The anti-fast fashion influencer
The anti-fast fashion influencer
Venetia La Manna turns down 95% of brand deals.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, by Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci.
My #OOOTD (Old Outfit Of the Day): Shoes from four years ago, top from three years ago, a ’70s skirt thrifted a few weeks ago. —Kate
Back in May, I wrote that TikTok had given me the “ick” for shopping. Specifically:
Video after video of Amazon hauls, IKEA bags full of thrifted clothes, even Emily Mariko’s frequent use of parchment paper that she throws away after using in the microwave for one minute—it all added up on my screen in a way it hadn’t in real life, and I suddenly stopped: stopped buying clothes, stopped throwing things away, and started playing a game with my trash and recycling cans in which I see how slowly I can fill them.
This also meant turning a more critical lens towards the creators I followed. It’s hard for influencers to not contribute to overconsumption when a chunk of their income comes from partnering with brands selling new clothes and other goods, especially when staying relevant means following internet trends and encouraging their followers to buy items that will soon be out of fashion. If I wanted to live more sustainably, did I have to withdraw my support for influencers, too?
Instead, I decided to be more mindful not only about the items I buy, but about the kinds of creators I support. Creators like Venetia La Manna have made that easy. The England-based podcaster and content creator provides all the fashion inspiration and lifestyle content that I normally turn to influencers for, but centered around sustainability, and not as an afterthought.
Venetia describes herself as a recovering fast-fashion addict.
“I was always going to fast fashion shops as a way to kind of escape the day or get a hit of dopamine,” she tells me over Zoom.
She now uses her platform to promote things like Second-Hand September, a yearly campaign from Oxfam to encourage participants to purchase only second-hand items for all of September—or, better yet, find new inspiration with the things you already own. She’s also the cofounder of Remember Who Made Them, a campaign in support of garment workers.
In addition to Instagram and TikTok, Venetia hosts a podcast called All The Small Things, featuring weekly interviews with guests. You can also find her over on YouTube documenting the days in her life, with a focus on mental health and slow living.
In this conversation for paid subscribers, Venetia and I speak about the complications of making money as an influencer who turns down most brand deals, and how she revamped her own brand from fast fashion-lover to fast fashion protestor. At one point in the interview, we had to pause because her neighbor came to warn her that a cow may have wandered into her garden.
How did you get started on social media?
I started using social media as a way to try and boost the amount of jobs that I was getting in television. I was a presenter at a time when social media was really picking up. It's like, unfortunately, a lot of creative industries: the more followers you have, the more jobs that you get. That's initially why I started it, and I was doing very standard lifestyle stuff, and I was vegan. And someone on my YouTube channel said, "Hey, cool that you are vegan, but you are wearing fast fashion brands. You should look into the implications of that. It doesn't align." So I did some research and couldn't believe what I learned because to me, in my little sphere amongst my friends, people were talking about the meat industry and they were talking about the plastic industry and the environmental impacts of those things, but they weren't talking about the fashion industry. I just very slowly started sharing some of my learnings online, and it mainly started with a hashtag that I started called #OOOTD. It stands for "old outfit of the day." And that's how it started. It all aligned because I no longer felt like I could participate in fast fashion in the way that the internet kind of makes you think that you need to, in order to be trendy, in order to be sexy, in order to get lots of engagement, I just couldn't keep up.
Since then, I still talk a lot about the environmental issues, but I really talk about the social justice issues. I launched a campaign in 2020, around the coronavirus pandemic, called Remember Who Made Them with three other friends and feminists. And it was really to shine a light on garment makers and their unions, who we spoke to in this podcast which we created as a completely free resource for people to learn about makers and their rights. And then this year I staged a protest outside the Pretty Little Thing fast fashion show. And then I've also been working on another ultra fast fashion brand here in the UK, a very exploitative one called Missguided. So I use social media as a way to educate people, as a way for people to find joy in clothes, but also as a way to campaign and join forces with other groups, individuals, and garment makers to create change on the ground as well.
I found you on YouTube, but what would you say your main platforms are?
YouTube to me is just this small space, this small community of people where everyone's pretty nice. And if you like hanging out with me or watch my videos over there, I don't really use them as a way to educate all that much. It's very soft content, the more everyday. I also use it as a way to show that a lot of the time I'm trying to look after my mental health and be calm, be settled. So I use Instagram and TikTok as my main platforms. They're the ones where I spend the most time. They're the ones that I try to use as the places where I spread the most information.
I'm obsessed with TikTok. Obviously like every other creator out there at the moment I have my current reservations about Instagram. I also use Twitter. I really, really like Twitter. I think it's a really great way to share news stories. So I use that and then podcasting is really the space where I try to have deep dives into subjects. And it's also the place where I like to really celebrate the creators, authors, and experts who I think really deserve as much attention on them as possible.
Was it difficult to make these radical changes given that you already had an audience who maybe wasn’t used to that content?
I've been doing this for about five years now, and I think what I've learned is that as long as you're up front about the way you change, people will come along with you. Sometimes they'll drop off. That's totally okay. Obviously when I started, I had more of a vegan community. I would hazard a guess that a lot of them dropped off, although I still eat a plant-based diet. My focus is more social justice now than it is animal rights. And I am not out here to support an H&M vegan line. So some of them have dropped off, which is totally fine. But I think as long as I share how and why I'm changing and I express why I make those decisions in a clear and concise way, I think people will either continue coming along and they'll respect it, or they'll drop off and that's fine. They'll find someone else.
Being an influencer who doesn’t want people to buy things sounds like it could be challenging. How does that affect how you work with brands?
It's a difficult one for me to analyze when I'm doing it all by myself day to day, and I think maybe it feels different to me to how it comes across online, so I'd be interested to hear what you think. I rule out working with 95% of brands and companies. I haven't done a paid partnership with a fashion brand for probably three or four years, even a sustainable fashion brand. So the only sustainable fashion brands I've worked with have been one underwear company and one period pant company, all other brands I've worked with have all been secondhand platforms. So the vast majority of my paid partnerships actually don't come from fashion brands. I've worked with a couple of beauty brands. I work with a TV company over here, I worked with an ethical bank earlier this year. So it basically means that I cut out 97% of what comes through. Obviously I have to earn an income but I'm very happy with the brand deals that I do.
If you were a company who wants to work with someone who doesn't really do many brand partnerships, to me, that's almost more appealing because my hope is that my community, if they see me collaborating with someone, they're like, "I know how seriously she takes this stuff." One that I did earlier this year actually, which I loved, was with Back Market, who do secondhand technology. It's something a little bit different, I didn't know all that much about it, and it's all secondhand.
I think for the most part I've consumed all your content for free, and I'm also aware that you are very selective with who you partner with. Financially, does that present any challenge or have you been able to make it work?
I'm very fortunate because I have a sizable platform now and also because I have these multiple streams. I have the podcast, Instagram, I have quite a few streams. I think I literally had some sustainable fashion, secondhand fashion creators talking below one of my posts today about how challenging it is being a new fashion creator, knowing that they ethically don't want to take any fast fashion brands and how it's no easy feat. I'm very, very fortunate. And of course it's because I have all these layers of privilege. I am more likely to get these partnerships because I'm white, because I'm standard size, because all of this stuff. So I'm really, really lucky. I'm in a good position and it allows me to be really selective about who I work with. Having said that, if I was no longer in a position where I could rely solely on these revenue streams, I would not forgo the decision to be really specific about who I would work with. Because I do other work that's not online, which is more consultancy and speaking and that kind of thing. So I would do much more of that. And then I would just not do so many paid partnerships. I wouldn't suddenly be like, "Hi, I'm partnering with Amazon, take it or leave it."
I try to be very optimistic about this space and not focus on what's frustrating, so what about being sustainable in this not-typically-sustainable space is particularly rewarding?
I'm obsessed with the slow fashion community. I adore them, as a community, as a whole. I really, really like the values and I like how everyone seems to really get that prioritizing joy with our clothes is of the utmost importance. And it's quite a creative space and it's quite a unified space, and that's really cool. In terms of how it's been rewarding, I've met amazing people, gained friends and best friends. One of my co-founders from the Remember Who Made Them campaign has become a really close friend. One of the people I look up to the most, Aja Barber, she's become a friend. My friend Mayisha, who runs a garment maker account called @ohsoethical, has become a friend. So it's been a really great way to make friends and also widely, I do feel like I'm part of something that is important. It really feels like this conversation's picking up a lot this year, and to be a small part of that feels very, very cool and very exciting. Of course there are times where I'm like, "What am I doing?" I have a lot of self-doubt and people who are public-facing in the community get a lot of backlash and it's hard hearing the same misinformed ideas about what it is that we're trying to do. “Sustainable fashion is only for people with money”—hearing that over and over and over again is tiresome. And when people misconstrue what you're trying to do, I think we all find that difficult. But generally I feel very, very, very fortunate and I just love the community and I'm constantly learning.
My big thing that I hold onto is that collective action, collective individual choices, are actually very powerful. And I think that's something where being a creator can be so influential. I completely, over the past year, switched to dropping off compost every week at the farmer's market and getting my coffee in a reusable cup and have really slowed down on buying clothes. And it's just from following creators who do it. When you're just one person you're like, “I'm one person.” But I'm sure thousands of people have made these choices from following these creators. I never want to underestimate how powerful that is.
Yeah. I agree with you. And it's the same for me. I genuinely love creators. I spend a lot of time on social media, following creators and learning stuff from them. It's a very good feeling when you feel like, without the internet and without certain creators, I definitely wouldn't think about certain topics in the way that I do.
You’re very vocal about something I’m also passionate about, which is Love Island, and the fast fashion partnerships contestants often make after the show. Why is it so important to you to hold that show and its contestants to account?
Arguably the most influential influencer in the UK is Molly Mae [Hague], who was on that show a few years ago. As a creator myself with an, in comparison, small following, I can see my insights when I'm partnering with a brand. I know how many clicks or tap throughs a specific link has, even if it's not sponsored, right? Someone with a million followers, or in Molly Mae's case six million, or in Gemma Owen's case two million, they are encouraging people to over consume clothes. And when we know that a brand like Pretty Little Thing is producing predominantly fossil fuel based clothing made by people who are consistently failed to be paid fair wages, we have to take that really, really seriously. And there are so many intersecting issues here, right? Like it's no coincidence that even though PLT's audience requested Indiyah [Polak], the Black woman, they gave [the partnership] to the rich white girl [Edit note: Shortly after this interview, PLT announced Indiyah as the ambassador of their PLT Marketplace app]. It might be because they are racist, but it also might be because they love the publicity. We don't know. But I don't think we should be snobby about reality TV. The world's really messed up. It can be a really comforting way to forget about the world. And I, too, love Love Island, but I do think we should take these partnerships seriously.
I'm not gonna point fingers at a creator with 20,000 followers working with H&M who is not at my intersection. Both Molly Mae and Gemma Owen are at my intersection. They're privileged, straight size white girls. They don't need to take these partnerships on. They don't need the money. They could do ethical partnerships. In fact, they should be doing ethical partnerships or consuming more ethically because they have the money to do so. And Heidi from The Rogue Essentials always says, we have to stop thinking of influencers as individuals, they are businesses. If you have millions and millions of followers, you are a business. A big business, at that, and we cannot underestimate that. And I'm also just tired of like, "Oh, this is such a girl boss move," like this absolutely isn't. You are selling clothes off the exploitation of others and our planet.
The fact that you're a woman doing it doesn't excuse it.
Exactly.
What are some of your goals for the rest of this year?
I would love to get the next season of my podcast off the ground. I would really love for the Missguided workers to get paid, but I don't think that's going to happen, which has obviously been very, very disheartening. To be completely honest with you, especially doing social media stuff—I’m not complaining—but I'm a gal with not the thickest skin. How can I continue doing what I'm doing, feel good about it, and also feel good up here [*pointing to head*]? So it's about making sure that I'm looking after myself as much as possible and not getting too wrapped up in it all.