The IUCN press release about the Red List updates: iucn.org/press-releas... Our project is on a pause but of course the extinction crisis trundles on, whether we personally tend to it or not.

Ugh. Meanwhile in Australia: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

Yesterday I had a conversation with a PhD candidate about how circularity is not neat like in the diagrams we present about it. Today was a reminder. Yet the very embodied experience of sorting and packing was also vitalising. I’m glad I did it and I will happily volunteer for Thread Together again.

The second half I sorted jeans into sizes. Boxing 30+ pairs from a brand, each labelled zero waste, was sobering. And to be clear, I wouldn’t demonise a brand for this. There are myriad reasons why inventory happens. Years ago an error by me led to 400 denim jackets being made with wrong size label

Of course this is not a solution to overproduction and TT have never claimed to be. It is profoundly meaningful work. And difficult: I didn’t know anything about the person besides size, yet was making choices for them. I really hope they like some of what I picked.

Huge thanks to Archivist Mel Leverich at LA&M who pulled a brilliant selection of materials in response to my vague brief.

Am I rested enough as I head back to work? No, but working on it: rest is an area of my life that I’ll continue to transform in 2025. Wishing all a gentle and kind new year.

In the nearer future I will present a paper from ongoing research on leather title sashes at Artefacta 2025 in Helsinki in February. This is where my professional and private lives intersect: I’m a researcher who is currently also wearing a title sash (until July).

As a side note it’s worth watching this clip from the 1993 O2 conference, which was attended by fashion designer Lynda Grose (of Esprit ecollection) and textile designer Vibeke Riisberg. Lynda speaks in the video of ideas that we now call the sharing economy: www.linkedin.com/pulse/lookin...

Kate Fletcher has published extensively on the topic for 25 years. The Routledge Handbook she co-edited with Mathilda Tham in 2015 has a chapter by Sasha Wallinger on the history of fashion and sustainability.

Of course I hope the bird makes it, but it’s difficult to maintain that hope in the context of the prevailing mindset that all of the world is ours to blunder for profit and growth. There is a real possibility that the tattooed birds on my chest survive longer than the species does.