As long as I can remember, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My parents are entrepreneurs, my grandparents are entrepreneurs- even my great-grandmother led a school. I almost didn’t have a choice. My parents did not believe in giving an allowance so while other kids asked their parents for money, I started businesses to make money. I started my first business at just six years old. It was a bakery that supported my entire family until the pandemic when we chose to close our doors. As an adult, I still wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I was less interested in making cupcakes.
When I went to college at Duke University, I decided to be a psych major. I thought that I would go on to get my master’s, then a doctorate, then return to my hometown and support troubled kids with my own practice in D.C. After taking psych 101, I realized I needed a new dream. Psychology was not for me. I went from the very stereotypically focused freshman with a plan to the stereotypically confused freshman trying to figure out what they want to do in life.
D.C. public school children have to wear uniforms, so I had to build a new wardrobe once I got to college. I started shopping every weekend and discovered I loved buying clothes. I even got a job just so I could afford to buy more clothes. I fell in love with fashion. I started designing, modeling, styling- anything in fashion. I tried it all and I was self-taught! The very first piece I designed and made was for a friend I was styling. I had a specific vision and could not find it in stores, so I just made it. I knew fashion was the next step for me.
Now, Duke does not have a fashion major, but they do have Program II which is the opportunity to create your own major. With Program II, you cannot just major in “Fashion” or “Fashion Design,” you have to have a deeper theoretical question so I started digging into the “dark” side of the fashion industry. This is when I learned about fast fashion and its negative impacts on people and the environment. I used Program II to create the major, “Intersectional Sustainability in the Fashion Industrial Complex: Production & Consumption.” Through this course of study, I saw how sustainable fashion is not accessible. The people most negatively affected by fast fashion have the least access to the solution, sustainable fashion. From that point, I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life figuring out how to make sustainable fashion more accessible for everyone.
After graduating college, I started my Venture For America Fellowship working for Endeavor. Endeavor is a global nonprofit that selects and supports high-growth startups to create flywheels of entrepreneurship outside of the U.S. coasts. At Endeavor, I learned about the world of technology startups and saw the opportunities for revamping sustainable fashion. Integration of tech has helped so many other sectors, so why not fashion? This was the birth of The Clothing Library.
At its core, The Clothing Library borrows the simple ideas of the sharing economy. It’s a library, but instead of renting books, you rent clothes. From eco-friendly washing methods to local delivery, every aspect of The Clothing Library is built with sustainability in mind. Rented garments travel miles, not states, reducing transportation emissions and allowing our customers to support their local communities. Even further, we are secondhand first. We source our inventory exclusively from local resellers, thrift stores, and consignment stores which is better for the environment, cheaper for our business model, and allows our customers access to one-of-a-kind inventory.
For me, The Clothing Library is not just about building a business, it’s about reshaping an entire industry and rethinking our relationship with clothing. It is hard for sustainable fashion to compete in a world where fast fashion is more convenient, cheaper, and trendier. We need solutions that help even the scale. As Anne Marie Bonneau famously said, “We don’t need a handful of people doing [sustainability] perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” I don’t believe in shaming people into being sustainable. This is why with The Clothing Library, we offer unlimited item swaps, effectively granting our customers access to an expansive wardrobe. I believe we can still have nice things and enjoy our lives, but considering the environment should always be at the forefront. For this Earth Month and beyond, let’s do sustainability imperfectly.