Giving Compass' Take:

• Stephanie Cordes, of the Cordes Foundation, discusses how she strives to make the fashion industry more ethical and sustainable. 

• The interviewer asks Cordes if she thinks that young people should utilize their resources to tackle social issues through mechanisms such as impact investing. Has could this practice potentially help battle the social injustices of the fashion industry?

• Read about the five traits of a truly ethical and sustainable brand. 

This interview is the fifth of 10 in a series of Q and A’s with leading changemakers, representing the Millennial generation who are working across sectors to be the force for change on the issues they care about most. The interview below is with Stephanie Cordes, of the Cordes Foundation regarding her efforts to make fashion more sustainable.

Tell as a little bit about yourself and your work.

I ultimately pursued a full-time position at Conde Nast where I further delved into the world of luxury advertising and marketing. When I learned that this massive $2.5T industry that I had grown to love was rarely paying its garment workers enough to live on—while also forcing them to work long hours in unsafe working conditions—I became motivated to take action.

What problem keeps you up at night? What do you think it will take to solve it?  
The fact that we, as Americans, dispose around 12.8M tons of textiles annually is just crazy to me! On average that would amount to 80 lbs. per every woman, man and child in the US! Along with being horrible for the environment of course, it’s also a largely untapped market opportunity given that 95% of used textiles can be recycled.

Why do you think it’s important to meet young people where they are to use their resources to address social issues, for example, through Impact Investing? 
Every young person has their own unique set of resources, a personal toolkit if you will, that is built over one’s lifetime. It is by understanding and unleashing the various forms of capital in these toolkits that they are better able to identify how they individually want to address social issues.

Read the full article about ethical fashion by Jessica Zetzman at the Case Foundation