Latest news with #Frank&Eileen
Entrepreneur
22-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
My Bootstrapped Business Led to $20M for Women Entrepreneurs
This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Audrey McLoghlin, founder and CEO of Frank & Eileen, a women's apparel company committed to providing resources to educational institutions to support women entrepreneurs. Before I started Frank & Eileen, I had already become a serial entrepreneur. My background was in engineering, so it's a wild mystery as to how I got into the apparel business. But I already had four multi-brand retail stores and another brand focused on knit T-shirts. I learned a lot from owning the four retail stores because I got to dress women all the time, and I also bought or got to go see every brand in the market. So I was familiar with the little holes. Image Credit: Courtesy of Frank & Eileen One day, I was working on a tissue-weight cashmere program at a factory in LA because I'm obsessed with sweaters, but I'm always hot. They left me in this conference room for too long, which was a theme in my career back then, so I naturally started snooping. I'm going around the room, pulling things off the bookshelf, and it was relatively boring until I found this book and opened it up — and I just lost my mind. There were beautiful Italian menswear fabrics. Tiny one-inch swatches of the most beautiful fabric I'd ever seen. I fell madly and completely in love immediately. Of course, I'm like, Why is this menswear? Why are these not womenswear fabrics? These are fantastic. So when the guy finally came back into the room, I basically lost interest in what I had come there for and asked if I could borrow the book. He said it was old and irrelevant, so I was like, "Great, so you don't mind if I take it." I went back to my factory and called the mill in Italy. Now we've been partners for 16 years. I went from being their smallest client to their largest client. Related: She Quit Corporate Life to Pursue a Side Hustle With Her Sister. They Saw Over $100,000 During Launch Weekend — and Now Have an 8-Figure Brand. I wanted to reinvent the button-up shirt for women using these unbelievable menswear fabrics. And because the whole thing had started as this immediate love story between me and these fabrics, late one night, I was in my factory thinking about what I would name the company — it had to evoke a love story. It had to be enchanting. I always like to name my businesses after family members, and I thought of my grandparents, Frank and Eileen. They were married in Ireland in 1947, and they lived a beautiful, romantic, old-fashioned life — I don't know if they would describe it that way, but they lived in a little stone cottage, never owned a car, just had a really charming life. Image Credit: Courtesy of Frank & Eileen All of this began to come together in the middle of 2008. I put together the sample, and when we went to launch in September, the entire world ended. We had the greatest financial crash in the history of our existence at that time. The economic collapse was devastating to me as an entrepreneur. I was bootstrapped always, and absolutely not in a place that I could withstand an economic crisis like that. Frank & Eileen was born out of the ashes: I lost everything in the process — all of my businesses — and went bankrupt. But I held onto the hope of Frank & Eileen. I'm a very logical person, and with my background in engineering, I didn't see the logic in an investor buying into a consumer brand. There are so many other ways to finance it, so you don't need to bring on professional investors. I never really considered it. Once you scale a business to a certain size, it becomes very interesting that you own 100% because all of a sudden, you have economies of scale. You've got an incredible team and don't have investors to have a conflict of interest with. You don't have boards; you don't have to spend all of your finance team's time preparing board decks and financial decks. You don't really answer to anybody. You can make decisions that you believe are in the best interest of your stakeholders, team, customers and longevity of the company. It was very clear to me that nothing like Frank & Eileen's product existed. We put these menswear fabrics into an hourglass silhouette and figured out an exact button placement that really opens up and shows the collarbone and jewelry. Then we did this special crinkle wash that was done by hand. We hand-crinkled every single shirt in the early years. They were basically all one of a kind and very well-received. Related: We Don't 'Need More Masculine Energy' in Business, Says the CEO of a Growing Femtech Company. Here's How the Mother of 2 Leads for Success. Then came the pandemic. In many ways, the pandemic was more acute than the 2008 crisis, but the 2008 crisis prepared me for the 2020 crisis. I'd learned to build a business with no credit and no money. Within 10 days of March 13, 2020, almost 100% of our orders were cancelled. So that was catastrophic to the supply chain, to cash flow, to the team, to everything. We had to do layers of damage control. We locked ourselves in a Zoom room to strategize the brand's next steps. One of the big conversations was shifting from wholesale (80%-90% of our business at the time) to direct to the consumer who was stuck at home. By doing that, we came out of 2020 stronger than we'd gone into it. Image Credit: Courtesy of Frank & Eileen I would say that 2020 goes down in history as the hardest year of my life, but because no one was traveling, commuting or working in-office, all of a sudden, I had this resource I'd been short on since the business's launch: time. I started to wonder how we could capitalize on this extra time and landed on the arduous process of becoming B Corp certified. That became a top priority, and we accomplished it. We wanted to memorialize that milestone, and after thinking about it for a while, we decided to establish the Frank & Eileen Giving Pledge. We pledged $10 million over 10 years to help create more women entrepreneurs. The world would be a completely different place if at least 50% of the entrepreneurs and business owners out there were women. We'd live in a very different place. We'd be raising our daughters in a very different place. It was the right time to start trying to make that impact. We partnered with educational institutions like Babson, Stanford and MIT and set up an accelerator and incubator program. We ended up giving the money away in four years instead of 10 years, so in January of this year, we announced that we were doubling our pledge — changing it from $10 million to $20 million as we continue on this journey to make a real impact. Related: This Couple Used Their Savings to Start a Small Business. A Smart Strategy Helped Make It a Multimillion-Dollar Success. Young entrepreneurs who want to start a business have to understand that it's really, really hard. And it's designed to be that way. In talking to young audiences, I've found that many people think that when it's really hard or when they fail and it feels insurmountable, that it's a reflection on them, and they think, I'm just not cut out for this. They always think it's their fault instead of the way it's just set up to be. So they have to understand that entrepreneurship is hard. But it's the resilience, perseverance and absolute determination that will help you get there eventually. It's going to hurt a lot, but that doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. This article is part of our ongoing Women Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of running a business as a woman.
Forbes
09-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
A Resilient Fashion Brand Takes On Tariffs
The journey of Frank & Eileen, launched by Audrey McLoghlin in 2009, is defined by a powerful vision: to redefine women's fashion with luxurious Italian menswear fabrics. However, this vision has been tested repeatedly, and now, with the tariff turmoil. Frank & Eileen was launched during the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent failure of McLoghlin's previous businesses, resulting in personal bankruptcy. She later faced challenges from COVID-19 and the Los Angeles fires. Frank & Eileen reinvented the women's button-up shirt into a fashion statement. During the conceptualization of the business, McLoghlin owned four multi-brand specialty clothing stores but observed a void in the market. She noticed that women's clothing brands weren't using the timeless, beautiful shirting fabrics available for men. Her inspiration came from a book of Italian menswear fabrics. She envisioned using these fabrics to create cool menswear-inspired, sexy, feminine button-up shirts for women. She named the company after her grandparents, Frank and Eileen, whose classic love story symbolized the timelessness and beauty she wanted to capture in her designs. The 2008 financial crisis posed a significant obstacle that shaped the company's DNA. McLoghlin's engineering background and resilience helped her navigate the challenges, turning disadvantages into advantages and evolving into an omnichannel global fashion brand. The company is a certified B Corp, reflecting McLoghlin's long-held values. The certification signifies that a company meets high social and environmental performance standards, public transparency, and legal accountability. 'I always felt like we've operated as a B Corp. I felt like it's just part of our DNA, of how we built the company, the brand and our values,' said McLoghlin. McLoghlin is also deeply committed to giving back, which led to the Frank & Eileen Giving Pledge. This initiative supports women entrepreneurs through a $10 million pledge over 10 years that is used for scholarships and programs at top entrepreneurial schools at Babson, MIT, and Stanford, as well as a special Los Angeles school. Bill Aulet, managing director at Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, said "Audrey is a visionary, mission-driven entrepreneur... Through her Giving Pledge, she's making society a better place by helping to make more and better entrepreneurs, raising the bar for the whole field. This alignment of visions is why at MIT we are so excited to collaborate with her." Frank & Eileen recently launched House of Frank & Eileen, a community design house that collaborates with iconic women to create capsule collections. The inaugural collaborator is actor, author, and entrepreneur Julianne Moore. "Working with Frank & Eileen has been a truly rewarding experience,' said Moore. 'The brand's dedication to empowering women and building strong communities resonates deeply with my own values, and I'm proud to be a part of this exciting initiative." A series of significant obstacles marked Audrey McLoghlin's journey as an entrepreneur, each presenting unique challenges that tested her resilience and determination. Her ability to navigate these challenges has not only defined her path but also shaped the very essence of Frank & Eileen. The economic downturn in 2008 presented an almost immediate threat to her budding ventures. The timing of her brand's launch, coinciding with the collapse of the global economy, created an environment of enormous difficulty. McLoghlin faced the daunting task of introducing a new brand into a market that was contracting rapidly, forcing her to close her existing four specialty clothing stores and a wholesale line of t-shirts and dresses that were failing. The weight of financial obligations from her previous ventures threatened to derail her efforts to establish Frank & Eileen as a growing company. It took McLoghlin three years to generate enough revenue from Frank & Eileen to pay for personal bankruptcy, a testament to her perseverance and commitment to rebuilding. 'It took another 10 years to build a credit score,' sighed McLoghlin. 'I had to pay cash for everything for 10 years. I couldn't even get a credit card.' During this time, McLoghlin cultivated a "warrior culture" for Frank & Eileen with the mindset, skills, and unity necessary to effectively navigate challenges. She promoted resilience, problem-solving, collaboration, and efficiency, which are crucial for businesses to weather such economic storms. The team is still together. During the pandemic, McLoghlin first focused on damage control. Recognizing the severe impact of mass cancellations, she prioritized the stability of her supply chain partners. Instead of passing on the cost of cancellations to her suppliers, which could have forced them into bankruptcy, she and her team analyzed their fabric inventory and redesigned collections on the fly. This approach allowed Frank & Eileen to continue producing and shipping products when many other brands could not, meeting the unexpected demand from retailers whose businesses were recovering faster than anticipated. Simultaneously, McLoghlin recognized the need to re-launch Frank & Eileen's e-commerce capabilities. The company had fortuitously been in the process of redesigning its e-commerce site, with a launch planned later in 2020. McLoghlin seized this opportunity, investing more resources into capitalizing on the surge in online shopping. The timing was ideal, as consumers, under lockdown, were eager for online shopping experiences. Just a few months ago, McLoghlin faced the challenge of the Los Angeles fires. The need to support her team, customers, and the wider community forced McLoghlin to temporarily halt business operations to focus on providing aid and support to her team and customers. McLoghlin acknowledges that "challenges come with the territory" for entrepreneurs, and Frank & Eileen is again facing uncertainty. However, she is sanguine: "I have no plans to make any reactionary changes to our supply chain." This approach is supported by the company's diversified production: "We're in a fortunate position," McLoghlin explains, "half of our production is vertical here in the U.S., and the other half is in Europe, so we're not feeling the pressure as intensely as some other supply chains." She remains committed to the brand's founding principles: "When I launched Frank & Eileen, the goal was to work with the best textiles in the world, and that commitment hasn't changed." Instead of reactive measures, the focus is on long-term stability. "We've already navigated two major crises -- the Great Recession and COVID—and I have no doubt," McLoghlin asserts, "we'll come through this crisis even stronger." McLoghlin has demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt, innovate, and lead with empathy. Her journey is a powerful example of how obstacles, though challenging, can forge resilience and drive innovation to build a sustainable women's clothing brand.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
L.A. and Kantamanto: 2 Fires, 2 Responses, 1 Common Problem
The crumpled sprawls of clothing, used and unwanted, wound along the curbs and occasionally spilled into the streets. They were the regurgitated contents of multiple closets: denim cutoffs, printed blouses, spaghetti-strap dresses, far too many T-shirts to count. It's a common enough sight in poorer nations like Chile, Ghana or Kenya that have become the 'away' people talk about when they discard things they no longer wish to wear. The castoffs have resulted in towering, often rotting, monuments to overconsumption that have not so much overtaken the landscape as become an indelible part of it. More from Sourcing Journal What's in Frank & Eileen's First Impact Report? Rooted in Community, Trinidad3 Gives to Those Affected by California Fires The Circular Economy Demands Reformed Trade Codes, Cambridge Reports While the garments that hugged thoroughfares with names like Washington Blvd. and Summit Ave. in the Southern California city of Pasadena hadn't achieved that state or scale quite yet, the parallels still struck Lindsay Rose Medoff as she stood, heartbroken, amid one of the deluges on a smoky afternoon. There would be many more like it. This is what happens when the system breaks down, she said, and when well-intentioned donations for those displaced by the recent wildfires become unmanageable. Medoff is CEO of Suay Sew Shop, a community-centered textile remanufacturer in downtown Los Angeles that quickly set up a 'Free Store for Fire Relief' when wind-swept conflagrations blazed through 27,000 acres, the size of almost 20,000 football fields. Since 2017, its circular textiles program, dubbed 'Suay It Forward,' has diverted more than 4 million pounds of textiles from landfills by upcycling them into apparel and home goods. A testament to creativity and tenacity, Suay's retail shop touts everything from patchwork jackets cobbled together from workwear uniforms to mesh produce bags derived from old sports jerseys. The entire operation is underpinned by a cavernous warehouse of tossed materials across the street just waiting to be reincarnated. It's difficult to say where the abandoned clothes came from, though overwhelmed donation drop-off sites could be a likely source, particularly now that many are winding up. Or maybe people have been dumping their contributions on the streets, hoping someone will be able to use them, though the chances of that are pretty slim. 'It's no one's fault; I think a lot of people genuinely wanted to help and jumped into action,' said Medoff, who prefers not to use the d-word. 'I think it started off as something that was genuine and that just became incredibly overwhelming because no one needed, by far, that amount of clothing.' In the span of a few days, Team Suay has picked up 50,000 pounds of clothing in a steady succession of rented trucks. There's an irony in the fact that the fashion industry's untethered churn is partly to blame for the soaring greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating climate change and, therefore, supercharging extreme weather events like hotter and hungrier fires. And there's always more where that came from. 'We are getting calls, emails, DMs every day to take on more,' she said. 'We're just so broken as consumers. This abundance of waste highlights a global failure to reckon with our overproduction and consumption habits.' Half a world away in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, on a similar afternoon, Liz Ricketts, co-founder and executive director of The Or Foundation, was also contemplating fire and used garments. In the early hours of Jan. 2, two weeks before the fires in Los Angeles broke out, an inferno of unknown origin tore through Kantamanto Market, West Africa's largest secondhand clothing marketplace. Two people have died, and eight acres of stalls—the equivalent of 60 percent of the market's retail-facing side—burned to the ground. More than 10,000 vendors have witnessed their livelihoods literally go up in smoke. It's difficult to put an exact number to the damage, but Ricketts, whose organization works with the Kantamanto community to find solutions for textile waste, estimates that tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment, infrastructure, clothing bales and other supplies were lost in the blaze. Ghana is the world's largest importer of used clothing. Kantamanto alone, she said, spends $300 million on bales every year, over half of which is paid to exporters in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. But vendors typically purchase bales sight unseen. And of the 15 million garments that enter Kantamanto every week, a contested 40 percent also leave as garbage because they're too stained or damaged to resell. This is the end of the line: Those that aren't landfilled or incinerated in ad-hoc burn sites go on to pollute Accra's streets, beaches and waterways. They often end up in the ocean, where they're churned up by the waves and disgorged along the coast in grotesque tangled masses, known colloquially as 'tentacles,' that sometimes have to be chiseled out from the sand. That volunteers at Los Angeles clothing relief sites have complained of discolored or hole-riddled donations doesn't surprise Ricketts. Kantamanto's vendors have been struggling with this for years, particularly with the rise of cheap, low-quality garments—in a phrase, fast fashion—that have left them feeling like their work no longer has dignity and they are selling Westerners' waste. 'For the first time, Americans who are accustomed to putting their clothes in a garbage bag and dropping it off at a charity or 'recycling' bin, many of those donors have become active participants in the secondhand supply chain,' she said. 'For the first time, they are being tasked with opening the trash bags, sorting the clothing and putting their hands on the truth—the truth that there is too much clothing and that clothing is considered disposable.' Ricketts said it was interesting how L.A. and Kantamanto are being drawn together because of shared tragedy and a similar surfeit of low-value garments with few viable outlets. Without off-ramps such as Kantamanto, however, there is no 'away' for Los Angeles. Then there is the way responses to both disasters have diverged. The Walt Disney Co. has pledged $15 million to rebuilding Los Angeles. Target donated $1 million to local and national disaster relief organizations such as the League of California Community Foundation. Walmart committed $2.5 million to support relief efforts. Nike said it distributed $7.8 million in financial and product donations to the likes of the American Red Cross and World Central Kitchen. Skechers has shelled out $1 million to Baby2Baby, the California Fire Foundation Wildfire & Disaster Relief Fund and others. Centric Brands and Gap Inc. made unspecified contributions to the L.A. arm of the American Red Cross and the L.A. Fire Department Foundation. Of the 20 brands that The Or Foundation has stumbled upon with the most frequency during its beach cleanups—including the aforementioned Disney, Gap, Nike and Target—only H&M Group and Puma said they had offered their support to the Kantamanto community, though they wouldn't specify in what way. Inditex declined to comment, while the others—Marks & Spencer, Next, Adidas, Nike, Gap, Primark, George by Asda, F&F by Tesco, Boohoo, Tu by Sainsbury, New Look, Reebok, Tommy Hilfiger owner PVH Corp., Asos, Slazenger, Gildan, Disney, Target and Carters— didn't respond to multiple emails requesting the same. Vestiaire Collective, the pre-owned luxury platform that collaborated with The Or Foundation to release a Black Friday collection of upcycled garments using materials from Kantamanto, donated money to the marketplace. Patagonia, which shared a stage with Ricketts to speak about overproduction at the Textile Exchange conference in Pasadena last October, did not. Again, Ricketts can't muster much astonishment. 'I am happy to see companies committing millions of dollars to L.A., as they should,' she said. 'It's not surprising that the same global fashion brands are not donating to Kantamanto because their customers are in L.A. and not in Accra.' She estimates that it will take over $5 million to reconstruct the damaged parts of the market, minus $1.5 million in direct relief to community members whose lives hang in the balance. It's a sum that's a sliver of many brands' marketing budgets—the same ones that power the engines of overconsumption. In the second quarter ended Nov. 30 alone, for instance, Nike spent $1.1 billion in so-called 'demand creation.' The Or Foundation sprang into action as soon as the fire hit, immediately unlocking $1 million in emergency funds for direct relief. Some of that drew on a controversial $5 million extended-producer-responsibility-like grant that Shein disbursed to the organization over three years, beginning in 2022. While the e-tail juggernaut hasn't rustled up additional funds, instead giving Kenya's Africa Collect Textiles Foundation $5.3 million last week to expand its used textile collection and recycling efforts, Ricketts sees its prior largesse as a demonstration of how EPR schemes should work. Right now, EPR funds in France, Hungary, the Netherlands and, some point soon, California, do not filter to the countries that serve as textiles' final sinks. 'The communities that need the EPR resources should be given the benefit of deciding how those resources should be used,' she said. 'And that is the positive with the EPR fund that we have; it doesn't stipulate that the resources can only go to material-based products or projects. For instance, we can use it for fire safety and the fire relief effort.' Chinazo Ufodiama, a brand and communications consultant who specializes in purpose and responsibility, can't hide her disappointment, however. Staying silent about Kantamanto is particularly indefensible, she said, because brands have been 'quietly outsourcing' their waste management to marketplaces like it to 'cover up mass consumption, diminishing quality and excessive overproduction.' It's also impossible to ignore the stark contrast in the causes that the fashion industry will choose to champion, Ufodiama added. A crowdfunding campaign that The Or Foundation launched for Kantamanto generated just over $221,000 in additional donations. 'When a fire destroyed Notre Dame in 2019, millions of euros were immediately pledged to aid the restoration,' she said, namedropping Kering and LVMH. 'As the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement spilled out from the U.S. into Europe, we saw brands publishing pledges and donating to various organizations. Upon Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the industry rallied around to donate money and relief packages, publicly expressing their support to Ukraine. And we are seeing an outpouring of support from the global fashion community in response to the ongoing catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles from resource sharing, financial donations, as well as calls for fashion brands to donate clothing and toiletries to those who have lost everything.' Samata Pattinson is the British-Ghanaian CEO of Black Pearl, a 'cultural sustainability' consultancy. She now lives in Los Angeles, where she can feel to her bones the difference, not only in the acknowledgments of the L.A. and Kantamanto fires, but also to the haves and have-nots in and around Hollywood. 'The response—or lack thereof—to the fire in Kantamanto reflects the historic dehumanization of communities burdened by our waste. Black, African communities often receive far less compassion in times of crisis, rooted in systemic inequality and historical injustices,' she said. 'Yet, the working and diverse communities in L.A. seem to be overlooked in a similar way to those in Kantamanto. 'Hollywood' is part of a vast ecosystem in Greater Los Angeles, where the climate crisis affects not only celebrities but also the countless behind-the-scenes professionals whose livelihoods depend on the entertainment and creative industries, and many who do not work 'regular' jobs to support their families.' What's clear to Pattinson, however, is that wildfires, air pollution and other climate challenges affect everyone. 'They do not discriminate,' she said. Neither should compassion nor responsibility for the global fashion system have borders. 'Both disasters highlight the same overarching issue: the fashion industry's impact on people, communities and the environment must be addressed—not only in the wake of disasters but as part of a long-term commitment to sustainability, ethical production, and responsible consumption,' Pattinson added. 'Ultimately, it's about acknowledging that no loss is more significant than another—whether it's in Greater Los Angeles or Kantamanto, where communities are left to rebuild, often without the necessary support.' For the vendors of Kantamanto, the stakes have never been higher. Those who were fortunate to have bales that were stored off-site have set up makeshift storefronts by spreading goods on the ground alongside a nearby railroad, with an umbrella or two in lieu of a shingle. Some have refused to budge from the charred remains of their stalls, where plumes of black, toxin-laden smoke from smoldering synthetic materials uncurled for days, in case opportunistic squatters try to take over. The Or Foundation has been urging people to sleep, eat and stay healthy. Still, anxiety looms as thick and heavy as the air. 'I am tired and I am suffering,' said Akumi Kyei, a 20-year veteran of Kantamanto. 'Before the fire, this market helped people make money to build their homes, take care of their children's education. Now that the fire has destroyed our livelihood, the business has gone down completely. Many people and our customers have heard that Kantamanto market is burnt, and so they believe there is nothing here.' Like the areas in Los Angeles that were consumed by the fires, Kantamanto is desperate to rebuild. But it's an endeavor that will prove to be expensive even before the first construction efforts can take place: debris needs to be trucked out, plans for a more fire-resilient infrastructure must be drafted, timber has to be purchased, a power grid restored, security enhanced. Meanwhile, the affected vendors have bills—grocery, housing, schooling, medical—that will continue to pile up. 'The majority of the things that I had were here in the market,' said Kyum Kweku, also known as Opaa, who has sold women's jeans in Kantamanto since 1996, working from 6 in the morning to 6 in the evening. 'Because I have stayed here for so long, this is where my kitchen is. When I say kitchen, that doesn't mean a typical kitchen. It is a proverb meaning 'this is where I eat from.' This is what I use to pay for my loans and my debts, and also to take care of myself and my family, so when the fire situation happened, I had no money left.' Asked what he needed most, Kweku did not hesitate. 'Right now all the help we are going to need, all stands on money,' he said. 'It's money that we need to rebuild. It's money! Because, I can't tell you all the things that I have lost, but once I have money, I will be able to use that to rebuild and develop my business again.' Julian Baba Otoo, who has worked in Kantamanto for more than two decades and lost all six of her sewing machines in the fire, said she arrived the day after to find 'not a single pin' on the floor.' 'When I came, it was just the land that was bare,' she said. 'So now we are waiting and hoping what God will do for us. If you guys have any help for us, please do help us. Because right now, nothing is in our pockets. Everything has been burnt. Because I never dreamt and expected that this would happen, and that Kantamanto burned to this extent that it did.' Otoo isn't looking for a handout but a hand extended. Or rather, for people to 'hold our waist' so the stall owners can rise up. The secondhand trade is what she knows and she doesn't want to stop doing it. 'If you guys offer me a loan to pay, I will do it and pay for it,' she added. Venetia La Manna, a fair fashion activist and content creator, wonders if the fire at Kantamanto would have been as voracious if brands were taking responsibility for the full life cycle of their garments. La Manna had been calling out Marks & Spencer, the U.K. department store responsible for the largest amount of clothing waste washing up on Accra's shores, even before 2024 came to a close. Now she sees any financial aid it might give as a 'debt' it already owes the Kantamanto community. La Manna, who works with The Or Foundation's 'Speak Volumes' campaign to get fashion purveyors to publicly declare their production volumes, isn't alone in that sentiment, either. An Instagram video that she posted on Jan. 16 asking Marks & Spencer to donate to the relief fund has garnered 330,000 views and 16,000 likes. One person who commented said a donation was the least the company could do. Another urged Marks & Spencer, which calls its sustainability initiative 'Plan A' because 'there is no Plan B,' not to 'shrug away responsibility and accountability.' 'Despite pioneering brands like Finisterre, Armedangels and Vivobarefoot publicly endorsing the campaign, M&S has ignored our requests,' she said. 'By ignoring the demands of the community on the frontlines of the textile waste crisis—with overwhelming support from the 'consumers' M&S claims to care about)—this corporation is, unfortunately, proving itself to be nothing more than a champion greenwasher. We don't just expect better, we demand better and we will continue to build pressure until M&S takes responsibility for its oversupply.' The invisible thread that ties Kantamanto to Los Angeles will continue to do so until brands commit to reducing production volumes and the global North's 'too much' ceases to be a burden, Ricketts said. 'Until we explore this, the impacts of overproduction that contributed to the L.A. fires will remain intrinsically linked to the debt burden that has left Kantamanto without adequate resources to build for fire safety and provide dignified working conditions or to respond holistically to a market disaster of this magnitude,' she said. 'The financial commitments are one thing, but we would also just like to see companies express solidarity. I mean, so much of our work has been trying to help people understand that the secondhand clothing trade is not charity.' For Medoff, the mounds of clothing being strewn around the affected Southern California areas are, in a way, a manifestation of the toll that fashion production extracts. It's also as clear a sign as any that resources and money need to be poured into the creation of truly circular systems, including in Los Angeles itself. 'The fire brought to the surface for all of us to engage with the very heavy environmental load that textiles carry from the time that they're created to the end of their life as the consumer views it,' she said. 'And then it has a whole other environmental load after the consumer is done with it that we just don't see very often. And now we're seeing it because it's in piles all over town, and people are feeling wildly overwhelmed with what to do with it.' The planet, Medoff said, is 'screaming' for change. 'How many fires, how many floods, how many disasters need to happen until we shift course?' she asked. 'Sometimes I'm like, 'Do we have to run out of clean water, clean air? Does every natural disaster really have to happen?''
