This Sustainable Fashion Journalist Shares How To Pivot Into Writing From Any Career
Conscious Career Chats Series
By Stella Hertantyo
What we see in the media matters. It tells us — even if subliminally so — what to focus on, what to pay attention to, and it often shapes our fashion aspirations too.
Fashion marketing and media — mostly saturated by fast fashion — are omnipresent in our lives from our social media feeds, to email inboxes, and fashion publications. But this mainstream media is trend and consumption-focused. It thrives on reinforcing the disconnect we have with ourselves, the people around us, and natural systems.
But there’s a new wave of media and a generation of sustainable fashion journalists who are sharing information that encourages an alternative way of relating to our clothes — one that decentralizes our primary identity as consumers and re-prioritizes our ability to be inherently creative and caring beings.
What Role Do Sustainable Fashion Journalists Play in System Change?
Sustainable fashion journalists help bring transparency to the historically opaque fashion industry.
The role of sustainable fashion journalists is two-fold. Firstly, they share verifiable, accessible, and digestible information about the fashion industry that educates us about its inner workings. Secondly, they share inspiring stories that help us reimagine fashion in a way that is more just, sustainable, and joyful.
We’re seeing more and more stories about communities suffering from waste colonialism, exposing the toxicity of fast fashion, and sharing the lived experiences of people working in fashion supply chains. This helps us make connections between multi-layered social and environmental concerns — and the ways we’re all embedded in these systems too.
As much as stories can shake us to our core with fashion’s harsh realities, they’re also able to move us to action through sharing the work of conscious small brands, fashion changemakers, and practical slow fashion alternatives to hyper-consumption, such as swapping, mending, and thrifting.
“Journalists exist to hold people and brands to account. We look past the greenwashing and marketing and dive into the reality of what brands are doing to help people understand what progress is being made,” says sustainable fashion journalist, Sophie Benson. “We need to reach people outside of the sustainable fashion bubble too,” she adds.
If you’re curious to learn more about how you can turn your words into a career in sustainable fashion, read Sophie Benson’s career story below and listen to this Conscious Style Podcast episode with Sophie.
And if you want another perspective on a career in the field of sustainable fashion journalism, listen to this Conscious Style Podcast episode with Jasmin Malik Chua of Sourcing Journal.
Sophie Benson
Sophie Benson is a freelance journalist covering the social and environmental impacts of fashion. She is the sustainability columnist for Dazed and has written for publications including The Guardian, The Independent, i-D, AnOther, Vogue, and Refinery29.
How did you get started in this field?
I haven’t always worked at the intersection of fashion and sustainability. And I haven’t always had a great awareness of sustainability and the environment. But I have always loved fashion.
Ever since I was young, I’ve been putting together completely bizarre outfits with anything in my house. I was quite shy. So fashion became a way to express myself, as well as being a great communicator.
Fashion has always been an important medium for me and that led me to study fashion. After studying fashion at university, I went on to become a freelance stylist. I specialized in working with smaller and independent designers. Of course small and independent designers don’t have tons of money, so I was working with tight budgets and took on shifts in fast fashion ecommerce studios to make ends meet.
This is where I got an insight into how low-quality fast fashion clothes are. Styling these garments would always require some kind of clipping, pinning, and manipulation. I experienced first-hand how low-quality the clothing on the rails and on the models was. But then I’d see it marketed online and it was entirely transformed. It wasn't baggy; it wasn't ill-fitting; sometimes, it was a completely different color. It was completely manipulated.
These experiences got me thinking about the mechanisms behind fast fashion and how much of it was smoke and mirrors. At the same time, I was noticing how many garments we were working with every day. We’d style 50 to 100 different garments per day.
The staff were almost always incredibly stressed because of this volume and pace. The brand owners were not the nicest people to work with and placed a lot of pressure on us, because they were constantly following trends and trying to find their place in the market to maximize profits.
Circular design is not just about preparing garments for recycling, but about reducing resource use and ensuring that garments are worn for as long as possible, in multiple lifecycles before they need to be disposed of. It’s a design practice, but also a cultural shift.
These were my professional experiences and simultaneously I was becoming aware of the sustainability issues in the fashion industry.
image courtesy of @sophiebenson
How did you pivot into fashion journalism?
I didn’t learn much about fashion’s sustainability issues at university, so I wanted to do my own research. I read loads of books and reports and watched lots of documentaries. Eventually I got to a point where between what I was experiencing in my professional life and the research I was doing in my personal life, I felt as though I couldn’t continue with my career direction.
I decided to extract myself from the fast fashion side of the industry and at the same time I stopped buying fast fashion cold turkey. It was quite dramatic. I remember being in a store with a fast fashion garment in my hand. I put it back on the rail and said to myself, “I can’t do this anymore.”
I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t seeing more stories about fashion’s sustainability issues in the media and why so few people were talking about these topics. I’m not saying that I was the first person to write about sustainability in fashion. Some incredible people have gone before me and laid the groundwork, but I wasn’t seeing it in the publications I was reading at the time.
So I started writing what I believed people needed to be reading about. Writing has always been a medium I’ve gravitated to. I set out to explain the issues in a way that was digestible and would spark the curiosity of someone like me who loved fashion but wanted to understand much more than just the trends. I haven’t looked back since.
What do you feel responsible for as a sustainable fashion journalist?
As a journalist, wanting to ensure that the information I share is accurate is one of my biggest concerns. I’ve been going the extra mile to ensure this in the past few years. I’ve never tried to be actively misleading, but sometimes it can happen unintentionally.
There’s been a lot of conversation about the kind of data and statistics we use in journalism, as well as looking into your references to make sure they are reputable. For me it’s been a practice of interrogating the sources of the data I’m using and making sure that I’m not purely repeating oft-cited factoids that are commonly used in sustainability conversations.
When I started writing, I had more trust that the statistics I read were reliable. I was optimistic that everyone was publishing this information for the right reasons. But I have realized that this hope is not enough to go on and reporting accurately is so important — even if it means I can’t give you the exact carbon emissions statistics of the fashion industry, for example.
I’d rather explore the topic and leave out the statistic if it’s not accurate, instead of creating a sentence that neatly rounds everything up, but isn’t necessarily true. I feel the weight of this responsibility to reference every source I use, ensure that they are accurate and clear, and make certain I am not spreading misinformation.
image courtesy of @sophiebenson
Do you need a specific degree to get started?
I don’t have a journalism degree, but I’m sure it would be useful. If you can go that route, definitely do it. I think it was a bit harder for me to get into the industry because I didn’t have a journalism degree.
I managed to get into the space with sheer will, persistence, and not letting editors ignore me. I had to learn a lot on the way as well. Whereas with a journalism degree I’m sure you’d learn all the intricacies, and rights and wrongs of the industry.
But it’s possible to pivot into the space without a journalism degree. Regardless of whether you studied fashion, business, or any other degree, you have to make sure you care deeply about the topics you are writing about. You’re constantly dealing with uncomfortable truths and it can be depressing at times to read reports and hear countless stories about fashion’s harms.
The most important factor to entering this industry is making sure you care about the topics you are writing about enough to persevere with the stories that need telling. Caring goes a long way. When you have gone the extra mile with research, doing interviews, getting other peoples’ perspectives, and writing a well-rounded piece, it reflects in the published piece.
How do you have any pitching tips?
To get your foot in the door, pitch a piece that is a reaction to a topic that's trending or relevant at that moment. When I was starting, I thought the best thing would be to pitch in advance. So I’d write on a topic that I thought could be published in three months. But editors weren’t thinking that far in advance — they wanted to know what was happening in a week or two weeks. You have to keep on top of the news cycle and pitch a piece that the editor has already had on their radar.
For example, for my first story for Dazed before I became a columnist there, they did a callout on Twitter looking for people who had an interest in trends on Depop. That was a topic I was interested in. I immediately replied to let them know that I could write about that trend and that I’d turn the piece in that day. I think they appreciated that willingness to be reactive. That got my foot in the door and happened at a few other publications as well.
I’d say do your research, know your topics, and be ready to apply your knowledge to different scenarios.
What do you think the biggest misconception is about being a freelance journalist in the sustainable fashion space?
This may not be a general misconception, but it’s a personal one that has been lobbied against me: the assumption that because I work in the sustainable fashion space, I must automatically be incredibly financially privileged. People assume that I’m only working in this space because I can afford to spend thousands of pounds on a dress. That's not the case.
For years I pretty much only shopped secondhand, because it was all I could afford. I don’t come from lots of money and I didn’t have lots of connections in the fashion industry. Obviously I do have privilege in certain social and structural ways, but financial privilege is not how I got into this space. I’ve had people trying to shut down conversations based on this assumption, which I find odd.
What’s your favorite part of your job?
Interviewing people is easily one of my favorite parts. I learn so much from the people that I interview. I feel so lucky that I get to speak with experts, enter their world for a moment in time, and understand everything there is to know about their work. My network has become invaluable. I have access to material scientists, union leaders, and so many incredible changemakers who I’m so grateful to learn from.
image courtesy of @sophiebenson
What are some challenging elements of your job?
On the flip side, one of my least favorite parts is transcribing those interviews, because then I have to listen back to my voice! But it’s also useful, because you pick up on a bit of the conversation that you may have missed at the time of the interview.
Also the current pace of the fashion industry and fashion media is fast. One thing I don’t get to do as much as I’d like is spending long periods — like a month — writing one story and doing a real deep dive. I’ve learned to enjoy the fast pace, because it gives you an adrenaline rush and there is always something new to learn. But it would be nice to slow down the pace once in a while.
If you could give your younger self and those wanting to get into this field some advice, what would it be?
A strong connection with the topic you are writing about is so important. Figure out if there’s a particular topic you relate to. It could be natural ecosystems, labor rights, or localized crafts.
My beat is quite broad, but my focus is on taking complex topics and breaking them down into an easily digestible format for the everyday reader. Finding your niche makes this work a lot easier.
You also have to make sure that you always keep the greater good in mind and remind yourself why you started doing this work in the first place. Understand that your role in the fashion system is to provide reliable information that helps people make sense of fashion’s complexity. Don’t forget this.
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About the Author:
Stella Hertantyo is a slow fashion and slow living enthusiast based in Cape Town, South Africa. Stella finds solace in words as a medium for sharing ideas and encouraging a cultural shift that welcomes systems change and deepens our collective connection to the world around us. She is passionate about encouraging an approach to sustainability, and social and environmental justice, that is inclusive, intersectional, accessible, and fun.
Stella holds a B.A. Multimedia Journalism from the University of Cape Town, and a PGDip in Sustainable Development from the Sustainability Institute. She currently works as a writer, editor, and social media manager. When she is not in front of her laptop, a dip in the ocean, or a walk in the mountains, are the two things that bring her the most peace.
