Alden Wicker, Toxic Textiles (Part 3): Has Toxic Apparel Become Fashion’s Watergate

Fashioncast®

Episode #53, November 12, 2024

Alden Wicker, Toxic Textiles (Part 3): Has Toxic Apparel Become Fashion’s Watergate?

This episode is Part 3 of a three-part series on toxic textiles and features Alden Wicker, award-winning author, freelance investigative reporter, and environmental blogger.  The discussion covers Wicker’s career in the fashion industry since 2011, including her introduction to fashion, the launch of her website EcoCult, and her first book released in 2023, To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion is Making Us Sick and How We Can Fight Back.

This is a highly informative and fast-moving interview. In many ways, Wicker is like the authors who have appeared on the show before her. She’s exceptionally intelligent, articulate, and speaks from experience and knowledge. In addition, Wicker is passionate about the surprising discoveries made during her research, and the listener can hear the urgency in her voice.

While reading To Dye For, Wicker’s investigative journalism instincts are pervasive throughout the book.  From her invitation to investigate Alaskan Airline flight attendant complaints about new uniforms, to her trip to India dye houses, Wicker uncovers endless layers of the proverbial onion.  Of course, all the while being scoffed at by gatekeepers and bureaucrats from the airline, medical, legal, and fashion industries.  To Dye For is a reader’s journey of intrigue, surprise, frustration, and anger.  If the outcome weren’t so tragic, the book was so well-written and full of unique characters, it could have passed as fiction.  Fortunately, I am not the only one who noticed, Wicker recently won the Society of Environmental Journalists Rachel Carson Book Award for reporting on the environment. 

Sure, Rachel Carson’s1962 book Silent Spring, challenged the use of chemical pesticides and sparked the environmental movement, but decades later big industry never got the memo, particularly the fashion industry.  However, one can only hope, To Dye For, may be the catalyst that sparks a new and serious movement in the fashion industry about toxic apparel with Alden Wicker leading the charge!  Enjoy this special episode.

www.Aldenwicker.com

www.ecocult.com

To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick--and How We Can Fight Back https://a.co/d/jl27WNk

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