Queen of Raw Takes Action in Textiles: Reimagining a Sustainable Fashion Industry

After apparent offenders in vitality, transportation, and agriculture, do you know that one among the biggest polluters on this planet is the textile business? Their factories devour hundreds of thousands of gallons of water every day in bleaching, dyeing, and rinsing fibers and materials, and this contaminated water is just not all the time disposed of responsibly, difficult the welfare of the panorama, animals, and human beings. The business additionally discards practically 100 million tons of waste material every yr.

The firm Queen of Raw, based mostly in New York City, combats these points by linking designers with suppliers via a web-based market that carries solely sustainable materials. Through this helpful device, designers have entry to high-quality uncooked supplies and leftover material that might in any other case be despatched to landfills, saving each side cash within the course of.

Queen of Raw made an look on the 2022 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Earth Optimism × Folklife program with Around the World in 80 Fabrics, a nonprofit that celebrates range whereas elevating consciousness for the surroundings, local weather, human rights, and well being by producing new materials with reused nature-friendly fibers.

In founding Queen of Raw in 2018, Stephanie Benedetto, a former lawyer working in style, media, and leisure, made the selection to collaborate with firms that bought ethically sourced textiles and materials. But she knew this may not be sufficient, as even these firms have been creating giant quantities of waste. Using synthetic intelligence software program and every firm’s manufacturing knowledge, Benedetto started serving to her companions mitigate wasteful practices.

“They sometimes find waste they may not even know they had,” she stated, waving her palms excitedly.

Benedetto was launched to textiles by her great-grandfather, who in 1896 settled in New York City’s Lower East Side, an space as soon as often known as the Jewish garment district. “I was very fortunate to grow up very close to my great-grandfather, and I would hear stories of his journey and the old-school way of doing business,” Benedetto stated.  Her grandfather would find unused materials that new immigrants introduced with them on ships. Repurposing the supplies, he created style clothes, promoting them to native prospects and shortly constructing a worthwhile household enterprise.

When Benedetto began her personal enterprise, how did she select the title Queen of Raw? Leaning again in her chair, she laughed and appeared completely happy that I requested. “I was raised in a predominantly female household, and I went to a women’s school for thirteen years.” Surrounded by ladies, she discovered the ability in embodying confidence—like a Queen.

Now, why Raw? Becoming extra severe, she defined she wished her model title to transcend the definition of sustainability, a phrase which means loads of issues to completely different individuals. She wished an organization title that mirrored her direct manner of presenting and attacking issues. “We wanted to get back to the root of things. What’s raw, what’s real.” 

From the beginning, Benedetto directed her consideration to the manufacturing course of and water use: “We’ve saved over a billion gallons of water to date, and we’re just getting started. It’s enough clean water for 1.4 million people to drink around the world for three years. This means that the fashion and textile industries have the power to solve the water crisis—if we rethink how we do things.”

Benedetto instructed me with urgency that if firms proceed with the present tempo of textile manufacturing, by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s inhabitants will face freshwater shortages and potential publicity to hazardous manufacturing chemical substances. The textile business makes use of carcinogenic chemical substances akin to formaldehyde for dyeing, and when these chemical substances contaminate freshwater our bodies that people use each day, the danger for most cancers will increase.

Before the pandemic, producers and makers despatched about $120 billion in scrap textiles to landfills annually. In the interval of the pandemic starting in 2020, the business has suffered over $288 billion in misplaced income, continued Benedetto. Queen of Raw works to counter these losses by repurposing material whereas decreasing waste and growing effectivity and model loyalty. Their work has caught the attention of NPR, The New York Times, and Forbes, and Benedetto earned the 2020 Inc. Female Founders 100 and the NASA/NIKE/IKEA/DELL LAUNCH.org Innovator awards.

In a partnership with the Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network, Queen of Raw labored with Aveda and Stella McCartney to guard the surroundings and wildlife. Queen of Raw permits artisan communities around the globe free entry to its market, permitting them to promote their merchandise on a world scale. Their work, which consists primarily of materials, beadwork, and different adornments, is created with pure dyes and natural cotton, introducing minimal waste and negligible toxins to the surroundings. Benedetto pledges a portion of her firm’s proceeds to like-minded not-for-profits, as she desires to assist not solely artisans however to construct a extra sustainable business.

At the Folklife Festival, Earth Optimism contributors showcased methods of dwelling extra sustainably. Visitors to the Around the World in 80 Fabrics tent acquired a strip of material to weave right into a vertical, makeshift loom, producing a repurposed communal quilt over the course of the primary week. As they contributed to the spiraling art work, guests might see that reusing even one scrap of material strengthens a extra sustainable business.

“Don’t be afraid to take action, even if it’s just one strip of cloth,” Benedetto stated. By seeing every thing come collectively, both by a loom or via conjoined efforts, challenges can flip into alternatives to alter the world for the higher. When I requested her what she hoped individuals would take away from the Festival exhibit, she answered: “Don’t be afraid to go out and change the world in any way you can.”

Benedetto stays hopeful as future generations function an inspiration to proceed defending and advocating for the Earth. She needs to assist create a ripple impact and cross down studying via the generations. Just as she discovered from her great-grandfather’s expertise and began an organization, we’re all able to doing one thing that quantities to a giant push for change. 

A significant motivation to maintain pushing, for Benedetto, is her youngsters. “I have two sons, and I want them to have clean water to drink, clothes that aren’t toxic to wear, and a planet to live on, and I’m not stopping ’til I do. I want to leave them a better world.”

Clearly, her affect has already trickled down. When her six-year-old was studying about place papers, he wrote concerning the significance of recycling—“how if we don’t recycle, we’re not going to have any room for people and homes because the landfills are going to take over the world. The fact that he was thinking of this world challenge and the little actions he could take at school just spoke volumes to me about how we can and will change the world.”

She added shamelessly, “You know, if a six-year-old can get it, so can other people.”

Mioko Ueshima is a Katzenberger intern on the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and a rising junior at Georgetown University majoring in American research with a minor in Japanese.