These people control the fashion industry

When I left fast fashion ten years ago to make the industry better, I learned quickly that the grass isn’t always greener.

Sustainability was just taking off, and I was going to every panel and networking event I could find, hoping to meet like-minded people. What I found instead was a lot of people with zero industry experience, who’d somehow convinced top editors they were experts on a business they’d never actually worked in.

They were incredibly good at marketing - both themselves and their ideas. The narratives mostly based in greenwashing they created, that change was as simple as the technology they were already working on, was spoon fed to editors who ate it up.

But I knew from experience most of it would never work IRL.

Blockchain was the big one. A decade ago, it was going to save fashion - transparency, sustainability, all the buzzwords. Every time someone got on stage to explain how they’d revolutionize an industry they’d never worked in, I’d raise my hand and ask the same question:

What happens when I lie when I input the data?

What if I enter that these fibers are organic when they aren’t, or that my factory runs on renewable energy when it doesn’t - and that becomes part of the permanent record that follows the material forever?

It wasn’t a popular question, and was usually answered with a condescending version of me not understanding the technology… ok bro.

I didn’t make many friends in those rooms.

This flashback encapsulates the early dats of sustainable fashion so well.

This was a moment when everyone wanted to believe, and I was the person pumping the brakes. Looking back, I get it - the media was finally paying attention to sustainability for the first time, and everyone was hungry for someone to hand them the answer.

It just wasn’t always the right answer - IMO.

Fast forward ten years, and here’s the twist: almost none of those panelists are still in the space, and all their companies are long gone. Most have quietly moved on to other industries entirely - like “social education” or “AI”.

Which brings me to today, and Functional Fabric Fair and Day 0.

Day 0 is a conference one day before the show official starts.

You wouldn’t recognize most of the people there - no Fashionista features, no photos with Stella McCartney at Fashion Week. And yet they might be the most influential people in fashion right now - because they’re the ones actually making your clothes, and actually making that process more sustainable. They’re the people quietly running things behind the curtain.

What struck me about Day 0 is that it’s a real conversation, not a performance. No one’s claiming to have all the answers. It’s more like: “Hey, I have this idea. We should try it. Anyone else in?” And, that humility between competing brands is exactly what’s making these collaborations actually work - because people are listening to each other instead of just waiting for their turn to talk.

Back at those old panels, “collaboration” was everyone’s favorite word. What it usually meant was: how can you help amplify my agenda? That’s not collaboration, that’s just good marketing dressed up in social guilt.

What I saw on Day 0 was the real thing - brands pooling resources and actually investing in the unglamorous infrastructure that makes sustainable fashion possible at scale.

My favorite example is Ciclo.

They make a polyester and nylon that embeds a food source into the fiber, so when microplastics eventually shed, they biodegrade naturally instead of sitting in the ocean for 500 years. I met them last year and thought it was brilliant, turns out I wasn’t the only one. Booth after booth at Functional Fabric Fair, Ciclo showed up as a collaborator, with suppliers building their technology directly into their own products.

Ten years ago, plenty of sustainable ideas sort of worked - as long as you never made more than a hundred pieces. The suppliers I met at Functional Fabric Fair have technology that actually scales, which is exactly why they’re now working with names like Zara, H&M, and Costco.

Are they perfect and have all the answers? No. But this is real progress.

Think about it. One perfect sustainable garment made in a run of a few hundred isn’t global impact. But building sustainability into massive manufacturing systems, and small changes compound fast, especially across a million or two million units of a single style. That’s where you actually move the needle.

That story doesn’t get nearly as much press as the flashy panels of 2017 did. But it’s where the real change has been happening this whole time.

If I could go back and tell 28-year-old me - sitting in the audience at those fluffy panels, half-convinced the industry would never really change - that this was coming, I don’t think I’d have believed it. But it’s here now, and it’s better than I imagined it would be.

BTW- if you missed the NYC July show and are having FOMO, there’s another coming up in Portland October 26-28.

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See you next week,

Melanie

If you didn’t know: tomorrow, July 22nd at 10am, I’m hosting a free live call for all my subscribers. Come join and ask me anything about starting a fashion brand, manufacturing, you name it.

Becoming a subscriber is only $5 a month, and you can cancel anytime. With a subscription, you get access to future calls, call replays, and all of my VIP gated content.

Considering I charge $300 an hour for private calls, there’s no better deal than this to get help directly from me.

Hope to see you on the call tomorrow!

P.S. Can’t make the call? No problem. You can pre-submit your questions. I’ll answer them, and you can watch my answers in the replay.

I was supposed to spend this week deep in work, getting ahead on content before we visit friends and family in Florida next month. Whenever I know I’ll have a packed calendar in the future, I go into workaholic mode now so future me gets the payoff.

Anyway.

After the wildfires, and the flash storms, our apartment flooded. So that’s what we’re dealing with this week.

There’s always something.

I share this because so many people tell me they’re waiting for the perfect time to start something. I hate to break it to you - that perfect time is never coming. You just do what you can, now.

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