Fashion Podcasts

Podcast is a portmanteau word formed by combining iPod and broadcast. A podcast is an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download in order to listen, often available for subscription so that new episodes arrive automatically by web syndication. A fashion podcast applies the form to clothing, shoes, fashion accessories, the apparel industry and fashion-relevant topics.

The Form: Radio You Choose

Podcasting grew from an obscure method of spreading information into a recognised medium for distributing audio content, for corporate and personal use alike. Podcasts resemble radio programmes, but they are audio files: listeners play them at their convenience, on devices that have become more common than portable broadcast receivers. That convenience — fashion coverage on a commute, in a studio or at a sewing table — is the form's whole advantage.

Subscription completes the model. A listener who subscribes receives each new episode automatically, so a fashion podcast becomes a periodical in sound: weekly industry analysis, interviews and news arriving like a magazine that reads itself aloud. Apple's fashion and beauty podcast category, linked from this page through iTunes, is the standard directory where the field's programmes are gathered.

The Fashion Programmes

The leading titles cover the field's range. The Business of Fashion Podcast brings the industry publication's analysis and interviews to audio, from the publisher whose company profile is linked alongside. Girlboss Radio, hosted by Sophia Amoruso, interviews boundary-pushing women who have made their mark, drawing solid advice from the lessons they learned. The Vogue Podcast carries the magazine's voice into the medium.

Harper's Bazaar's top fashion podcasts list, linked here, surveys the field's best for new listeners, and Pop Fashion — in which former vintage store owner Lisa Rowan and fashion stylist Kaarin Vembar discuss fashion news, pop culture and questions of business and creativity — shows the independent end of the spectrum. Between the industry titles, the magazine programmes and the independents, a new listener can assemble a fashion education entirely in audio.

Listening as Industry Education

Fashion podcasts have quietly become the industry's evening school. A junior retail worker can hear a chief executive explain merchandising strategy on the commute; a design student can hear working stylists discuss how shoots actually run. The interview format suits fashion because the industry's knowledge is largely tacit — held in careers rather than textbooks — and an hour of conversation extracts it in a way articles rarely do. New listeners should start with the general industry titles, then follow their own specialism's guests from show to show.