Sweet summertime means long sun-soaked days, sunset dips and hours upon hours of looking at the clock waiting to break free from work. In dramatic fashion, toss those papers aside and make a break for the ocean, but don’t forget to protect the money maker — your face, of course! Since hats are trés trendy right now, make yours sustainable for an added layer of protection for mama earth.
We connect with Melanin and Sustainable Style founder, Dominique Drakeford, to share her work of celebrating the success of communities of color in the sustainable fashion industry while demanding a more inclusive approach to creation, style, and industry.
Everlane released underwear with their #LoveYourUnderwear campaign, and it’s everything you could want. Not only is the sustainable brand leading the charge with their “Damn Good Denim” efforts, but now they are innovating the sustainable underwear space by offering underwear for real women without frills, bows and as they say, all the bullshit!
Kestrel Jenkins is the host of Conscious Chatter, a podcast where what you wear matters. She speaks with leaders, innovators, and designers within the sustainable fashion industry about an array of topics like workers rights, environmentalism, equal representation, and trends. Her style is uniquely her own by reimagining trends and pieces in ways that only a true student, devotee, and maven to the fashion world could design.
Last week we had our inaugural Ladies Aloud Local event, a panel discussion on Women & Sustainable Fashion. Our panelists were brilliant and humble and wowed the crowd with humor, honesty, hard facts (did you know you only wear 20% of your closet?) and positive encouragement of “we’re all in this together!” The energy was welcoming and Vocabulary’s funky chandelier offered the perfect glow as women connected, fiercely engaged and walked away with sustainable fashion fever!
Alison Rojas Metcalfe is generous, kind, a master creator and a woman of many talents. She is a local San Diego maker whose heart is in sustainability and hands is in anything she can create. From ethical + sustainable fashion, inspired by nature and her surroundings, to holistic skincare including the most incredible and effective natural deodorant cream, Alison turns to clean gold all she touches.
“…(unfortunately, despite my very best efforts and many attempts, styles worn on a tall, young, white, thin model would sell significantly better than anything else, though I would love for you as my customers to help disprove this.) As a feminist, I would love to take a stand and insist on only using diverse women, but if this leads me to going out of business then not only will I not be able to help bring more diversity to fashion, but I also won’t be able to help bring fair trade, veganism, and sustainability to fashion either.” (A sustainable fashion pioneer whose name is intentionally left undisclosed)
In a social and political landscape where women’s rights are not our own and the planet is used and stripped of its resources and human greed, one thing is evident – we need each other. As the life sources for humanity, women coming together to preserve mama earth seems like a no-brainer. The connection? Fashion.
Denim is dirty business. Really dirty. According to Reformation’s new campaign into cleaner jeans, 1 pair of the 450 million jeans Americans buy a year takes upwards of 1,500 gallons of water to produce. Water that then goes untreated back into the environment causing deeper — literally deep into the ground — damages that go beyond immediate repercussions.