“Shein, shine, sh*t’ Whatever it’s called.” Mary Portas fireside chat with Kate Hutchison.
I participated in a panel at the Yorkshire Sustainability Festival (YSF) recently, now in its second year, and growing. The day started with a fireside chat with Mary Portas and founder of YSF, Kate Hutchison. Early in the discussion, Mary mentioned her forthcoming book about her time at Harvey Nichols, when she said no one asked questions about where things were made then.
Mary does believe that “more and more businesses are listening. There is enormous hope. So many people want to do the right thing.”. In relation to the future of our retail culture and sustainability, she believes we are on a “cultural trajectory” . Citing early environmental planning pioneer, Jane Jacobs as an inspiration for the design of our cities, suggesting we read – Life and Death of American Cities, by her.
A comedy moment in the discussion about the death of our high streets, and the need to address community cohesion to achieve sustainability, Mary suggested that Kevin McLeod, should pitch a new urban design show – “Which tw*t built that?” Mary talked about something she called “trivial interactions” to achieve business solutions, something that in my world of consumer behaviour research, helps us to understand consumer experience and perception of their experience. In contrast to making assumptions about what people need and playing to the days of Charles Worth and Revlon. His marketing epiphany turned sales philosophy from another era was that women are not buying lipstick, they want to buy the possibilities that the product can bring them, he called it ‘hope’. The idea being that in the 1950s, bright red lipstick would help you win a husband and turn the hope of a secure family future into a reality.
Today, I wear my red lipstick for confidence, security and joy, a piece of armour, particularly on a podium or panel, that signals I am confident to wear whatever I want to and be taken seriously. I have a husband, it is another era, but one of deep insecurity and confusion around self-image, exacerbated by social media, leading to mass insecurity, particularly young people.
Not enough research has been done, to address overconsumption of clothing and marketing that plays on self-image insecurity.
Mary talked about the Better Business Act, which means that the head of a corporate business can only earn a maximum of seven times more than the lowest manual worker. This comes from reports of CEOs, earning up to forty-three times more that the lowest manual worker. She went onto say that it has been reported that BCorp businesses are 24% more profitable that other businesses.
In a recent post, editor at LinkedIn, Orlando Crowcroft, questioned the integrity of BCorp asking if it had lost it’s way. There is much still to be learned about the challenge of how we balance business and degrowth, with accountability and transparency on a planet experiencing a real environmental crisis, that needs resource balance now.
One thing I do love about Mary, is her championing of the high street and the “physicality of retail”. She also iterated her point about understanding how people live, what is their experience, referring to Rilke, ‘living the question’, need to know what we are trying to understand to find a solution.
When asked if she was starting again, what kind of business would she build, Mary referred to Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop as someone who was a beacon of sustainable retail from the beginning. She gave the example of Anita fighting for the rights of nut oil workers in Brazil, part of her supply chain. Shell had destroyed their livelihoods with oil exploration and set up an organisation to challenge the titans and won, ensuring small nut oil businesses could continue to grow in the region.
As Mary talked about her as an early inspiration, I did think, like many I have met who have worked in the fashion industry for several decades, if you could see the problems then, and others doing things differently, why did it take you so long?
She talked about being inspired by the brand Patagonia, showing us how to do fashion business differently with the strapline – “one shareholder, mother earth” and the transition to a nonprofit business model. At the heyday of Mary’s career, HN would never have been a stockist of Patagonia (not just because it is an outdoor apparel brand). Now, HN is where you go to for sustainable, luxury staples from US based, circular principled, sustainable brand, Eileen Fisher. So, where do you go if your bank account and pals say Shein will do, and Mary’s Living and Giving is not in your neighbourhood. I can’t help wondering what the young Mary would have recommended…