Unveiling Fashion, the Sustainable Fashion Conference that Put Washington D.C. on the Fashion Map
By Gabrielle Clary
There is a fashion industry in Washington D.C. It does not solely thrive on power suits and ball gowns, it thrives on diversity, history and sustainability. When I arrived in D.C, five years ago for college, I came in with hopes to receive the tools I needed to break into the fashion industry. I knew a change needed to happen, but I never imagined I would help ignite the change in Washington D.C. . Fast-forward to Saturday, September 29th, 2018, I am one of the four co-founders of the DC Sustainable Fashion Collective putting on our Inaugural Sustainable Fashion Conference titled Unveiling Fashion: Conversations about Fashion and Sustainability. After 9 months of emails and meetings with my fellow collective founders Joelle Firzli, Janice Wallace, and Kaveri Marathe, we managed to make our vision a reality. This conference was our baby.
On Saturday morning we hosted a group of individuals spanning from makers to farmers and lawyers to designers, all gathered at The George Washington Museum and Textile museum. Everyone had somehow contributed to the sustainable fashion movement, whether they wrote about it, owned second-hand stores, designed sustainably made clothing or advocated for it on a political level. It was amazing to see all these players together in one room. Everyone was not fully acquainted with one another, nor were we aware of all the efforts going on in DC including raising awareness regarding issues like modern slavery, advocating for a raise in minimum wage for garment workers or supporting ethical manufacturing. But the atmosphere was vibrant, we all wanted to share and learn from each other.
In the morning we started off with opening words from Camille Brewer, Curator of Contemporary Art at the George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum. Along with a welcome from the Director of the Office of Sustainability and the Senior Advisor of Sustainability Initiatives at George Washington University, Meghan Chapple, who set the stage for our three presentations throughout the day. Our first presentation was by Whitney Bauk, assistant editor at Fashionista, on the current state of fashion, followed by an inspiring speech about the work done by Fashion Revolution from our keynote speaker, Lauren Fay, the Executive Director at Fashion Revolution USA. Both presentations laid the foundation for a very thought provoking morning. During the afternoon session, Marci Zaroff; Founder/CEO, Metawear; Author of “ECOrenaissance: Co-Creating A Stylish, Sexy and Sustainable World”; a woman with many hats, gave us an encouraging outlook on the sustainable fashion industry.
The conference was appropriately titled Unveiling Fashion. As a collective, we recognized a strong hidden fashion culture in DC, and wanted to help steer it in the right direction, towards sustainability. In order to do that we had to breakdown the current foundation of the fashion industry, identifying its current problems and where the root of these problems lie. With four panels covering key topics like “The economics of Fashion”, “Consumer Trap”, “The Sustainable Fashion Ecosystem and “The value of a garment: “What difference can a garment make?”, guests got an earful of knowledge.
One of my biggest takeaways from the conference was from our panel on “ The Sustainable Fashion eco-system”, in which Kenya Wiley, Founder/CEO of the Fashion Innovation Alliance, made a statement about fashion brands putting more money toward their marketing and PR instead of investing in the sustainable quality of their products. That statement summed up the sustainable fashion conference for me, we identified where the resources were going and how they can be better utilized for the future of fashion. We concluded the conference on an inspiring note, after all, this is just the beginning.
