. That was one, one thing that somebody told me, somebody who's, who's been in the styling industry for many years and knows everything about it. They told me something really interesting, which I started paying attention to. When you wear an outfit and somebody compliments you, pay attention to what they actually complimented. Did they say, oh, I like your outfit, Or did they say, oh, you look so good in this outfit? Because those are the two different things. Your outfit might be amazing, but they're seeing the clothes, not your face.

Or they might even say that that color looks nice on you, but, you know, maybe that style is not great as well.

Yeah, I thought it was a super interesting comment, and I started paying attention to what people are actually saying. And it's, it's, it's very, it's been very eye-opening.

I love that. Well, that's a great tip. And is there any other tips that you have for us, Giulia? Like, especially for someone that wants to start with this journey with their wardrobe, like, do you have any tips for them?

My biggest tip is don't try to imitate somebody else. Like you said, you like J.Lo's outfits. She's actually your body type, just because I know your body type. But her style personality, I feel, is completely different from yours.

Yeah.

So however much you like her outfits and outfits on her, that's probably just not you, even if the coloring and the— so don't try to imitate anybody else. Figure out what looks good on you and most importantly, what makes you feel good. Because if you know how you want to show up, let's say you're giving a speech at a conference. You're giving a talk, you want to feel a certain way, you want to show up in a certain way. So what makes you feel that way? A lot of times it's really just kind of experimenting with things and trial and error. And no stylist, however good they are, will help you feel a certain way. It's all inside you, right? So you really kind of need to have that cultivate that in yourself. And then understanding— for me, understanding the why behind something works or doesn't, that was, for me, it was very empowering. Not for everybody, but I think for a lot of us, it's just knowing helps. So why does it look good on my friend but not on me, or vice versa, right?

Exactly. No, that, that was really, really interesting. And it's definitely something that, you know, I would encourage people to have a look at and, you know, see what is those things. And yeah, try and be unique to yourself. And, you know, if you've got some crazy earrings that you absolutely love, like, you know, show it, enjoy that part of your personality. But there's so much more to our wardrobes and things that we can, you know, also do when it comes to sustainability and also the, like, circular fashion. One of the things we kind of touched on it, where you also mentioned that, you know, people can actually resell their items or even some of the repair or alteration services. So how does that work? And is that just in the US at the moment? Or where exactly can our listeners find access to that?

Alterations and repairs are in the US at the moment. Only resale. So we— important to understand, we do not— we're not resellers of records. So we are not the ones who actually facilitate the transaction. We have integrations with platforms right now. The one that's live is Poshmark, and I believe Poshmark operates in the US and Canada, and we're, we're working on other integrations. So there's going to be more. The way resale works is, for example, with Poshmark, you need to have an account with them. And what we are making super simple is we create a listing with our AI, we pre-create the listing, we suggest the resale price based on your market, and you just do like one button click and it puts it there. And then, but you have to manage that relationship with the buyers and all of that. So we're out of there at that point. That's how it works. Very simple.

Oh, that's great. And I mean, then at least you can get some money for your clothes. You don't have to keep on adding to the donation pile if there's still stuff that's got some really good quality and, you know, that can go towards your next new purchase that you need to, you know, add to your wardrobe. And how do you envision Open Wardrobe actually scaling to have like a measurable impact on this like global fashion waste?

Yeah, the more people we get on the platform, it compounds, right? So That's the focus right now. Try it out and see if you, if you like it and if it's for you. And one thing that I want to mention, I mean, digitizing your wardrobe always helps, right? But you don't have to start with that if you don't want to. There are lots of tools and lots of things that you can just learn from about yourself and then make choices, and then you can digitize it at any other point in time because that, you know, it's a perceived friction a bit, right? Like you have to do some work to get the most out of the platform, but it's very much worth it. So from the users who have emailed us, it's like, yeah, it took me a week, about a week to digitize everything, but oh my gosh, it's, it's now it's so easy, but you don't have to start with that. That's the point.

Yeah. And I mean, when it comes to taking the photos of every single item in your wardrobe, you can also just take all the hangers that you've got, turn it around. So it's facing the other way. And then just start from one end, do a couple of stuff each day, and just like, you know, within a week you would probably have your entire wardrobe digitized. Except if you're my mother-in-law, she's got one hell of a wardrobe. I don't think anyone's going to digitize that in a week. She laughed at me when I showed her this and she was like, I don't know if I can have this. But yeah, there's hope. Maybe, maybe one day. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I was just going to say it's probably not going to work for everybody just to turn it around. You just don't have space. Yeah. But, but yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's all doable.

It's very doable. Exactly. And obviously now you can kind of document, you know, how many times you're wearing stuff or, you know, you can go as you can do as little or as much with this platform as you want. But if you do kind of make note of every time you wear an item and where is it coming from and all of those stats, is it possible to actually calculate your carbon footprint of your wardrobe?

Yeah, it's a really good point. We do not calculate the carbon footprint yet, but we're giving you so many other statistics, right? So things like cost per wear and your investment versus your utility for different categories. So some people find it super useful because they say, oh, I spent, let's say, 40% of the cost of my closet is in this one category, let's say coats, right? But I only wear it 10% of all the wears. That kind of gives you a bit of a perspective. We find, for example, occasion wear, right? People in urban areas have more occasion wear, but it's not worn very often, right?, but that is an expensive investment oftentimes. So maybe something like this will, will kind of open your eyes to, okay, why did I spend this much money on something I don't wear when maybe for occasion where I can rent it, stuff like that. But carbon footprint is a good one and we're definitely adding this at some point soon.

Yeah. And if you can change one thing about the way that the fashion industry actually operates today, what would that be?

Oh gosh, it will probably never happen, but it would be really great if everything they produced, they sold so that we don't have this additional waste of items that are never sold and then end up on the landfill or end up burned. You probably heard of that practice in some luxury brands. Exactly. That would be ideal. How we get there is a long way out, right? So we, we need to understand really what people want, what people would buy. With, with clothing and apparel, it's very difficult to forecast because tastes change so much and you can't really compare two items as apples to apples, right? It's, it's very, very difficult. But I think with even advances in AI and, and supply chain improvements, We're getting there, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be a long way.

And I feel we've definitely gone— and I mean, I've interviewed quite a few people that's in the fashion industry previously, and I'll link some of those up to this episode as well. But, you know, we've literally gone from two seasons in the fashion industry where we've just got like, you know, your spring/summer and then your winter/autumn. That was the two seasons. Then we kind of went to the four seasons. And that's not the hotel. It's literally the four different seasons of the year. And now it's pretty much 52 seasons where we've got a new fashion trend happening every single week. And even that is being fast-forwarded through to— you can almost go to some of these fast fashion brands every single other, like every second, third day, their displays would be changing because they get new stock in. And then what happens to that old stock? So it's really an issue because a lot of the times those clothes get donated. But if you speak to especially a lot of the African countries, like my sister, like she lives in Zambia, and she said, you know, they get so many clothes that's donated and they like, we don't know what to do with all of this. Like now we sitting with all of this clothes. Everyone has got stuff and sometimes it's not even stuff that's really appropriate for them as well. So it's like, it's this entire cycle where, you know, maybe at some point we will have like an online shopping where you scan your body and it makes you something and it delivers it. And it's like a made-to-order type of thing. I don't know, maybe in the future, we don't know.

Those services exist actually.

Oh, that's amazing. But yeah, it's just the thing with a lot of the mainstream stuff, it obviously gets manufactured on the cheap, and also we pay a cheap price for it, but it has a very expensive price tag attached to it that we don't pay, but someone else is picking up that tab, whether it is the workers that's not getting fair wages, or whether it is actually the environment. Because a lot of the times, especially in India, there's some of the rivers where they say that they know what is going to be the, the trendy colors coming because they can just watch the water streams and they just see all the dyes going through there and they know, oh, okay, it's like a purple, you know, it's the new, new in thing. So it's like there's so many things that we can address, but it all comes down to our choices. If we tell these people we don't need all of this, maybe they won't make it. And exactly, a great way to start with of that is to actually know what is in your wardrobe, because I've heard so many people say, oh, I just bought a white shirt and then I realized I actually have a very similar shirt, but now I've got two.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all guilty of that.

Exactly. But now, now you can know what it is.

Not a lot of people know the statistics, but it's really eye-opening when you really think about it. Annually, every year, we put 11.3 million tons of textiles out to landfills. 11.3 million tons. Wow. In weight. It's, it's, it's huge. You mentioned your sister in Zambia. That made me think of another statistic I read recently that today already produced clothing can clothes the next 6 generations of people on Earth.

We don't need more. Wow. Wow. That's crazy. And we still keep on piling stuff on.

And I— yeah. And even if you think about water usage, right, to make one t-shirt, it takes 700 gallons of water.

And that's just, you know, from, from—

or something. It's standard cotton. Yeah. So because, and then you took, you look at the whole supply chain, of course, you know, growing cotton, cotton is very thirsty, right? And so on, so on, so on. And it's just basically piles up. That's enough water for a person, one single person to drink for 2.5 years. Just put it, to put it in perspective.

Yeah, that's crazy. And that, that kind of made me look at when I do actually purchase stuff to look at what is it? Is like the quality— so I tend to purchase either secondhand if I can't afford the, the actual product. I love Patagonia, is probably one of my favorite brands because, you know, I just feel like if I was a clothing brand, I would be Patagonia. Or like Nudie. Nudie jeans is like my favorite jeans of all time because they don't use all the chemical dyeing processes as normal jeans. So they've got like a dry denim and it uses a lot less water than the regular jean company. So every time I wear my Nudie Jeans, I'm like, I'm doing something good for the environment. So I love it. And I love brands like that because I know that they've gone out of their way to make these decisions. That's why I, instead of having 10 jeans in my wardrobe, I only have 2 nudie jeans because that's all I can afford. And they're really amazing. And the one I, I picked up secondhand from them as well, which is great because, you know, I'm giving that a second life and I got a discount, so that's even better. But it's, there's just so many like environmental things that is contributing to what we wear every single day. And it all starts with that, you know, when we buy something, what is it? How's it made? Like, am I gonna be able to wear this for, you know, another couple of years? Or is this something that I will have to throw out within a couple of weeks or even just after one wear? Because then, like what you said, when you take into account the cost per wear if you buy a $15 t-shirt and you only wear it once because then it kind of fall apart, that wear was $15. Whereas if you buy a nudie jeans, I can't remember what's it in US dollar, but you're probably looking at around $300 or $400 for the jeans. But you can wear that, you know, maybe 100, 200, 300, 400 times because they've also got a lifetime repair system, then how much is it costing you then? Oh, it's like $1 per wear. Which one is more practical? So I think it's really cool to kind of get these stats and like, make you see just how much your wardrobe's actually costing you.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And Julia, what has been one of your most important decisions that you've made around Mamaearth?

When it comes to clothing, it's just, and again, it wasn't a conscious decision. I have to say that I wish it was, but just kind of stopping to buy all this stuff that I never use. I think that was one of the most impactful. And I wish I was a little bit more kind of conscious about, okay, I want to do it because of the environment. I didn't do that. But it, it, it helped me personally to just really understand all these things. And also, one thing that I actually am doing pretty consciously, I'm trying not to buy anything in plastic packaging anymore, do it with paper or do it with whatever, whatever alternatives they have. But that was something that I kind of made more of a conscious decision, get water in paper containers rather than plastic bottles.

Okay, wow, that's interesting. Giulia, you have helped me build like my wardrobe and my blueprint as well. Can you explain kind of for our crazy birds, first of all, what is this blueprint and what does that process look like if someone new starts?

Yeah, so it's, uh, it's called Style Blueprint and it basically has like 3 chapters, we call them like 3 parts. One is your colors. Another one is your body shape and silhouettes that suit you. And the third one is your style personality. So for colors, we use the tonal system of color analysis and we give you only your dominant color type because that's the only thing that we can reliably determine from just a picture of you together with your questions. And by the way, I should have mentioned that I actually, when I started working on, on Open Wardrobe, So I went and I learned all about color analysis and personal styling. I became a certified image consultant just to be able to understand all of the theory behind it and train our tools. So the tonal system of color analysis is a lot more flexible and a lot more— I feel it's easier to understand for people than the seasonal. Seasonal kind of assumes that that's your season for life. If you ever colored your hair, you probably noticed, and if you drastically changed the hair color, you went from, let's say, light to dark or from gray to red or something like that, you probably noticed that now you're starting to look different in the clothes you already have. So that's why the tonal system I find a lot more useful. And that's what we give you. We give you your dominant color type. Type, which comes with 30 colors for your palette. And by the way, if you go to a color consultant in person for the tonal analysis, they will give you your, your dominant, your secondary, and your tertiary color. And the full palette will be 42. So 30 of that 42 is about your dominance. So we'll give you majority already. We're giving you an explanation of how to wear your color. So that's another difference. It's not what colors you should wear, but how you wear colors. So contrast, pairings, light or dark, right? And we're giving you keywords that you can kind of keep in mind when you're looking for clothes. So that's, that's on your colors. Then the second chapter is analyzing your body shape and giving you your silhouettes. So depending on your weight, your actual shape and your height, and your proportions— proportions are very important for styling— we're giving you kind of ideas of what might work and how you style yourself so that you look however you want to look, right? Some people want to accentuate certain parts, and that's fine. But if you kind of want to have that kind of hourglass shape that the standard— or I don't know what you want to call it— That's, you know, it's basically it's all about symmetry and proportions, right? Because the human eye sees symmetry and then perceives symmetry as more beautiful. It's kind of in our evolution. That's what we— what we're guiding you towards. And so we're giving you with that, we're giving you actual silhouettes. This, this is what you should look for. This is you should ideally avoid. And of course, with styling, you can basically correct everything. And then the third chapter is your style personality. And we give you your top 3 or 4 personalities. So no one is one personality ever, right? We're always a mixture of things depending on our lifestyle. And, you know, at work we could be this and then at home we could be something different. So with— through our questionnaire, we kind of give you your primary personality and then maybe second, third, and maybe even fourth if that fits. That kind of gives you an explanation of, oh, you know, I am a creative type, so the crazy earrings is mine, right? I think it's your case. Or I am, you know, a mix of this. And then we're giving you kind of a list of brands that fit your personality so that you don't even have to think about, oh, if I want to shop, like, where should I go? We kind of guide you. You don't have to, of course, but it's just an education. So that's a style blueprint that you, you get after receiving the questions. And then with that, we're also having a series of workshops, pre-recorded workshops. So for example, for women, we have very detailed explanation of your color analysis and for your color, like some additional information on how you can put stuff together. I'm going to be publishing one soon on body shapes as well. And for men, it's slightly different. For men, we're basically guiding them through developing their personal style because we just kind of found that for men, it's slightly different. They don't care much about theory. They just like, tell me what to do. So depending on your gender, you will get one set of information or another set of information.

Okay. Wow, that sounds so great. We are now going to move into our final 5. First one is, what is one social media account or publication that you follow?

A publication? I— Economist. I just love their newsfeed, and that's the only one I kind of go to for news.

And what is your hope for Mamaearth going forward?

The hope is that we're actually going to make more informed decisions as consumers. Brands are doing everything they can, but we as consumers need to really be empowered. So if we are and we understand what works, what doesn't work, and why, I think we're going to be, as a, as a pool of consumers, going to be a lot more powerful in steering the direction of how brands and, and manufacturers are producing stuff, their goods, right?

Yeah. And what advice can you give our Crazy Birds this week to actually help out Mama Earth?

Think about what you can do with things you already have. That's one of the easiest, easiest ways to help.

And what is one sustainability fact that you like to use in a room with people not yet on a sustainable journey?

Yeah, the one that I actually mentioned about water, because water is a precious resource that is kind of getting depleted and helping people understand how much water it takes to produce stuff. A lot of times it's really, really eye-opening for people and just put it in perspective, put it in terms they can understand, like one t-shirt equals 2 years of you drinking water.

Yeah. And can you imagine what your entire wardrobe must be? So yeah, definitely something to look into. And Julia, where can people find you and The Open Wardrobe?

Just go to our website, it's www.openwardrobe.co.

It's.co, not.com. We will link that all up in the show notes so our crazy birds can go and find you exactly there. So me and Julia actually did a little bit of a video as well where she took me through my actual wardrobe. So it went on for quite a few minutes. So I have decided instead of having that in the podcast episode itself where you're not physically going to see and trying to explain that, it was a little bit challenge. So I have created a separate little video for you that is linked in the show notes and you can actually go to that and see step by step how we are using the blueprint and also my wardrobe. I I hope you enjoy. And if you feel like creating some outfits for me and, you know, want to check out what is in my wardrobe, please feel free to do so. I would happily like to try some of those outfits. And that is it for today's episode of Mama Earth Talk. I hope Julia's journey and her work with Open Wardrobe has inspired you to look at your own closet a little differently, and how small changes in how we use and care for our clothes can actually add up to some big difference for our planet. For anyone that would like to do their own blueprints, Julia has actually provided us with a really awesome discount code where you can get 30% off just for our crazy birds. So the code that you can use on checkout is MAMA_EARTH, M-A-M-A_EARTH, all in caps. And I will link that in the show notes as well, and and you can just access that from there as well. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please make sure to leave a review on Podchaser, share it with a fellow crazy bird, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss one of our Mama Earth Talk episodes. And I would love to hear your thoughts. What stood out on today's episode? Have you started making some more regenerative choices in your life? Or maybe you just want to come over and say hi. Come find me on Instagram @mamaearthtalk. And remember, Mama Earth has a voice, and it's us crazy birds. See you in the next one.