Option Green: The True Cost of Fashion (Hybrid)

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This event is for adults and teens ages 13 and older.

The True Cost of Fashion

Who makes our clothes, and where and how they are made are all ethical questions related to the almost three trillion-dollar-a-year global fashion industry. How has our love for buying cheap clothing come at a high cost to the people who make it and the planet? In this talk, we will examine solutions for a more sustainable future for the global industry, now in a crisis, through innovation, policy reforms, and conscious consumerism.

Kathleen Webber is an associate professor of journalism and professional writing at The College of New Jersey. She has been a freelance journalist since 1998 writing about sustainability in the global fashion industry, innovation in creating circular economies and domestic manufacturing. Her bylines have appeared in Women’s Wear Daily, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Textile World, Grid magazine, Modern Farmer, sustainablebrands.com, Sierra magazine, ecowatch.com and GreenPhillyNews. Prior to working as a journalist, she was a product developer for Macy’s and a textile buyer for the designer, Michael Kors. Her textile research with Circular Philadelphia is currently being featured at “The Ecology of Fashion” exhibit at The Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

This is event is part of our Option Green series co-sponsored by the Friends of the EB Environmental Commission