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There is a rip in the armpit of Orsola de Castro’s jumper. She raises her hand high in the air so I can see it: a slash of pale skin peeks from tomato-red wool. This “memory hole”, as De Castro describes it, tells the story of the jumper’s long life. It was owned by her cousin, then her daughter. “It is very old Benetton, from when Benetton was still made in Italy. You can’t see it on Zoom, but this is really nice wool,” she says, arm still aloft.
De Castro, 54, is an activist, a lecturer, a former designer, and a co-founder of not-for-profit movement Fashion Revolution. With the release of her book Loved Clothes Last, she has also become a kind of anti-Marie Kondo. She advocates “radical keeping”, not decluttering. “The only antidote to throwaway culture is to keep. So I am an obsessive keeper,” she says.
The book is full of startling facts about fashion’s impact on the planet and its people. It is “as much about mending systems as mending clothing”, says De Castro. She had just four months to write it, so her daughter Elisalex de Castro Peake, who runs the independent sewing-pattern label By Hand London, and her colleague Bronwyn Seier helped with the research. “That meant that all I had to do was vomit words, which were nestling inside me, quite pumping to get out.” Those words are still pumping in today’s interview: she talks rapidly and lyrically, her eyes shining behind thick-rimmed cat-eye glasses, her salt-and-pepper curls trembling as she gestures energetically.
De Castro grew up in Rome. Her mother is an artist and runs a traditional printmaking school in Venice. Her father, who died when she was two, was a businessman. Her Venetian grandmother, whom she calls Nonna Stanilla, taught her how to crochet at the age of six. She moved to London at 16, did her A-levels, then had the first of her four children at 18. She made clothes for years, first with a small line of upcycled hats, then printed textiles.
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Embellish your imperfections. Photo by Iryna Khabliuk / EyeEm
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