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.
Fashion and beauty are undergoing a shift, led by a generation of entrepreneurs and creatives who view their platforms as catalysts for change. For them, accessibility, inclusion, sustainability and a deep appreciation of heritage and craftsmanship are not afterthoughts: they are integral to the way business is conducted.
Our champions of change are building models that put people at the centre — from artisans and garment workers to underrepresented consumers — while challenging an industry that too often sidelines social and environmental responsibility. They believe that creativity carries weight beyond runways and campaigns, and together, they are reshaping what it means to build influence in fashion and beauty today.
Founder and CEO | Made for a Woman
Eileen Claudia Akbaraly is building a brand where the women making its raffia products aren’t an afterthought, but the foundation. She weaves together social impact and fashion as founder and CEO of Made for a Woman, creating opportunities in economic mobility for artisans in Madagascar — an important region for sourcing raffia, where raffia palms grow natively, but where workers are often mistreated. In 2025, the company scaled from 350 to 750 artisans, all earning fair wages and gaining access to healthcare, education, mental health support and childcare. The organisation recently expanded its social impact initiatives, developing a primary school, shelter and the first on-site medical cabinet dedicated to mental health.
This year, Made for a Woman launched its third co-branded collaboration with Chloé (which began in 2023), with its raffia bags featuring in the collection, and renewed its partnership with Fendi for a second year. Akbaraly also began mapping out Madagascar’s first fully transparent supply chain for raffia.
Founder and milliner | Closely Crafted
New York’s Garment District is shrinking, as rents skyrocket and regulation threatens to push out the businesses that remain. Gigi Burris, founder of Gigi Burris Millinery, is working to preserve the city’s artisanal centre. She founded Closely Crafted, a non-profit that advocates for sustaining craft in American fashion, in 2022. Her latest obstacle and point of focus is the Midtown South Mixed-Use (MSMX) plan which, experts say, will result in the displacement of production and manufacturing businesses due to changes and fallout from the rezoning.
In June, Burris organised a protest against the MSMX plan, bringing together Garment District workers to advocate for safeguards, should the plan go through. In August, it was approved. Through Closely Crafted, Burris is continuing to push for those in charge of the MSMX plan to adopt seven key protections to safeguard production and manufacturing businesses in the Garment District once it goes into play.
Founder and designer | Cindy Castro
‘Made by Immigrants’ read the tags on designer Cindy Castro’s garments. This forms the basis of Castro’s New York-based label, which she founded in 2020, before opening her Garment District atelier in 2022. The past year has proved tough: Castro has faced the prospect of debilitating impacts from the MSMX plan, as well as fears of the increased ICE presence in New York City following the raids in LA, some of which targeted the city’s garment workers.
Castro sprung into action, speaking out about the detrimental effects of the plan and attending protests against the initiative. She also hosted a ‘Made by Immigrants’ experience at her Garment District atelier, offering a glimpse into how her products are made. This is an offshoot of Castro’s larger, longer-term project alongside her fashion brand: she’s building out a training facility for women of colour and immigrants to equip them with the knowledge and skills for the industry, and to support the next generation of US garment workers.
Founder and designer | Willy Chavarria
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Willy Chavarria has had a big year. In October 2024, he was named American Menswear Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). In February 2025, he uprooted from New York to Paris Fashion Week, where he’s now shown twice (most recently in June). His latest show for SS26 was a testament to how Chavarria blends fashion with activism, opening with a tribute to the immigrants and citizens who have been detained by ICE in the United States. It drew both praise and criticism, a reflection of the designer’s commitment to protest through fashion, and refusal to shy away from making a political statement at a time when it’s increasingly difficult to do so — especially as his brand and platform grow.
In July, Chavarria was announced as the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) newest Artist Ambassador, a role in which he will focus on advocating for immigrant and LGBTQ+ rights. This follows Chavarria’s collaboration with the ACLU for his SS25 collection. (The organisation also worked on the T-shirts the models wore in the opening sequence of the designer’s latest Paris show.) He is the first fashion designer to join the Artist Ambassador programme.
Founder and hairstylist | Hair Care
Fashion week is a visual explosion: striking colours, sculptural silhouettes and dazzling lights. It’s a setting that blind and low-vision individuals are rarely able to experience. Hairstylist Anna Cofone has been on a mission to change that. Through her non-profit Hair Care, she’s pioneering a more accessible approach to fashion shows that allows low-vision or blind guests to immerse themselves in the show through a multisensory experience: listening to audio descriptions of the clothes and touching fabric swatches to experience the textures of the materials. Designers including Chet Lo, Sinéad O’Dwyer, Roksanda and SS Daley have partnered with the initiative since it began last year.
An award-winning hairstylist, Cofone is known for her work with stars like Lana Del Rey and Dua Lipa. She was inspired to launch Hair Care in 2019 by her father, who was blind and always kept his hair well groomed as it boosted his self-esteem. Along with the accessible fashion week initiative, the non-profit offers hands-on workshops to equip blind and low-vision women and girls with the practical skills and confidence to care for their own hair. The organisation has so far supported over 500 people through its programming.
Co-founder and CEO | Everybody.World
Carolina Crespo founded basics brand Everybody.World in 2016. Amid a turbulent year — as a first-generation American, the June ICE raids in LA hit close to home, and she spoke out about standing in solidarity with the city’s garment workers — Crespo has pushed forth to new heights. Everybody.World’s Tailored Tee and Overnight Tote have continually sold out and restocked after Ayo Edebiri wore the brand consistently throughout season four of The Bear.
Crespo’s business model is built for growth: about 70 per cent of the T-shirts the brand sells are wholesale, meaning they’re blanks that other brands purchase to print their graphics on. Everybody.World also has a Trash Tee collection, in which T-shirts are made out of 100 per cent reclaimed waste — a world first, according to the brand. One hundred per cent biodegradable, they use 0 per cent synthetic materials. With this, Crespo believes she can change the industry’s status quo.
Designer and digital content creator
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Jasmine Dowling is an antithesis to the AI age that’s dominating design today. She developed a distinct visual language combining hand lettering with styling, illustration, photography, collage and tactile motion. After viral success with her brush‑lettering style in the early 2010s, Dowling diversified her craft, expanding beyond graphic design into immersive mixed‑media content when copyright disputes pushed her to explore other creative pathways.
This year, she created stop‑motion and paper‑fold animations for fashion and beauty players Aesop, Longchamp, Armani Beauty and Tom Ford, bringing nostalgia and handmade warmth back into digital storytelling. By maintaining a tangible, handcrafted aesthetic in motion, she’s challenging digital norms and raising creative standards for campaigns worldwide. With her organic, handcrafted ethos resonating across global brands and a trajectory towards branded activations and immersive digital narratives, Dowling is poised to shape the next wave of visually expressive content in fashion and beauty.
Founder | Give Your Best
Over 5.5 million people in the UK face clothing poverty, yet £140 million of wearable fashion goes to landfill every year. Sol Escobar saw an opportunity to close this gap, launching digital-first social enterprise Give Your Best in 2020. The organisation allows refugees, asylum seekers and others in need to “shop” donated clothes via its online platform with dignity, mirroring the experience of shopping on any other secondhand outlet but entirely for free.
Since then, the platform has supported over 3,500 people, and has grown into a network of over 100 volunteers and 52 brand partners. In June 2024, the organisation set up its first pay-it-forward pop-up in London where every purchase funds free styling credits for someone experiencing clothing poverty, which became a permanent fixture by September that year. Give Your Best has also launched an in-house repairs initiative funded by the Mayor of London to restore donated clothing. Escobar actively advocates for regulatory changes to tackle clothing poverty and textile waste and is lobbying for legislation to make it more feasible for brands to redistribute excess inventory to those in need.
Founder and designer
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London-based designer Feben has shown on the London Fashion Week schedule since SS22, except for a one-off Milan Fashion Week show for AW24, supported by Dolce Gabbana. Of Ethiopian heritage, Feben was born in Pyongyang, North Korea, and moved to Sweden as a small child before relocating to London to attend Central Saint Martins in 2019. Her transient childhood, as well as feelings of displacement, have informed her approach to both design and business. The designer frequently works with artisans in Accra, Ghana, to craft elements of her collections, from hardware to accessories, lifting up communities of artisans. Meanwhile, in London, she frequently collaborates with charitable organisations and NGOs like domestic violence charity Sistah Space to stage fundraising and community events.
Content creator and consultant
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Consumers have been calling out the lack of inclusive makeup shades for years now, but the problem persists. Beauty content creator Golloria George has managed to make waves with her viral ‘Darkest Shade’ series on TikTok. Originally a refugee from South Sudan, the US-based creator began making videos as a college student, when she was unable to find makeup in the right shade for her skin tone. In the series, she tries out (and often critiques with her sharp humour) the darkest shade available in any particular makeup range.
George advocates with everyday influence, using her 3 million-plus platform, to spotlight both beauty gaps. She is the face of Laneige’s lip tint campaign and has consulted for brands like Rhode and Patrick Ta, helping them to reformulate and expand their offerings. Rhode’s Hailey Bieber caught wind of George’s review of the Pocket Blush and reached out to hire her as a shade consultant for the brand’s shade expansion (deeper shades now available in the Pocket Blush include Date Cake and Plum). In addition to pushing for inclusivity in the beauty sector, George advocates for refugees and contributes to initiatives that provide Sudanese communities with access to clean water and education.
Founder and designer
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London-based designer Conner Ives launched his womenswear label in 2021, quickly becoming one of the city’s most talked-about young designers. In 2025, Ives shot to global fame for his charity “Protect The Dolls” T-shirt, for which he donated all profits to Trans Lifeline. Spotted on everyone from Pedro Pascal and Troye Sivan to Donatella Versace, the T-shirt raised more than £500,000 for the charity. Originally from Bedford, New York, Ives graduated from Central Saint Martins (CSM) in 2020. But even before he finished his studies, the designer was asked by model Adwoa Aboah to design her dress for the 2017 Met Gala after she’d seen his work in the CSM White Show, put on by BA students in their first year. Shortly after, Rihanna tapped Ives to work on her (now shuttered) LVMH-backed Fenty line. His commitment to creative upcycling has seen him produce and sell upcycled garments at major retailers like Net-a-Porter, proving that brands can be circular even as they scale into retail.
Founder and president of the board | Open Style Lab
Fashion too often sidelines disability in conversations around design. Grace Jun has been working on improving inclusivity. She founded Open Style Lab, a Smithsonian Award-winning non-profit launched at MIT in 2014, where she now serves as president of the board of directors. The organisation brings together disabled and non-disabled designers, engineers, therapists and experts to create a more accessible future through a variety of projects. Over the past year, Open Style Lab has displayed accessible footwear at the V&A Museum’s Design and Disability exhibition, and launched its first UK fellowship for designers creating solutions for accessible footwear.
Jun has spent the past decade pushing the industry to recognise disability as a site of innovation rather than an afterthought. A graphic design professor at the University of Georgia, she published her first solo-authored book, Fashion, Disability and Co-Design, last year, which outlines design processes that are inclusive to those with disabilities. Her current wearable tech project, Motion Circuit, is designed to monitor arm movement during post-surgical recovery from breast cancer and will soon be exhibited at the FIT Museum in New York.
Chief culture officer | The Bicester Collection
What does it mean to align purpose with profit? That’s Chantal Khoueiry’s mission as chief culture officer at The Bicester Collection, a group of designer outlet villages located across Europe and China, where she leads the overarching social impact strategy. Khoueiry spearheaded The Bicester Collection’s Do Good philanthropic programme, which focuses on empowering women and children through charity partnerships, advocacy and innovation, and aligns with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. One of The Bicester Collection’s most meaningful initiatives is the Unlock Her Future Prize, launched in 2022 to offer financial capital, mentorship, leadership coaching and exposure to female social entrepreneurs across the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and South Asia. It has awarded $600,000 since launch.
Alongside her work at The Bicester Collection, Khoueiry set up a social enterprise, Brides Do Good, in 2016. The organisation resells donated wedding dresses to fund programmes that protect girls from child marriage.
Co-organisers | Mother Daughter Holy Spirit
Throughout 2025, a three-part series of fundraising events took over New York’s social feeds and calendars. Led by co-organisers Bobbi Salvör Menuez and John Mollett, Mother Daughter Holy Spirit (MDHS) is a fundraiser for the Trans Justice Funding Project, an initiative founded in 2012 to support grassroots, trans justice groups run by — and for — trans people in the US. A celebration of trans joy and beauty, it was the fourth fundraiser organised by the pair.
Menuez and Mollett kicked things off in March with ‘Mother’, a runway show featuring models from Alex Consani to Cynthia Nixon and guests including Madonna. This was followed by a pop-up store named ‘Daughter’, selling items from celebrities including Hari Nef and Chloë Sevigny, as well as pieces from the Mother runway. ‘Holy Spirit’ closed out the fundraiser series in May with a celebration on Gitano Island featuring a string of performances (party hosts included Luar’s Raul Lopez and model Consani). T-shirts and designer pieces donated by brands and celebrities are still available to purchase on the MDHS website. Menuez and Mollett, for their part, stayed relatively behind the scenes, but their ability to bring such a breadth of activists, models, celebrities and designers together is a testament to their advocacy.
Director | Swarovski Foundation
The philanthropy sector is facing calls for more equitable, grassroots-led impact, and Jakhya Rahman-Corey is setting a new standard for how luxury engages. As director of the Swarovski Foundation, she leads its mission to promote sustainable livelihoods and reduce inequality through education. The foundation focuses on three areas — equity, water and creativity — through partnerships that prioritise local agency over a top-down approach. For instance, its Waterschool programme offers education on how to safeguard existing water sources in regions including the Amazon River in Brazil, including how to filter water for drinking purposes.
The Creatives for Our Future programme, in partnership with the United Nations Office for Partnerships, aims to accelerate creative leaders in sustainability by offering financial support and mentorship. One winner — Stanley Anigbogu — created a solar energy solution to provide underserved communities in Nigeria with clean light sources. By empowering communities to create their own solutions, and offering resources to do so, Swarovski Foundation is able to uplift communities without creating a system where they’re reliant on external aid.
Rahman-Corey started her career working for international charities in Cambodia, Costa Rica, India, Australia and the UK. Her experience ranges from conducting field work and implementing sanitation and structural improvement in rural areas, to promoting social programmes for women and young people. Along with her work at the Swarovski Foundation, Rahman-Corey is a trustee at non-profit Azuko, which aims to end housing poverty in Bangladesh by co-designing housing and infrastructure, providing construction training, and supporting communities to understand their housing rights.
Founder | Positive Retail
Anna Woods left a career as a buyer for the British high street convinced that there must be a different way for fashion to do things — a way that doesn’t negatively impact people and the planet. In 2022, she opened Positive Retail, a retail concept that sells surplus, old-season stock from brands including Margaret Howell, Ganni, Universal Works, Goodhood and Aligne, alongside pre-loved items from the likes of Comme des Garçons, Raf Simons, Gucci and Acne Studios. In June 2025, Positive Retail opened in London, bringing its store count to five. Woods has become a vocal advocate for change in the industry, speaking out about issues including diversity and sustainability — most recently, focusing on the Topshop relaunch, which she argues was a missed opportunity to build a blueprint for a more transparent fashion industry.
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