After 10 years running one of the largest online stores for ethical and sustainable fashion, I am hanging up my heels and closing The Fashion Advocate. Well, closing The Fashion Advocate as you know it. I’ve had a long career in fashion, and it’s time for me to do something different.
I started my first circular fashion label when I was 18 and I started my first fashion events and PR company when I was 22. Then I launched the country's first and largest exclusively-Australian made online fashion store, The Dress Collective, and in 2014, I founded The Fashion Advocate. It started as a blog and grew to become one of the largest online stores for ethical and sustainable Australian and New Zealand fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands, and it was something truly spectacular.
The Fashion Advocate hosted the country's largest sustainable fashion runway at Melbourne Fashion Festival. We opened two of the best ethical and sustainable fashion stores in Melbourne. We stocked some of the country's most innovative sustainable and circular fashion designers and with the help of our beautiful community of customers, we also donated thousands of dollars every year to good causes. When things got a little crazy in 2020, we even released Australia's first plastic-free, synthetic-free, biodegradable face mask.
At a time when the fashion industry didn't value or understand sustainability, it was all we did. It was hard going against the grain, but we did it, and we did it really well. The Fashion Advocate was a multi-award-winning ecommerce store, and we grew to stand for something so much more than just sustainable online shopping - we led the conversation for change in the fashion industry.
In the 10 years that I ran The Fashion Advocate as an online store, we did some really amazing things, and even though it was brutally hard at some points of our journey, I loved every minute of it.
But when I was pregnant with my first child, I realised the future I was creating wasn't just my own anymore. Every decision and every choice I made was going to change the world – for better or worse – for the next generation, and I wanted to make sure I was doing everything I could to run the best possible business with the biggest possible impact.
So, it’s time for change.
I’ve re-launched, re-branded and re-birthed The Fashion Advocate, and now I'm sharing everything I know about business, fashion and sustainability through my online courses and mentoring to help ethical, sustainable, circular and slow fashion brands and businesses thrive in one of the toughest industries. I want to inspire fashion brands to use their businesses as a force for good and create positive social and environmental change with every sale.
I want to change the fashion industry for the better from the inside out and from the cutting room floor up, so now I'm working with brands and businesses - because they control whether fashion becomes a solution for global problems or a serious problem for our future.
Fashion itself isn't bad, fast fashion is. Ethical, sustainable, circular and slow fashion is the good stuff I want to see more of, so I'm determined to help the good brands succeed, because the world needs a little more good.
Claire x
