A career chat with Elizabeth Joy
Happy new year and welcome back to another edition of The Green Dress Report! I’m so excited to take this newsletter into 2023 with me. Although it will no doubt look different now that the fall semester has ended, I hope to keep posting from time to time, with everything from resources and events in sustainable fashion, to my thoughts on different topics to conversations with individuals working on these issues that I might come across in my own job search after graduation. Thank you for all your support so far and I look forward to having you here with me in the new year!
This week’s edition features Elizabeth Joy, founder of Conscious Life and Style and current head of Conscious Fashion Collective. We covered her sustainable fashion journey, the biggest issues the industry is facing and her excitement for her sites’ new initiatives this year. Read on for some amazing advice and career resources below!
I began with the question I ask all my guests, by asking Joy to describe her education and career journey in sustainable fashion. “I always loved fashion,” Joy explained; she recalled having a subscription to Teen Vogue as well as their career guide. She was “confronted with the realities of the fashion industry early” when she heard about the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh in 2013, and through watching the documentary “The True Cost.” These events made Joy realize that fashion was at odds with her passion for human rights and her desire for a career that did good in the world. To begin to reckon with this juxtaposition, she founded Conscious Life and Style, her first platform focused on raising awareness about conscious fashion brands.
Joy decided to get a degree in international business from Loyola University Chicago, but was unsure of her exact path. She interned for a fair trade fashion brand doing marketing and with nonprofits throughout college, and after graduation began doing marketing for JCA, a firm offering technology consulting for nonprofits. After a while, Joy wanted to get back to working in fashion, in addition to running Conscious Life and Style on the side.She started doing freelance marketing, and got more serious about her blog and Instagram account (@consciousstyle). One of her clients was Kamea Chayne, founder of Conscious Fashion Collective. When Chayne moved on to focus on her podcast, Green Dreamer, among other projects, she picked Joy to take over as manager of Conscious Fashion, in addition to still running Conscious Life and Style.
Both sites started out mainly offering sustainable fashion brand guides, but have more recently branched out into other forms of coverage. Conscious Life and Style has begun to focus on education around ethical fashion, covering topics such as living wages in the garment industry. Conscious Fashion, on the other hand, is shifting toward more unique brand guides (such as ultra slow fashion brands that don’t produce collections on a seasonal schedule) as well as featuring career resources, which will be the site’s main focus in 2023.
“I feel like we’re really offering something that doesn’t exist elsewhere.”
This shift toward featuring career resources comes as a response to “huge” audience demand for them, said Joy, and the response so far has been great. “I feel like we’re really offering something that doesn’t exist elsewhere, … [and] I know that we’re really helping people.” Conscious Fashion plans to launch an online career membership program early this year for those looking to build a career in conscious fashion. Joy explained the decision to create a membership over a one-time course or workshop in order to allow for more learning opportunities, including help with resumes and portfolios. The community will allow those already in the fashion industry to network, while also providing a way for newcomers to break into the “elitist and exclusionary” fashion industry and helping grow the sustainable fashion space.
Now it’s time for the lightning round! I asked Joy questions about her career advice, lessons she’s learned, areas she sees for improvement and who is doing it right. Read on for her answers!
Do you have any advice for those looking to pursue a career in the fashion/sustainability industry?
I would point people to an article that our amazing contributing writer wrote—Stella—on 10 tips for getting started in a career in conscious fashion. I think that she did a great job outlining those tips.
Get clear on what you love to do and where your skills lie:
What is needed in the industry and what roles exist?
Where do your passion and skills match up with these needs and roles?
What qualifications might you need to get?
Check out Conscious Fashion’s Career Chats series
Reach out to people on LinkedIn!
Can be alumni or others you have a connection with
Ask if you can job shadow or just send them questions, see if they’d be willing to meet
What lessons have you learned through doing this work?
I’ve learned so many lessons! I think that I’ve learned a lot about history, global geopolitics, trade laws… Fashion might sound vain or frivolous to people but it is interconnected with just absolutely everything in the world!
Are there any topics you’d like to see get more coverage?
In the sustainable fashion niche this gets talked about, but in the broader fashion industry when they talk about sustainability it doesn’t get covered enough, and that is living wages for workers, fair working conditions and worker rights, like the ability to organize safely without the risk of being fired. I think that needs to be talked about way more, and that’s part of sustainability!
What are some “false solutions” you see in the fashion industry?
Wow. A lot!
Big fashion brands launching tiny little eco/green collections that are a tiny percentage of their entire collection and promoting themselves as sustainable—that’s just got to go!
The reliance on textile recycling—it’s an innovation that we do need, but it’s an excuse for bigger brands to continue overproducing
It doesn’t get to the root of the issue, which is overproduction
Certain types of recycling might be energy-intensive or require lots of chemicals
The reliance on recycled polyester—using it for more than swimwear or activewear, for example
Washing synthetic materials results in a huge release of microplastics into waterways
Recycled polyester garments are typically not able to be recycled
Recycled polyester isn’t a fully circular system like recycling plastic bottles is
And there are a lot more!
Are there any common misconceptions about fashion sustainability that bug you?
That it’s expensive and we have to buy our way into sustainable fashion
It’s also about buying less and taking care of our clothes, learning how to increase clothes’ longevity such as washing in cold water as a very basic one that also saves you money!
You can also think about alternatives to buying clothes, such as swapping or shopping secondhand
Sustainable fashion isn’t about buying the same amount of clothes only from sustainable brands, it’s also about being more intentional about what we’re buying and whether we’re actually going to wear and love the clothes we buy
It’s also about reframing our relationship to our clothes and developing a deeper relationship with them—what do we want to have for the next several years, maybe decades?
Who is doing it right?
I think Vestiaire Collective is doing some interesting things right now. They are a secondhand platform and they have been a supporter of the Or Foundation, which is an amazing organization in Accra, Ghana, where the Kantamanto Market is. They’re going beyond doing secondhand and saying “Oh, that’s enough to be sustainable”; they’re also really investing in the communities that are on the front lines of fashion’s waste crisis, and they are also very open about the fact that secondhand isn’t enough; they also want to improve other elements of their business to make it as sustainable as possible. They made an interesting, very provocative decision recently to ban fast fashion from their platform, which was quite controversial, but I think that it’s interesting to see a platform try new things and see how it goes.
Who or what gives you hope for the future?
The growing attention to the need for legislation in the fashion industry
We’re seeing some interesting things in the US, EU and UK about human rights and traceability, circularity and greenwashing
All the engaged citizens who care, all the people who are standing up and doing something about this, whether that’s starting an Instagram account, starting a brand, wanting to go into the sustainable fashion industry—the movement is growing and we all contribute to the culture shift
This is the future that people want, and there are enough really incredible, intelligent, inspiring, creative people working on these issues that it gives me a lot of hope.
That’s all for now! Thanks so much to Elizabeth for speaking with me and providing such great advice, make sure to check out Conscious Life and Style as well as all of Conscious Fashion Collective’s career resources! You can also find them on Instagram @consciousstyle and @consciousfashion.
That is amazing that you are continuing your project!! And love this interview!