A conversation with Lou Badger

In the May 2019 issue of Vogue, Hamish Bowles wrote about the Gucci creative director, Alessandro Michele. He sets the scene, "a stylish retreat decorated in the tastemaker's signature neo-Romantic style, with tapestry-seated Napoleon III chairs and lacquered furniture dotted over flowering rugs and terra-cotta tomette tiles, all of it embowered in a Chinese paper of flowers and… exotic birds." The scale of this workshop "a 35,000-square-meter behemoth" he explains "is a testament not only to the brand's strength and ambitions—Gucci enjoyed 33 percent sales growth in 2018, with $9.3 billion (8.3 billion euros) in annual sales, and has doubled its revenue during the past four years—but to its creative director's singularly potent aesthetic."

These two factors: the successful growth of a fashion brand and a charismatic head designer with a unique vision, have been important markers of success in the fashion industry throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries. The fashion historian Dr. Elizabeth Kutesko told 1 Granary, "The evolution and importance of the fashion designer were consolidated by the fashion media throughout the 20th century, in line with consumer's voracious appetite for novelty." 

I am interested in shifting the needle on the language we use to talk about fashion design. What if we were to tell different stories about the designer's journey? What if we set the scene in another way? What if we asked questions about the challenges they face financially and creatively? 

This week I interviewed Lou Badger, who has an eponymous clothing label, previously called Paulo Redeem. Lou started designing in 2019; until then, she had a successful career first as a teacher, then in leadership, in Philadelphia's public school system. This is not your typical ascent to fashion star. I wanted to ask her what inspired her to make this shift into making clothing? And how had her work with young people informed the work that she was doing? I also asked her about growing her company and the challenges she is facing around scale.

Shonagh Marshall: I read that your upbringing taught you about reuse. How did this manifest in clothing? And what interest did you have in clothing or fashion as a young person?

Lou Badger: I was more interested in fitting in as a young person. I was always the only, if not one of a couple of, Black children in my school. I remember wanting to stand out as little as possible, which I now know is impossible. That said, I did play a lot of dress up as a kid and remember really enjoying it.

Clothes definitely played a role in fitting in. My peers were shopping at Limited Too, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Hollister, and my mom was not having any of that. She was like, Spend what on a pair of jeans? So I was excited about the hand-me-downs I would get from my cousins, Britnee and Brennan. They were really cool to me and I looked forward to receiving things like swishy sweatsuits, denim jackets, and graphic tees. 

Additionally, I'm of Ghanaian descent – my late father NiiArmah was from Ghana. So I was privileged to travel there a good amount as a young person. These trips exposed me to the experience of going to the fabric store to pick out your fabric and then going to the seamstress to have your measurements taken and your clothes made. It also impacted my thinking about making things in a custom way. The last time I went was in 2011, which was my first time going as an adult by myself, there were so many things I got made, a beautiful yellow kente blazer, for example. I have also taken these outfits and reused the materials as I got older. 

Lou wearing a dress made in Ghana by her Nana.

Shonagh: It's interesting you talk about your want to fit in but being one of the few Black students at school. After finishing high school, you went to study political science. And at the time interned with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF). What drew you to politics at the time? 

Lou: This is a good question to reflect on. What drew me to politics at the time was a desire to understand the conflict I was witnessing in the United States and understand the world at a deeper level. 

I felt like my upbringing was isolated, given that I wasn't surrounded by a lot of Black people in my schooling. I had a Black girl scout troop, but I wasn't surrounded by a Black community in general. I was trying to understand how I could make a difference for communities that looked like me within a political system. 

As I was thinking about this question, I stumbled upon a paper that I wrote when I was an undergrad; the following passage stood out to me.

An understanding of political culture clearly helps one have a better grasp of the interactions between and motivations of the various social, racial, and economic groups within a nation. A political scientist is interested in examining these phenomena, if for no other reason than to have a better grasp as to how and why political attitudes vary from country region, towns, town, person to person.

I think my main motivation was just to understand people better. It's interesting looking back on things that I wrote. My analysis has changed and elevated over the years, especially given my work in schools. 

Before I interned at CBCF, I interned for theChildren's Defense Fund, headed byMarian Wright Edelman, who was very involved in the Civil Rights Movement. In my experience, that internship reoriented me towards a focus on the most vulnerable in our society. That's where I learned about thecradle to prison pipeline– the idea that a Black boy born in 2001 is six times as likely to be incarcerated for a drug offense and a young white boy.

My time there shifted my focus from wanting to go to law school or graduate school to focusing on public policy as it applied to Black and Brown communities. I applied to do a teaching program. I didn't specialize in education, so I applied for and was accepted to an alternative program calledTeach for America.

When I started, I was like, Okay, I'll do the program and teach for two years and be done because I'll understand what is needed in policy. That quickly dissipated. When I got to the communities and was working in schools, I realized, Oh, wait, the government isn't doing shit for them, this is bad. I realized that my impact would be more felt if I just continued to work and serve in schools. Over time my mindset evolved from being a savior to a servant. Communities don't need saving; they need people willing to be there and serve for as long as they can. As a teacher, I saw an intentional outcome of a world that's built on anti-Blackness. But it bolstered a personal understanding of where I could be most impactful and served most, which was in schools.

Shonagh: Can you tell me a bit more about what your teaching experience was like? What grades did you teach?

Lou: Wow, it was a wild ride. I taught second and third grade all subjects. So I had one class of students with me all day learning math, science, English, history… That was exhausting; it was non-stop. 

I have a lot of critiques of the teaching program that I did, but one of the biggest ones is that they don't prepare people to teach in the communities that need the most expertise. They offer a summer program where they teach you how to be a teacher in five weeks, but you don't know shit. I didn't know how to give these young people, who are already in many ways very behind, what they need to catch up while simultaneously nurturing a critical consciousness of the world.

After that, I taught seventh and eighth grade English. I loved teaching middle school. Middle schoolers can engage with you in more thoughtful ways. We were reading some excellent books; they made some great text to self and text to world connections. The experience of teaching was so many things: exciting, challenging, growth inducing, dramatic triggering, and just wild. 

Once I landed in middle school, I was very inspired by how abundantly honest and observant the students are of the world and the adults in their world. One of the things I loved most about teaching was staying in contact with many young people I taught. A lot of those students now are young people in college about to graduate. One, in particular, is also designing her own upcycled garments. They are leaders at their schools; it's just so cool. When I post something on social media, my favorite comments are from them saying, Badge, we love you, we're so excited for you, we're so proud of you.  

In many ways, that's who I create and design for. I want them to see that you don't have to be one thing as an adult. They saw me as a teacher, an assistant principal and now they're seeing my journey unfold as I center a self determined creativity. They were a crucial part of my upbringing; they are phenomenal human beings who will keep it real with you. They're going to tell you when your outfit is trash when you're being a jerk. It can be transformative when you allow yourself to face the feedback that young people have for you.

Lou as a child playing dress up in OshKosh B'Gosh

Shonagh: After teaching in the classroom, you moved into a leadership position. What prompted this transition? What was it like going from the classroom into a role where you made more decisions about how things operated? 

Lou: My motivation for pursuing school leadership was because primarily I didn't see a lot of good school leadership. Maybe I was a little arrogant; I thought I could do a better job (laughs). I had experienced leadership that didn't feel helpful, hopeful, or promising. It was focused more on maintaining the status quo than innovating. It confused me; leadership wasn't supportive of helping me get better as a teacher, which I thought they were for. Often, it seemed more about the comfort of adults than the success of young people. I also found myself getting in situations where adults would say, This is what we want to do, this is what we need. I felt it didn't make sense for young people. 

One of the school leaders I had gave me great advice: doing this work, you need to leave your shoes at the door. A lot goes on in your personal life, but when you step into the classroom space, you need to leave that and be there for young people. I tried to employ that mindset. 

Similar to teaching, I applied to an alternative principal certification program that placed me in a school, and I had a coach – someone who would come to support my work through the daily activities of coaching and developing teachers. 

Frankly, it was rough; my first couple of years were really hard. It was a real uphill battle. At the time, I was 26 or 27, which is young for a school leader. Being a young, Black, dark-skinned woman, managing a majority of white teachers, who did not come from the same context as me, was challenging. I experienced a lot of microaggressions from people who were constantly questioning my leadership. This is contrasted with my white colleagues who had the same job as me. They would ask people to do something, and they would say, Great, got it, on it. I would ask the same, and I would be called robotic, inauthentic, and a dictator, or get a lot of pushback. I’m still healing from the anti-Blackness I experienced in schools.

I was also placed, or maybe unconsciously took on, in a position where I was having many  conversations about race in our schools. I was managing how adults showed up, which sometimes felt like being a therapist. I would think, This is not why I'm doing this. Black women really do take on a great deal of unseen and unacknowledged labor.

I served as a school leader for six years. And while I do know that I did make an impact and helped teachers get a lot better, sometimes it still feels hollow because I know that there are real and fatal consequences for people who are racialized as Black in the United States. For certain, I witnessed that at visceral levels during my time in schools as a leader. Whether it was noticing these things happening to young people or witnessing things happening to myself, I realized that our young people need to be prepared to go out into a world where the things happening to me will happen to them. They need the skills, the words, they need to address people about these things and take care of themselves, to be able to decide for themselves.

However, it felt good to make decisions on a system-wide level, and I felt supported by my colleagues, who were also school leaders. There's a piece around the work being about trying to convince people that something was the right thing to do or why it made sense. Sometimes I wanted to say, You should just do it because it's good for young people. 

Another layer was merely existing. I was in a charter network, where  the leadership didn't look like the young people they were serving;  that was also a significant rub. Just thinking about how policies were created, whether it was around uniforms or discipline, they often recreated the same systems we see in mass incarceration, for example. These are not built to help young people decide for themselves and think about the world in their own unique ways.

Shonagh: Earlier, you mentioned that the young people you worked with would authentically meet you; you've also said that sometimes they even saw things in you that you didn't see in yourself. I thought that was super interesting, and I wanted to ask you a bit more about it, especially in relation to clothing. When you were teaching, do you think your clothing was an expression of your identity? Middle schoolers are so curious about their identity; it is a stage where they are forming their little selves. I was curious about how you communicated with them through the way you presented yourself. 

Lou: Clothes became a more significant part of my identity once I hit my 20s. That had a direct correlation between financial independence and buying my own clothes versus being reliant on my parents to do that. My mom was not trying to help me put the look together! So in my early 20s, I was doing a lot of thrifting because I was a broke teacher – I didn't have that much money. I finally had the opportunity to express myself through what I wore. There were a lot of really great thrift stores in Philadelphia, where I was living.

One of the schools  I was working at implemented a uniform. It felt very oppressive. I would push the limits and modify the uniform – we had to wear specific colors and a patch with the school shield on it. I found myself getting things in the colors I wanted – subtle nuances of the required hues, which were navy and khaki. I would pin my shield on, whereas others would wear the same things every day. 

When I think about expressing myself, it was about exploring because I hadn't had much of an opportunity growing up to explore my style the way I wanted to. Most people are influenced by what our parents have and what they can give us. 

When I left that school and transitioned to the next one, I was like, Oh, yes. It was an African-centered school; the principal wore these fantastic looks in beautiful african fabrics every day. It was an excellent opportunity to wear my Ghana outfits to work. I found myself dressing more boldly than ever; I wore a lot of color and patterns. I had just been to Ghana as an adult, so I had some great custom looks. It was all about expressing myself and expressing my culture, which people would ask about, and then I would get to talk to them about it. 

I was also encouraged by the young people I taught, who would frequently ask, Did you make that? Or they'd say, You should model, you have a look Miss Badger. I would think, What are you talking about? Then fast forward, and I have modeled from time to time, including for my own line. 

There's this book that I remember reading when I was in when I was teaching called The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children. One of the focuses of the study is a woman named Mrs. Dupree. In the book, she says the kids asked her, Why do you get dressed up every day for work? She tells her students she dresses up every day for the important people at her job: her students. That stuck with me for years; it resonated with me. I also found a correlation between the more boldly I dressed and the more engaged the students were in class. It was a teaching strategy, why be boring when you can wear something bold that makes them want to look up at you? 

Even as a school leader, I found myself dressing up with the students in mind. Adults would ask why, they'd say, You're really dressed up today. But the kids – they're not supposed to curse – but as I walked down the hall, they'd say, Miss badger, you'd be putting that shit on! (laughs) This is in Philly. Fast forward, I've had a few students who graduated and said it meant a lot for them to see me as a Black woman in leadership, wearing what I wanted and killing it. They'd say I'd treat the hallways as my runway. If the kids talked about your outfit behind your back, it meant they thought you were great. 

My attitude now is if no one has ever clowned your, you're not doing enough. So I appreciated it. I think being in a community with young people has been an essential part of developing my style identity, frankly.

Expansion Collection, Photograph by Marcus Branch

Shonagh: It's so joyful; it should be how we approach getting dressed. It feels like it was playful.  

Lou: It was playful. Definitely. Obviously, working at a school, you can't be showing skin. But I think that has contributed to the fact that I often wear layers and play with volume and proportions. I am trying to make it impactful while still being fully clothed, and often, it was cold in the school, so I was dressing to be warm. 

Shonagh: I know that feeling; it is always freezing in the classroom I teach in! While you were still working at the school, you started Paulo Redeem, now called Lou Badger. What was the impetus to start making clothes?  

Lou: I was doing it for myself. One day, I looked at my closet and realized I had accumulated a lot of clothes. I was overwhelmed by it. I had gotten into a cycle of donating things. Still, as I read more about sustainability and how many of the clothes we donate end up in landfills anyway, I started to think, What else can I do with these clothes? I had a  dress form, gifted to me by my former partner and friend (who also sewed my very first design!) so I began to cut clothes up, deconstruct them and pin them back on the dress form. 

I realized it could work; I could take my old things and make them new and funky. At the time, I was inspired by Y/Project with exaggerated proportions and necks in crazy places, etc. I hired a couple of people to sew the things I had put together. At the time, I had a mentor, Nicole Haddad, she has a brand in Philadelphia called Lobo Mau where they use deadstock and innovate to use waste. I was learning more about sustainable fashion from her and had taken her a few pieces I'd made, and she gave me feedback. Her biggest feedback was that I needed to improve the quality of how the things were sewn but overall, she thought they were creative and unique. 

In February 2020, Nicole opened a flagship store stocking various sustainable designers right before the pandemic. They had jewelry makers, people who did pottery, all types of things. She asked to stock my brand in the store six months after I started first designing, which was a huge affirmation. It was received okay; I think it was a little wild for the South Philly streets but my line of avocado-dyed garments, New Earth, sold well.

Then when we were in quarantine, I did another collection and started the website. Things sold pretty well on the websites, and I thought, why don't I try this. I was very tired of working at my school, going into the same building every day doing the same thing, and just felt energized by the opportunity to be more creative.

Shonagh: Interesting that you started with your own clothes. I read as you grew, people began to give you their clothes. Were you making bespoke things for people on commission? Or were you accepting donations and then making them into items to sell online?

Lou: Mostly when friends gave me clothes, they would say, Please take these off my hands, I need to not look at these anymore. So there was very little collaboration with folks but I was happy to receive the materials.

I do have a custom service available on my website, and I want to do more custom work. I've worked with two people that have asked me to reimagine their clothes for them. I'm now in a place where I have a more resources to think creatively. That is definitely on the shortlist of things I want to publicize more. 

I need to think through the challenges of how people get things. We are in an age where people like things to be very convenient. It's easier to order something online and have it come to your house than you have to ship it and wait for it to come back to you. But I think there's a way to make it as simple for someone as possible.

Ruffle Hoodie by Lou Badger

Shonagh: I have been thinking recently about our relationship with clothing. In the West, we strive for convenience, and almost exclusively, we go into a shop where clothing is ready-made and buy it there. Do you think working on Paulo Redeem has changed how you feel about clothing? Now that you are making it yourself?

Lou: I have moved to Mexico, and it's hard to get stuff sent here; some stuff I was  trying to receive got rejected last week. I had already been setting intentions around the amount of new clothes I'm buying or being intentional about buying things that I want to have forever, but being based here is also forcing me to do so as it's less convenient. I am also thinking about modifying clothes to make sure that they're wearable for the long haul. But something about being in Mexico has limited my consumption, period. I feel like I'm consuming a lot less. 

It's a rub because we don't need any more clothes in the world at all. So I often feel this conflict around starting a fashion brand, where you're putting more clothes into the world. I'm trying to think about how I can approach it to think about the end first. What does the end of life look like for my garments? Am I going to be able to take them back from people, mend them or make them into something new? 

If I had a lot of money, I would open a factory to recycle many clothes and make them into new fabrics and garments. That’s compelling to me, thinking about how many garments or pounds of clothes have been recycled for a collection. And what happens with them afterward? I'm also thinking about products being broken down to make mattresses or using waste to fill outerwear or pillows. Things that people will continue to need in the future. 

Often I wonder, Am I doing the right thing? But we have to create new models of fashion if we want to survive in the future anyway. But right now, it feels like building a plane and flying it at the same time because there are not a lot of models that I can look at in regards to what I'm trying to do.

Shonagh: There is a lot of greenwashing where brands claim to use waste fabric and deadstock. It is ultimately really hard to scale. You are looking at how you might be able to scale Paulo Redeem. How do you view growth for the future of the brand?

Lou: Winning the Amiri Prize has given me the privilege and opportunity to slow down and think about things. I'm not feeling like I need to make money urgently. In response to this question, I'm still learning. I'm trying to expose myself to as many experts and resources as possible to have a strong vision and map out what I'm trying to do. I'm in this process now. 

I've been having some conversations with CFDA. They have a really good tool on their website. It's called The Sustainable Strategies Toolkit, where they break down all the parts of the supply chain. In a meeting with someone who's focused on supply chain, he said, You're in a great place right now, as an emerging designer, where you can map out what you'd want these things to look like. He asked, Who do you want your garment workers to be? What do you want them to be paid? Where are you going to get your fabric from? What type of fabric do you want to use? How do you want to innovate? 

Scale is a challenge. Right now, I'm trying to just focus on what my vision is. A lot of that is being creative about how we use materials. One example is in Mexico City; I'm working with a small production house called ReBonita. They specialize in upcycled materials. So one of the things I asked them to do was create patchwork fabrics for me. People often give me garments, and sometimes they're things I want to use, sometimes they're not. I make a patchwork fabric out of the ones that I’m not going to use to make a new garment. Usually, it's grouped by color, and then they save the scraps so I can use them in the future for filling, for example.

The next step is figuring out who will make the clothes because so many factories want the pattern and the fabric, and that's it. They may not be equipped to work with upcycled materials. I'm in the process of exploring what production could be like. 

In terms of growth, I would like to continue staying small. I want to make enough to support myself and a future family – I would love to have kids one day. I would also like to hire people I admire and pay their rates. I think that's also a part of sustainability, supporting people in your community. I'm thinking about the balance of not getting insanely big, where I'm having a negative impact on the earth. But I would also like to support myself and the people I love and care about. I would love to hire one of my former students to design a collection — the one I mentioned who is in college and designing her own upcycled stuff.

I want to work with brands' overstock. It would be so cool if a brand said, We would love to have you take our overstock and create an upcycled collection out of it. I would love to also get to a place where I can work with other people in collaboration.

TR First Born Frock, Paulo Redeem by NaaAmerley Badger

Shonagh: Thank you so much for being so generous with me, Lou. For my last question, I always ask, what would your utopia be? If you could wake up tomorrow in Lou’s ideal world, what would that look like?

Lou: Wow, that's a great question. 

I would have my own factory where we can be innovative and not limited by the bounds of what has been traditionally done. I would employ Black and Brown women garment workers and pay them more than a living wage. 

I wouldn't make that many clothes. The majority of my work would be custom work, where people bring their things from their closets, and we would work with that. Frankly, the most sustainable way is to use items already in your closet. Instead of having all the impacts on the earth – having to source something or transport it – people would ideally just bring them to me, and we would work with that. 

I would also be doing a lot of collaboration, creating opportunities for young people to be creative. I would like to divert what often feels like nepotism in the fashion industry and give people a chance to try new things out. I feel grateful that I've had that opportunity, especially through the Amiri Prize. We live in a capitalist world, so you need capital to make things happen. 

I would want to be very transparent about how many pounds of clothing or items of clothing we were recycling, where the clothes are coming from, who's making them, what their working conditions are like, our net impact on the earth, and the connection between unsustainability and anti-Blackness.  You mentioned greenwashing earlier; that's one of the things I'm thinking about as I map things out and want to avoid. I want to state and name these things that consumers want to know as we inch closer toward climate apocalypse. My utopia would recenter the true origins of sustainability and engage conversations about the roots of unsustainability.