A conversation with Wilson Oryema
Wilson Oryema wearing Bethany Williams by Harley Weir for FARFETCH Conscious Fashion Campaign, 2020
In July, with a rather suggestive animation, Lanvin launched a scratch and sniff t-shirt. A man and a woman lounge on the grass next to some water. A bike wheel turns, some fruit spills from a wicker basket, a strawberry is plucked from the pile and brought seductively to the lips. The man lies back as the woman rubs sensually on the strawberry on his chest, stimulated it omits sparkles that we assume are symbolic of the sweet summer scent of strawberries.
In this neat little example, the uneasy relationship between capitalism and the climate crisis is laid bare. The scent of nature in summer, and the strawberry itself, does not suffice; we must have a synthetic fruit scent on our shirt so that when things get tough, we can rub ourselves, or another, and be lulled into a berry scented daze. Both gimmick and consumption reached a breaking point; this is not the first time the scratch and sniff T-shirt has been peddled; it was fashionable in the 1990s. When presented with it in 2020, however, I did not have a wave of nostalgia. Once I managed to put aside the socio-political landscape to which this $590 T-shirt arrived. I thought, what on earth is that made from?
I did some research to try to understand how when we scratch, it smells. Caity Weaver wrote a comical analysis of the Lanvin shirt for The New York Times, where she explained the scientist Gale Matson came up with scratch and sniff by developing tiny plastic balls that, when touched, omitted scent. “Mr. Matson’s patents describe,” she writes, “how he created capsules filled with “one part perfume oil and two parts diethyl phthalate,” and coated them onto a sheet of paper. The paper remained odorless until the capsules were scratched open.” He designed this for the American multinational conglomerate 3M, which has been accused of polluting drinking water with cancer causing chemicals. The e-tailer FARFETCH, where the shirt is sold out, lists that it is made from 100% cotton, which we know is not true. I looked up diethyl phthalate, listed on the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry, but little is known yet about how it impacts our health.
The toxicity of our clothing is something that is seldom talked about. This week in a bid to learn more, I interviewed Wilson Oryema, the director of the documentary How Toxic Are My Clothes? The first in several offerings by Wilson on the subject of chemicals used in the production of clothing within the fashion industry, it offers a brilliant foundation, engaging the viewer in the basic principles of the way synthetics textiles are made and the effects they can have on the body.
In the interview, we talk about a range of things. Wilson has so passionately taken on the mantle of raising awareness about the climate crisis. In his work, he thinks about the challenges in sustaining contemporary practices and our problematic consumption habits. Using different formats to engage people in his research, he has written two poetry books, Wait and haha, curated exhibitions, modeled clothing, and most recently made a documentary, all in a bid to spread his knowledge and ideas further. Speaking to him was very inspiring, a real lesson in how merely being curious can get you a very long way.
Shonagh Marshall: You first became aware of the environmental concerns through the food you were eating and became vegan. Others have told me that was their start on a journey to learning more too. Why do you think people generally put more thought into what they put into their bodies than on their bodies?
Wilson Oryema: I think it goes in order of importance for most people. Even though you could say the food was my first foray, it began in the mind. I was thinking about value and how I would impact the world; I wanted to add value. I was thinking about how I could become a better person. Typically, for most people, food is the first step because they believe, "I want to look, and be fitter, I don't want to feel sluggish." Food is so visceral. It is direct in how it can make you feel. If you eat junk food, you will feel the aftereffects. I think that was why it was the first step for me. I also was looking into certain spiritual paths, which included fasting or specific diets. So that was how I delved into veganism and vegetarianism.
In 2012 I started to explore vegetarianism; I cut everything out except for dairy. Then I became a full-fledged vegan in 2016. Now I'm back to eating almost everything; I'm 80 to 90% vegan at this point. I'm not an extremist, so I don't think one thing is going to work indefinitely. For me, there's a lot of benefits to a mixed diet that supplementation can aid but won't ultimately help. And of course, different humans have varied biology, so it's not easy to say the same for anyone else. It's about understanding where your ancestors are from and what they were eating for the last tens of thousands of years. What type of deficiencies you might have growing up in a region different from where they originated from. These things, and various others, will inform your personal choices. I can't say that veganism is the only way. I think many people in pursuit of climate justice, in their battle for a so-called better world, will go against common sense and traditional knowledge on the well being of humans. It's like they're playing the role of martyr. Humans are a part of the ecological cycle as well; some things naturally work well for humans that will also work for the planet. Sometimes we act in detriment to ourselves to omit specific stuff. I can't say veganism is a choice for everyone, and I can't say it's a choice for no-one, it's about how you interact with it.
Shonagh: It is interesting to apply this thinking to fashion. Saying everyone should be vegan, as a solution, is like saying everyone should only buy "sustainable" fashion brands, and if they can't, they should not buy anything at all. However, that's not possible for some people; there are many different variables.
Wilson: It's such a Western ideology. Many people who live below the international poverty line cannot survive without meat.
Shonagh: Exactly, we're having these conversations from a place of extreme privilege. You are engaged in thinking about the complexities of our modern world. Therefore when you were scouted as a model, did this threaten your moral boundaries? How did you marry your questions on contemporary consumption with using your body to sell clothing, and ultimately a lifestyle, to people?
Wilson: For the first two years, from 2014-2016, I didn't think about it. My ideas about fashion were more based on taste. I never looked at fashion as a serious thing or something I would continue working within. I thought I could do something cool for a year or two, and then I would go back to whatever I would end up doing. That's what informed my initial ideas in this space and what types of jobs I took on. When I did the Wait book and exhibition, I began speaking on concepts of waste, the environment, and how we relate or interact with it in society. I was forced to have the conversation in interviews. Journalists would ask me about my writing about waste, then say, "what are your thoughts on fashion?" So I did a lot of research in my spare time to not be caught out or accused of misleading the public and not to embarrass myself. From that point, there was still a level of taste and aesthetic ideals in the project I chose to take on. Still, it became about how to progress while working with those who have a level of accountability in producing clothing and acting in society. From the moment I did Wait in 2017, I put a nail in the coffin for my career as a model. Now it's at a point where I don't model it at all unless it's tied to "sustainability," and I'm doing something else with a brand. It changed my perception of how and where I work and how I give my body to a brand.
A handwritten poem by Wilson Oryema for Charles Jeffrey’s Spring/Summer 2020 catwalk show
Shonagh: Things have changed quickly in our attitudes to consumption, waste, and the environment. I, too, have a trajectory where I worked in positions and made decisions, where people and the planet were not at the forefront of my mind, which is very common in the fashion industry. How do you think people can move past the shame and embrace a new perspective as a group?
Wilson: Public transparency works better in the long term because it's easy for people to weaponize things against you if you hide them in the dark. Whatever you keep in the dark will come to light. Before I got into fashion, my interest was to be someone who has a job, makes a decent amount of money, and no one will know who I am. But the way life has unraveled, this is the way for me to proceed forward—to be public about what I'm learning, my mistakes, and how I feel.
Shonagh: It is admirable that you turn down opportunities based on your ethical standpoint.
Wilson: I'm not a person who puts money in stocks, cryptocurrencies, or investments. I am more about betting on myself. If I have any spare money, it will go into something I'm marketing, like the short film documentary I made, How Toxic Are My Clothes? The costs for getting the footage from a stock video website, the microphone to record my voice, and the video editing software to put the documentary together. Beyond that, I have spent money marketing the video, securing YouTube ads, for example, which has returned well.
Another example of this is before I released the Wait book that everyone knows today. I wasted quite a bit of money on a pre-version that was initially a series of images that I showed in an exhibition in 2017. It was on the same weekend as the London Bridge terror attack and the music festival Field Day, so only 100 people visited over the weekend. Afterward, people asked me how they could see the work, so I decided to make it into a book, which I finished about two months later. This iteration told the story through images I'd taken and text taken from a book that I'd enjoyed. I made a few dozen copies, but I realized I would have to license the text to sell it, which would be quite a hassle. I thought about whether it should just be this free thing or should it exist as a book to solidify the ideas. I decided to turn it into a book.
Image by Wilson Oryema, Exhibited in Wait in London, 2017
Shonagh: So is that how Wait, the self-published book of poems that came out in December 2017, came to be?
Wilson: Yes. I took the poem that I had used in the photo book, and I rewrote it in a more appropriate way to what I was speaking about. That became the first poem of the book Wait, which came to be about this fictional city of trash. From there, I put together a series of poems that built on this world that I hoped would aid people in understanding my thoughts on consumption. Wait is about how we consume things or objects, how we consume other people, and how we consume narratives. I wanted to collate my poems to understand better the different ways we consume and how that can impact us.
FollowingWait, I wanted to speak on different forms of consumption because they don't exist in a vacuum. That's why I wrote the book of poetry, haha, which came out in July this year. It is about how things consume us, like stress, trauma, addiction, shame, aggression, and grief, for example. This book was another way of communicating the idea of consumption. It gives you a different perspective and enables me to fill out this space for the reader, so they can understand what I'm trying to convey.
Shonagh: This mirrors my journey into the subject. I began my research awed by consumption, and the waste is produced. As I have deepened my knowledge, I have started to think about behavioral issues at the root of consumerism. These actions are often the product of the feelings you mentioned. After you released Wait, you did an exhibition of called rubbish_1 at Soft Opening, the gallery in Piccadilly Tube Station in London, the following year. Here your poems were exhibited alongside photographs by Harley Weir. I read an interview that you did with Weir and Antonia Marsh; in it, you talk about raising awareness. 2018 feels like a different time, although it was only two years ago, people were simply unaware of their impact. Today it feels like the conversation has moved past that. Would you agree? Or am I just too often preaching to the converted?
Wilson: I would say, yeah, it is partially achieved. More people are taking on the message, which was pushed through the show Harley and I did. But it's not enough. There's so much more that has to be done beyond that. For example, with behavioral conversations around the mind and how we respond to stimuli or even act specific ways when we consume. Most people are not going to react if you say, "Hey, this is bad, and this is how you need to change it." You need to hit several targets to sway people into a new space and think about a new idea. Although it sits somewhat in the psyche for many people, the positive benefits that will draw from that still have yet to be completely realized. I would say it is moving in a positive direction for sure. It's hard to admit, but the average person saying "I'm going to reduce my waste" isn't going to do much in the grand scheme of things. But at the same time, there is a benefit to people acknowledging that it's a problem and somewhat trying to move forward together.
Some people focus on a single thing, and they push that for the next 30, 40, 50 years, whether that's about waste, or conservation, for example. However, I think you have to approach it more holistically. You have to progress from one idea to the next logical progression or step. This progression is also determined by the level of impact you have and where that impact lies. My approach is to display the concept and put it into the current culture, so it sits with people, then others reflect on it and share it. They duplicate this idea and do other things based on it. So when you bring up a policy in a few years, or an organization tries to address change or supports those trying to advocate for it, the ideas have more respect and momentum because it's an idea that already sits in the psyche. People think, "Hey, this is a problem; Wilson, or Harley, mentioned this before." It's essential to focus on that because, honestly, if you think of the number of plastic bottles produced every day, it is around 1.3 billion a day; a single person in the UK or the US reducing their consumption isn't going to change much. But if we can inform people of the ideas that underpin why change should be made, then it is more likely to get approval when being pushed through as policy in Parliament or the Senate. So maybe change isn't progressing as fast as we'd hoped, but there's still some progression. I think it will go from a bottleneck, to a stream and out into the ocean. Slowly it will widen, and more people will be on board. When we look at the younger generation, most of them are entirely behind these things. You can see in what's been submitted to Regenerative Futures the project I co-founded, which is focused on bridging the intergenerational gap through collaboration and conversation. I think in the next five to ten years, we'll start to see a massive change.
“Untitled (Print 15)” (2018) Photography Harley Weir, exhibited alongside Wilson’s poetry at Soft Opening
Shonagh: I have found that within my research, cognitive dissonance is rife within fashion. Brands use greenwashing to overemphasize or lie about their work to protect people and the planet, misleading their consumers. When you work with brands, do you aim to educate them?
Wilson: Yeah, there's a bit of education. Both the brand and I are working to find a better understanding, it can depend, but my overarching questions are; what's the level of transparency in the brand's honesty around mistakes they've made and what are they trying to learn from? What's their approach to sustainability? How do they measure this approach? Considering where they are based, and where their factories are, what kind of change are they trying to impact or implement? What is their tolerance for workers? There is a willingness to learn from both parties and dive in more together so that we come out saying, "Hey, we're feeling more confident, right?" I approach brands and present an idea; for example, I will tell them about something I am doing around materials of the future. Even if there's not much interest, there's still a conversation happening where they can feel more comfortable learning more or contributing to a broader discussion in the future.
Often, the people shouting at these brands tell them what they are doing wrong, which is a massive problem for me. They say, "don't do this, don't do that," and that doesn't provide any solutions. One of the next big next frontiers is essentially getting environmental commentators with large followings to put their money where their mouth is and work with brands to make some positive change. The way many of these people interact with brands is to wear the clothes ethical brands send them. Even the sustainable activist websites may talk down about brand A or brand B and their practices. However, the only way they interact with brands that they consider sustainable is to share an image of the garment and say it's made with recycled plastic. There's no willingness to dive deeper. They're exacerbating the problem, and they're still promoting the same behaviors associated with the fashion they speak down upon. They're not doing anything to progress forward.
I'm looking more into a scenario where people essentially take jobs with brands and work with them, inside and outside, to address some of these goals. I think that's where the education goes; it's not enough to hear they are doing a good thing and then align for a photo op with them. We have to go in and help steer conversations and work together to provide a beneficial result. It's not going to be easy. It's not going to be pretty at the start. But I think that's one thing that we need to move towards. I am thinking about how we do better collectively. Many of the multinational corporations that people speak badly upon have not changed. They continue to increase their market share, and an influencer may even gain a wider audience through talking badly about them. So where's the change? How do you resolve these differences? People are too quick to say because I don't agree with a handful or even the majority of things that someone is doing, I'm not going to work with them at all. We don't get anywhere through that, apart from just more tension and a wider chasm. I think there needs to be a lot more collaboration.
Shonagh: The role of the ego and the allure of being the one to save the planet at once is a distinctly human trait, but it is hindering the collaboration needed to make progress. I admire what you're saying as an example of a different approach. Brands need to admit they have got things wrong and that they want to work on it. It feels contemporary, and it feels useful.
Wilson: There's this massive fear in fashion, and the creative industries, where they're scared to rip the band-aid off or suffer any pain. They think it will be the end of them. Many brands are typically fearful of admitting their mistakes because it will impact their profit. Or they are nervous about changing any aspects of the business to make an Environmental Action plan over the next five to 10 years as it might remove 10% of their profits. They've been continually pushing for growth; in this scenario, they're going to have to sacrifice some of that for the long term. That is such a foreign concept to them, and there's so much fear around it, many people don't want to do it. Even on the activism side, you've got many people screaming for degrowth, which is this idea of don't buy anything, don't use anything. We are so far gone in this crisis of delusion that not doing anything isn't going to save anyone. You need better solutions, whether that's energy solutions, transport, or waste management solutions. Not only how we manage waste but how we use waste materials or even develop new materials from it. We need to sprawl into all these different spaces to provide insight and new approaches. For example, take the carbon dioxide ideology; even if we stopped using all fossil fuels today, there's not a single report that says that we'll do anything to change the planet's temperature. There's nothing we can do today to stop any of these problems; it is more about building solutions for a better tomorrow. As the global population increases to 10 billion in the next few decades, we need to accommodate an approach to provide new solutions.
Shonagh: In your work, you described how you select a particular topic and focus upon first raising awareness in the hope of galvanizing a conversation to lead to solutions. The next subject you have moved on to explores the toxicity of the clothes we wear. You are in the first stage of your process, and you have made a documentary called How Toxic Are My Clothes? Why did you decide to make this?
Wilson: It started in early 2019. A brand sent me a jumper, which came straight from the factory. I thought it looked nice, so I wore it. When I got home, I realized the dye had bled onto the clothes I was wearing underneath. I had a basic understanding of biology and the body, and I wondered what the effect is on my skin? I had heard that metals in sunscreen sit on the body and seep through the skin to cause different issues. Our skin absorbs things; for example, we often talk about how we absorb vitamin D and other nutrients from the sun through our skin—this is somewhat common knowledge. I wanted to know the effect of chemical dyes or chemicals used in clothes on my body once I wore them? I decided I was going to do some research into it and make a documentary.
I started doing more research into it and solidified my understanding. I had already done two poetry books, and I didn't like the idea of writing a text-heavy book because I don't think they sit with my audience well. I want to provide different forms of learning. In UK schools, they do a test to determine whether you're a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner, but then they never do anything with that knowledge. I started to think about how you communicate different things to different people. So I wanted to create something visual and auditory, so I have the video element and text that people can read; this provides different ways people can interact with the information. The documentary came out in December 2019. I presented it on a website, where I'll be creating more video content, as well as text.
Shonagh: What response have you had?
Wilson: It's been a good response. The key idea behind this first documentary was that it was a digestible form. Hence, people got the concept of toxic chemicals and their use in different manufacturing or production stages and how these affect the body. Next year, I have a much larger version of the documentary coming out. I want to try and communicate new ideas to the general public who might not know these things. Often, we assume that everyone knows certain things, but they don't, and sometimes they need somewhere to learn. In my work, I started with quick drops in the ocean; I did an interview in the press and talked about something, I did an Instagram post or a single poem. Moving forward, it's more about how you set a mark in the ground, which I'm doing with the documentary and the Regenerative Futures project.
Shonagh: Could you tell me more about Regenerative Futures?
Wilson: Regenerative Futures is a bet on the future but is also an initiative set to bridge the intergenerational gap through collaboration and conversation. It's a four-year project which I’ve co-founded, and each year we have a different set of projects, some of which are recurring and others which might change. We've got the regenerative list which will take on a different cohort each year, a global call out to find 100 young innovators doing exciting work around sustainability in any field. For the most part, it is about getting them access to funding, mentoring, and or media exposure for their given idea or project. Alongside this, in our first year, we are also producing the Regeneration Report, which is a sustainability report that we are doing in partnership with Irregular Labs, which is a Gen Z outlook on sustainability, launching early December. Next year, we've also got a summit, which focuses on our future and provides space to have much-needed conversations.
Shonagh: Thank you ever so much for talking to me today. My last question is, what is your fashion utopia, Wilson?
Wilson: I think it is interesting to have different storylines occurring at the same time. You can have one goal you address in your work and then multiple additional goals: first and second-order effects. First-order effects directly occur due to change or an event happening, and the second-order is what may happen later, and so on? I am interested in looking at the underlying or additional storylines. I'm trying to push for fashion to be looked at as a legitimate thing beyond aesthetics. Historically fashion has been postulated as purely aesthetic; because of that, it is limited in how the industry is regulated. I am asking how might it be supported in times of crisis, such as this year? How can the industry develop and progress further? Fashion operates in a bubble, so there's not been much interest or focus on technological advancements. You've got people making clothes the way they have been for the last 100 years, especially in the previous few decades, not much has changed in the development process. It's only now that fashion is being pushed, and people see that clothes can be made from mushrooms, and people are finding new ways to produce clothes, whether that's through robots, or various other things, which people are for or against. However, we're finally, slowly moving in that space. In terms of regulation, fashion is massively under-regulated, it's looked at like the art industry is, but it's built on the backs of working-class people, whether that's buying the clothes or making them. I'd say a broad goal for me, with regards to fashion, is making a utopia where people understand the importance and value of fashion, and that is societal wide, which would mean we can make the necessary changes and improvements without much of a fight. In the UK, conversations are happening in parliament regarding fashion; there's not much progress because there's not much belief in fashion and its importance. Let's believe in fashion more.
