When it comes to practicing sustainable and ethical manufacturing techniques, not many people in fashion can compare to womenswear designer, Eileen Fisher. Since 2009, the year she debuted her first wide-scale eco-friendly initiative “Green Eileen,” Fisher has made it a mission to transform her iconic basics-meets-business-casual brand into one of the most environmentally and socially conscious brands in the business. Her dedication to recycling clothing, sourcing sustainable fabrics, and fighting against unfair labor conditions, has created a new eco-aware blueprint that has changed the industry for the better and has earned her the Positive Change Award at this year’s CFDA Fashion Awards.

Fisher, who founded her namesake label in 1984, is one of the few high-end designers that adopted environmentally-conscious manufacturing practices years before it became a trendy cause. As a part of the brand’s 2009 “Green Eileen” eco-friendly initiative, the brand began accepting previously worn Eileen Fisher clothing that the brand would then clean or repair in order to resell at a discounted price. This program was designed to reduce the brand’s reusable textiles waste, which has been a major issue many fashion brands have just now begun to address. As of today, the fashion industry remains one of the most wasteful industries in the world as a result of many brands’ tendencies to dispose of old garments and fabrics in landfills. According to Vogue, not only did the “Green Eileen” campaign help subside the amount of fashion waste, but it also earned the brand more than $3 million dollars in 2018.

Following the success of “Green Eileen,” the company decided to roll out yet another eco-friendly and socially conscious program dubbed “Vision 2020”. “Vision 2020” was designed to tackle six main problem areas within the manufacturing industry––hazardous color and fiber use, fabric and corporate waste, and unethical labor and supply chain practices. The brand plans to make major improvements in these areas by 2020, the same year that they pledged to begin solely using organic cotton and linen by 2020. According to the brand’s website, the “Vision 2020” agenda hopes to take human rights and sustainable initiatives from just a movement to a new way of life, one in which companies permanently implement positive production strategies into their corporate structure.

According to a recent report conducted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, textile production creates 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually and about 25.5 billion pounds of reusable textiles are thrown away each year (70 pounds per person). With numbers like these, people like Fisher and her team are what’s needed in the industry to prevent the hazardous effects of climate change and dangerous and unfair labor conditions. Together with the CFDA, which in 2016 began awarding emerging socially and economically conscious designers with the Eileen Fisher Social Innovator fellowship, Fisher has set her sights on encouraging other fashion brands to follow in her footsteps, and that’s one positive change the fashion industry can and should be proud of.