15 Innovative Women Making Waves in Fashion and Sustainability
March is finally here (is that spring we smell?) and with it comes one of our favorite months of the year: Women’s History Month! In proper Sustainable Baddie fashion, we want to highlight a few women-identifying trailblazers who are not only reshaping the fashion industry, but also inspiring a new generation of designers and fashion lovers to prioritize environmental and social responsibility. These women are innovating in spaces at the intersection of fashion and sustainability and slaying every step of the way.
1. Summer Dean
Summer Dean, also known as @climatediva, is a climate communicator, writer, imperfect intersectional environmentalist, and sustainable fashion content creator. Based in Los Angeles, but originally from Portland, Oregon, Dean's work focuses on making sustainability fun, fashionable, lighthearted, and less daunting. Dean was one of our very first Sustainable Baddies of the Week! Learn more about her here.
Mira Al-Momani is a London-based stylist. She prioritizes slow fashion and highlighting emerging designers when styling her clients, occasionally throwing luxury pieces into the mix. Her personal style features sustainable designers, and with each ’fit post, she proves you can look amazing, ethically. Mira is also the founder of NIMA, an online marketplace for creatives and people focused on the sustainable future of fashion.
Kristy Drutman is a Jewish-Filipina-American environmentalist, founder of the online platform Browngirl Green, and the co-founder of Green Jobs Board. Drutman created Browngirl Green as a response to feeling that the landscape of visible environmentalists is overwhelmingly white and wealthy. Her work prioritizes making the world of environmental activism accessible to BIPOC communities everywhere. Check out our interview with Drutman from last November!
4. Sophia Li
Sophia Li is a Chinese-American multimedia journalist, climate optimist, director, environmental activist, and co-founder of Steward, a web3 collective set to launch later this year that works to protect people and the planet through digital art. Li works to make issues like climate justice, human rights and web3 more inclusive and accessible to people everywhere. She is also the host of Meta’s podcast, Climate Talks, and was named one of the top climate communicators of 2022 by Harvard University.
Chloe Felopulos is an NYC-based artist and stylist. Her goal is to express her eye for color, texture, and silhouette within her work through the use of vintage and thrifted pieces. She has styled celebrities like Billy Porter and Sonya Tayeh and for publications like Vogue Italia, Paper Magazine, and PAP Magazine.
6. CA8TY
Caity, known online as @ca8ty, is a sustainable and inclusive fashion designer and content creator. Based in Portland, Oregon, Caity designs handmade pieces from upcycled materials like leftover fabric or bedsheets, and shares her design process and results on her TikTok. Caity was inspired to start sewing when she realized mainstream sizing does not consider or cater to the body types of people with dwarfism. Through her content she is making fashion more accessible to everyone.
7. Aditi Mayer
Aditi Mayer is a sustainable fashion blogger, photojournalist, labor rights activist, speaker on topics of social and environmental justice, and founder of the platform ADIMAY. Her work looks at fashion and culture through a lens of intersectionality and decolonization. Out of frustration with the lack of representation and intersectionality within the sustainability movement, Mayer has built a space in collaboration with ADIMAY that is unafraid to look at sustainability with a curious and critical eye.
8. Mandy Lee
Mandy Lee, also known in online spaces as @oldloserinbrooklyn, is a Brooklyn-based freelance fashion writer, trend researcher, and TikToker known for her takes on trends, fashion history, and personal style. Her content not only dissects the science behind trends in the fashion world but is also critical of trends as a concept and how they encourage overconsumption. A lover of fashion and clothing, Lee emphasizes the importance of buying secondhand, rewearing pieces, and mending what you already own.
Sumak Helena Sirén Gualinga is an Ecuadorian environmental and human rights activist. Gualinga belongs to the Kichwa community of Sarayaku, in the province of Pastaza, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and at just 20 years old has become the spokesperson for a people who are demanding rights and autonomy from state governments and major oil companies. The documentary “Helena Sarayaku Manta” tells the story of her people, her activism, and their fight for territorial rights.
10. Masego Morgan
Masego Morgan is a Cape Town-based sustainable fashion and lifestyle creator committed to building a more inclusive and accessible sustainability community. Having fallen in love with fashion at a very young age, Morgan was inspired to learn more about the harmful fast fashion industry after watching the True Cost in 2015 (like so many of us!) Her work sets out to make sustainable fashion accessible without promoting the idea that sustainability needs to be bought, as sustainability is rooted in many indigenous beliefs and practices.
11. Cindy Villaseñor
Cindy Villaseñor is a sustainable living creator and outdoor adventurer. As a first-gen Mexican-American, Villaseñor grew up watching her mother repurpose everyday items like plastic containers, but hadn’t made the connection to environmental activism until starting her zero-waste journey in 2013. As an educator, activist, environmental advocate, plant-lover, and adorer of the outdoors, she is passionate about helping others start a sustainability journey that is practical, being mindful that there truly is no such thing as “zero waste”.
12. Berenice Castro
Berenice Castro is a Mexican sustainable fashion stylist and content creator who is literally running the maximalist side of TikTok, and who was named one of TikTok’s Latinx TikTok Trailblazers in 2022. Growing up, Castro learned the value of secondhand clothing, upcycling, and mending, which has flowed into the way she innovatively styles her own vintage and secondhand clothing. Her style is governed by the idea that “more is more” and she encourages others to make bold, daring choices with their style.
13. Jenny Bruso
Jenny Bruso is a queer, plus-size writer, adventurer, hiker, and founder of Unlikely Hikers. In 2012, Bruso discovered the joys of hiking which led her to become an advocate for underrepresented outdoors people. In nature, she found a sense of place and joyful movement, leading to the creation of the Unlikely Hikers Instagram page. Unlikely Hikers, a diverse, anti-racist, body-liberating outdoor community of underrepresented lovers of the outdoors, aims to change the narrative of who gets to be outdoors.
14. Audrey | A Thrifted Wardrobe
Audrey, also known as @a_thrifted_wardrobe, is a thrifting, mending, and sustainable style content creator. Raised in a thrifty household and having grown out of a teenage stint of overconsumptive thrifting, Audrey’s content emphasizes the importance of being selective with the pieces that one brings home and how and where to donate pieces that no longer serve us. Through her platforms, she teaches her audience to mend garments and to help them stand the test of time. She wants to ensure clothes have longevity and normalize passing them onto the next generation.
Madison Rodriguez is a South Florida-based queer Puerto Rican-American sustainable fashion creator. Rodriguez is inspired by fashion, the planet, & human rights and uses her online platforms to give tips on styling and redesigning a sustainable wardrobe. Her fun, whimsical, disney-loving fashion inspo reminds everyone that sustainable fashion need not limit us to earth tones, but can allow for more artistic expression than ever.
Who are your fave women in sustainability?