You are listening to the Darren Wilson Show, I'm Darren, I spent the last 20 years devoted to improving health, protecting the environment and finding ways to live a more sustainable life. In this podcast, I have honest conversations with people that inspire me. I hope that through their knowledge and unique perspectives, they'll inspire you to. We talk about all kinds of topics from amping up your diets and improving your well-being to the mind blowing stories behind the human experience and the people that are striving to save us and our incredible planet.

We've investigate some of the life's fatal conveniences. You know, those things that we are told might be good for us, but totally aren't. So here's to making better choices and the small tweaks in your life that amount to big changes for you and the people around you and the planet. Let's do this. This is my show, The Darren Olean Show.

Everybody, welcome to the show. Thanks for tuning in, I again, I'm stoked that you're taking the time to tune in, learn, expand, be inspired. And I just want to say, like, listen, we just had the election. I don't make political statements. I'm just not into it. I do believe in supporting what you believe is true for you. Here's the only thing I'm probably going to say about this, and that is don't give your power away to what you wanted to have happen and it didn't.

And also, don't give your power away to what you think will happen if your candidate did win. The reason I say that is it's great to be inspired and to be optimistic and or angry or upset over who won or who lost and grieved through that. And that's fine and that's necessary. And that's part of the journey. But I think the most important thing is by not giving your power in any direction, stay true to the center.

The Native Americans call this the red road. You're not way over here and you're not way over there. You're taking the red road. It's balanced. It's within yourself and within yourself and within your power. The coming together of people, the collaboration's the community, the human to human synergy and alchemy and passion and faith and prayer and conviction. That is the most important thing. So don't let your guard down. Don't get overly high. Don't get overly upset.

Find your TrueNorth, find your center within yourself deeply. And from there, find other like minded people, put your centredness, your conviction, your passion into action. Now, today, OK, that's all I'm going to say. OK, so this great gas, Jeff Garner, he's an American fashion designer. He's a regular dude from Tennessee. He's an artist. He's best known for sustainable clothing, plant based dyes on red carpets. He did this over twenty years ago.

You know why? Because it was the right thing to do. He was one of 40 artists chosen for the Smithsonian Renwick Gallery Forty Under Forty exhibition in July 2012. In twenty nineteen, he won an Emmy for his documentary on toxins in clothing and sustainable fashion called Remastered. So I will put that in the show notes. You want to check that out? It's incredible. You're going to be blown away. Jeff as a fifth generation Tennesseean and was raised on a gentlemen's horse farm outside of Nashville where nature inspired his creative soul, he graduated from Pepperdine University.

That's how we got exposed to the beauty of Malibu from Tennessee. And he worked in Stiletto Entertainment in Los Angeles, became creative directors for people like Barry Manilow, Fleetwood Mac, Donna Summer. And then he left and started driven clothing design, band of merchandise and stage clothing back in Nashville. And people really became aware early on that he was a renegade and doing his own thing. He's been in the London Fashion Week. He was inducted in the Smithsonian Museum in Tennessee.

He was Vogues top ten Oscar dress that the Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding wore at the eighty four annual Academy Awards. He also works with Suzi and James Garner on the red carpet green dress contest for the Oscars each year.

So you're going to find this incredibly fascinating and shocking, extremely shocking.

We need to look at our clothes. We need to look at the dyes. We need to acknowledge that most clothes are not beneficial for you. So I started throwing away a lot of clothes and very being very careful what kind of clothes, where they're from. And let's just pop open this incredible world that you knew nothing about. And so you're going to learn something and you're going to be aware of something and you will not be able to put that awareness back in the bottle.

So drumroll, please, super stoked for my good friend and this great conversation. Jeff Garner. There was such an interesting, eclectic background, and then I really want to talk about your point of view of literal fashion and how healthy it is, but stylish and in picking it that. But I will tell you what's your background?

Yeah, I'll do a shortened, shortened version. Um, so I grew up in Farm Horse Farm in Tennessee, just got really into nature every day riding horses like is like what farm are we going to play at. So my both my grandmothers had like organic gardens. I learned very quickly, like they like the medicine woman from my Outlander. I mean they were her I mean I just learned so much to them. And then naturally I just grown up that way.

My grandmother taught me to sew and taught me about fabrications and what things were made up and why it was important. And so my buddies were in bands back in Nashville and they're like, hey, be in our band. You got a good look alike.

Now, I don't want to live that life, but I'll dress you kind of old this 15, 14, 15, 16.

So it was just kind of there for you. Just kind of there. Yeah. When I started diving in and started printing band T-shirts or graphic T-shirts, I was like, wait a minute, this stuff's gnarly. And I see off gassing off of the. So basically they print it down on a screen and they run it through, you know, a heater and it just you can see it off gassing. The guys wear a mask like why they wear masks and just simply start asking questions, realize it's plastic Solanke they're using that keeps it gives it the staying power on the T-shirt.

And he serves the glues, formaldehyde, all the stuff. And they wait a minute, this is all wrong. So highly toxic. Why people bring in the and it obviously doesn't dissipate. It doesn't wash out of your laundry. Right. Like people think it stays on the t shirt for the life. So I went to this guy will fix that. A company, Atlanta, Georgia, and say, hey, can we have you ever tried a new ink?

Like, No, but we're willing to. So this guy was kind of a science background. So we came up with organic pigment ink for screen printing.

And this was what year? I think I was 18 at the time. So it was great because then they could offer that to all their clients across the board. And then I knew the guys at American Apparel and Alternative Apparel because I'd buy Ben T-shirts from them, say, listen, go, why don't we do this beautiful collection of organic cotton, influence it like start doing this and see what happens. And he tried it one season, compared the cells to the regular stuff and obviously the regular stuff went out and said, you know, didn't touch your margins, bigger margins, all that.

And that's that's the disconnect is like, well, it's got to make commercial sense. So I went to the guy, Greg from Atlanta, Georgia, started Alternative Apparel. It's a basic T-shirt brand as well. And they had these beautiful washers, kind of vintage look. And I went to him and said, hey, why don't you try this, this and this. And he was more open to it is like, yeah, let's do it.

And so they started like the first kind of eco collection of T-shirts in a commercial way and actually had enough margin, enough niche of a market that they kept it on and grow, grow, grow. So anyways, I said no to West Point, got my jeep, drove to California, ended up in Malibu, and it was like I felt these things aligning, you know, when you let go of your own ego and say, this is what I have to do, I just gave it a chance and said, you know, I know my vision is bigger than this.

And so I got it started going down this path. And then I got hired by Stiletto Entertainment, who they do, um, Barry Manilow, Fleetwood Mac and Donna Summer at the time, they're management. And I started doing the same thing I was doing for my band friends in Nashville with them. So it was a creative director. So design emerge stage clothing stuff.

And that's a short story, a longer story, but that's how it began. And then I jumped ship six years later after I traveled the world. Then I said, I want to do my own thing. And that's how prophetic was born. And it was the reason I picked the name, because it's deeper into the deeper roots of just being another fashion brand, selling fickle fashion. It was the idea of like you can showcase sustainable fashion in a different way and get people to think and talk about it and like why it's important.

Well, that's kind of the economy that we've got. We you know, you can you can lay that across many industries. But that's the thing. It's we're so into the modern world that we have now lost the the even the ability to question or we have the ability. We just haven't asked the question like what is on me.

That's a constant exposure causes acceptance rate. So I personally cannot if I bought a parent I bought boxers today and put them on, I would itch scratch. I would be able to where I'm like I can touch my friends T-shirts and it makes my hand itchy because I've separated from it for so long. But now we accept the fact that we get hot in our workout. Gear, and it's because it's not breathable, it's made of wick away or whatever it is called, you know, so it's very interesting how that yeah, you're right, we're just disconnected from the natural product.

Just started going off the shelves gradually, slowly, and then just disappear. My grandmother, you know, everything was in her world was natural fabrics. She wouldn't touch the other. But you have stuff like acrylic got introduced to the 1950s to that stay at home wife so she wouldn't have to wash these wool sweaters special handwash, because they naturally have to be. She introduced acrylic.

Oh, you can put this in the washing machine. I loved it, but nobody questioned what acrylic it does to the immune system. I have no idea. And again, it's a very bad culprit, but, um. But yeah, there's there's just so much. But what basically I've learned through all this is that it is an addiction. So I can sit here and talk all day long about the chemicals in it, why it's important and that would give awareness.

But you discover that people are addicted to cheap price points. And so you're saying like. Exactly. But people are still buying T-shirts for seven bucks the same price in the 70s they were buying for us. So what's happening? Well, we keep moving production, manufacturing to different parts of the world that are still beating people down, building factories down, workers down say they don't have fair wages. And then we're using synthetic, cheap, cheap, cheap fabrications, you know, and we're not changing that.

So it's like we're still at the same price point. But gas has gone up. You know, living costs has gone up, rents gone up, but not clothing because it's an addiction. We like that. Feel good thing of I got a date next week and I'm going to buy a new dress, you know, at some fast fashion company and then throw it away. The cycle is right now. It used to be about three months of a life cycle.

This is they did a study in like 2000. It was like people would keep garments for about three months in the nineteen ninety eight. It was like eight months. Right. Today it's like three days that they wear it and then toss it. Come on. No, not really. That's it. Yeah.

I went when I was teaching at Polymeric in Florence, Italy. I like walking to it's beautiful villa right by the river in Florence. I'm walking to the villa for my first day of teaching master classes in sustainability and then in the crew had just seasonal change and there was one of those recycling bins. We have one in Malibu at Chevron, but of recycling clothes. It was overflowing with winter jackets just hanging out. I mean, just overflowing our working class, I go watch.

Raise your hand if you threw a winter coat at the recycling bin outside and there was like ten hands go up. So it just shows you, like, we're not making things that you're going to, you know, where your entire life cycle and or pass it down to generation. Like, I'm still wearing stuff of my grandfather's that was passed down, you know, as big horse riders to question gear. And it was beautifully hand tailored and made and stills lasting.

It's timeless. It's timeless. Oh, yeah, it's amazing. And it has character right. Where all these trendy designers are making stuff that looked like character that washes the holes in the denim, the whitewash in the sand, blasting all this gnarly stuff to give a character like you spin in your you know, your life long time is has a lot of stories to tell and it doesn't. And that's, you know, that's what we're up against.

It's like, well, can we introduce this to consumers and have them care enough to be like, you know what? I heard what they're saying on the podcast today, and I want to make a shift that's, you know, can they break that addiction cycle? Can they save for a month and buy a pair of underwear versus nylon in my hemp underwear is twice as much as a Calvin Klein nylon. It's like forty dollar price point. But if I give it to you, you'll say, oh, Jeff, organic waistband, natural rubber will last for like, you know, I've had mine for like four years now and no issues with it.

And, um, but hemp is as strong as fiber. Again, polyester was mimicked him. So long as you know it's the as planned, it just doesn't break down. It is the like super fabric of our world. And we used to use it on us. Andrew Jackson was like, everyone should grow hemp and for fabrication purposes, not for other purposes. And and it just got taken out by other industries because it would hurt other industries out of business.

It's naturally porous in nature. So it allows your body to just you know, it constricts during the winter. So it's warmer. I mean, it just is the super fabric. Wow. And it holds dye ten times better cotton. You know, a lot of people say, what about kind of holds water, holds moisture, just the natural nature of cotton. Right. So with hemp, you wear it for riding horses every day, just doesn't hold the moisture.

So it doesn't hold smells, antibacterial antifungal. That's why it's great for boxers. You know, they're like the travel bokser. You can you know where I'm at. They're like promoting. I can you know, I won't say the name, but in a travel, you know, like company, they're promoting his boxer, but it's made of polyester sprayed with a chemical and they call it wickerwork. So naturally, probably when you drop water on it, it builds up and falls off.

Non permeable, non breathable. So obviously anything underneath it won't breathe will make you sweat more. They spray chemical on top of it so that the bit of water spreads out and it, you know, dries faster. They call it wick away so they can own it, sell it, make money off of it. Right. But it doesn't do good for us as humans. Right. So if you're an athlete and sponsored by some company, I'm not giving any names.

And you're going to your you're I don't know, your motocross or your surf expo and you have your jersey on, it's made of this and let's say fatigues, your muscles. Twenty five percent faster. Or you as an athlete would want to do this. You'd want to wear the most performance level fabrication you could. But this these studies have been done, but nobody's discussing, they're talking about it. So it's like it's really exciting to actually dig into it because because it's like that's an interesting angle.

You're containing this thing that can't breathe. And now that that thing that you're containing the body, the organs are heating up. Right. So now the heat is acting almost like a T, right. It's it's it's bringing in almost as methodically and bringing in the chemical because of heat. So now you're going to absorb more of the chemical because you're hotter.

Right. So so there's this other other side. And the more I'm digging into these this chemical exposure, the more there's the FDA, EPA, USDA are so under they're not even testing some of the stuff. Right. So most of it they're not testing, but then they throw out an article saying this is kind of dangerous and yet it's still in the in the atmosphere and in our environment. Oh, yeah. And so the proliferation, I don't think we even know one percent of all of these exposures, all of the clothes were wearing all the time from everything, all the time for a lifetime and women and underneath our armpits and lymphatic in like.

Whoa, oh yeah. Oh yeah.

That's why the discoloration when you run. So you're looking at Mindiola mixed in with the chemical dyes. I mean, it's been in our face the whole time, but we don't, like you said, nobody's going to pay for these studies. And, you know, there have been I do have like 16 published cases, but this is like from scientists studying, like does our body does our skin soak and the chemicals? The answer's yes. And then they found out what percentage and then you could share those.

I can put it in the footnotes. Yes, exactly. And it's not just some theory that come up with but you find it spread out and it's through the years. And actually, my buddy try to Amberg, he's going to the foundation. They're going to help me fund the research project for 2020 just to get a new updated version of that. Like just simply, hey, give me your T-shirt and take it to the lab independent lab and see what's inside of it.

And then, you know, and figure that out because you just want to give back the power of choice. Right? I think you say that, too. It's just the consumer. If they believe this or if they don't, they need to know, like in your food, you know, this isn't doesn't have organic greetings. Okay, cool. Your choice to buy it or not. But we have no idea what's in our clothes. And I could sit here and make a new pair of denim.

I don't do them, but I could do and I cut it out my pattern and take my pattern and cut it out and access fabric. I have to discard as toxic waste. But I can legally or I get fined, but I can give it, I can go back.

It was all done so for years, maybe all most of my life people have been asking me what kind of foods you eat, what kind of exercises do you do, what kind of water should I drink, all of these things and so much more we put into a 21 day program so that can take you through a theme every day of knowledge, action, and then eating this delicious meals, working out, getting support, anchoring in these new habits.

So you can do what? So that you can kick ass. So you have the energy, the vitality to live the kind of life that you really want. That's what it's all about. So all in this app, we have grocery lists, we have education about real hydration and what greater oxygenation and the balance of organization. All of these things we are diving into as you're heading down this hero's journey of implementation into a new life to give you the kind of life that you actually want.

So join my tribe. All you have to do is go to one to one tribe, Balkam, sign up and you get three free days. Join me on this hero's journey. Join the tribe. I want to make sure everyone just heard that, yeah, you if you work with denim. Yes. And you when you completed your fabrication and product legally, I'm supposed to discard it in the toxic waste.

I cannot just throw it in the trash because it has synthetic denim. I mean, it's synthetic. It's synthetic indigo. Right. That is in the denim. They dipti that so many times and also the formaldehyde, it's heavy metals. So it doesn't break down or but everyone thinks is cotton. So it's natural, but it's the dye. And think about taking a beautiful wood wall and you paint toxic paint on top, but it's no longer a natural wood wall.

Right.

So they they manipulate the view by saying, hey, it's organic cotton. But they haven't told the rest of the story in the rest of the story as they've spent a lot of time toxifying and dipping that and incredibly immune suppressing hormone, manipulating cancer, causing kidney disrupting chemicals. Yeah. And my mind just got blown. Ladies and gentlemen, the fact that you have to discard it as a toxic material tells the entire frickin story is messed up.

Well, that is the complete. Craziness. But I could sell it to give it to you, put it on the shelf in a store, but there's no labeling, it says this may this may contain that. It added, you know, this could affect your health. Like there's no warning label, no nothing. And that's the scary part. So you have to leave it up to consumers, have their own education about it, which is why you have this platform.

I have my platform to try to bring some sort of balance to the equation because it's not out there. I mean, so many people live and Dinham, especially yoga pants. So obviously, guys, we both live in Malibu and it's a beautiful spot and nature driven and everyone's super active. And so we have this place called Sunlife and a lot of these young girls hang out there that that have like, you know, that are super healthy and they go to work every day and they drink these, you know, beautiful smoothies.

And I Sibel's, you know, and but then if you notice and you look close, they have little bumps on their back and on their neck and you can ask them about it and it's it's Tedi's the name of the chemical and it's a hormone disruptor to them, but it's a hormone disruptor. So what they're doing, they're living, they're going to yoga and then off gassing like the heat buildup you just talked about, they're living in it all day long.

And so there's this and this is this is well beyond bright.

This is this is a lot of women live in their yoga pants and we have full sun most of the time in Malibu. So the sun is a synergy of fact that it creates the Afghanistan as well. So you're having it go straight and just straight into their skin, obviously. And these young girls are very sensitive to endocrine hormone disruptors. And that's exactly what this is, especially those black ones that are heavily dyed. And it's the spandex. It's in the spandex, which was created by Dupont in 1953.

But anyways, that I can tell you are the chemical names. It's made of it, but I don't want to, but that's simply what it is. And so I go in yoga class upstairs. We're used to before covid, but I used to go upstairs the other class and I asked the teacher to open the windows because I could not breathe. I was that sensitive to it. Um, it looks great, you know, makes you feel like you're like you're working out, you're in shape.

I get why people are emotionally attached to wearing this tight leg and stuff, but it's not good for you. Like back when I started yoga and, you know, in the late eighties, like we're wearing, you know, like I'm wearing the baggy pants. And it was kind of hippie, but it allowed you to have flexibility without the stretch. Right. And it's a different day now. And so now these girls are wondering why what's happening with them, why later in life they're having issues, having babies, et cetera, et cetera.

And it is there is a synergy of connection. You can't sit there. It's called bioaccumulation. You can't sit there and say this causes this. I want to be very clear here. So where you can say is that we are bad cumulation levels, depending on our body, make up our health or DNA structure where we're where we're living, in our environment, etc.. But you don't want to tip it over. So adding these clothes on an everyday level, it's going to eventually tip over your jar.

Well, this is and this is, again, what we were hinting at before the you start out, OK, you're in the yoga pants all day, but then you go into your car and there's this type of plastic. And literally the technical term is car fluff. It's one of the gnarliest.

Plus, I've heard that I talk about the fabrication in the seats and it off gases. The reason why people get lung cancer without ever smoking, because our car heats up and creates a cloud, you open the door and it goes straight into your lungs. It's a formaldehyde in the in the in the seats because they spray it too, because they want don't want anything soaking in. It's like, oh it's a..

You can put your dog in whatever it's like. It's basically so that's the plastics and all that stuff is the type of incredibly toxic.

And then the car fluff is similar to that of a tire.

It is so toxic if. Yeah. So, so the toxic exposure of car, car tires and car flops, they can't even recycle. They don't have the technology to be able to even break that down because there's so many chemicals involved that there's no safe way. So anyway, so we're going back to we're in these environments. We're in our homes. We're like, this was made here. And the couch was sitting on was specifically made in Malibu.

That was like they didn't have one that wasn't clean without chemicals and organics. So I told them, well, I'm not buying a couch. So, like, OK, let's do some more. And so some some guys in Malibu made it for me. So so it's like we have to do that because we also have to put pressure on the big boys so that it can scale. Yeah. And I think it's happening and we're cut. This is turning into a big fatele convenience.

So sorry, not beautiful, but and I want to get back to the fashion because I. Don't know enough about it. Sure, and I know without a doubt that the little that little bit that I have just it's just unregulated chemical like it's so it's like on us all the time. Yeah, it's with us all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And again, the skin's the organ.

Yeah. I mean we're naturally designed to be naked, you know, should be nude and so we're clothing with stuff that's you know, it's good. We're obviously going to be affected by it. But, you know, it's interesting. So everyone asks, well, what can we do, Jeff, because they hear me talk. And I was like, well, you know, you can just turn off your labels and look what's in it. But here's the other thing you'll you'll appreciate.

If I made your T-shirt wearer. Now, I can basically. I can put any type of fabrication listed on it. Nobody is going to regulate me. I can sell your T-shirts and harassing him and it's maybe a 50 50. There's no regulation.

It's the weirdest thing I've ever like. I can just make up something. So sometimes I'll get friends sweaters like, oh, no, this is cashmere. I'm like, uh, it's a mix. And they're like, no, no, no, I bought it. This is like 200 bucks that I was 100 percent kasman. So.

So there's a need there, right? There's an issue there. But so you can flip over your tags and obviously you can choose like I've been looking just for fun when I never shop, I make my own stuff. But when I go in stores I like, hey, what kind of socks you have. And they show me and like do you have anything that's natural without acrylic. And we go and look and look and it's all polyester acrylic mixed, you know, and it's just it's just intriguing for me to try to find natural product in the modern day retail stores.

I'm not going to say the name brand name, but if you wash in a and this this detergent that your mom washed with, you know, let's call it red, for example, um, then naturally you're going to wash your clothes when you get out on your own and reputation and association. But these these companies get away with listing what chemical ingredients are in it because it's their you know, it's what makes their product unique, so protected in a patent so they don't have to disclose it.

But it is the chemical makeup that creates anything that has a stain power with smell. Just note, it's going to be something gnarly, something you just don't want on your skin, and so eventually, so that addiction cycle continues and that's how they keep their target market and keep everyone. But it's the easiest thing in change so they can go to Whole Foods. Seven generation is a great brand that for a detergent that is clean and free of that, you know, that's dyes and and there's, you know, the smells.

But, yeah, you know, just think of that. So not only the clothes that we're talking about are full of chemicals. Now you're bathing it in, quote unquote, washing it in more chemicals. Right.

And that's run into streams, etc.. And then there's a little polymers break off the polyester and our washing machines and or, you know, our water systems here are not designed to capture those. So they're talking about it. You probably seen Argo's or the nano particles and the stuff. They open up fish and it's in there. Well, that's how they get through. They get through all our filters because they're not designed to catch things that small. But that's what's happening.

So, I mean, I live on the Beach County and like, you know, I have a hippie neighbor and he kind of got stuck with polyester because in the 70s, that's what they were. And his little machine is now backed up. The pipes are backed up from all those little polymers and broke off. He can even use his laundry machine, you know, just shows you like it does accumulate, accumulate, and then it doesn't break down.

Right. And that's sort of the microcosm, if it's the macro to it's like if we change these habits, number one, we're not going to toxify our body anymore or start to minimize that. Yeah. And at the same time, we're having it immediate impact on the ecosystem.

Oh, yeah. So we yeah. We need to make those connections. And instead of waiting for this to just slap us in the face, why do we have cancer? Why do I have breast cancer? Why do I have colon prostate? Why do I have these weird bumps on my back? Why I have psoriasis. Why, why? Why. Why the dermatitis. Yeah, exactly. And it could be just this massive accumulation of toxins. And yet at the same time, we're spending so much energy and money on the perfect supplement, the perfect way to eat.

But if you don't minimize the chemical ised life style and what you're ingesting and sucking in and breathing in, and then, you know, it's your body, it's like, you know, taking the said superfood is like showing up to a forest fire with a squirt gun. Yeah. You know, and that's why this is like a superfood. We need to take off the chemicals and put on these beautiful clothes. So let's let's. Yes.

Part of that plant based lifestyle you're promoting, you know, you're encouraging. And I always call it like it's like you go to the gym and you're like smoking in the gym and working out like when you wear these clothes is like it doesn't make sense, but, uh, so yeah. So I, you know, obviously I talk about it, I speak about it, encourage people and and try to bring that awareness to what I've done is created a couture sustainable collection called Prophetic.

And so I've been doing about 18 years now. So I tore it around. I worked with U.S. embassies a lot in other countries, like I had one in midair. I used Madeira Lace that used to be on these beautiful tablecloths and I turned it in the gowns. Right. And kept showing them like, you can do things differently now because was having a sit down there. Well, now we're having more sit down dinners. But before my grandmother had one of these beautiful tablecloths.

But we don't collect those, you know, and it's a lot of hand detail. These women make it in villages and it's beautiful. But so I've been doing projects like that to bringing the idea of local craftsmanship. Again, it's made of natural organic cotton and linen and their hand doing the embroidery. I mean, I try to do these projects around the world to bring in showcase, hey, we can do things differently. We just did Scotland, where we had the land and they have these old linen factories are still making over there.

They're also making lace as well. So I did a show at Edinburgh Castle as Mary Queen of Scots collection, you know, so there are some theatrics to it, but ideas as high and couture and people are attracted to that. So it's kind of my platform to say, hey, this was just die with Indigo or this was die with Miracle Flower. And then like, really? And then they see it on, you know, the best is when Giselle or some gown for we had we went to the Rainforest Alliance, gather together in New York and she wore this beautiful Indigo Marigold dyed gown made of him.

And the whole headlines were like just hours him. It was great. But it looked you if you saw it, you'd be like this, this is it. And there's no way it was a hemp silk blend. So it just hung well and had luminosity and as you know, plant based dyes industry differently. They read differently in the light because they're made of light. Right. And the whole crew and all that stuff. So I like synthetics are just a flat color.

So other than the art form, you know, it's just it's always been kind of a callus to present change the idea of change. And so, yes, I just got back from London Fashion Week two weeks ago, believe it or not, we did our catwalk, which everyone wanted us to do. I think Burberry and a couple others did a live catwalk. Everyone else was doing digital. But I felt it was it was a need, you know, to kind of say, hey, we need to move before we did everything properly and everything was done and the right guidelines.

But but I did a Mad Hatter collection, and then there was a company called Thomas Incur that makes these beautiful plates and that are all made of fine bone china. And again, we don't do we collect those nowadays? We pass them down generation to generation. Well, it's old tradition crafts are dying out. And so I did a design for them. And then we had the dinner table sat in account down the middle of it was kind of cool with these beautiful Polynesian beautiful handmade fabrics.

So it's about this art infusion being a bridge to say, hey, we can do things differently, we can keep these traditions alive, we can keep these crafts available locally. I mean, you know, like we used the yellow tones. I die with eucalyptus trees from my body has a place, you know, here in Malibu. We just pull this off his tree and like, so if you look around, there's more that we can do, you know, and, you know, that inspires.

And it's that time to go back home to, like, create, I think. And the nature is the inspiration. And it's it's the inspiration of even all the way down to people wanting to synthesize and make drugs out of like. Yes. Like and the colors and the symphony. And, you know, it's it's and it just you know, if I were a fashion guy, it would be exactly the same way that you went about it.

Many of you who follow me know I've spent most of my life searching for the healthiest foods on the planet. If you look hard enough, there are a few unknown, extraordinary foods around the world that people still don't know about. And a few years ago, I came across my favorite superfood discovery of all time verrucas nuts. When I first tasted them, my eyes lit up. The taste alone just absolutely blew me away. But after sending them to the lab, which I do and getting all the tests, I realized they're the healthiest nuts on the planet like no other nut even compares.

They have like an unusually high amount of fiber and they're off the charts in super high antioxidants and have fewer calories than any other nut. Like it's jam packed with micronutrients. But they're not just good for you. They're really good for the planet. Most other nuts require millions of gallons of irrigated water. But Maruca trees require no artificial irrigation. Burqas are truly good for you, good for the planet. And good for the world community. It's a win all the way around.

I really think you'll love them. So I'm giving all of my listeners 15 percent off by going to Barracas Dotcom backslash, Daryn. That's B A, are you K.S. Dotcom backslash, Daryn. D, A, R I and I know you will enjoy. The thing I love about your story is like you did, you started this way, so the years and years and years, what, three decades plus about 18 years since I was kind of the weird guy and.

Yeah, but also, you've always had this very high end platform that you I mean, aside from the rock and roll thing, it's still actually a very high end platform, just a different way. But then you took it. So I want to hear like, what's your vision for? Your company, sure. Yeah, and then and then I want to kind of break it down to a normal after that, I don't want to break it down into a normal like what people can do.

You say, OK.

So I say it every season, every time after two o'clock. Like, I think that was my last show. I think, you know, and I say that because, you know, 18 years of it beating your head against the door and then but now people are finally listening and respecting, like our show in London, not I'm not trying to self promote, but we were on the front cover the Times that says something like sustainable fashion is on the front cover.

London time. Well, OK, cool. That's a great you know, that's my graduate. So I feel like I'm kind of flying a flag for sustainable fashion at this point. So I cannot put the banner down just yet until real shift and change happens. And, you know, there's Green Screen America really advocates about trying to go after some of the majors and get them the detox cycle detox campaign. And that's good. But until that consumerism shift happens, I feel like I had to continue going and continue doing these kind of projects and showcasing.

So, you know, that's kind of my my cross to bear, so to speak, which was just fine. I can handle that. But, um, I just kind of launched an intimate collection that is wearable. So the tangible ness of it, I don't think I was doing a good job with early on. I had like 70 stores had like a store inside Fred Siegel here. And I was really doing more wearable pieces after the catwalk couture show.

And but it was just to a point where it's too much to handle. And I was losing sight of the vision, so I narrowed it down. So now I'm just like, what's the closest thing to our bodies? Well, Entenmann's and I lost my mom November last November to breast cancer. And that was a callus say, OK, now it's time. Jeff, you've been doing these other bigger things. Great. Let's get this on people, because we don't want another mom, another, you know, dad, another guy, you know, to get prostate cancer.

So it's like Elisse bring the alternative to mainstream. And so that's what I'm doing. And hopefully encouraging. I hope everyone copies and tries to do it, too, because then we shifted it. Right. And until then, I'm just doing a boxer. That's kind of a high price point. And people are like, that's cool. But you're doing, you know, doing now. Yeah, but it's funny. Like when I talk about yeah.

I talk about this subject matter a lot and this is a whole nother segment. But I you know, I always call it the bra lick test. And this really connects with people as well as say it now because, you know, I say I start off saying, hey, I'm a Southern gentleman, forgive me, but gentleman and or ladies, if you take off the bra of your girlfriend and you start kissing her breasts and it tastes like an envelope you just licked at the post office, that's it from the high.

That's the glue. That's the staying power that's in the dyes and then the bra and every single person.

Oh, my God. Recognizes that. They're like, wow.

And then the girls are like, really? And the guys are like, I know exactly what you're talking about. And, you know, you could say, oh, it's it's sweaty and it's not sweat. It's because of the gas. It's been you know, it's it's on your mammary glands. It's actually on your lymphatic coracle. Yeah. All the time. Because as you know, you know, the breasts hold. They have a lot of fat tissue and that holds the toxins in.

So if it's not allowed Xscape to leave, if your lymphatic system I mean, you get you sweat off like a what, a pound a day or something of toxins or if it's not allowed to leave and not to mention it, you know, bras are very tight fitting. So unifying system works like a clock. You don't have to wind up. It works on movement. So it's not moving things out like it should because it's constricted. But there's, again, tons of studies I can sing or study.

I can give you all these details. But it's something for women to think about. Like there is a correlation here and we need to look at that and say, OK, well, and the same with the men and the prostate. It's the same deal. So anyways, long story short, that's why I dove into this. The idea is like, wow, there's just I know too much. I got it. I got to do this.

Anyways, that's that's the vision right now. Yeah, well, that's that's a similar like it's like you can't stop. Right. And so you want to deliver like I want to give this to people. I mean at the end of the day, if we didn't have to be sustainable, I'd just give this all this stuff away. Yeah. Formulas away. I'd give superfoods away. But of course there's a sustainable side to that. Yeah. We have to make money on that stuff.

But the passion in the heart led mission is there. Yeah. What how do you suggest people move forward. I mean I know you can't necessarily maybe you can, I don't know, reifel off the companies to look at or support or whatever. But, but how does one now look at their.

They just heard this episode. Sure. And they're like, oh my God. Everything everything in my closet potentially is a is a toxic. He that I'm now put bathing in. Right, right, um, yes, I get different reactions, so my friends go home and literally clean out the wardrobe and start afresh, but they may have the means to do so and they're not so constrictive. But, you know, it's funny. I always joke like, you know what?

Dad makes your teenage daughter her first training bra. Like, I made her training pro and bellows like that. Oh, your daughter? Yeah, my daughter. I was like, yeah, but even then she was like, it wasn't cool with her friends set so she can shift and change. Right. So, you know, so obviously I'm talking to an older audience to say, yeah, you can when you go home, you can check what's natural, what's not natural, probably 10 percent maybe natural in your closet, probably.

Maybe we hope. Um, but then just making educated, like, strategy purchases, you know, like if winter's coming on, you want that nice will cope. But the problem is, will cause they're like lined with acetate, which is an unbreathable, you know, impermeable. So you want something lined with silk, but this is stuff you would naturally know.

So, you know, the easiest thing I would say is Interments and Cheat's Shiho six, eight hours a night. Right. You're supposed to that's when you're switched off gases, chemicals of your polyester sheets. And it's not happening. So I make my own sheets, you know, eventually hopefully I can add that to the list that we're going to manufacture. But there are companies out of Europe, you know, you can get online that do organic cotton or bamboo's OK.

It's not the best solution, but chemicals. Yeah, exactly. And so I was an advocate for either organic cotton or hemp. Hemp is going to be better because organic cotton, again, will hold and the moisture so you can find hemp shoots online, um, you can find natural cotton undies right now online. You know, I'm doing they have boxes for men, but there are solutions out there. They have to be more thorough in your research.

And those are good. Those are two good things to start with. Yeah, sure. You're laying in your bed for a minimum of eight hours. And so change your sheets, everyone. Yeah, people don't change them enough anyway, so changes she with help. You wouldn't have to wash them as much either. There you go. There you go. And those of you like also mattresses right off gassing of mattresses. Yeah. This is a it's a big deal.

We got a couple of companies in California that make natural, you know, rubber patches. Yeah.

And then, uh, your underwear. Yeah. Um, anything else in terms of next.

Yeah. I mean we said earlier the detergents are key, but like little things like crack your windows, your car, like because you want that off gassing to leave your car and take it in your lungs, you know, because we all have the plastic and the formaldehyde in the seats, you know, so the little life changes you could make, you know. Um, but yeah, I mean, the next take your clothes off as much as you can.

Well that's it. You can sleep sleep noon ideally. Yeah. In your new sheets. And that's, that's great. Um but yeah. And definitely ladies don't wear your bras at home you know, um because you know that constriction. Yeah. Um but yeah. And I have to make I go to the point I make myself board shorts out of silk.

Come on now I'm serious because think about you're out in the beach. UV rays hit. I'm not wearing that nylon. No way. Not frying my my kids. Yeah. So I take it to a purist level, but that's the idea that I introduced them. Surfrider Foundation, the guys we can do these if and get the word out, you know, how do we scale that. Well that's it. You know, and the beauty is I've served Facer for me when I'm in Malawi, I serve two to three times a day because I live on the water.

Right. So I'm in and off, in and out of these poachers. They last roughly about a year. And then the silk naturally starts by degrading what you want. It's I cut off the snaps on them and I make a new pair. Right. And that's that's how I wish it could be done, is that we only have one pair and I wear through them and then I replace them with the new and that old kind of thinking would be a nice way to move forward, I think is like just have what you need and, you know, a this crisis, I think people are more.

Open to that. Yeah, and that's a great way of moving forward, that's not overwhelming. So I think through everything that you wear, so your yoga pant, OK, there are some alternative options already on the market. You know, I've talked to a company out of Europe called. Have you heard of Temel? Mm hmm. So they're a organic, mostly cotton. But literally you can get T-shirts and you can when you're done, send them back and they will absolutely recycle those shirts and kick out other shirts.

Amazing. So on a big level. So I'm talking to them on several levels to help support because they work with the World Wildlife Federation and watch all these other.

That's a great program. You know, there's yeah, there's been you know, there's a big things, you know, talk on this really quickly. There's what they call in the fashion world like this, you know, circular economy. Yeah. And me speak on it really quickly. But that was created for these bigger companies, keep doing what they're doing and keep using polyester, which is basically plastic as we know, so they can keep it. And it still feels good because we're going to recycle it.

We're going to keep it. And the reality is you cannot break down like. So if I took your T-shirt and it was a polyester, what I had to know exactly the percentage of polyester and what the other fabrics were in order to separate it and actually break it down to where it needed to be to respin it into a polyester yarn to reuse it. Nobody's taken the time to do that. Think about it.

They're just landfilling with this recycled polyester. They're not taken into the recycling programs. Like you said earlier, 10 percent is actually being recycled. The same probably a big stretch to it's the same gimmick going on in that circular economy idea. But it's like a hybrid. Instead of doing the Tesla electric car, it's like a patch to say we are thinking about this thing. Watch it's green screen once we get rid of polyester all together and nylon, I mean, we need it.

It's a new it's a new platform.

I'm going to talk on to something I was hesitant about mentioning, but it is actually you can find it, you can Google it and find it. But basically, Victoria's Secrets were sued by six hundred women saying that the bras caused them to break out and rash and there was a linkage with breast cancer. So you can view it. Obviously, it was you know, it's a public information. Yeah. And that's the and that's only six hundred women who had the courage.

Yeah. To do it. Yeah.

And it got settled out of court. Obviously, when you go up against a company of that nature, obviously they have the money and the PR to to handle it. But what they ended up saying in the press was that it was the wire in the brawls that caused. The reaction, so there's some truth to a wire as a conduit, you know, of radiation, electromagnetic. Exactly. You know, change for sure. So there could be that.

So but it was done in such a way that they can easily replace it with plastic, still have the constricted bra, you know, and that support system, and basically have to change the way in which they manufacture. But they don't talk about the fabrications, the dyes, the toxins in that and again, address that issue because they would have to change their entire manufacturing process, source new fabrications, figure out how to do these dyes that are not as intensive as what they're using, um, which they are on the marketplace, by the way.

And so therefore, they just did basically what I consider a cover up so they wouldn't have to amass the real reason. So they wouldn't have to, um, you know, change because it would potentially put them out of business or at least hurt their business. So in the bra, that's would not be 15 dollars anymore and they would be more. So, you know, there's been you can read it also lately, Delta Airlines, they were two women came out and there were stewardess and said that they were out and rush with the new uniforms that were designed by a fashion designer called Zac Posen.

Well, he in turn sued his manufacturers, saying it was their fault because they, you know, put the chemicals in the uniforms or whatever. But essentially these uniforms are made of polyester because you want to iron them and they look good. But again, no breathability. And their purple color, well, that dye is very intensive and Paramatta and heavy metals as well. So, you know, you could see the correlation there. But then any designer knows what's in his fabrics.

We know we know what our stuff's made of. So, you know, there's there's a higher ethical issue here of like, OK, well, is probably good for business, but what are you doing to the people wearing it? And these people are in high altitudes on a plane already, distress under stress. And so. Yeah, and I don't know how that case settled out or what happened to it, but I imagine I haven't heard about it much anymore.

Um, but it's not the first time there's more and more cases of this, but they get buried under because as a designer, there's no way I can make something that I knew could potentially hurt a human body and or environment. It just would not be OK. And my mindset. So there's that. Yeah, that that commercial driven, you know, ethical dilemma where they look the other way and or ignore it because it's for profit. And we got unfortunately, we're in that society today and we need to, you know, shift it.

Dude, this was amazing. Amazing. And I think I'm saying start off. I want to help.

I want to help in any way I can.

And this it's just it's in my it's in my blood. And I don't want any more toxins in my blood. I can see action in my blood. So, yeah, I really am stoked for what you're doing. And, um. And yeah. Let's. Let's keep pushing this thing on. I want to help scale this, whatever that looks like. Yeah, well, let's get you some so-called shorts.

Yeah, perfect. Thank you, brother. Awesome. Thanks. What a fantastic episode.

So tell me, what is one thing you got out of today's conversation? If this episode struck a chord with you and you want to dive a little deeper into my other conversations with incredible guests, you can head over to my website, Derrinallum Dotcom, for more episodes and in-depth articles. Keep diving, my friends. Keep diving. This episode is produced by my team at Must Amplify, an audio marketing company that specializes in giving a voice to a brand and making sure the right people hear it.

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