I had the honour of being invited to the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles to speak to the students about Sustainable Fashion. The students were all so enthusiastic about the talk so involved and passionate, it was so inspiring to be in a space with loads of young students that wanted to create change in the fashion world.
I spoke about the realities of being a small brand and trying your best to be sustainable and how it was not fair for a small business to cover all areas of sustainability with out the backing of an investor. I spoke about how the bigger brands were the problem in the fashion industry and their slowness to create change and their greed was what was affecting the fashion industry from being sustainable. They all agreed the pressures of being 100% perfect in every way as a start up brand was a lot and most of them gave up with the pressures. I wanted to let them know that if they strived to be perfect in everything they would kill the creative in themselves and even if they were trying to be sustainable they were doing more than what other fashion brands were, so not to be so hard on themselves.
Many of the students present had ambitions of creating their own brands one day and many already had brands they were building, i wanted to tell them that they were the future and their innovation would pave the way for change in the industry.
Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
I explained the journey was the most exciting running your own brand and having over 10 years designing for brands in the fashion world was also an amazing experience. We spoke about the different ways of being sustainable in fashion, what new innovations that were out in the world - i wanted to expand their minds that things were already being worked on and there were like minded people who wanted to create change in the industry too. The talk was so well received and i am so happy i was invited, as i walked out very inspired.