The New Fashion Entrepreneur: What Leadership in Fashion Must Look Like for the Next Generation

How to Become a Successful Fashion Entrepreneur and Leader in a New Fashion Economy

Adopt a Holistic Perspective 

As a sustainability leader in the fashion industry, Priebe encourages others to take a holistic view of their businesses and their paths to success.

It is said that “no man is an island.” Well, neither are our clothes. The materials must be grown, harvested, and processed; the design formed, and the pattern sewn. Multiple actors and locations are involved in the process—the conscious designer must adopt this wider awareness with regard to the impact their products and business has at every level. 

There is a myriad of industries connected to the fashion business; it has links to almost every sector, from agriculture to manufacturing and from transportation to media. This wide reach makes the conscious fashion industry uniquely capable of not only bringing about large-scale change in the way we do business but also in redefining and realigning our cultural values and collective beliefs. Clothes and accessories are a defining part of culture, after all.

It is therefore the responsibility of the leaders within the circular fashion movement to wield this influence in ways that bring success not only to their own businesses but to the communities and environments that their business relies on. As a fashion leader, you will need to reflect on the impact of every aspect of your company; the success of your design, sourcing, manufacturing, marketing, and beyond must be measured in terms of sustainability just as much as it is measured by profit (which we will talk more about below).

Priebe believes that fashion entrepreneurs must also redefine what it means to be sustainable:

“There are definitions in Webster’s and [OED’s] that generally define sustainability as what is sustainable for Planet Earth and our natural systems. […]

I want to add to that and ask ‘what is socially sustainable?’ 

Is working in a factory for less than a living wage socially sustainable, or physically? 

Is the work physically sustainable for someone? 

How do we make this business model financially sustainable, socially sustainable, and environmentally sustainable?”

Acting sustainably is not just the right thing to do; sustainability and the consideration of large-scale impacts are also approaches that will enable your company to develop more robustly.

Treating your workers with dignity will ensure they are invested in their job and improve their performance. Participating in sustainable sourcing practices maintains your access to materials and helps you control your prices. Creating desirable and high-quality products maximizes your marketing appeal, while campaigns that uplift will inspire your customers and grow brand loyalty. The list goes on!

What could a holistic perspective of success and sustainability mean for you? 

In short, it means zooming out to see the bigger picture regarding the impact of your decisions and acting accordingly. 

So, what does that really mean!? It could mean rethinking your materials and choosing plastic alternatives in order to reduce your waste output. It could mean providing workers’ benefits or making your manufacturing plants carbon neutral. Or perhaps, monitoring your plant’s economic impact in a community in terms of education or access to healthcare.

Overall, it means acknowledging, respecting, and enhancing the interconnections that exist between your business, our humanity, and our planet.

Grow Responsibly

Perhaps one of the most destructive features of our current economic system, especially within the world of fashion, is the equation that bigger business means better business.

The obsession with unfettered growth and the aim to increase stakeholders’ profits above all leads to ethical frugality. Priebe sees this narrow scope as largely responsible for the failures and destructive practices of the fashion industry, from water contamination and GHG emissions to labor exploitation.

As Caroline puts it, we live in a society in which public companies have to produce compound annual growth infinitely for shareholders, but since:

“…we live on a finite planet, creating that sort of compound growth usually requires cutting corners, usually requires [having] no regulations, usually requires less taxation. You have to exploit labor because of the ridiculous notion that you can have infinite annual growth year after year. And so that causes fashion companies to cut corners, to exploit labor, and to overproduce.”

To be a socially responsible entrepreneur in the new fashion industry, you’ll already be oriented to a wider viewpoint. With that perspective, Priebe insists, you must also know when enough is enough. You must grow to scale, calculate your growth, and realize when you have reached the optimal intersection between healthy operation and profitability.

As Caroline points out:

“Eileen Fisher just said in an article that she actually was most profitable when she was about half her size, so growth and profitability are not intimately correlated or connected.”

As Caroline explains, growing businesses to scale versus infinitely has real benefits. She recalls her own family’s experience:

“My parents and grandparents grew the business, grew the business, grew the business, and at one point decided, okay, we’re done. We’re good. We are employing people. We’re providing health care. We’re giving people a lovely livelihood. Our employees seem to be happy. We can go on vacation or the kids can play soccer. We’ve got a nice house. We’re good.” 

In order to really understand how your business is growing, you must include many measures of success. She goes on to say:

“I hope that the fashion industry questions this need for growth at any cost, because growth only measures growth. GDP only measures growth; it doesn’t measure any of the associated costs. A tree is only accounted for in GDP if it’s cut down.”

Fashion companies that choose to reign in their growth to responsible levels will bring about a future of fashion that is rooted in the local community. Priebe believes that these successful mid-sized businesses will be better suited to fulfill the needs of their surrounding communities. After all, she reminds us, small businesses are the biggest employers in the U.S., and of course, each region will know what is best for their region.

More than fulfilling the needs of local communities, creating this local fashion economy will also help avoid the social and environmental costs of international corporate operations. Using materials sourced locally and responsibly will strengthen both the local economies and local ecologies. The increase of local businesses will curb carbon emissions by minimizing the shipping of commodities and lessen corporate reliance on foreign labor.

What could a commitment to grow responsibly mean for you? 

Committing to healthy growth will mean creating your own goals and measurements of success that go beyond profit and acknowledge people over product and planet over profitability.

It will mean asking yourself not only how to grow to scale but also what is “enough?” How do you need to be compensated? Are all your workers being paid living—or even thriving—wages? Are your employees all receiving benefits, access to education, and healthcare? Are you able to cover all your expenses and still have a comfortable budget for donating, experimenting, and optimizing operations and sustainability efforts?

If your answers all check out, seriously consider what else you seek in growing your business. What is worth giving up to get there?

Embrace Circular Design

In addition to irresponsible growth, unconscious design practices have, in large part, been responsible for the waste and pollution problems of the fast-fashion world. It’s likely that we’ve all experienced buying a brand-new product that arrives with a defect or is worn out or broken with just a few uses.

Where does that now-unusable product usually go? Let’s remember that the average American throws away around 81 pounds of clothing per year and that three out of five fast fashion items end up in a landfill.

This unwarranted waste can be avoided. To do so, successful fashion entrepreneurs will need to adopt a new philosophy of design that brings about fast fashion solutions and embraces circularity and regeneration.

Like the other two practices key to developing sustainability in fashion, Priebe explains that design needs to keep the larger picture in mind. She urges fashion professionals to assess every aspect of the product chain, from sourcing materials to end-of-life use, in their product design. 

In the circular fashion movement, design will not only be focused on beauty and aesthetics, but on ensuring quality, longevity, and end-of-life value. It will focus on answering the question, “how do you make a product that is simultaneously beautiful, functional, and durable?” More than this, it must consider where that product will go when it can no longer be used by the consumer. Can the material be recycled or is it biodegradable? 

Because of this holistic view of design, Priebe explains, the principles of circular design must also be extended into other parts of your business model. She goes on to encourage fashion designers to:

“…be very thoughtful about not just your designs, but as thoughtful with your designs as you are with your business model and supply chain.”

This means not just making your products with the individual consumer or product in mind but also considering future generations as well. Do the farming practices in your raw material production consider soil health? Do your materials or your dyeing process contribute to waterway pollution? 
Preventing environmental damage and protecting resources and communities will help you create a business that can survive the environmental and social threats that the industry is currently experiencing and will increasingly face as we move further into the climate crisis. That is why circular design and regenerative business models are the clearest way forward for the fashion industry.

What could embracing circular design mean for you? 

More than just implementing quality controls on your products and designs, perhaps integrating circular design into your company could also mean opening up a product recycling program, like Patagonia has, through which consumers can return worn-out clothes to be repurposed. Or maybe, like Sunski, it could mean utilizing plastic waste to create your fashion line. 

It could also mean sourcing your materials from regenerative farms or directing your 1% For the Planet donation to conservation efforts. Or it could mean implementing a business model like BANGS or TOMS in which you donate a percentage of your profit to worthy causes.

In short, how do you structure your design, supply chain, and business model to support a circular fashion economy where there is little waste, and resources are not only protected but regenerated for future use?