Sarah Ratty FRSA: How Craft and Creative Leadership Turn Sustainability into Action
The fashion and textiles sector accounts for between 2% and 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. It also consumes an estimated 215 trillion liters of water each year and contributes 9% of the microplastic pollution reaching the world’s oceans.
In the UK, WRAP’s Textiles Market Situation Report 2024 found that 1.42 million tons of new textile products were bought in 2022, while 1.45 million tonnes of used textiles were generated. An estimated 711,000 tonnes were discarded through general waste streams rather than being reused or recycled.
Sarah Ratty FRSA is a sustainable fashion designer, eco-innovator and the Founder of Conscious Earthwear and Ciel. She helped shape the Global Organic Textile Standard through her work with the Soil Association and co-founded the Ethical Fashion Forum. Her work has been exhibited at the V&A, while her collections have appeared at London and Paris Fashion Week.
In this exclusive interview with the Female Motivational Speakers Agency, Sarah explains what organizations can learn from craft-based systems and what surviving a serious road traffic accident taught her about resilience and transformation.
Question 1: What can organizational leaders learn from design and craft-based systems about closing the gap between strategic intent and practical action?
Sarah Ratty: “Craft teaches us something incredibly important: intention must pass through our hands. In craft-based systems, there’s a direct feedback loop between ideas, materials, labor and consequence. You feel when something is wrong, you slow down and you adjust.
“Organizations often operate far away from consequence. Design thinking, when informed by craft, helps us reconnect intention to action by making systems tangible, visible and accountable.
“Craft isn’t nostalgia. That’s something that we think is just in the past. It’s a systems intelligence.
“I remember when I did a project with Dr. Martins and we were thinking, “How are we going to make a sustainable shoe?” We realized it was a bit like a recipe. We had to find the different things and put them together. That’s how it worked.
“But we also started to think, “We’re not just putting the components together. We’re also thinking about the logistics. How can we put these things together in the right way?”
“We’ve got the logistics problem, which is, “I’ve got to get this piece of rubber from this place, but I’ve got to get this thing from here.” Then we’ve created a big problem.
“When we look at shine, one of the biggest problems is that it’s on demand to the consumer and it’s an instant drop. Who’s paying the price? It’s always coming by air, and that’s causing enormous amounts of problems with the ozone.
“We have to think about how we can do vertical production and keep it all in one place. With the advancements of technology, we work together hand in hand with AI and digital printing. We can send a file, we can get it printed, it can become there and rapid pro, and this can happen in situ.
“This is how we have to start thinking in a different way. That’s where my work differs, in that I like to think of all the things and encompass them all together.
“I’m not someone who’s afraid of technology. I embrace technology. I always have done. I think that’s part of being a designer and part of design systems and design thinking: we are at the forefront, pushing the conversation and making positive change.
“That’s what designers’ roles are. When you design, it doesn’t have to be product-based. It can be incorporated into systems thinking as well. That’s the exciting area.
“Life is not black and white. We’ve got the grey area in the middle. That’s where the magic happens, because that’s the opportunity and that’s alchemy. It’s quite exciting.”
Question 2: How can creative leadership, informed by fashion and culture, move corporate sustainability beyond metrics and compliance towards meaningful systemic change?
Sarah Ratty: “Metrics matter, but they don’t inspire transformation.
“Creative leadership means bringing back into sustainability. It means: what story are we telling? What values are we embodying? What future are we rehearsing through our decisions?
“Fashion and culture remind businesses that sustainability isn’t just about doing less harm. It’s about imagining better ways of living. That’s why fashion is so contagious, because we go, “Oh, that’s new.” But we can’t just chase new unless we reduce.
“If we reduce our production and capacity and say, “That 30% that gets overproduced, we’re not going to do that anymore,” that one change and the right action would have a huge knock-on effect throughout the supply chain. Then we don’t have people working in factories in terrible situations.
“There was an Oxfam report a few years back saying that women were working and weren’t allowed to take toilet breaks. They were sitting there in nappies making clothes.
“This is an insane situation.
“This is something unique to this period of time in our civilization. This is a civilization pivot, and we need to understand that it’s up to us to design a better system.
“The factory was being squeezed, and they were saying, “We want higher volume, but we want it for a lower price.” Who’s paying? The workers are paying.
“If we were to say, “We actually don’t need that 30%,” that 30% wouldn’t go to Agra, where they’re pulling textiles out of the beach, or into a mountain of textile waste in Chile.
“This has only happened in the last 20 years. This was not historically part of the system of humanity. It’s never happened before. It’s time for us to stop, address it and change. That’s what we have to do.
“We have to change and make sure we’re reactive, proactive and aware that our design choices and buying choices are creating this system and culture.
“People working for a large company should be able to put their hand up and say, “How about we do this better? How about we work with the factory?”
“The factory says, “I don’t really want to produce this amount, but I also need to pay my workers and I need to survive.”
“We need to think all the way through the system. How can we make the change? How can we make it better for everybody?
“That ties back into the theory of the leisure age and the new renaissance. What if people were allowed to have time? What if they weren’t enslaved to the system?
“That’s a huge new opportunity for creativity, artistic process, health, wellness and well-being, all designed in tandem. I think this is really exciting. That’s the opportunity for the world that we are birthing in this new age.”
Question 3: When you speak to organizational leaders, what change in mindset or action do you most want to inspire?
Sarah Ratty: “What I would really like is to inspire hope: hope for a generation, hope for the future and hope for your organization.
“I want to help people understand that their light bulb moments while I’m talking, their moments are important, and that they can join this journey of transformation.
“One of the things that perhaps not a lot of people know about me is that I’m a survivor of a road traffic accident in 1999. I was in South Africa. I broke my back, my leg, my arm and my shoulder. I was at the peak of my career, and I thought that was it.
“But I was very pragmatic. I remember saying, “People break their legs all the time skiing. I’ll be all right.” It took me five years to recover. I was disabled.
“It gave me a different view, but I was always on the path of transformation and change. I thought, “What can I do now?”
“That’s when I got involved with the Soil Association, the Ethical Fashion Forum and the Pesticide Action Network. I thought, “I’ve got all this experience. How can I transform from the inside? I can give design knowledge. I can give my fashion background. I can give connections, and I can make positive change happen.”
“I saw this thing the other day: “Turn lemons into lemonade.” He said, “Don’t just turn it into lemonade. Get the tequila and the salt.” Let’s have fun with it as well.
“Building resilience, the bounce back, all of that. As someone who has had an incredible journey, I’ve had an incredible design journey and an incredible life. I’ve been very blessed to meet loads of amazing people, but I feel that I really want to help people transform.
“I hope that’s what I do with my speeches. I hope that I help people believe they’re important and think about how they can make change in their organization. I’m just one of eight billion people.
“But if all of these people come together and we all make positive change, we get to live in a world which is a paradise earth. We’re so lucky. There are so many beautiful parts of it: mountains, rivers, lakes, streams, diving and seeing all the beautiful fish.
“But we need to take the right action. We must stop things where they’re not working. We have to have the confidence and courage to do that. I hope that I inspire leaders to do that.”
This exclusive interview with Sarah Ratty was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.
