An accidental pHD, a reality show, and a great deal of protests later; Brett Staniland is still fighting for our better future.
Despite being on one of the biggest reality shows in the world, you’re probably more likely to recognise Brett from his undivided efforts in forging a greener, more sustainable world with regard to the fashion industry. We spoke about his intentions going into Love Island, the root of issues in the fashion industry, and the future that he is fighting for.
By Amelia Defeo. Photo credit: Angela Christofilou / Protest Photos.
You have a pHD, and have said that a lot of your 20s was encompassed by academia. What was that decision like? Have you always been academic-minded?
I've not always been academically inclined. I went to university as sort of a last minute decision, so I basically concentrated for about six months at sixth-form, and scraped through to uni. After I did my undergrad, I then went on to a master's degree because I got a scholarship, but I didn't know what I wanted to do after that. I wasn't working in the fashion industry at all at that point. And I applied for a couple of PhD's and science jobs, had some interviews, but nothing was really grabbing me. After that, I went away in August, and one of the professors who I had an interview with, emailed me and was like, ‘we've got this project, and we think it's more suited for you than the other ones that you applied for’, and it went from there. It was based in Spain which was attractive, so I lived in Madrid for two and a half years, and the research was in public health. It was one of those really interesting topics that gripped me, so I got very, very lucky.
Coincidentally, I fell into a PhD and then I did that for a year. When I came back from Madrid, that was the first time I got scouted, and so my love for fashion grew too and I started modelling and working in fashion and doing both side by side which was pretty intense. It took me 5 years in total to finish my PhD.
So was it that first entry into the fashion world that then sparked the passion that you have for sustainability in the industry?
Yeah, that was definitely my avenue into it. I started modelling not really knowing anything about the fashion industry, not really knowing anything about clothes. I was interested in style but mostly through pop culture, and footballers - things like that. I just thought ‘Oh, they’re cool’, and started to dress like that. But working in fashion and actually being around a lot of clothes, trying so many clothes on for work, got me really interested in fabrics and textiles which then led me towards luxury fashion, and then sustainability, I guess.
Did you have any sort of awareness about it all before this?
Well, I say no, but I grew up in Derby in a really working-class family where the things that we probably call sustainability now were things that we always just had to do because we didn't have loads of expendable income to go and buy clothes all the time. In the Midlands, it's not really one of those industries that anyone goes and works in. My dad was an engineer, and everything we bought was either made to last or was fixable, and my Dad would mend everything. That mending, repairing, and rewearing of stuff was always ingrained into us just because of the family that we grew up in. When I started to learn and talk about fashion, I knew that it was heavily influenced by my upbringing.
That's definitely the case with a lot of people, where the way they've been brought up and the customs that they've been raised by just bleeds into their adult life.
Yeah, especially the Midlands. Where is it you’re from?
Near Manchester.
So yeah, especially up our way, the industries are mining and steel and coal, proper working class Industrial Revolution jobs. And the people that that bred are the people who are very tactile, who like to fix things and mend things and not buy things unnecessarily. It makes you frugal when you grow up. So yeah, they’re all just things that we just did. And now it's like, oh, we've got a fancy word for it.
Absolutely. You’ve obviously spent a lot of time in educational settings - do you think we adequately discuss sustainability in mainstream education?
I think unless you go down an environmentalist root from the start, it's not really something that was fed into the courses. I remember speaking to Orsola de Castro a few weeks ago for my book, and she was telling me - and actually Patrick McDowell, the designer - they both said that years ago, when they were at Central Saint Martin's University, during the sustainability lectures that were on one module, on one course, the lecture halls were empty. No-one was really interested in all that. You look now, and literally all of the marketing courses, the management courses, the design courses, the journalism courses, all of them have specific sustainability modules that stand on their own feet. Obviously, it's nice to see that change over the last 10 years, and it's going in the right direction but back then it wasn't something anyone really paid attention to.
I remember seeing a lecture Al Gore gave in the 90s talking about climate change, and he was literally laughed out of the lecture. I was thinking, “They can't take this guy seriously when he's talking about ice caps melting and stuff like that?”. It's crazy.
Nowadays too, trend cycles are so fast and it has become such an integral part of that to be the person, or the brand, that is ‘the sustainable one’.
They're not stupid either. Some of them are creative geniuses and marketing geniuses, and they're really, really clever. They can read and analyse data, and the reason they're now talking about these things is because it's trendy for them. It's also obviously a very good way of greenwashing. They know the places that people are going to be shopping in a couple of years’ time and Gen Z are really big on it, and they're just greedy. They're all billionaires. So it's just greed. It's massive greed.
But for me with the sustainability thing, those who have been credible in the space for almost a decade, it makes us just really angry that they have the potential to turn it into a trend. So who knows what will happen this time next year? The conversation could possibly have died because they're moving on to - whether it’s AI or something - something else.
A lot of us were introduced to you through Love Island and reality TV, and you were also the first islander to turn down free clothes from the fast fashion sponsor. Was there any internal conflict between your intentions, and going on a show with a heavy influence in the fast fashion world and such a specific demographic as its audience?
Massively. It was huge. I had a body of work that I was really proud of, I've walked runway shows and done campaigns for some really nice luxury brands, and I'd been vocal about sustainability for a long time before that. Basically, I was waiting to get the contestant agreement, which is the contract that you had to sign before you do the show, and prior to that, I’d had loads of meetings with the producers and told them that I was going to be wearing my own clothes, but legally I needed to see the relationship that the show had with the sponsor. My best friend, who’s also a model, used to be a lawyer. We kind of sat down with the contract and we saw that the loophole was that as long as you don't wear any of the clothes that are given to you, they can't use your image. So I was like, right, I can do the show, but I have to only wear my own clothes, and that was our little loophole.
Did you get much pushback from that? Internally or externally?
Yeah, I think I got some pushback. When I came home, some of the brands that I used to work for and model for didn't want to work with me anymore because of the reality TV connotations. I remember getting ostracised by loads of modelling agencies, talent agencies and publications. Even just the general public just absolutely hammering me for my clothing or for how vocal I was about other Islanders and their clothing choice, and their deal choices. And then people just call me a massive hypocrite for doing a show that's sponsored by fast fashion. I don't think they really understood what I was doing and what I was trying to achieve.
Not long after I came home, an editor called Steph Yotka at Vogue Runway in America, who I've known for a while, reached out and wanted to do an interview. It was called ‘Lemaire to Love Island’ because she was like, ‘surely you're the first person to ever wear Lemaire in the villa’. It was nice to have a big stage to actually say, ‘right, I took all my own clothes, I wore Riley Studio, and Casablanca, Lemaire, and King and Tuckfield, and Katherine Hamnett, Hemingsworth, Asket, and small brands too. And I re-wore loads of stuff even though I was only there for a short period of time’. I was able to actually tell people the deal. So eventually it kind of changed, but it was rough for the first six months or so.
Do you feel that it’s moving in the right direction now with the change in sponsorship?
It is, it’s like the first step. I remember when they announced it I thought it was great, because it's such a big change and a big swing, and I know the impact that the show has on the general public. We just need to keep on going with it. I think there's a risk at the moment of us just replacing our fast fashion habits with secondhand fashion, which, you know, it's better, but it can still tinker on the unethical if we're just buying 100 billion items a year. I was really proud of the change and I think it opens up conversations for people finding their own style and being self expressive, rather than people just all looking the flippin’ same all the time.
Do you think there’s ever a world in which that’s the standard for those types of shows?
Maybe eventually. I can see, even in the last couple seasons, we've got Tasha, who's also an ambassador with eBay. But even Millie, who won in my year, she's now doing some vintage store and charity shop tours. So I think the narratives are going in that direction. And as someone who works in high fashion, and goes to all the Fashion Week's, I've definitely seen a big change. I’ve got people messaging me saying ‘how do I go to Paris Fashion Week, and how do I go to Milan Fashion Week’. I think they're now thinking that that's the cool thing to do rather than be the fast fashion ambassador. But it's cool to see brands like Ahluwalia and Labrum dress Dami, as well as Bianca Saunders, and Martine Rose being on the reality TV stars too. It's nice for them to have that platform as well.
From what we’ve spoken about today and what I’ve seen of you prior to this, you obviously grew your platform with a very specific intention. Is there a sense of a short time frame after you come off such a huge peak of attention - like the attention that Love Island gets - and use it as best you can?
Yeah. It's crazy when you get your phone back. I had about 40,000 followers when I went in and I came home with about 75 [thousand], but I was getting like 100,000 story views. I just needed to make sure I told everyone who I am and what I stand for immediately, because there was loads of just absolute shite that wasn't true about me. But also, I was like, I've got a window of opportunity to peddle some important stuff too and to talk about things that were going on. At the time I think Turkey was on fire, where my dad lives. There was an Afghanistan conflict, and loads of other stuff in the news too. And I was so aware that I had a platform to really spread some awareness.
I think I'm lucky because I was so against the grain of what everyone else was doing. I've managed to retain a decent audience and retain engagement unlike a lot of the other contestants do, unfortunately.
I think that does often happen where, maybe the ‘underdog’ contestant happens to retain a good audience. Some people see the flip side of that where the focus on them absolutely skyrockets, and inevitably drops back down.
Yeah, I know. It's interesting as well, because I know there's definitely still some Love Island fans that are in my following, but I think there's also been a nice growth of more sustainability-focused people, or more fashion people. I've seen some friends lose 200,000 followers in the last year. It’s crazy to think about those numbers.
That’s the thing, because I watched your year of the show but anytime your name has cropped up since then, it's been completely unrelated; aside from the protesting. How much courage does it take to place yourself at the front of those conversations? Because they are your peers, in a way.
I was really content with my life, and my academic career, and my fashion career before. I felt really ostracised by the show as soon as I came home because I was really vocal about the show and fast-fashion. I just felt like nobody wanted anything to do with me. They thought I was saying all the wrong things.
I think because I went in with the mindset of, ‘I literally don't care about any of that stuff at all’, I didn't even care if I was there a day and went home and gained nothing from the show, it puts you in a nice position to just take it or leave it. And when you're in a position where you can take it or leave the thing that everyone else really wants, it means that your voice is then really authentic. I don't care at all about the repercussions.
Did people keep in touch at all after the show? To check in?
ITV called me every single Friday for 18 months after the show. They have a duty of care for you to check in. I was in therapy, I struggled with an eating disorder for a while. And it's there for your support. But at the same time, they might mention that they’d seen you in the news or they’d seen you say this, and it got this response. I was just persistent that I will say whatever I want because I'm not trying to take money off anyone. And so my voice is my voice, which is cool.
Absolutely. We’ve touched on this slightly but in a culture that is so heavily reliant on consumerism and trends, where it’s very ‘out of sight, out of mind’, and we aren’t seeing the people suffering as a result. What do you think it’s going to take to shift the tides?
In general with the sustainability conversation and fashion being a really big problem in terms of contributing to global emissions and all that stuff, it has never been taken seriously. I think because it's such a creative industry, and with where we're from, if you tell people in England that you work in fashion, they're like, ‘Oh, that's cute, but when are you gonna get real job?’, a lot of it is rooted in misogyny. People think that fashion is a female dominated job and it's for women, and therefore, it's not a serious job. It's been rooted in deep misogyny for years and years and years.
The biggest impact we will have is when the government and legislation comes in and tells us what we can do online, and on social media, and tells brands what they can and can't do. Brands need to be off put by fines that are so severe, it is literally the worst case scenario for a brand rather than just a slap on the wrist.
And then, again, with everything in our social media lives or our television lives, it needs to be marketed to things that are meaningful and important. Get the important messages out on primetime TV. I think the way that social media is going and ‘de-influencing’ and having genuine and authentic creators online that actually care about a community rather than seeing their followers as customers; the more that happens, I think the better we'll get in our own consciousness to say, ‘You know what, I don't care what any of my friends think about what I wear, and I don't care that social media has seen this outfit before because it reflects who I am, it’s telling people stories about me without saying anything’.
I think all those things will lead us down a much more responsible path and towards a better industry. Sometimes it takes one person to do it, and then everyone else feels comfortable doing it too.
What does the fashion industry look like when you picture the one that you’re fighting for?
Oh wow. I feel like the words ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable fashion’ just don't even exist.
It looks like something that we had many years ago where it's community led, and it's local boutiques, and things with really short supply chains. It's thriving local industries that we used to have many years ago and I think it's used as a tool within the creative industry in the right way.
It's storytelling. It brings fulfilment into your life in the same way music, art, and film do. Fashion can do that. That's why I love fashion week. I go to shows all the time where I think I wouldn't wear a single thing on this runway, and yet it's so impressive what they can do with fabrics. The story that they've told is amazing. And the conceptual narrative of the show was really interesting. We can have that and enjoy a fashion industry that's like that, but just in a more responsible way.
And much more natural fibres and natural textiles and just a massively less dependent industry on oil. I fucking despise polyester. Very passionately. It's just everywhere.
As you’ve said, you’re much more immersed in the high fashion world. Do you feel that the conversations are being taken seriously in those spaces?
Yeah, I think so. When you look at the epitome of high end luxury, it is so timeless and so muted and so not trend led. If you look at Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli - Brunello Cucinelli is a billion dollar brand this year, which is insane considering their price point and their customer base -, Hermes, Kiton, Brioni, The Row. And these brands have amazing clothes but they're just simple, timeless, elegant things, and they play on silhouette, and styling more than anything. The industry, I think, is going in the right direction. I think the next trends we're gonna see is a reversion back to tailoring and classic uniforms and things like that.
You've also got a crop of designers who, like Marine Serre in Paris, says, ‘I don't want my brand to get any bigger than it is now because I'll lose control. And if it gets any bigger, I won't be able to sustain it’. And she at the same time tells great stories in their shows about textile waste and denim and how exploitative the industry is. These things are really important to some really cool designers. So I think the industry is taking note.
