Women working in sustainable fashion innovation means they’re creating a new category, which takes time and patience

The women working in sustainable fashion innovation is to inherently understand that what success has looked like in the past, does not dictate what future success might look like a powerful attitude to adopt when it comes to pushing for gender equality.

The idea of women working in sustainable fashion innovation clothing represents a combination of processes. However, sustainable clothing includes how clothing is produced, distributed, consumed, and recycled. By reformulating some of the practices most commonly used until now, like reducing carbon emissions yielded during production, making clothing sustainably can go a long way in having a positive impact on the planet.

We continue to spot innovations aimed at making the production and consumption of clothing more about women working in sustainable fashion innovation. From reducing fabric waste, carbon emissions and producing textiles from recycled materials, here are ten of our favorite sustainable clothing innovations we’ve seen in recent months.

1. Your passion will drive the change:

Identify the problem that you can have the biggest impact on and that you are passionate about solving. This will give you the greatest energy back from all the efforts you will dedicate to this!

2. Act on the root causes: 

Make sure your idea or solution to the challenge is not only symptom solving but acting on the root causes.

3. Accept that everything is an evolving journey: 

The situation and ecosystem of your challenge will further develop over time so that your solution today might not stay the best solution in 20 years. Try to not fall in love with your solution, fall in love with the amazing process of problem-solving: Always question what other new factors on your journey you need to take into account to keep your solution relevant.

4. Collaborative impact is key: 

See everyone dedicated to solving the same challenge not as a competitor but as a potential collaborator. Build synergies and make sure to join forces with great minds since the problems we want to solve are too massive and complex that single persons or organizations could solve them alone.

5. Design the business to run without you: 

The less your business rides on who you are and the profile you have, the better its chances of having a scalable impact.

6. Recruit a kick-ass team: 

In the end, no founder can deliver even the most beautiful vision without a smart, well-balanced, culturally cohesive team. One can never be thorough enough when it comes to recruitment. The ones that hang in there through a longwinded recruitment process, are worth considering.

7. Know your materials:

Understanding the impact of materials is crucial when it comes to women working in sustainable fashion innovation. A good rule of thumb is to avoid virgin synthetics such as polyester—which makes up 55 percent of clothes globally—as these are derived from fossil fuels and take years to break down. Not all-natural materials are made the same: organic cotton, for example, uses significantly less water than conventional cotton and doesn’t use harmful pesticides.

8. Reduce your water footprint:

Given that the production of textile uses an astonishing 93bn cubic meters of water annually 

the equivalent of 37m Olympic swimming pools—we should all be more conscious about the water footprint of our clothes. As mentioned previously, organic cotton uses significantly less water than conventional cotton (91 percent less, according to one study), while the use of low-water dyes also reduces water consumption.

9. Ensure your clothes have a second life:

When clearing out your closet, being conscious about how you dispose of your clothes will help stop them from ending up in a landfill. Re-selling your clothes or organizing a clothes swap is the best way to ensure they’ll have a second life, as well as donating to charities and organizations that are looking for used clothing. For worn-out pieces that can no longer be repaired or reused, look for recycling schemes specifically for those items, where possible.

10. Avoid microplastic pollution:

As it’s difficult to avoid synthetics altogether (nylon and elastane are still required in activewear and underwear to get that all-important stretch), washing clothes can release thousands of microplastics into our waterways and oceans, causing harm to marine life that ingest the tiny particles. Luckily, there’s a simple solution: investing in a microplastics filter such as a Guppy friend washing bag, in which you can put your synthetic garments, or a Cora Ball that you put in with your laundry.