Change for Their Tomorrow

On May 22, 2025, the eternal city of Rome was not just a backdrop for sunshine, streams of tourists and dolce vita, but the setting for a vision. With the opening of the new headquarters of Inside Out Fashion, Textiles & Home, Suzy Amis Cameron and Matteo Ward set a powerful example: It's time to radically rethink lifestyle, sustainability and responsibility - from the inside out and now. We were there and asked them to talk to us.

Text: Janaina Engelmann-Brothánek. Photos: IO

Responsibility is no longer a footnote, it is the new narrative. But in an industry that thrives on spectacle, fast pace and constant reinvention, an uncomfortable question arises: can fashion really be responsible? Suzy Amis Cameron and Matteo Ward are convinced: Yes. But only if we are prepared to rewrite everything - from supply chains to how we see ourselves. As founder of Inside Out, Suzy Amis Cameron designs a holistic impact framework that links fashion, nutrition, education and media - an ecosystem based on responsibility. Matteo Ward, co-founder of WRÅD and now CEO of Inside Out Fashion, Textiles & Home, brings over a decade of activism, strategic thinking and design disruption to this new dimension of influence and impact.

"In the end, it's about our children," says Suzy Amis Cameron during her opening speech and asks those present to think of an important child in their lives. The sentence sticks and focuses on what this initiative is all about: responsibility for the future, conceived from the perspective of children and their children's children.

The power of the coalition

But back to the beginning: what happens when an environmental activist, former actress and three-time author meets a radical fashion thinker? The result is more than a mere collaboration - a genuine connection with the power to fundamentally change things. When Suzy Amis Cameron first heard about Matteo Ward's documentary "Junk - Armadi Pieni", she was sitting in her car. "I called immediately and said: I want to be an executive producer." A spontaneous impulse that quickly turned into a deep, trusting collaboration.

"I thought it was a joke at first," recalls Ward, who once worked at Abercrombie & Fitch in the American fast fashion business before founding the WRÅD platform. With over ten years of experience at the intersection of design, research and activism, he knew immediately: "We not only share the urgency, but also the vision and, above all, the will not to stop at criticism." Together, the two are now weaving together threads that have long hung loosely side by side: Education, technology, textiles, architecture, agriculture. The goal is a radically new one: regenerative systems that are based on responsibility rather than exploitation - neither of people nor of resources.

PODCAST
Curated Coincidence

#01 Talking Real Change with Suzy Amis Cameron & Matteo Ward

Clothing as a mirror of our attitude

"What we wear is not a neutral act," Suzy Amis Cameron is convinced. Clothing is much more than a textile shell; it is a statement, political, personal and often a reflection of our values. This is precisely where Inside Out Fashion, Textiles & Home comes in: at the sensitive interface where aesthetics, ethics and everyday life meet. Suzy Amis Cameron has held this position for some time: she founded the Red Carpet Green Dress initiative back in 2009, long before sustainability became a buzzword in the fashion industry. The idea: to use the glamor of Oscar night to bring ecological responsibility to the world's most visible red carpet.

The year 2025 now marks a new chapter: In an emotional statement on Instagram, Amis Cameron announced the end of RCGD Global and her next, bigger step: the full integration of the initiative into the new Inside Out Fashion, Textiles & Home platform. "It was time to take the topic out of its niche," she says. Red Carpet becomes Real Change.

"Fashion was never just clothing," adds Matteo Ward. "It has always been an instrument of power and exclusion. Today we are faced with the ruins of this ideology. Clothing has become a disposable commodity. We need to rewrite the system."

Inside Out does exactly that and consistently thinks about fashion as a systems issue. Instead of fast fashion: durable materials, regenerative supply chains, local production, circular thinking. Instead of greenwashing: real research, new technology, educational partnerships. Together with universities, start-ups and biotechnology labs, textile innovations are created that are measurably better for people and the planet.

One example is Sheep Inc. from New Zealand, a label that combines regenerative agriculture with CO₂-negative production. Or the Italian start-up Orange Fiber, which produces fibers from citrus peel - luxurious, vegan and biodegradable.

"It's not about sacrifice," says Amis Cameron. "It's about redefining beauty - with responsibility, transparency and a clear goal: to protect the world for the generations we will never know."

Education as a lever

This new definition requires more than just products. It's about new narratives, or rather counter-narratives. "We believe in the transformative potential of education," explains Suzy Amis Cameron. "But not just in schools, but everywhere." For this reason, Inside Out is working with universities such as MIT, Texas Tech and Georgia Tech on more than 17 interdisciplinary research fields - from soil health to water purification. One of the flagship projects is CASFER, a portable device for detecting antibiotic residues in drinking water. "Technology must not be a luxury," says Matteo Ward. "It must be accessible, democratic and scalable in order to have a truly systemic impact."

Ward sees education as an active lever for change and a project close to his heart. With his platform WRÅD Living, he has been providing radical, visual education in schools, at festivals and in museums for years. It is never about moralizing, but about curiosity and context. One example is the "Storia di una maglietta", a free workbook for children developed together with the FAO, which is available in 17 languages worldwide. It is a tool for early awareness-raising that is both playful and well-founded. "If we want the next generation to consume differently, we need to invite them to have their say early on," says Ward. At Inside Out, education is not understood as a checklist, but as a process, as an invitation to think, as a collective act of cultural rewriting.

Rome as a resonance chamber

Why Rome? "Because it's Rome," explains Amis Cameron with a laugh. That sounds casual, but there is much more to it than that. Rome is both a symbol and a system - past and present, chaos and powerhouse. A city in which politics, culture, spirituality and civil society have been in friction with each other for centuries, a field of tension from which movement arises.

"Rome can be a sounding board for real change," adds Matteo Ward. "This is where global decision-making centers meet local realities. That's exactly what we need: Places that listen - and broadcast." Inside Out's new headquarters are strategically located in the heart of the city, within sight of the FAO, UNESCO and WHO. A deliberately chosen location that combines visibility with connectivity, because real transformation does not work in solo mode, it thrives on connections.

However, Rome not only stands for the networking of power and practice, but also for continuity and renewal. "This city carries the spirit of repetition, but also of rebirth," says Ward. And it is precisely this attitude that the sustainable fashion and lifestyle world of Inside Out needs: a departure from fast-moving trends in favor of an attitude that has a lasting effect - deeply rooted and future-oriented.

Less than wealth

For Suzy Amis Cameron, sustainability is not a fixed destination, but a continuous journey - one that goes on forever and challenges us to rethink responsibility. It is not about renunciation or restriction, but about real liberation: fewer possessions can give us more freedom, longevity is becoming the new status symbol and transparency the most valuable currency.

When asked what practices they would remove from the fashion industry forever, Matteo Ward's answer is clear: "Planned obsolescence, this concept that products are quickly used up and thrown away, must disappear. Instead, we need a programmed regeneration that makes fashion sustainable and alive." Suzy Amis Cameron adds: "Fashion must be designed in such a way that it builds up people, nature and society, not exploits them. This is the only way to make it sustainable."

Cooperation is a key issue for Suzy Amis Cameron. "In 2009, we often came up against closed doors," she says. "But slowly, many luxury brands are opening up - not out of choice, but because the market demands it. We work with Vivienne Westwood, Armani and Louis Vuitton. Bit by bit, things are moving." When doors close, she looks for windows, roofs or chimneys so that she can still get in.

Matteo emphasizes how important it is to preserve WRÅD's own identity along the way: "Our DNA has not changed since we became part of Inside Out. The values fit together perfectly. This allows us to protect and pass on what we have achieved, even when we are no longer here."

For the children, not for the applause

In the end, the following realization remains: this is not a marketing campaign, but a mission. Amis Cameron, mother of five and grandmother, says: "I don't want to lie in a coffin and know I could have done more." Ward, 39, adds, "We're the first generation to know all the facts, and maybe the last to act." That's why they keep building, small-scale and persistent. With materials, platforms, curricula, tools and, above all, attitude. "It's not about us. I'm doing this for the generation I won't even know and for their children."