What happens when young leaders and creatives partner for change? Meet the team starting the Fossil Fuel Fashion campaign and social media revolution
Photo: Bright Colors
It all started with Sophia Kianni, the powerhouse Iranian-American climate activist, who is also the founder of Climate Cardinals, a youth-led non-profit focused on making the climate movement more accessible to those who do not speak English, as well as digital fashion platform Phia, which recently launched a collaboration with Stella McCartney. She is also the youngest member of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s Youth Advisory Council on Climate Change.
If you ask her what her goal is, she will always tell you it’s to empower her peers. “We can make young people understand that they are part of the solution by giving them the tools they need to understand what difference they specifically can make,” Kianni says. “This is why we must use fashion and social media to affect change. One of the biggest problems today is that we consume so much and so fast – and fast fashion is killing our planet. The fast fashion industry has become part of the fossil fuel industry. We are all literally wearing oil. Fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas – are by far the largest contributor to the climate crisis. There is a direct correlation between the growth of synthetic fibers and the fast fashion industry. How do we discuss transitioning away from fossil fuels when this industry is producing clothes made with oil and gas at an absolutely horrific rate?”
Fast fashion has become one of the biggest challenges for a generation like Kianni’s, which in many parts of the Global North is accustomed to consuming voraciously and digitally. “But here’s the turning point,” she says. “Every time we choose to rewear an outfit, every moment we decide to buy mindfully, we’re casting a vote for the world we want to live in. Choosing quality over quantity, natural over…
