This article is part of the Vogue Business 100 Innovators: Class of 2025, an annual list of individuals Vogue Business editors believe have the potential to change the luxury industry for the better.
It was never easy to be a sustainability thought leader, but this year has tested even the strongest-willed. From the US to the EU, politicians have whipped up an anti-ESG frenzy, prompting regulators to roll back hard-won policy momentum, and taking the wind out of the fashion industry’s sustainability efforts in the process. Even the companies that have doubled down on ambition and raised targets are being stifled by budget and staffing constraints. All the while, the social and environmental impacts of the climate crisis are becoming more severe, especially for the vulnerable communities in the Global South that make much of the world’s clothing. Sustainability has never been more pressing, and leadership never more vital.
This year, our sustainability thought leaders are recognised as much for their tenacity in the face of these challenges as for their vision of systemic change. Whether through grassroots organising, building localised fibersheds and recycling models, advancing material and technological innovation, or reshaping business models and consumer culture, each innovator is pushing fashion to confront its challenges head-on.
Founder and executive director | Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity
Trade unionist Kalpona Akter began working in garment factories at the age of 12, and has been a vocal advocate for her fellow garment workers ever since. She was critical to the Bangladesh Safety Accord after the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013, urging brands in the Global North to sign up, and she made sure that worker groups were involved in the EU’s Sustainability Compact (a series of EU initiatives and measures aimed at promoting sustainability and a circular economy within the trade bloc, and through international partnerships).
Akter is driven by a deep commitment to labour justice, gender equality and climate resilience for working-class communities in Bangladesh and beyond, and consistently stands in solidarity with workers as they continue to battle systemic oppression in various forms. This year, she demanded a substantial increase in the minimum wage for Bangladeshi garment workers and championed their rights on the global stage, actively pushing for the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) to include legally binding measures that protect workers and prevent human rights violations. Akter also continues to work at the grassroots level, educating workers on the critical concept of a just transition and advancing the just transition framework with different industry stakeholders.
Founder | Re-Ceremonial
Ateev Anand is reframing how India dresses for its most important moments. With his label Re-Ceremonial, Anand is challenging the high-spend wedding and occasionwear market that has long prioritised opulence over impact. His radical proposition? Couture-inspired occasionwear crafted from recycled textiles and dyed only with plant-based ingredients — no synthetics, no polymers, no sequins.
Working with five craft clusters across India, Anand handweaves fabrics from post-consumer waste. (For commercial viability, he incorporates some power loom textiles like pure 60 gram silk and Tencel.) The dyes are created in Mumbai using natural materials like temple flower offerings, tender coconut skins and onion peels. Embroidery incorporates only glass or metal, never plastic.
The idea for Re-Ceremonial began in 2020, when Anand, also founder of slow fashion label Teev, met a woman at an airport and designed her two-piece wedding outfit using recycled materials. That encounter made him realise bridalwear, central to India’s fashion identity, could be a way to drive systemic change. Today, Re-Ceremonial speaks to a new generation eager to honour tradition without compromising on values.
Co-founder and creative director | Mattter
Yidi Chen believes China is at a critical point as its citizens slowly start to embrace a more conscious way of living and consuming. Chen is emerging as a leading voice in the sector. A creative director and sustainability advocate, Chen was born in Beijing and lives in Shanghai, where she built a name for herself in fashion media having worked for global video platform Nowness. There, she launched the film series Survival Season, exploring the relationship between humans and the environment. She then went on to work for Shaway Yeh’s pioneering sustainability consultancy Yehyehyeh, and participated in the Circular Economy and Sustainability Strategies programme at the University of Cambridge.
Now, Chen is co-founder of Mattter — a platform advancing next-generation material innovation to bridge design, technology and manufacturing to drive sustainable change, launched in 2023. It works with brands on a range of project, including identifying, aligning and often co-developing solutions such as new fibre innovations, or a distinctive fibre treatment. It counts brands from LVMH, Kering and OTB as clients.
Founder and CEO | Project Plan B
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Recycling may not be the answer to fashion’s overproduction problem, but it is an essential part of the equation as we face the thorny question of what to do with the mountains of textile waste piled up in countries throughout the Global North. However, the infrastructure to develop textile-to-textile recycling is woefully lacking. Driving change is Tim Cross, founder and CEO of British clothing manufacturer Project Plan B, which makes garments from recycled materials. Last year, Project Plan B partnered with charity Salvation Army Trading Company to set up Project Re:Claim, the UK’s first commercial-scale textile-to-textile polyester recycling facility.
In 2021, Cross founded the non-profit Circular Textiles Foundation (CTF), which aims to bridge the gap between clothing brands and post-consumer textile recycling technologies via workshops — in particular, focusing on how to design a garment so that it can be recycled at its end of life — and certification. In 2024, the UK Intellectual Property Office recognised the CTF’s “Infintee” symbol as the country’s official certification trademark for recyclable clothing.
Co-founders | Responsible Contracting Project
In fashion’s supply chains, power imbalances emerge because contracts usually favour brands over suppliers and workers. Sarah Dadush and Olivia Windham Stewart co-founded the Responsible Contracting Project to rectify that. The initiative develops practical contractual tools that promote shared responsibility for human rights and the environment in the supply chain.
Dadush is a law professor at Rutgers University and a former UN legal counsel who brings legal rigour and policy insight to the project, while Stewart is a sustainability and human rights advisor who leads the Apparel and Textile Transformation Initiative and has experience working with businesses, NGOs, industry associations and more. The two started working together in the American Bar Association Business Law Section’s working group in 2019, officially forming the Responsible Contracting Project in 2021. In the past year, the organisation has published briefs that unpack the contractual requirements within the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive as well as a number of forced labour ban laws, and has provided training on responsible contracting for over 500 brands and suppliers. Today, Dadush runs the day-to-day operations as director; Stewart contributes as a senior advisor while managing a portfolio of independent projects.
President | Insieme Social Cooperative
Tucked away in the Italian city of Vicenza is one of the country’s leading organisations for textile reuse: Insieme Social Cooperative. The small-but-mighty social enterprise manages and repurposes textile waste, employing people referred by social services, who have struggled with addictions or mental health challenges, or recently left the nearby prison. President Marina Fornasier uses the organisation’s approach to textile waste as a metaphor for its approach to people: “We believe that there is value in everything, but sometimes you have to work to bring the value out.” In many ways, its evolution speaks to the broader fashion industry’s challenges. Earlier this year, Insieme closed its in-house upcycling workshop after five years, citing the time- and labour-intensive nature of upcycling and the limited environmental and financial rewards. Following that decision, the Insieme Social Cooperative board (which also includes Adriano Verneau, Alessandro Dal Lago, Filippo Giaretta and Giulia Fasolato) has focused its attention on building stronger supply chains for textile reuse. It has consistently championed the need for better collection, sorting and recycling infrastructure among B2B partners, citizens and public institutions, advocating for systemic change at scale.
Head of Sustainability | Lakmé Fashion Week
Darshana Gajare is rewriting the sustainability playbook for India’s most influential fashion platform. Since 2019, she has led sustainability at Lakmé Fashion Week — India’s apex fashion event, co-organised with the Fashion Design Council of India — transforming what was once a standalone Sustainability Day into a central pillar of the event. Under her leadership, sustainability features more prominently in designer applications, show programming and brand partnerships — from eliminating single-use plastic to mandating refillable water bottles and pushing greener backstage and production practices.
She has also been instrumental in scaling the Circular Design Challenge (CDC) — India’s largest sustainability-focused fashion award. While not the founder, Gajare spearheaded its global expansion, having led its transition into an international competition two years ago. In 2024, CDC received over 190 applications from 10 countries, spanning Australia to Argentina. Last year’s winner was Ritwik Khanna, whose label Rkive City reimagines textile waste into fashion-forward silhouettes.
Beyond Lakmé Fashion Week, Gajare serves on the advisory board of Fashion Revolution India and hosts Ethically Yours, a climate storytelling podcast spotlighting changemakers and questioning fashion’s impact on the planet. With her system-wide approach and emphasis on grassroots change, Gajare is nurturing a generation of designers who see circularity not as a buzzword, but as a launchpad.
Founding director | Collective Fashion Justice
Australian activist Emma Håkansson has become something of a moral compass for fashion, consistently advocating for people, the planet and animal rights in an industry that has historically overlooked all three in the drive for profit. Through her charity Collective Fashion Justice, Håkansson has been quietly rewriting the rules of engagement for fashion brands around the world. She supported Copenhagen Fashion Week to become “wildlife free”, later replicating this success in Amsterdam, Berlin and Australia. This year, she also worked with the British Fashion Council to ban wild animal skins at London Fashion Week. Her documentary film, Shiringa: Fashion Regenerating Amazonia, has garnered several international awards for its moving portrayal of the Amazonian community creating animal-free bioleather from the shiringa tree. Since its release, Håkansson has been working to translate its message into meaningful industry change, with European fashion brands Marimekko and Aeron introducing the first products that swap animal leather for shiringa bioleather. This is the first in a series of films she is working on, with the intention of making vegan, total ethics fashion (the subject of her three books) a reality.
Senior director of global fashion and nature initiatives | Conservation International
While much of the industry has been laser-focused on decarbonisation, Conservation International has been quietly pulling at a lesser funded but equally important lever for change: nature and biodiversity. The global non-profit is the brains behind Kering and Inditex’s Regenerative Fund for Nature, which finances farmers transitioning to regenerative agriculture, and has enrolled over one million hectares of land to this end already. It also regularly contributes to the nature and biodiversity strategies of leading industry coalitions, including Textile Exchange and The Fashion Pact. Virginia Keesee heads up its fashion initiatives, and has become a leading champion for change in the industry. Her team is consistently at the cutting edge of progress. Last year, they published a guidebook for fashion brands working with Indigenous communities, tackling a highly controversial subject that brands consistently get wrong, and creating a constructive blueprint to getting it right. In both this and the Regenerative Fund for Nature, Keesee has advocated for fashion to not only take note of Tier 4 — a part of the supply chain that has historically been hidden or overlooked — but to place Tier 4 suppliers and workers at the forefront.
Founder | Kantai
Fashion too often forgets the hands behind the craftsmanship. With over 15 years of experience leading craft development at Khamir, a non-profit based in Kutch, India, Ghatit Laheru has transformed endangered artisan traditions into thriving cultural economies, providing visibility for over 6,000 rural artisans. In August 2024, after stepping down as director, Laheru travelled through India’s spinning and weaving clusters to map the challenges and potential of grassroots hand-spinning. He discovered a gap in support for Khadi-based yarn producers. This led him back to Khamir to found Kantai, a dedicated hand-spinning incubator that nurtures local artisans, revives traditional techniques and reframes spinning as both heritage and economic opportunity.
Sustainability director, professor and IFM-Kering sustainability chair | Institut Français de la Mode
Andrée-Anne Lemieux has dedicated her career to empowering future generations of fashion workers to become sustainability changemakers, at the point when they are most receptive and eager to learn. As director of sustainability at Institut Français de la Mode, Lemieux has helped to embed sustainability in the curriculum, designing mandatory courses on critical skills such as impact measurement, circularity and governance. She also heads up the prestigious Parisian fashion school’s partnership with luxury conglomerate Kering, a six-month programme that encourages students to develop industry-leading interventions to complex sustainability challenges. Now in its fifth year, the programme has delivered over 50 transformation projects, focused on reducing the impact of manufacturing, enabling circularity and decoupling growth from material use, promoting traceability and climate justice, and exploring cutting-edge concepts like emotional durability and extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies. In July, Lemieux was awarded the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR), the highest academic qualification in France, recognising her ongoing contributions to sustainability and circularity in fashion supply chains.
Co-CEOs | Manteco
A pioneer of circular fashion, Italian manufacturer Manteco has been making recycled wool since World War II, when its founder Enzo Anacleto Mantellassi noticed that raw materials were in short supply, but high-quality, discarded military garments were plentiful. Today, mechanically recycled wool represents about 45 per cent of Manteco’s business, which the company says delivers a 65 per cent reduction in carbon emissions, water usage and energy consumption compared to virgin wool. While many promise recycled content, Manteco is actually delivering it, boasting brand partnerships from luxury (including LVMH and Kering) to mainstream staples (Samsøe Samsøe, Reformation and Cos), through to emerging talent (including Patrick McDowell and Federico Cina). Now, brothers and co-CEOs Marco and Matteo Mantellassi are doubling down on the company’s commitment to sustainability, having taken the reins from their father, company president Franco Mantellassi, in 2000. The brothers are paying it forward with the Manteco Sustainability Award, supporting emerging circular design talent in collaboration with various leading fashion schools.
CEO and founder | The Sustainable Angle and Future Fabrics Expo
The seismic impact of material choices on the overall environmental footprint of a fashion product is widely recognised today, but when Nina Marenzi founded The Sustainable Angle in 2010, it was still a fringe conversation. Fast forward 15 years, and Marenzi remains a leader in the space. The Sustainable Angle celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2025 with a bumper edition of its flagship event, Future Fabrics Expo. Showcasing over 10,000 textile solutions from over 150 companies, the event has continued to evolve, recently adding a footwear hub, a launchpad for cutting-edge commercially available materials, and a circularity lab. In recent years, Marenzi has also expanded the expo’s seminar series, advocating for progressive legislation to drive sustainable action, championing global — and often overlooked — leaders in regenerative agriculture and climate resilience, and highlighting common challenges for material innovators.
VP of consumer sectors | BSR (Business for Social Responsibility)
Long-time luxury consultant Elisa Niemtzow has been quietly leading the charge for corporate sustainability for over a decade. She was among the first in luxury fashion to question the potential of degrowth for consumer goods companies, and worked on tracking physical climate risks in fashion supply chains with Kering, long before the conversation went mainstream. As VP of consumer sectors at BSR, she helps brand clients navigate increasingly challenging times, embedding sustainability in business as usual and championing women’s rights in the supply chain through BSR’s collaborative gender equality initiative, RISE (Reimagining Industry to Support Equality). Niemtzow also leads BSR’s Responsible Luxury Initiative (ReLI), and is a strategic advisor to Watch and Jewellery Initiative 2030, co-founded by Kering and Cartier to advance climate resilience, resource preservation and inclusion. This year, Niemtzow co-founded Racine, a group of luxury leaders and sustainability experts working to reframe sustainability in light of supply chain uncertainty, shifting cultural values and new approaches to creativity and desirability.
Director of supply chain social impact | Patagonia
Senior director of social impact and transparency | Patagonia
Patagonia has long been associated with sustainability, but some of its impact team’s most impressive feats never reach the front pages. In 2012, Patagonia rolled out its supply chain monitoring programme from Tier 1 (direct suppliers, such as finished garment manufacturers) to Tier 2 (indirect suppliers, such as spinners, weavers and printers). It quickly started to see red flags across several of its key sourcing markets — notably, migrant workers in Taiwan being made to pay recruitment fees, trapping them in a cycle of debt and equating to a form of forced labour. Savage and Nguyen have spent more than a decade working to eliminate this insidious but often overlooked practice. Their efforts have since saved over 3,000 workers up to $1.7 million annually in recruitment fees. This year, they turned outwards, using Patagonia’s influence to bring other brands into the fold and to drive a collective response to recruitment fees. This is in addition to Savage and Nguyen’s work on living wages (which are paid in 39 per cent of Patagonia’s factories, significantly more than most brands), regenerative organic agriculture (which now accounts for 23.4 per cent of the brand’s cotton use) and responsible purchasing practices (for which it co-developed an educational framework).
Founder and CEO | Coleo Group
Textile-to-textile recycling is something of an albatross in sustainable fashion: billions of dollars have been funnelled into its emergence, but few of the startups leading the charge have managed to build viable businesses at scale. Like Project Re:claim in the UK, Coleo is a rare example of textile-to-textile recycling in action. The Spanish company started out as a conventional fashion manufacturer and retrofitted recycling into its business model, building on founder David Puyuelo Huguet’s experience at Spanish textile manufacturer Sedatex. With one eye on the future, Huguet has consistently invested in artificial intelligence, allowing Coleo to sort and grade textile waste more efficiently — one of the key roadblocks to recycling. In the past year, Coleo managed around nine million garments that would have otherwise been considered waste, producing 2.8 million new, recycled garments in the process, of which 2.5 million contained more than 60 per cent textile-to-textile content. Crucially, Huguet has brought multiple household name brands on board as clients — something other recycling companies have struggled with. In the final months of 2025, Coleo will expand its impact further, opening two new waste management facilities — its third in Spain and another in France, addressing textile waste at the source.
State president | Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union (TTCU)
Earlier this year, Indian trade unionist Thivya Rakini was conducting a routine factory visit when — just two hours in — the heat caused her to faint. In a viral LinkedIn post recounting her experience, Rakini shared how factory temperatures had soared to 38.6°C, and she fainted despite having eaten, stayed hydrated and dressed in breathable cotton clothing. The workers she was visiting, however, have to endure those temperatures for nine hours a day, wearing synthetic uniforms, often under immense pressure to produce garments at speed.
As she experienced, extreme heat stress is one of the most pressing climate risks for garment workers, and Rakini has become one of the leading voices advocating for adaptation measures. This builds on the former nun’s long career rallying against gender-based sexual violence in fashion supply chains, a problem that the audits and codes of conduct imposed by brands have failed to stamp out. In her work on extreme heat and gender-based violence, Rakini has done what many in the fashion industry have neglected to: put female workers front and centre, and cast light on the realities that brands have historically tried to hide.
Founder | Herd
Fashion supply chains are notoriously complex and opaque, but a growing wave of brands are bucking that trend, putting provenance and traceability first. At the forefront is Ruth Alice Rands, founder of British knitwear brand Herd. She has built her British wool supply chain from the farm up, absorbing the risks of processing losses to guarantee a return for farmers, while championing the bluefaced Leicester, a British breed she calls “the Romeo of the sheep world”.
Over the past 12 months, Rands has evolved the Herd concept further to include Indian cotton and Scottish tartan tweed — also natural materials rooted in a specific place, supporting heritage craft and industrial ecosystems. Her romantic notions about local production are quickly gaining global relevance, compounded by ongoing supply chain disruption, subcontracting scandals, constantly shifting tariffs and a regulatory push towards transparency and traceability. Amid all of this chaos, Herd’s fibreshed model stands out as a potential way forward.
Co-founder and director of finance and special projects | Hasiru Dala
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Waste pickers are some of the most crucial yet overlooked contributors to fashion supply chains, and Nalini Shekar is among their most consistent and effective advocates. As the co-founder of Indian non-profit Hasiru Dala, Shekar works to restore dignity and agency to informal waste pickers across 18 cities, 38 taluks and 64 villages. Earlier this year, in the coastal region of Dakshina Kannada, Hasiru Dala implemented a women-led, decentralised waste management system. They brought together local governments and citizens to transform waste into a resource and build economic opportunities on the ground, directly impacting over 7,500 individuals and indirectly benefitting a further 59,000. Empowering waste entrepreneurs is a personal passion of Shekar’s and the impetus behind her Textile Waste Management initiative for post-consumer waste, which has gathered over 257,000 kilograms of textile waste to date, linking local collectors to national recycling markets and training 126 waste pickers in the process. This year, Hasiru Dala also helped to implement the multi-stakeholder programme Saamuhika Shakti, supported by the H&M Foundation, whose textiles-specific project aims to divert 800,000 kilograms of post-consumer textile waste and support 500 waste picker livelihoods by 2026.
Director of strategic engagement | Transparentem
Supply chain transparency is something of a North Star in sustainable fashion, but it has proven elusive for brands with historically fragmented and opaque supply chains. US-based non-profit Transparentem works to uncover the exploitation hidden within these supply chains, but rather than just call brands out, their end goal is to facilitate remediation at a systemic level. Director of strategic engagement Karen Stauss has proven particularly effective, leading the charge against the pervasive but often overlooked issue of recruitment fees, which can trap migrant workers in a downward cycle of debt. This year, Stauss and her team brought together more than 40 apparel companies to address labour abuses like debt bondage risks and holding of identity documents at Tier 2 factories in Taiwan. Several of the companies they engaged are now working with the Taiwan Textile Federation to change long-standing practices that negatively impact migrant workers across the country.
Director of Material Innovation Lab | Kering
As the director of Kering’s Material Innovation Lab (MIL), Christian Tubito and his team scout, validate and industrialise innovations with trusted suppliers, before presenting them to Kering’s brand creative teams. It’s a complex role, bridging group strategy, brand creative and industrial partners. It’s also rapidly expanding. Founded in 2013, MIL now houses more than 5,000 samples of “certified sustainable materials” from over 500 manufacturers, and is currently running more than 35 pilot projects. This year alone, Tubito has spearheaded the implementation of two textile innovations: a bio-engineered alternative to silk, and the first 3D-weaving technology able to go straight from design to production, minimising waste, energy and chemical use in the process. He also helped pilot and install the first commercial filter to reduce or avoid microfibre leakage from textile materials, a major step forward for fashion production, which releases countless microfibres each year. Most notable in 2025 was the introduction of the Kering Accelerator for Regenerative Materials Implementation (KARMI), with which Tubito doubled down on the group’s commitment to regenerative agriculture, allowing Kering brands to reserve thousands of tonnes of regenerative textile materials through direct relationships with suppliers — a rare feat among brands.
Founder and designer | Sioduhi Studio
From the Alto Rio Negro region in the northern reaches of Brazil’s Amazonas state, Sioduhi Waíkhᵾn is challenging fashion’s history of extraction with a vision rooted in Indigenous Futurism, a movement that draws on Indigenous knowledge to reimagine the future. In a region where fashion’s supply chains have contributed to deforestation and the exploitation of Indigenous peoples, Waíkhᵾn, a member of the Pira-tapuya community, is advocating for change.
As the founder of fashion brand Sioduhi Studio, he works closely with artisans, including his own aunt and cousin, to create accessories and garments using fibres from native tacum palm trees. He also invented maniocolor, a natural textile dye derived from cassava bark. Waíkhᵾn trains his collaborators in brand strategy, pricing and product development, democratising access to business knowledge, which is typically withheld from Indigenous makers. Elsewhere, he co-founded Abya Yala Criativa, a platform that amplifies the innovation of Indigenous perspectives across fashion.
CEO | Inside Out Fashion, Textiles Home
CEO | Wråd
Matteo Ward has a proven track record designing system-shifting interventions for luxury fashion companies. Last year, he worked with Ferragamo on a “hackathon”, inviting staff to rework Ferragamo’s iconic styles with circularity and sustainability in mind, and partnered with Vestiaire Collective on a campaign encouraging influencers to use their platforms for good. Ward has also advocated for change in the public realm, working with non-profit Fashion Revolution to champion sustainability in Italy, and authoring the book Fuorimoda! to uproot the fashion system’s toxic traits. He co-created and hosted the docuseries Junk with Sky Italia and Will Media, which aired on national television across Italy, exploring the global impact of fast fashion across Chile, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Ghana and Italy. Earlier this year, his consultancy and design studio Wråd was acquired by Inside Out (IO), the latest venture by environmental advocate and entrepreneur Suzy Amis Cameron, who is married to the filmmaker James Cameron. Pitched as a “wayfinding collective” designed to “deliver revolutionary solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges”, the holding company has six verticals, including fashion, textiles and home, of which Ward is now CEO. His work is driven by the question: what can clothing do that it hasn’t done before?
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