Chronicling how she transformed Harvey Nichols from a fusty, old-fashioned store to a thriving, cutting-edge fashion brand, this entertaining and insightful book is suffused with the heady glamour and excess of 90s Cool Britannia.

Mary takes us behind the shop window - to the people who kept the show on the road and the early lessons that shaped her career. Told with her trademark wit, grit and candour, readers will see first-hand how, armed only with the blank canvas of a shop window and her own creativity, Mary created an era-defining global brand destination.

About the Author

Mary Portas is a businesswoman, broadcaster, author and activist. She has published four books: Windows: The Art of Retail Display, Shop Girl, Work Like A Woman and Rebuild. At age 32 she became a board member at Harvey Nichols before founding her own retail consultancy. Mary has since worked with some of the biggest names in global retail. Her BBC series Mary Queen of Shops premiered in 2007 and she has presented on television and radio ever since. In 2009, she partnered with Save The Children to reinvent charity shops. She also conducted a review of the future for high streets for the British government in 2011. As co-chair of the Better Business Act, Mary heads a coalition of businesses calling for a change in the law to ensure UK companies align their interests with those of wider society and the environment. In 2024 she was awarded an OBE for her services to business, broadcasting and charity.

If plants have shaped fashion’s past, couldn’t they hold the secret to its future? Vivid, celebratory, impassioned and angry, The Nature of Fashion is an epic sweep through the history of how we learned to create clothing with plants, revealing how textiles have transformed the human world and our natural landscape.

More than just a story about plant-based fashion, The Nature of Fashion chronicles the plant stewards, obsessives, innovators and profiteers who have shaped what we wear. It is about the clash of worlds, voracious exploitation and silenced voices; about devotion, passion, blindness, idealism, greed and how clothing has separated us from nature.

Told through intimate vignettes into this past, each person, people group, plant and place is a thread in the fabric of the book, forging connections across place and time. And like weaving, as the story strands weave in and out, the pattern slowly emerges.

As the centuries unfold, we meet plants from every continent and understand the human stories of origin, culture and community. We see people and countries interact through trade, conflict, human and land exploitation and the age-old struggle for riches and power.

The stories of yesterday find their echoes in today. In every culture and every place, each plant is part of an ecosystem, and we see how the choices we once made shape landscapes and economies today. Amidst human folly shine strands of hope and resilience, cultures that have maintained their textile traditions, human artistry that works in rhythm with the natural world and innovators who are finding new ways to produce fibres and dyes.

For thousands of years our clothes have been made by working with nature, not against it. Fashion is at a turning point – to look forward, we need to look back.

About The Author

Carry Somers is a globally recognised entrepreneur, activist, speaker and opinion leader, named by Business of Fashion as one of the key people shaping the global fashion industry. As co-founder of Fashion Revolution, the world’s largest fashion activism movement with teams in over 90 countries, she has been instrumental in pressuring the industry to take responsibility for its social and environmental impacts.

Carry’s award-winning fashion brand, Pachacuti, became a pioneer of radical supply chain transparency and the world’s first Fair Trade Certified company. Since then, Carry has sailed from the Galapagos to Easter Island investigating microplastic pollution, collaborated on a show garden for RHS Chelsea Flower Show and appeared daily on the Nasdaq billboard in Times Square during New York Fashion Week 2022, which highlighted women-led social enterprises in the fashion industry driving social and environmental impact. Carry is lead consultant for The Good Clothes Show, which opened at the NEC Birmingham in September 2024.

A regular spokesperson in the media, Carry is a go-to commentator for the BBC and other media whenever there is a fashion news story. She has been interviewed on countless shows including NPR’s Here and Now, BBC One’s The One Show, Radio 4’s Mary Portas On Style and the EU Delegation’s official UK podcast, London Calling EU. In print, she has appeared in British Vogue, Vanity Fair, Financial Times How to Spend It, IRK Living At Home with an Icon cover article in February 2023, Vogue Portugal, Business of Fashion, Marie Claire France, Women’s Wear Daily and many others.

'A funny, achievable guide' Observer

'Lauren Bravo is one of my favourite writers' Dolly Alderton

'Bravo will inspire you to repair, recycle and give old items a new lease of life' Stylist

You probably know the statistics: global clothing production has roughly doubled in just 15 years, and every year an estimated 300,000 tonnes of used clothing ends up in UK landfill.

Fast fashion is the ultimate toxic relationship. It's bad news for the planet, our brains and our bank balances. We can't go on like this; our shopping habits need an overhaul.

Journalist Lauren Bravo loves clothes more than anything, but she's called time on her affair with fast fashion in search of a slower, saner way of dressing. In this book, she'll help you do the same.

How To Break Up With Fast Fashion will help you to change your mindset, fall back in love with your wardrobe and embrace more sustainable ways of shopping - from the clothes swap to the charity shop. Full of refreshing honesty and realistic advice, Lauren will inspire you to repair, recycle and give your unloved items a new lease of life without sacrificing your style.

Because fashion belongs to everyone, but no outfit should cost us the earth.

Publisher: Headline Publishing Group