Tansy Hoskins is on a mission. For too long the fashion industry has hidden itself behind the mysterious shroud of a fragile and precious creativity that must be protected at any cost, be it life, liberty, equality or dignity. Her first book, Stitched Up! The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, seeks to critique fashion as the multi-billion-dollar industry that it is, taking on issues such as environmental resources, labour, cultural colonialism, racism and body hatred. Hoskins, an ardent fan of fashion’s transformative potential, issues a passionate call for more responsible and revolutionary attitudes to the industry and how we consume clothes. As for Susie Orbach, the iconic writer is a psychotherapist, author and feminist social critic whose influential 1978 book Fat Is a Feminist Issue radically interpreted fat bodies as a protest against sexism, objectification and normative body ideals. Thirty-one years later, her book Bodies described how every aspect of our anatomy has been destabilised by capitalism, exploited like a commodity, using body-hatred to sell product. In 2003 Orbach established AnyBody, the UK chapter of Endangered Bodies, an initiative to challenge the toxic culture that promotes negative body image. Dazed met Hoskins and Orbach at the Stitched Up! book launch to listen as they talked commodifying bodies, airbrushing and why the fashion industry is “up there with telecoms and steel”.
