ania zoltkowski
ania zoltkowski
STORIES TO TELL
For over 17 years, I've navigated the global fashion and textile industries, building experience across design, manufacturing, sales, communications, and sustainability. My path led me from interning at Vivienne Westwood's London couture studio to managing the Florence Deschamps showroom in Paris, where I connected emerging designers with the world's most prestigious boutiques. In northern India, I established and ran my own sustainable label in collaboration with a fair-trade women's workshop. These experiences have filled my archive with industry tales – some hilarious, others shocking – revealing the multifaceted nature and complexity of today's fashion and textile industries.
A TURNING POINT
During my time in industry, a profound shift occurred. Behind fashion's glossy facade, I witnessed firsthand an industry grappling with fundamental issues – where values and ethics were sidelined, and care for people and the planet became secondary to rapid production and efficiency. In hindsight, I recognise what was missing: care, reverence, reciprocity, and responsibility. It was the absence of these essences that left me searching for more.
This realisation catalysed a deeper questioning of industry practices, global systems, and my own contributions. It led me to London, where I pursued a master's in Fashion Futures at the London College of Fashion. Under the mentorship of sustainability pioneers Alex McIntosh and Kate Fletcher, and supported by the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, my perspective transformed. I discovered fashion's place within a broader web of connections – integrating notions of spirituality, ecology, economics, culture, and beyond.
CREATING NEW PATHWAYS
Upon returning to Australia, I began teaching at the University of Technology Sydney and UTS College, where I challenged students to think beyond conventional boundaries, encouraging them to forge unexpected connections and bring their authentic perspectives to their practice.
Seeking to explore sustainability from a deeper perspective – one I hadn't encountered elsewhere – I embarked on a practice-based PhD at UTS, supervised by Timo Rissanen and Cameron Tonkinwise. Over four years, I investigated how a fashion-textiles pluriverse might emerge. This research developed a holistic methodology toward sustainability that embraces relational, place-based, and sovereign approaches while integrating spirit, heart, mind, and body. Through theoretical exploration, hands-on making, and experiential workshops, I created new frameworks for understanding and practicing sustainable fashion-textiles. During this time, I also founded the Sustainability 5.0 online fashion community, hosted the Spirit of Design podcast, and contributed to The Lissome, a leading sustainable fashion publication.
Parallel to my professional journey, I've dedicated over 15 years to personal development and inner work. My exploration spans meditation, kundalini yoga, visioning, embodiment practices, archetypal work, hypnosis, NLP, energetics, sacred sexuality, and more. This depth of personal work has profoundly shaped my approach to sustainability and fashion-textiles. My recent completion of a 2-year Shamanic Immersion 'LuminoGaia' with Luna Wood has further deepened my understanding of vital sustainability.
Today, my work bridges pluriversal approaches and creative practices, creating spaces that cultivate transformative experiences empowering individuals and communities to discover their own pathways toward sustainability.
I look forward to playing here together.
GRATITUDE
We don't do anything alone. My work is an emergence from the vast web of life, a continuous tapestry of relationships that sustains and nourishes me.
In the spirit of relationality, reciprocity, and reverence, I offer so much gratitude to my teachers, mentors, guides, places and ancestors who have shaped my journey as well as the rich and diverse human and other-than-human communities that form the foundation of my praxis.
I acknowledge the sacred landscapes and elemental spirits that have held and continue to hold me, including the unceded lands of Naarm, Meanjin, Gadigal, Worimi, Bundjalung, and Gayemagal. Deep appreciation to Annelijn Hooij and Elizabeth Curtis-Walker for their photography and filmmaking magic.
