Five Minutes with a Friend: Kate Fletcher
This month, fashion and sustainability pioneer Kate Fletcher returns to the literary event of the year, Hay-on-Wye Festival, following the release of her latest book Fletcher’s Almanac: Nature Encounters & Fashion Systems Through the Year, which was published at the end of 2024 by Quickthorn Press.
This illustrated pocket-sized book documents Fletcher's writings and predictions for each month featuring nature - not as the scenery against which fashion stories unfold - but as the main event.
Fletcher is as a Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University and Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway, and works at the forefront for pioneering system change in the field of fashion, textiles and sustainability, advocating for fashion localism.
Ahead of the festival Katerina Knight caught up with Kate to find out what has been inspiring her lately, and her thoughts on returning to Hay again this year.
Kate, can you put into words what it is you love about textiles?
What I love about textiles is that they sit at the porous boundary between body and earth, mediating between us and the world.
Where is your most inspiring space to be creative?
Anywhere in nature. The woods, the hills, the bank of a stream, the nest of a bird. The inspiration is endless.
What has inspired you recently?
Something that I have been recently inspired by is Figures in Extinction, a contemporary dance performance I saw earlier this year at the Aviva Studios, Manchester. The production was a collaboration between choreographer Crystal Pite and director Simon McBurney from Complicité. This dance performance said more about the biodiversity crisis and the need for connection - human to human, human to nature - than a thousand, thousand words. It was breathtaking.
Congratulations on your latest book, Fletcher’s Almanac, what is your hope that our community will take away from reading the book?
Thank you. My hope is that we might start to adopt a way of being in clothes that sees the endless and beautiful dependencies between a dressed body and the living world.
You spoke at the Hay Festival back in 2016, what are you looking forward to most about returning there this year?
The camaraderie between readers and writers is so special at Hay. Writing often feels like a solitary act, but when a writer is together with readers, this feeling changes. It feels like solidarity.
Have you read a book recently that has particularly stood out to you?
Recently I read Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life by Anna Funder, which I loved. It is a book that recreates the forgotten literary marriage between George Orwell and Eileen O'Shaughnessy, using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend. Everyone should read this book!
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Further Information:
Kate Fletcher will be speaking at Hay-on-Wye Festival on Sunday 25 May 2025 at 5.30pm. Tickets are available to purchase here.
Kate Fletcher:
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Image Credits:
Lead Image: Portrait of Kate Fletcher. Photo Credit: Jack Grange.
Illustrations: Danai Tsouloufa