Transcriber: Silvia Monti Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Okay, so who's ready to talk about fashion?
Everyone close your eyes,
just for a moment.
Look into your closet.
Count.
How many T-shirts do you have?
From promo T-shirts, from concerts,
your girlfriend's bachelorette party or that Turkey Run.
How many jeans? How many pairs of shoes?
Now, when you open your eyes, think about what you just pictured.
When I looked into my closet, I had 116 T-shirts,
52 pairs of jeans.
Yes, they were all different shapes and colors,
but still, I had a closet full of clothes and nothing to wear.
(Laughter)
How many people here could relate to that
and have uttered those same exact words out loud to yourself?
Well, needless to say, I've always had an interest in fashion
and a passion for putting outfits together
and looking and feeling stylish,
whatever that may mean to you, anyway.
But four years ago, I started to wonder
if fashion, like in food,
was going to go through a sort of organic transition.
I wondered if I could create the "Whole Foods" of fashion,
a place where you could buy ethically-made clothes
that were good for the environment,
but also stylish.
And I asked myself,
"Where does sustainability start?"
It was at this moment in my life that I realized
that the number of items in my closet
no longer had any value.
Experiences, yes, but values, absolutely not.
So I started researching brands
that would be ethically-made and sustainably-sourced,
and I had very, very little luck.
I was asking them about their environmental impact
and their supply chain.
Trust me, at this time,
nobody wanted to share about their supply chain or social impact
nor environmental impact.
So I started to do a lot of research.
Turns out that the fashion industry works in a take-make-waste model.
We take from our environment with no hesitation,
we make our clothes with very little regard for those who make it,
and then, because the clothes hold so little value,
we wear it once or twice, and then it's in the garbage.
How do we put this in perspective?
So if one T-shirt takes 2,700 liters of water to make
and we multiply that by the 116 T-shirts that I have sitting in my closet,
that makes around 313,200 liters of water.
Okay, great, that sounds like a lot of water,
but how much water is that really in human perspective?
So if we drink around two liters of water a day, if you're good,
that means I have 429 years of possible drinking water in my closet.
Not to mention, but unfortunately, all of my T-shirts are not organic cotton,
which means there's increased water pollution by the runoff of pesticides
into the waterways of the local communities
that also harm the health of those people living around the water systems.
In the US alone, we have 25 billion pounds of textile waste every year.
15% of that gets recycled;
the other 85% goes straight into the landfill.
That's around 70 pounds per person of landfill waste sitting in this room.
That is only the tip of the iceberg.
We're constantly being bombarded by marketing campaigns
telling us to shop more,
that what we have is not good enough,
without keeping in mind the human cost of fast fashion,
which causes disasters like that of Rana Plaza,
where 1334 people died in the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh.
Most of the victims, mostly women,
they are at the most risk
with the globalization of the fashion supply chain,
with increased numbers of violence, negligence and oppression.
Now, we're learning all these facts; what was I going to do with them?
I needed to merge my passion for fashion
and my desire to create sustainable futures.
That's when I knew that education was the key
and when I started The UpCycle Project.
The UpCycle Project is a platform
that raises awareness on the waste that the fashion industry creates
by making hands-on, circular solutions for design students.
Because sustainability starts with the designer.
Working with students is an absolute magical experience.
They know that their designs will have an environmental, social, cultural
and economic impact.
So we make them work with unconventional materials,
such as forgotten pieces from the dry cleaners,
deadstock fabrics from different designers
and even bed sheets that no longer were used by different hotel groups,
all of them truly embracing
the sustainability lessons that we have to teach them.
We've also worked with different hotel groups,
and we recreate different products that people actually want to buy.
If we have the foresight to be able to work with different hotel industries,
imagine what we could do with other global industries.
But now, what about us?
What can we do on a personal level?
So when you don't know what to do,
I've learned that it's best to do nothing at all.
And in my mind that translated into "stop shopping."
So I said I was not going to shop for a whole year.
I was going to wear and rewear the things that I already had.
To put it in perspective,
I went to fast fashion six to seven times a month.
It was easier for me to buy something new
than to rewear something that I already had.
How many people here do that?
(Applause)
Absolutely.
So I went to my closet empowered, and I said, "Okay, here we go.
Where are all my great clothes that I love so much?"
Well, I found out that my closet had major ADD.
Why?
Because it was filled with clothes that were just trendy,
that were unaligned with my style.
All of these clothes had no value.
Sure, I went in there, and I reworked some outfits.
And, you know, some weeks I went and I just wore
the same thing over and over again -
white T-shirt and jeans, no surprise there.
But it wasn't until I kept on working
that I found that nobody truly cared about sustainable fashion.
My family didn't care; my friends didn't care.
They just wanted to look cute.
Why was I going through this whole trouble?
So I decided to break my shopping boycott and go into my favorite store
and buy everything that my credit card could handle.
Well, I went in there and I picked everything.
And I went to the fitting room and I sat down.
And I tried the clothes on, and I said,
"Okay, where are these clothes going to take me?"
Not thinking about the clothes that I already had in my closet.
And when that thought came to mind, I sat back down and I said,
"What do I value from these clothes?
What is their purpose?
Who made them?
Is the brand story aligned with my values?"
And that's when I realized that no,
the clothes had nothing better than the style and the price.
So I put them on the floor and I left, empty-handed but fully empowered.
Now that I'm free thanks to my shopping fast,
I now look for brands that are transparent in their supply chain,
who tell me who made their clothes,
who have limited edition productions,
who pay fair wages and give dignity to those who make their clothes,
who use technology and strive for better design and better materials.
Thanks to this shopping fast, I have saved money,
I have reduced that I-have-nothing-to-wear anxiety
and I am free from the hollow brands and all those marketing campaigns
that promise empty lifestyles and poor-quality products.
Now I invite you to close your eyes one more time
and think about your closet.
Where are those clothes going to take you?
What do you value from them?
And when you open your eyes again,
think about what you truly value.
Dr. Seuss once said,
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not."
And I stand in this stage before you today,
and I tell you that it most definitely will.