Who Made Your Clothes? Tim Ridley

For the fourth in the series of The Good Wardrobe’s ‘Who Made Your Clothes’ interviews, John-Paul Flintoff talks to artist Tim Ridley.

As someone who makes a real effort to shop carefully, and who thinks a lot about where his clothes come from, Tim feels ‘it’s important to think about the little things that you do that can affect the world’. However, he’s well aware that asking people to start thinking about where their clothes are from can induce feelings of guilt. John-Paul is keen to find out if Tim ‘can think of a way to invite someone… to have a think about it in a way that’s not going to make them feel bad?’:

‘It’s about empowerment – you have the power to decide. If you just indulge in the feelings of misery – that this person who made your clothes got paid awfully – that doesn’t get you anywhere. And I totally can see that. It is harder to get people to feel that they can make a positive change in their lives, but they can, and it actually would benefit them and this other person [the person who made their clothes]. Maybe if they concentrate on the exterior thing – the world rather than themselves, because guilt as we know is always a very internal thing.’

If, like Tim, you are interested to know who made your clothes, then why not come along to our London event at Designer Jumble, or the evening panel discussion hosted by John-Paul at Somerset House. If you can’t make it then you can still get involved online or by attending one of many events around the world.

Reposted with kind permission from The Good Wardrobe and John-Paul Flintoff