Revolutionizing Rental: Shared Closets As a Circular Solution to Fashion’s Disposability Culture
CFC Member Spotlight: Jasmine Summers
Author and interviewer: Stella Hertantyo
Jasmine Summers is a lifelong seamstress, professional fashion designer, and passionate advocate for ethical fashion. She has dedicated her career to challenging the norms of the traditional fashion industry.
Her journey began amidst the bustling streets of New York City, where she honed her skills as a fashion designer. But it was her transformative experience living and working in Cambodia that truly opened her eyes to the inner workings of the global fashion landscape.
Fueled by a desire for change and innovation, Jasmine embarked on a mission to redefine the way we create and consume fashion. Drawing from her extensive fashion education and industry expertise, she founded her fashion rental business, revu.
I interviewed Jasmine in the Conscious Fashion Collective Membership as part of our Member Spotlight interview series.
Below are some of the highlights from the conversation, including:
The future of rental in the circular fashion space,
Unexpected job options for people who studied fashion design, and
Lessons for sustainable fashion solopreneurs.
What led you to work at the intersection of fashion and sustainability?
I live and work in Pennsylvania and I attended fashion school eight hours away from home in Ohio. I also did a semester and three fashion design internships in New York.
By the end of my third internship, in the summer before my senior year, I had this intuitive feeling that the traditional fashion industry wasn’t the right career path for me. But at the time, entry-level sustainable fashion jobs were not on the map yet. The sustainable fashion jobs that did exist were not entry-level.
When I graduated, I took on my first Assistant Designer role at Macy’s, which is a major department store in the US. I specialized in knitwear design at my university. At Macy’s I was working in men’s sweaters and knits. But I found myself bored with designing, redesigning, and sourcing buttons, trims, and fabric for 25 to 65 products in two months.
I worked so hard in fashion school — drawing, pattern making, sewing, and iterating tech pack designs — that I never imagined I’d be bored once I got to the workforce. So I started applying for other jobs at seemingly more innovative fashion companies.
I didn’t have much luck until I landed an interview for a fellowship position in Cambodia with an anti-human trafficking nonprofit called Nomi Network. I took the jump, bought a one-way ticket to Cambodia, and left the design side of the fashion industry behind.
Nomi Network works to create economic opportunities for survivors and women at risk of human trafficking. This includes creating pathways to safe and sustainable employment for women and girls. I led the Nomi International Fashion Training curriculum development and taught courses within my areas of expertise, as well as working with the Nomi Network Fashion Incubator.
I ran programming for survivors and for Cambodian business owners focusing on upscaling and capacity-building to create more safe jobs in Cambodia. We worked with individual tailors, production workshops, and small factories producing for export. I managed the fashion-specific skills training, and other volunteers focused on teaching about marketing and business development. It was an amazing experience.
This was at a time in my life when I was ready to leave the fashion industry, because I couldn’t find a job that aligned with my values. I saw this as an opportunity to pass on all the technical skills I had learned at college, even if I never worked in fashion again.
Yet, this experience in Cambodia ended up solidifying my commitment to fixing fashion and creating the kind of work that I never knew was possible.
What is your advice for people who studied fashion design, but don’t want to start their own brand or work in production?
You have to look at skills and interests that can complement and diversify your fashion-specific skills.
For example, there was only one conversation in my four years of studying at a fashion school about the global supply chain. Most of the emphasis was placed on creative and technical design and production capabilities, but not on the global garment industry at all.
My internships and first job helped supplement that lack of university education on where clothes come from, what mass-market production looks like, and how to connect with global suppliers. This taught me cross-cultural communication and design experience. I doubt I’d have gotten my Cambodian job without this.
It’s useful to broaden your lens and look into the nonprofit industry too. I have always been interested in the intersection of modern-day slavery, international development, and globalization. This aligns with work being done in the nonprofit space.
There is a much larger variety of jobs out there now than when I was looking for alternatives. I’d recommend looking into certification organizations, such as Fairtrade International or Global Organic Textiles Standard.
There are also research and advocacy organizations such as Textile Exchange or the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (now Cascale).
Governance and compliance jobs are also on the rise, because of the uptick in sustainable fashion policy and legislation.
How did your experience living and working in Cambodia shape your understanding of sustainable fashion?
Cambodia is one of the top garment production hubs in the world. I gained so much inspiration and motivation from being there. It was incredible to see the innovation happening there in a country where people have so much less access to formal resources — such as studying fashion design — than we do in the US.
I met, worked with, collaborated with, and trained so many Cambodian entrepreneurs who started businesses with far less formal education and resources than I had access to, and yet they were supporting entire communities. For example, I met weavers who were resurrecting the cottage industry in weaving towns in Cambodia.
While I was there, I also became the Cambodian Fashion Revolution Country Coordinator. This meant running events and engaging with big brands and ethical brands that were producing in Cambodia. A great example of an ethical brand produced in Cambodia is the Australian brand, Outland Denim.
An image that will always be imprinted in my memory is that I saw fashion waste in every corner of Cambodia. If you’ve seen the secondhand industry in Ghana, you can imagine something similar in Cambodia.
Riding around on my bike, I saw bales, families sorting through secondhand clothing for resale, clothes on sidewalks or in market stalls all over the city. Being American, it was shocking to realize that so many of our clothes are made in Cambodia and end up back there in the end too.
There were warehouses full of deadstock fabric and clothes. The rivers were polluted. I was living in a city that was a living, breathing rag trade.
My experience seeing secondhand clothing, alongside deadstock fabric, in the same city as massive garment factories and so many garment workers had me questioning everything about mass-market fashion. It cemented the idea that any brand or business I created in the future had to be based on circular principles.
Can you tell us about the moment you knew you wanted to start a bridesmaid dress rental business?
I have been sewing since I was 10. Being a seamstress also means that I’m always the friend who gets asked: Can you get this? Can you alter that? I have hemmed and altered many bridesmaid dresses in my twenties.
The idea for my bridesmaid dress rental business, revu, came from my little sister's friend who needed work done on the bodice of her bridesmaid dress that was a lot more complicated than a hem or shortening straps. I was hunched over my sewing machine for eight or nine hours.
After living in Cambodia and seeing fashion’s waste, I wanted to do whatever it took to make sure she could wear it. At the same time, I realized that I was spending more hours altering it than the hours she was going to wear it. It felt like a waste of effort knowing that so many people were involved in the supply chain and development of this garment — let alone the alterations. I wished it wasn’t going to be a once-off wear, because bridesmaid dresses hardly ever get worn again.
That’s when rental came to mind. I started Googling and trying to see what the options were for bridesmaid rental, but nothing came up. There were clothing rental businesses and wedding dress rentals, but nothing bridesmaid-specific.
I have been a bridesmaid every year, from age 18 to 23. As a student and new professional, this was a financial burden. Plus, I couldn’t fathom the idea of all of these dresses going to waste. I looked in my closet and noticed I had four bridesmaid dresses. I texted people I knew and asked how many dresses they had.
By the time I had gotten all the responses, there was a collective closet of 60 bridesmaid dresses — most of which had only been worn once. That’s when I decided to start revu.
What is your vision for the future of rental in the circular fashion space?
I have seen a lot of growth in the rental space since I started working on my business, which is very encouraging. Now we’re seeing a combination of independent rental platforms and brand-owned rental platforms.
revu exists in the space of the hyper-local consignment and small rental business. There's something special about being able to try a garment on in person before renting it. This can’t be replicated through online ordering. I seek to serve local customers through our studio, as well as national via our e-commerce site.
In the US, bridesmaid dress rental is almost entirely online. The fact that I have a space where people can try on their garments has been the biggest drawcard for my clientele. I think there will be continued growth in the hyper-local circularity and consignment space, whether it's through local clothing swaps or rental businesses.
For rental to thrive as a circular option, I believe that we need increased tariffs on fast fashion imports and increasing compliance regulations to disincentivize fast fashion. This will also be a way to shift the habits of consumers who are stuck in the culture of buying disposable clothing. On the other hand, we need incentives for fashion recycling and circular initiatives. The US government has a lot of work to do in this area.
What is one of the biggest lessons you’ve learned as a fashion solopreneur?
Firstly, when you are first starting on your journey into sustainable fashion or sustainable work, the feeling that you need to solve all of fashion’s problems can be overwhelming.
You need to take the pressure off yourself and understand that each of us can only do so much alone. We are limited by our time, capacity, and resources.
But together we can do so much more. Understand your limits and do the best that you can do every day.
I work full-time in marketing and communications and do revu on the side. That is my way of saying, “This is what I have to offer.” This is what I can do with my expertise, the time I have, and the opportunity I've identified to build something innovative in the fashion space and provide a solution to a problem that I see.
I can't prevent thousands of pieces of clothing from ending up in dead stock warehouses in Cambodia, but I can try to provide a sustainable, affordable alternative to occasion wear through e-commerce in my community.
Secondly, the biggest lesson I learned since becoming a solopreneur is that slow fashion is a business practice as much as it’s a personal practice as a consumer. I learned that I had to take a slow, patient approach to business and focus on building towards a sustainable business model, without expecting instant results. There was a while when I was operating in the red, but I knew I was building something bigger.
I put a pause on buying inventory, because I wanted to work with what I had first. I started with 100 pieces and now I have 350. I need to practice slow fashion as a business owner and encourage my target market to do the same.
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