Creating Community in Sustainable Fashion
How two leaders are shaping deeper conversations and building relationships within their new community driven online platform.
Five years ago, sustainable fashion was still such a niche part of the fashion industry as a whole. Sure it existed, but the conversations, education, and brands were pretty nonexistent. This issue’s featured leaders are two amazing women who are both true pioneers in opening up the conversation around sustainable fashion. Chances are you’ve heard of them either by listening to their podcast, or attending their live conference put on every year in Portland Oregon.
They are Brittany Sierra, founder of The Sustainable Fashion Forum, and Kestrel Jenkins founder and host of Conscious Chatter. Although each of their backgrounds and experiences leading up to their current career paths were very different, they are now both leading some of the most important and inspiring conversations surrounding sustainable fashion through both of their individual platforms and now together with their new venture Group Chat.
Kestrel Jenkins, hosts Conscious Chatter - a weekly podcast with over two hundred episodes which covers everything from the latest sustainable founder’s story to deconstructing how oppressive systems have impacted the sustainable fashion space. As a listener since the very beginning, Kestrel was literally one of the first podcasts talking about sustainable fashion. Her interviews are not only incredibly inspiring, well edited and thought provoking, but open the door to deeper conversations that help to learn and unlearn what we’ve been taught over the years.
Brittany Sierra, the founder of The Sustainable Fashion Forum who calls herself “an outsider to the sustainable fashion industry”, worked in the fashion industry within marketing for the majority of her career. Her curiosity to find more answers about sustainability pushed her to create an event featuring a panel of experts with companies like Eileen Fisher jumping on board to speak. What started out as a small event was shared with multiple people and over 150 people showed up. The rest you could say is history. With a following of over 190k and five conferences under her belt, she has taken her once local Portland event to a global level with her most recent conference being held virtually.
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GETTING THEIR START
Kestrel grew up as a young girl very interested in fashion, who then went on to pursue a career in Global Studies and International Journalism. “I was really interested in the idea of how people or products or ideas flowed around the world, and influenced other people and environments along the way. I became intrigued about the idea of fair trade, because of learning about all the chaos that can come with free trade.” After discovering a fair trade fashion magazine called Fair Indigo and a conversation with her Mom, Kestrel started to do some research on companies she could potentially work for, and that’s when she found People Tree. “I started reaching out to them and asking if I could apply for an internship, and I got one email back and they were like ‘yeah yeah, we’ll get in touch if we’re interested.’ I didn’t hear back so I pretty much emailed them once a week to check in and eventually months later the PR manager set up a call with me. So I ended up getting an internship with them and working there for six months, and that was my first sort of crash course in the industry and learning about all the inequities in fashion.”
From there she went on to work in various areas within sustainable fashion whether it was writing about green design or helping to put on the first eco-fashion show for Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. “I’ve always been weaving around the space to figure out how to bring the conversation to a more mainstream audience and how to bring more people in the most accessible way possible. That’s one way that what Brittany does really resonates with me, because I think she has a really beautiful approach to communication where everyone feels they can come hang out and isn’t an exclusive thing.”
How did the idea for a podcast come about?
“I had a blog called Awear World for a while showcasing different people and what they were wearing sometimes within sustainable fashion, and a friend of mine that has an organic t-shirt company was like ‘why don’t you start a podcast?’ He planted the seed and I didnt think it was possible but then I started doing some research and realized you just buy a microphone and you can pretty much start a podcast. The podcast has been a literal evolution of my learning, and it’s changed in a sense over time as I’ve learned more and have had a chance to talk to different people which has expanded my perspective on what sustainability can mean.”
On the flipside to Kestrel’s story, Brittany’s path towards sustainability started much later in her career. It wasn’t until she was a judge at a sustainable fashion show that ultimately led her down the rabbit hole of trying to understand more about what was going on in the industry. It was through her curiosity, and ultimate realization of discovering something she loved that led her going full force into the industry. “My background is in marketing so I was helping designers and retailers here in Portland with their email marketing, social media, digital marketing about five years ago, and I was heavily involved in the fashion industry. I was asked to judge a fashion show which was all about sustainability. Essentially they gave designers a bag of fabric and they had to create something from it and from there they were auctioned off. When I went to the fashion show I heard a lot of facts and statistics that I had never heard before, and working in the industry I was completely shocked to hear that the industry that I loved so much was detrimental to people and the planet. So I went home and I tried to google and figure out what was going on. And at that time (five-six years ago) there wasn’t as much information on the internet as there is now - at least that I could understand and follow what was going on.
Was this sort of your “ah-ha” moment?
I always say this but I’ve been trying to think back to my thought process about why I decided to create an event that I knew nothing about and the only thing that I keep going back to is that I was being lazy. If I could have someone tell me
“The podcast has been a literal evolution of my learning, and it’s changed in a sense over time as I’ve learned more and have had a chance to talk to different people which has expanded my perspective on what sustainability can mean.”
- Kestrel Jenkins
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what it was instead of having to google and figure it out on my own then I felt that that was a good idea. So I put together the first event, it was just one panel, not a big deal, I wasn’t planning on creating a conference. I invited people and put it out into the world and figured if other people were interested maybe they’d show up. And that first event 150 people came. I had never put on an event of that magnitude before so it didn’t dawn on me that I wouldn’t be able to sit there and listen to what was going on. I was literally running around making sure everything went smoothly so I learned absolutely nothing that first event. So I was basically in the same spot that I was when I decided to have the event. But what I did learn is how much I enjoyed bringing people together. And even though I didn’t have all the answers, I enjoy being that bridge between the folks that do have the information and those who want to learn more.
It wasn’t until after the second event that I realized I wanted to do it full out. The first two years it was just a side random thing. But the second year I realized how much I really enjoyed the community aspect and it could merge my love for community, fashion, and my new love for sustainability and marketing. So it ended up being the perfect combination of everything that I loved and that I didn’t even know that I loved yet. So that is essentially how it started. I know a whole lot more now than I did back then.”
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DEFINING MOMENTS & INSPIRING GUESTS
Brittany and Kestrel both met a while back when Brittany asked Kestrel to moderate a panel for the Sustainable Fashion Forum. Fast forward years later and they are now running a new community platform together called Group Chat.
Group Chat is a place for the sustainable fashion community to come together discuss various topics whether it be through a question of the day, a recent news article, or via amazing guest speakers to dive into a topic even deeper. It’s a place to nurture conversations and build deeper relationships within the community. The word community means so much to the sustainable fashion industry. It’s truly such a collective of like minded individuals striving for a better industry through education that can oftentimes feel a bit endless. Through these meaningful conversations and experiences we can hopefully work together to build a better future for this industry we all love so much. Through a happenstance experience in which both Kestrel and Brittany were approached by the same individual to potentially take over their existing platform, the two were able to re-connect and discover that they each had wanted to create the same exact type of platform - and Group Chat was born.
GROUP CHAT
Brittany: “We realized that we wanted to build something together. It’s interesting because she had all these thoughts on what she wanted to build that was very similar to what I was already doing and what Group Chat ended up being. But she didn’t even know what I was doing, and so it’s interesting because we both had this idea of the same thing and didn’t even realize it until we were brought together by this person that wanted us to take over their platform. It’s kind of awesome if you think about it, because we were already on the same wavelength and didn’t know it. It was kind of this perfect thing that came together.”
Kestrel: “Yeah, I think it’s pretty amazing which we didn’t realize until we started having these conversations, but we actually have very different skills which turns out to be super helpful because we both work in this space and both in a sense curate conversations. Brittany is a master of marketing and building community and creating really beautiful visual storytelling. And I’m really good at none of those things.
Brittany: “Kestrel’s great at everything I wish I was good at!”
Kestrel: I’m a really organized person and can do some of those behind the scenes things, and I’m good at moderating conversations and asking questions. But I think we have different skills which has ended up being super powerful and allows us to build this while we have so many different things going on at the same time.
Were there any stand out moments or inspirational guests that have really impressed you?
Brittany: For me it’s the fact that when I email these big companies, the fact that they respond or participate is flooring to me. I don’t know, I mean you have your insecurities, right? I think building a business, it’s your baby, and you love it, and you really hope other people will love it too. You put it out into the world and you do your best to make it good and something other people will enjoy or take seriously.
When I started the conference I was having huge identity issues. I didn’t finish college, I did two years of school and I was helping people with their marketing and PR because I know what I’m talking about, but I was very insecure about not having that piece of paper. Like, will people take me seriously? Will people know that I know what I’m talking about?
It's weird because there's this part of me that's been very naive in doing this, but there’s also a part of me that was a bit intimidated. So for me it’s not a particular person, just the fact that in general either brands are reaching out to me or I’m reaching out to them and they’re actually saying yes.
Kestrel: There've been so many guests that at different points have been pivotal in the narrative about how I think about the industry, but two that come to mind are the show I did with Dominique Drakeford - this was a few years ago and it was called “Sustainable Fashion is a Privileged White Girl Thing”. I think that was really good for me to start understanding how the narrative had been and how I had been perpetuating this issue, and it started to get me thinking more about how inequity on deeper levels is built into fashion. So that’s when Dom and I started having conversations about the Root project, and ended up being developed years later and that was really pivotal.
I also did two shows with Mara Hoffman. One was in the first season and it was at the point where she realized that she needed to shift her entire business model and think about sustainability. She was like I either have to shift everything or we have to shut down. And then two years later she came back to give an update on where they were at as a company and how things had transitioned. It was really powerful to see how much can be done in a short amount of time for a somewhat larger company. It was powerful to hear side by side how much had changed and for businesses who are like “it’s too hard we can’t do it”. Yes it’s hard, no one is saying it’s easy, but there are steps you can take really quickly to start transitioning if you can allocate the funding and time.
“I definitely used to be of the mindset that you just needed to buy different things, whereas now my mindset is you don’t need to buy things.”
- Kestrel Jenkins
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Have YOU adapted your lifestyle to be more sustainable since delving into the space?
Kestrel: I shop very little as well at this time in life. I'm really fortunate because sometimes people want to send me things, but I won’t take things unless I’ll actually wear it. I don’t buy very much, but if I do it’s from one small brand that I’ve been watching for a long time that I’ve been kind of wanting this one unique piece.
I definitely used to be of the mindset that you just needed to buy different things, whereas now my mindset is you don’t need to buy things. I think that’s definitely shifted in more recent years, away from you have to buy into this movement, versus let’s be resourceful. What do we have around our house, can we share clothes with friends? How can I use something I already have that can be reworked into a different way to meet the need that I have at the moment.
“I’m not going to be the person that bashes other people for doing what they can with what they have and I’m not going to be the person who puts a lot of stress on myself because I’m a leader in this space and live above my means. That’s not authentic to who I am or authentic to what I can maintain.” - Brittany Sierra
Brittany: Honestly, I don’t stress about it. Being an entrepreneur and trying to do this whole thing, I don’t shop typically anyways so I haven’t really had to do that even before Covid. I’m very much in startup mode so my investment always goes back into the platform. But when I do shop, I don’t stress about who it’s from whether it’s from Target or Eileen Fisher, I buy things based on what I know the crap out of and I know I'm going to continue to get use out of. I cannot do Forever 21 or Zara, I don’t go there. But I buy what I can afford and I buy what fits with my wardrobe and know I will continue to wear. I’m not going to be the person that bashes other people for doing what they can with what they have and I’m not going to be the person who puts a lot of stress on myself because I’m a leader in this space and live above my means. That’s not authentic to who I am or to what I can maintain. Because I think that’s also a part of sustainability is being able to maintain that. I just do what I can.”
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