Podcaster, vlogger, fair fashion campaigner, presenter, social activist – meet Venetia La Manna. She previously worked in TV, first as a producer, then as a presenter. “TV executives kept saying to me that one of the barriers to them giving me a job was that I didn’t have enough of a social media following,” she explains, prompting her to become more active on socials. Now, social media has become a place for her to talk about the topics she’s most passionate about without any restrictions.
Her platform spans Instagram (241,000 followers), YouTube (28,900 subscribers), TikTok (68,200 followers), X (12,900 followers) and her podcast, All The Small Things. “I see my YouTube channel as the space where I can connect with my core community,” La Manna says. Instagram is her biggest platform, and she considers each post carefully – “I’m not flippant with the content I put out on there,” she says. TikTok is more open for experimentation, while her podcast is an avenue for in-depth conversations, interviews and deep dives. The common thread? Informative, entertaining and thought-provoking content about fair fashion and sustainability.
In 2018, she started the #OOOTD (old outfit of the day) hashtag as a response to the constant newness pushed by fast fashion. “I started this hashtag as a way to normalise rewearing and to celebrate the clothes you already have instead of buying new,” La Manna says. The hashtag now has more than 97,000 Instagram posts. She is also one of the founders of Remember Who Made Them, a podcast and platform dedicated to supporting garment workers around the world – its Instagram has more than 23,700 followers.
Her husband is chef and creator Max La Manna, and she found inspiration in the step-by-step format of his food tutorials, which she co-opted to talk about corporations’ exploitative practices. Her 2022 pancake tutorial discussing Adidas’ treatment of garment workers has had 1.9 million views, while her 2021 French toast video about ultra-fast fashion brand Shein has been viewed 724,000 times. “I want to give people value when I hold their attention, so I thought the format would lend itself very well to spreading information about corporations and exploitative brands, and in a way I hadn’t seen done before,” the campaigner says.
To ensure the information she shares is accurate and well-researched, she works with a journalist who fact-checks her content. “It’s really important to me that I’m not spreading misinformation,” La Manna says, and stresses the importance of being a trusted and reliable source for her followers. “I think the more educated people are about what is actually causing climate breakdown, the less inclined they are to point fingers at individuals for their individual consumption and really know that this is very much about holding big corporations to account,” she says.
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La Manna describes the sustainability community as being thoughtful, welcoming, joyful and intelligent. “My experience of the sustainable fashion community in particular has just been wonderful, I’ve met some really great people,” she says. The best way to engage her audience is by suggesting a simple action, she says – commenting on a brand’s post or signing a petition, for example. Social media offers accessible ways for everyone to get involved.
She has organised protests as well, such as disrupting a Boohoo sustainability panel and demonstrating outside a Shein pop-up. “Joining up with people to partake in in-person actions is so vital because it offers such a great sense of camaraderie and community, and comfort as well, in times that feel very isolating and scary,” she says.
For La Manna, it is essential to make sure the brands she collaborates with align with her values. “I have to truly believe that they’re doing good or important work, or they’re making sustainability or second-hand more accessible, or that they are a business that truly cares and understands their role and that they also are not greenwashing – I think that’s probably the biggest thing for me,” she says. It’s crucial that the brand understands her stance and that the sponsored content fits in with her overall message.
Some of her most recent partners include Vinted, Back Market and Greenpeace, which she partnered with to shed light on Dove’s plastic waste – her video has had more than 604,000 views. La Manna also reaches out to brands she wants to work with, such as greenwashing.com, which she collaborated with to create a satirical show called The Fashion Danger Zone.
Though she has had a manager in the past, she is now self-managed. “In order to have a manager, I feel like they’d have to be very clued up about social and climate justice,” she says. The pressure of earning an income not only for herself, but also for a representative is another reason she chooses to self-manage. “I’m not saying that it would work for me forever, but for right now it feels like the right choice,” she says.
The creator has several projects in motion for the rest of the year. She is currently a campaign adviser on The Or Foundation’s Speak Volumes initiative. The campaign is working to get fashion brands to disclose their clothing production numbers, which would hinder unsubstantiated sustainability claims. La Manna is also part of a group called Anti-Sweatshop Activists Against Apartheid, which is drawing connections between garment workers in Gaza and the wider fashion industry. She is one of the judges for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and last year she started working on a documentary – although she won’t share any details on this just yet, it’s sure to be a must-watch.
By Dina Zubi, CORQ news and features writer. Picture credit: Venetia La Manna via Instagram
