Dana Thomas

Rethinking the future of fashion.

Dana Thomas has spent more than two decades investigating the forces reshaping the global fashion industry. The author of Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes joined Visionary for a conversation about what our clothes really cost — and the designers, manufacturers and entrepreneurs trying to build a better system.

Recorded at Here East and hosted by Georgina Godwin, the conversation examined an industry transformed by scale: from the rise of fast fashion and globalised supply chains to the environmental and human consequences of producing more clothes, more cheaply, than ever before.

But Thomas also offered a way forward. Across Fashionopolis, she has documented a new generation of businesses experimenting with local production, regenerative materials, new technologies and a return to craftsmanship. The result is a different vision of fashion — one in which innovation and sustainability can work in tandem.

The brief

Visionary brings together entrepreneurs, thinkers and creative leaders to explore the ideas changing how we live and work. Produced by Wondercast for Here East, the programme turns those conversations into intelligent long-form interviews and digital media designed to travel well beyond the campus.

Dana Thomas brought a global industry into focus. Her work connects fashion with some of the defining questions facing modern business: what happens when relentless growth becomes the objective, how can established industries reduce their environmental footprint, and where can technology help create more sustainable models?

It was also a natural fit for Here East. Fashion is increasingly as much a story about technology, materials science and new methods of production as it is about clothes. Thomas’s reporting reveals an industry being challenged from the ground up — and the innovators already experimenting with what might replace it.

The impact

The episode placed Here East within a wider conversation about sustainability, innovation and the future of industry.

Rather than treating sustainability as a corporate slogan, Visionary used Thomas’s reporting to examine the harder question: how do you redesign an industry whose prevailing business model depends upon ever greater consumption?

That gives the programme a broader purpose. Visionary can move comfortably between technology, business and culture, using individual stories to explore larger shifts in the economy. In this case, fashion becomes a lens through which to consider responsible growth, new technology and the revival of craftsmanship — and what a more thoughtful model of capitalism might look like.

Watch Dana Thomas on Visionary.

Client — Here East
Project — Visionary
Format — Video podcast
Wondercast — Editorial development · Production · Post-production · Distribution