How to Build Up Your Experience & Skills for a Sustainable Fashion Career
By Elizabeth Joy
By far the most common challenge I read from the Conscious Fashion Collective community is: how do I get experience / develop my skills / build up my qualifications for a career in sustainable fashion?
After replying to dozens of these emails from subscribers and speaking with several CFC Members, I decided it was time to write up a proper article to address these challenges.
But before I discuss how to gain relevant experience for your dream sustainable fashion career, it's probably worth exploring which experiences and qualifications you'll actually need or that will give you a boost…
Note: If you want individualized support on defining your next steps, I also offer Career Clarity Coaching.
What Experiences, Skills or Other Qualifications Do I Need for a Sustainable Fashion Career?
The types of jobs within the sustainable fashion space are as vast as the conventional fashion industry! You may want to work as a sustainability consultant, specialist or manager at a fashion brand. But you might also want to work in marketing, legal, operations, or another field within a sustainable fashion brand or organization.
Which means that the experiences and qualifications necessary could vary widely! So I want you to do something for me (or really, for you).
Write out your current experiences. Consider your CV, resume, and/or LinkedIn page, plus any other potentially relevant experiences you can remember. This might be at a formal workplace or it could be an experience you developed as a student, business owner or freelancer, volunteer, or through other uncompensated labor.
Now do an analysis of the types of jobs you want to pursue.
Search for these jobs on job search engines like LinkedIn, job boards like the Conscious Fashion Collective Job Board, and even the employment or careers pages at companies you're interested in working for.
Look at the qualifications and experiences required and write these down. You may also want to write out the "nice to have" qualifications in a separate column. Look for patterns. What are the most important qualifications to have and experiences you'll need? Highlight the most important experiences and qualifications.
Now look to see what the overlaps are — which experiences do you already have?
Remember that sometimes different industries will use different terminology for the same type of experience or skill-set. So consider if there's a way to communicate your current experiences that you wrote down in a different way that aligns with the job descriptions of your ideal jobs.
And then see which important qualifications and experiences you need to gain, or which ones you need more of. Then dive into the next section about how to gain those experiences!
How to Gain Experience & Skills For A Sustainable Fashion Job
Make The Most of Your Current Job or Situation
It's not always possible to quit your job and make a leap, depending on your financial situation. And it's not always the best course either, depending on your goals.
Instead of viewing your current job as somewhere that you are stuck or held back by, consider how you can leverage your current role to gain experiences and develop skills you can use for propelling you to the next step in your career. *Note: toxic work environments are an entirely different situation, and this advice may not apply.
Here are some ideas to make the most of your current role:
Talk to your manager about your interest in expanding your knowledge and experience in sustainability (and/or fashion and textiles). You never know when a client project or internal job opening could come up.
Strengthen any transferrable skills, such as project management and communication, even if you're not directly working in fashion sustainability. (Look at the job descriptions for the types of roles you want to transition into to see what these transferrable skills would be.)
Does your company have a sustainability or CSR department? Build connections with employees in that department and look into internal job opportunities. Consider if there are cross-department collaboration opportunities to work with CSR or sustainability departments.
Get creative and consider ways you could integrate sustainability practices into your current role. If your organization isn't necessarily sustainability-minded, make the business case for a specific practice or talk about upcoming legislation that might make a practice a future non-negotiable.
Join or start a Sustainability Group or Environmental Club. This could be a great option to explore as a secondary or backup plan if it's not possible to integrate sustainability efforts into your formal role at your organization. Check out these ideas for starting a sustainability or environmental club at work.
Another opportunity you can look into is your organization's education budget. Many companies will offer funding for continuing education for their employees. Are there events or workshops you can attend or certifications you can work towards that could also apply towards your next career move?
Even if your organization has a small education budget, you should still be able to access books. There are a lot of opportunities for lower cost education even if your company doesn't have much of a budget! And if they don't have a budget at all yet, you could advocate for one with your manager, especially if you can make the case for how it will support you in your current role.
If you're currently unemployed, the benefit you may have, depending on your situation, is time. You can utilize your time to develop your skills, deepen your education, and to build up your network or deepen existing professional relationships. (Take a look at tips 3 & 4.) Or perhaps you want to take on a bridge role that will propel you forward. (More in tip 5.)
2. Integrate Sustainability Into Your Coursework
If you're looking for potential degrees to pursue related to sustainable fashion, check out our sustainable fashion degrees guide!
If you're currently enrolled in a degree program that's not focused on sustainable fashion, perhaps you can still seek out coursework that aligns with the direction you want to take your career. Even if there aren't fashion sustainability courses, you'll likely still be able to find courses that will help you develop the types of skills you'll need to have for the jobs you want.
For example, many fashion sustainability management and specialist roles require strong analytical skills and data research experience — which could be developed through data analytics coursework — as well as project management, presentation, and communication skills — which can be developed through certain business management and communications courses.
You may also be able to find courses on environmental sustainability at your university, even if they aren't fashion-specific, that would be beneficial for a role in fashion sustainability.
And whether you're a student or not, many universities offer certificate programs and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) related to sustainability, even specifically towards sustainability in fashion. You also can take courses that aren't run by universities.
Check out our guide to Sustainable Fashion Online Courses for some ideas.
Other ways to build up your sustainable fashion knowledge are through books, podcasts, articles, newsletters, following relevant accounts on LinkedIn (you can follow Conscious Fashion Collective for example!), and attending events or workshops.
These aren't as straightforward to transfer into a resume as a certification but it's still possible. You can still post your takeaways from a book you read or podcast you listened to in a LinkedIn post for example. Or you can add the educational events and workshops you attended to your LinkedIn profile.
Plus, building up this background knowledge will help you be more effective at your future sustainable fashion role!
3. Volunteer at Sustainable Fashion Organizations
Volunteering at an aligned nonprofit can be a way to not just develop skills and experiences, but also to build relationships with like-minded people and support a cause you're passionate about in the process.
Here are a few sustainable fashion organizations with volunteer opportunities:
Fashion Revolution has teams in various countries around the world
Fashion Revolution USA has contacts for various regions across the country here.
Remake has a global ambassador program that you can participate in remotely
Slow Fashion Movement has specific volunteer opportunities they post on their Instagram. Follow them to stay updated!
UK-based Labour Behind The Label posts volunteer roles on their Jobs Page
Clean Clothes Campaign similarly publishes volunteer opps on their Jobs Page, typically in Amsterdam or Brussels
Change Climate has volunteer projects for work on subject matter like: “Recycled + post-consumer products emissions factor research” and “Average footprint analysis + graphic”.
The Fashion Connection is a Washington DC organization that publishes volunteer opportunities on Idealist
You can also look for local sustainable fashion organizations and reach out to them to inquire about volunteer opportunities!
If you're currently at a university, there may be aligned clubs you could join. If not, you could start a new club, found a chapter of a larger organization at your school, or be a student ambassador of an organization. For example, Fashion Revolution USA has a student ambassador program. (Apply here.)
If you're not able to commit to a long-term volunteer opportunity, you can also look into opportunities to volunteer at events or helping out with specific projects.
4. Start a Side Gig or Project
If there aren't opportunities in your current role or even in your organization, consider if there's an opportunity to start your own side project.
If you want to work in communications or become a sustainable fashion writer, you could start a Substack newsletter or start writing on a social media platform.
If you want to be a slow fashion stylist, ask if your friends would be open to you styling them and taking photos for your portfolio.
If you want to work as a graphic designer, web designer, photographer, or social media manager, you could start offering freelance services to slow fashion businesses in your community or ones you connect with online.
Publish a profile on a site like Fiverr or Upwork — or our Sustainable Fashion Freelancer Directory!
If you're a designer and feeling limited by your current role, could you explore circular fashion design and other sustainability principles as a side project?
There are SO many ways to practice and develop your skills outside of the traditional workplace. And if you're tired of waiting for these “traditional” opportunities to come, create your own opportunities and you just might be surprised at what starts coming to you.
5. Look for Bridge Roles
If there is a significant amount of experience you need to gain for your dream sustainable fashion job or it's a significant shift from what you're doing now, you may want to consider a bridge role.
This is essentially a job that you could qualify for now or very soon that can bridge the gap to where you want to go. The bridge role could be at your current employer or at a different one.
How do you know which bridge role you need? Think about your finish line (your dream role) and go back to that list of qualifications you noted that you'll need for that role.
What are the most important qualifications that you need to build up that you do not currently have? What types of roles could help you build up that experience?
This process is going to be quite individualized to your particular career goals, so I would recommend reaching out to people who currently have your ideal job for informational interviews. If they're not open to meeting with you, you can also follow their career trajectory by looking at their LinkedIn profiles.
Or look for public interviews, such as our Conscious Career Chats with sustainable fashion professionals.
Everyone's career path looks different, but these interviews, LinkedIn profiles, and meetings can start to generate ideas for what your next best step could be!
Develop Your Plan to Build These skills and gain these experiences
If you've made it this far and you've read through all the various ideas for building up your qualifications to get your dream sustainable fashion career, you might be feeling:
A) excited
B) overwhelmed
C) a little bit of both!
So, let's develop your plan!
Note: this plan can be done while networking and building relationships in the sustainable fashion space!
Make a checklist.
Which of the ideas listed above in ways to gain experience and skills are accessible to you and would be relevant to your ideal role? List 'em out in a checklist! I personally love Notion for keeping track of to-do's.
What is your timeline?
For each item on your checklist, determine the start date and the end date of that experience, educational goal, or skill-building exercise. Obviously this may change with factors outside of your control, but this timeline will help you get started. Consider your current time constraints — work and life-wise) to make this a realistic plan.
Define what "done" looks like.
The reality is that while building up our qualifications may be essential to getting your sustainable fashion role, sometimes we get stuck in productive procrastination. We build up our qualifications and experiences endlessly without actually applying and networking, because putting ourselves out there is… well, a little scary.
Avoid this common trap by defining what "done" on your qualifications plan looks like. What experiences and skills do you want to develop? What is realistically "enough" to get that job?
Set up accountability mechanisms.
What types of accountability would be most useful to you? Is it setting up a tracking system on your phone or in a journal? Is it having a friend check in with you? Is it volunteering with a friend or colleague? Is it a career coach? Figure out what's right for you and set up those systems!
Embed self-care practices along the way!
Building your dream career takes time and not all elements are in your control, so don't forget to prioritize rest and self-care along the way. Take breaks, make the process fun (I like to jam out to upbeat music while doing tasks I'm dreading), and don't be so hard on yourself!
Rejections and "no's" are a natural part of the process, and can often provide lessons and/or help steer you into a more aligned direction.
Reflect on your progress.
Set up regular self check-in meetings (or meetings with a career coach or accountability partner) to check in on your checklist and timeline. See where you stand and develop a plan for getting back on track if needed. There's no shame in reassessing! Sometimes our plans are overambitious and sometimes life just happens.
Get going!
Close to your "done" point? Apply to those jobs and continue to actively network! Notice I said "close to 'done'" and not "reached 'done'". You may not hit 100% of the qualifications on the roles you're applying for and that is ok!
If you're looking for some extra support and community, join us in the Conscious Fashion Collective Membership.
If you want individualized support, you can book a Career Clarity Coaching Call with me.