The Golden Glue

A podcast applying the lens of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden repair, to the broken business of fashion.

Disconnected on so many levels, the fashion industry is on an ever-faster, ever-cheaper merry-go-round of overproduction and waste: polluting the planet with toxic chemicals and plastic fibers, paying poverty wages, and taking little to no responsibility for the impacts on distant communities and ecosystems.

Value is extracted along the value chains by the big and powerful, while the risk is pushed back down the value chain onto those with the least power and ability to shoulder the burden.

For the majority involved, the system is broken and disconnected.

Traditionally, Kintsugi involves repairing broken pottery with golden glue, but it’s also a beautiful metaphor for healing. When we see our broken world through the lens of the Golden Glue, it is where we are broken and cracked that there is the most potential for creativity, beauty, value-creation, and regeneration. Things may not go back together exactly as before—something entirely new and beautiful can be created from the shards of the old.

So what is the Golden Glue?

That’s what this podcast intends to discover. Each episode we will talk to changemakers and status-quo-rejectors who have created value, beauty, resilience, and joy through unexpected collaborations, unlikely partnerships, and unique relationships. What makes the relationships and connections valuable may differ depending on the context, but perhaps, weaving together the common threads will help us realize our potential to connect with a little golden Glue.

Business doesn’t have to be “just business”—another way is not only possible, it’s already here.

Join us as we seek the Golden Glue.