The SOcial Lives of shoes Podcast
What if shoes could speak?
The Social Lives of Shoes explores one of the most underestimated aspects of consumer culture through conversations with the people who design, make, study, and wear footwear.
Hosts Dr. Alexandra Sherlock and Dr. Emily Brayshaw uncover how shoes reflect our values, impact our world, and offer possibilities for more sustainable futures.
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Lessons from Vietnam: Culture, Craft and Footwear's Place in Sustainable and Regenerative Fashion Research
In this episode, Dr Alexandra Sherlock debriefs Dr Emily Brayshaw on her recent attendance at the 28th Annual IFFTI (International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes) Conference, hosted by RMIT University's Vietnam Campus in Ho Chi Minh City. The conference theme, ‘Cultural Connections for Sustainable Fashion Futures: Rebuild, Renew and Regenerate’, drew Alex to Vietnam with a clear purpose: to put footwear on the radar of fashion sustainability researchers, and to ask what the field's most progressive thinking means for an industry that has long been left out of the conversation. Alex shares insights from key conference papers, translates their themes for a footwear audience, reflects on a visit to a Vietnamese footwear factory, and makes the case for culture as the essential foundation of any genuinely sustainable fashion future.
The Social Lives Team
Dr Emily Brayshaw
Emily Brayshaw is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Design School of the University of Technology Sydney and a costume designer. Her research interests include fashion, dress, textiles, and performance costumes in Europe and America between 1890 and 1930, feathers, the aesthetics of Kitsch, the viola, knitting, and ugly shoes. Emily writes regularly for The Conversation and has authored two histories of Birkenstock for its 250-year anniversary book.
Dr Alexandra Sherlock
Alexandra Sherlock is a Lecturer in the School of Fashion & Textiles at RMIT University, Melbourne. Her research is situated within material culture studies and focuses on fashion, footwear, and identity. Following the ‘If the Shoe Fits’ research project (2010-2013), she relaunched the If the Shoe Fits blog as the Footwear Research Network in 2021. She works with industry and the higher education sector to inform the development of a socially, culturally, environmentally, and economically sustainable footwear sector.