On April 8 and 9, FIT’s 19th Annual Sustainable Business and Design Conference, Charting a Course Toward Circularity, brought together leaders and innovators who are pioneering closed-loop systems that minimize, and even eliminate, waste in fashion and related industries. Over the course of two days, panelists and presenters delved into their experiences, accomplishments, and strategies for sparking and navigating change. They spoke of the power of collaboration, offered hope, and challenged attendees to keep pushing for reform.
“Every single one of you has the power to make change today,” said keynote speaker Liz Alessi in the conference’s opening presentation, “Immediate Solutions to the Crisis of Stuff.” After more than 20 years in fashion supply-chain leadership, Alessi is now a sustainability and circularity consultant. She uses her expertise to disrupt the status quo by advising brands and innovators on environmentally preferred choices, end-of-product-life solutions, and transitioning from vertical to circular systems.
Waste Is Circular Fashion’s Most Valuable Raw Material
“Zero-waste systems will save the planet,” Alessi said. “Zero-waste systems also benefit the bottom line.” When working with clients, Alessi emphasizes this, telling them, “I’m going to help you stop throwing away money.” How? By eliminating waste.
Alessi radically reframes the very concept of waste: “There is no waste, only untapped value,” she said to the audience packing the seats of Katie Murphy Amphitheatre. “Waste is not a loss but an asset. We need to think creatively. How can we unlock the potential value in all objects?”
Revaluing waste needs to happen in corporations. And at home. Every bit of stuff—the stuff we want and the stuff we don’t—has financial, emotional, and/or utilitarian value. “Your ratty old jeans, maybe nobody wants them,” Alessi said. “But their denim has value.” As individuals, we can contribute to circularity by considering every item’s untapped value before we purge: Is it something worth repairing or re-tailoring? Could it be upcycled or recycled? Repurposed or donated? Resold or returned?
Have Less, Make Less
The importance of unlocking potential value was echoed later that afternoon by a panel of independent designers and entrepreneurs, discussing what it really takes to embrace circularity in the industry today.
“Sustainability is about being resourceful,” said panelist Maxwell Osborne, founder of New York–based label anOnlyChild, which launched during the Covid-19 pandemic and specializes in turning scraps into high-end clothing. The label was born of Osborne’s drive to create in a time of scarcity. Conventional sourcing channels had shut down, so Osborne sought unwanted fabric locally and began working with what he could find, exclusively deadstock. This required him to invert his creative process, putting materials before design: “First find the fabrics and then build out the collection.”
Fellow panelist Jonathan Cohen, creative director and co-founder of Jonathan Cohen Studio, also specializes in creating luxurious garments with deadstock and scraps. Cohen emphasized, “Less is more.” To him, this means having less, making less. “We need to slow down the production cycle.”
Mainstream Sustainability
“Sustainable fashion can be capital-‘F’ Fashion,” said Cohen, whose collections, like Osborne’s, are sold at top-tier retailers like Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.
But for sustainable fashion to leave the luxury niche and enter the mainstream, “it can’t keep coming down on small companies and consumers to deal with waste. I want to see the big companies take the lead, extend the energy,” said entrepreneur Indré Rockefeller, founder of The Circularity Project.
And some companies are, indeed, taking the lead.
In a panel on “Innovation and Business Practice,” moderator Tom Scott, associate professor of Fashion Design at FIT, introduced the leaders of four high-volume textile brands—Supima Cotton, Kintra Fibers, Circulose, Return to Vendor (RTV)—that are scaling up zero-waste practices. “We are figuring out how to deliver circularity. Now. And at scale,” said William Calvert, founder and CEO of RTV, a fully closed-loop brand that collects discarded nylon from global cleanup to create their signature product of the same name, RTV. It is a versatile new mono-material derived entirely from waste. RTV is infinitely recyclable and a viable, scaleable replacement to commonplace polluting textile fibers.
This panel addressed the core issue: “Fashion’s business model and sustainability are at odds. So what do we do?”
Supima VP of marketing and promotion, Buxton Midyette, told the audience the answer: “You can say, ‘No! We’re not going to put up with this anymore.’ Fashion was founded on the exploitation of the environment and of people. We must say, ‘This is no longer acceptable.’”
Fellow panelist Billy McCall, co-founder and CEO of Kintra Fibers, added that even before entering the workforce, students have the power, as consumers, to drive change by spending their money judiciously: “Don’t get sucked into mindless zombie buying.”
How Can Brands Adapt and Lead?
What it means to lead change was the Sustainability Conference’s day-two touchpoint. The imperative—“Know your sources”—was reiterated in several sessions as the cornerstone of legitimate change.
“Dig into those relationships with sources, going all the way back to the raw materials, the persons who farm the land or work in the mines,” said Wendy Waugh, founder of Golden Collective and former longtime SVP of sustainability and raw material at Theory.
Tiffany Stevens, head of sustainability for the International Gemological Institute, addressed how technology is creating new opportunities for a common problem with sustainability projects: “A lot of sustainability gets stuck in pilot project mode. But now technology is changing the game, allowing even the small sourcer connect with big buyers.”
Stevens urged students entering the workforce to ask interviewers where sustainability fits into the org-chart: “If you don’t have a powerful person in the company standing up for sustainability, it gets swept under the rug,” she said. “As young people get your courage and confidence together and push back.”
Wendy Waugh, who shared the stage with Stevens, agreed. “To keep steering in the right direction, the more noise we make, the more we will stay on the right course,” she said and advised students to speak up. “When you join a new team, don’t worry if you’re the youngest or least experienced. Bring your ideas and talk about them. Be vocal until the older people take action. Let’s go for it!”
As the conference neared its end, the audience’s spirits rallied during the engaging session “Afrofuturism: A Climate Solution.” Panelist Kwolanne Felix of Black Girl Environmentalist, a national organization addressing systemic barriers to participation in the environmental movement, highlighted the power of storytelling as a tool for advancing sustainability. “We’re all accustomed to a dystopian picture of the climate future. But the positive possibilities—if we get this right—are so powerful,” she said, to applause. “And that’s what’s needed to get in there and fight. We need to be able to see ourselves in the future to get out of climate doom spaces and inspire collective action.”
The conference was organized by the president’s Sustainability Council, chaired by Karen R. Pearson, chair Science and Math. Next year, the 20th Annual Sustainability Conference will take place on April 8 and 9, 2026.