Fashion is female. That may strike many as a reality, but its truth doesn’t rely on what common sense may suggest. Common sense sees fashion as female because, for centuries, it was considered part of the “feminine” world: magazines, style, pretty clothes, designer bags, and the ideals of what fashion is.

Yet, as a cultural phenomenon fashion has proved many times in its history to be far from gender-specific. Actually, the phrase “fashion is female” takes on its real weight not in cultural perception, but in numbers: fashion, as an industry, is overwhelmingly driven by women in the workforce.

According to SCIRP, women account for over 80% of the global textile workforce. This proves fashion is undeniably a female-powered industry, not because it belongs to what’s considered a “feminine” universe but because women make up the majority of the labor force.

And in a field where men still hold most of the leadership positions (more than 85% of graduates from top fashion schools are women, yet only around 14% of the top 50 major fashion brands are run by women) the gender gap and resulting inequalities remain an important debate.

But what if we pushed the conversation further, examining not just where women are positioned in the fashion industry but how they actively shape fashion's future, particularly in the critical space of sustainability?

This was the focus of Patricia Langan, Founder of Women for Women’s Wear and Sustainable and Ethical Supply Chain Advisor at World Collective, in her deeply insightful panel on the Expert Talk Stage at  Functional Fabric Fair.

Patricia E. Langan | Founder and Chief Curator of Women for Women's Wear and Sustainability Advisor at World Collective.

Her July presentation, titled “Is the Future of Sustainable Fashion Female?,” pointed out that while systemic inequality has concentrated women in the most unethical and environmentally damaging tiers of fashion’s supply chain, there is another, growing dimension to women’s participation: when women lead fashion brands, their leadership is often associated with stronger commitments to advancing sustainable and ethical production.

In this blog post, we dive deeper into the arguments, data, and first-hand interviews Patricia brought to her panel, insights that shed light on the realities of women in fashion’s workforce and their role in shaping a more sustainable industry.

The Elephant in The Room

Before talking about themes like sustainability and ethical practices in fashion, it's important to understand these terms and know how to differentiate them.

At the very start of her panel, Patricia referred to this as “the elephant in the room,” as a way of saying: let’s acknowledge that most people in the audience are probably unsure  where sustainability ends and where ethics begins, and let’s clear that up before we move forward.

She summarized it this way:

Sustainability focuses on environmental impacts, while ethical focuses on labor practices, gender equality, and culture.

She moves forward explaining each concept in detail, clarifying that sustainability is centered on mitigating or eliminating harmful elements such as GHG emissions, microplastics, other pollutants, biodiversity loss, natural resource depletion, and related environmental  impacts.

Ethical practices address issues like unfair pay below living wage, unequal pay, lack of contracts or benefits, restrictions on freedom of association, workplace discrimination or harassment, unsafe working conditions, and related social concerns.

With those definitions in place, we’re ready to look more closely at women’s roles in shaping fashion’s sustainability and why building a more ethical system for them is both necessary and transformative.

Women at the Heart of Fashion’s Supply Chain

It’s a troubling paradox: the same industry that sells empowerment to women is built on the labor of women who hold little power within its structure.

Like we’ve mentioned earlier, women have been systematically concentrated in the most polluting, labor-intensive tiers of fashion’s supply chain - raw material production and processing, material production, and final assembly tiers, often performing low-paid work under precarious conditions.

Such systemic inequalities have serious consequences. Many female textile and garment workers endure long hours, unsafe workplaces, wage disparities, and even harassment.

Moreover, the fast fashion era’s demand for cheaper, faster production exacerbates these issues: as brands and customers push for lower costs and quicker collections, it’s the women on factory floors who bear the brunt.

As one Climate Policy report aptly noted, “the catastrophic impact of the fashion industry on climate change and the environment is inherently a women’s rights issue.”

However, recognizing women as the backbone of fashion also means recognizing their potential power.

On her panel, Patricia Langan emphasized that investing in women workers, through fair wages, education, and empowerment programs, can have a positive domino effect on sustainability.

Langan contends that when women have greater agency and broader opportunities, they are more inclined to champion cleaner, safer practices within their businesses and the communities they’re part of.

In essence, her message is that advancing sustainability in fashion goes hand in hand with advancing the rights and well-being of the women who make our clothes.

What Happens to Fashion When Women Take the Lead?

During her panel, Langan challenged the audience with three powerful questions. These “unanswered questions,” as her presentation called them, cut to the heart of fashion’s gender and sustainability paradox.

1. What proportion of businesses across fashion’s value chain are owned or led by women?

2. Are women-led fashion brands more ethical and sustainable, and if so, why?

3. What needs to change for women-led brands to bring more impact in terms of reducing environmental harm and improving ethical production?

Langan built her argument by raising these questions one by one, grounding each in the reality of today’s industry and the potential of women’s leadership.

The first question laid bare a stark knowledge gap: in an industry powered by women in the workforce, we simply don’t know how many businesses are actually run by women.

But beyond the big-name brands, data on female ownership along the wider fashion supply chain is scarce. How many of the countless suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and indie labels are women-owned or women-led?

Nobody has systematically tracked it, and that was precisely Langan’s point.

“We need more research and we need more of you to get involved and asking these questions."

This lack of visibility isn’t just a numbers problem; it hints at untapped opportunities and insights being overlooked. If we don’t even know how many women-led enterprises exist across fashion, how can we fully understand their collective influence or their unique challenges?

This uncertainty naturally led to Langan’s second question: are women-led fashion brands more ethical and sustainable, and why might that be? It’s a provocative idea that many in the audience likely nodded along to.

After all, women entrepreneurs in fashion often launch their brands with purpose-driven missions, frequently inspired by personal values or lived experiences.

In fact, Langan noted that there is a widespread perception that female founders infuse their companies with a greater emphasis on ethics and sustainability.

Some evidence backs this up: studies have linked a higher proportion of women in leadership with stronger environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance.

In fashion specifically, female-led companies tend to score better on transparency and social responsibility measures, fostering more open cultures and higher ethical standards.

This isn’t about innate qualities of any gender, but more likely about perspective: women leaders, who both drive and consume fashion, may be more attuned to the human and ecological costs behind the products.

However, Langan was careful not to jump to conclusions. Are women-led brands categorically more sustainable, or do we just assume they are?

Do these brands truly outperform their peers in ethical practices, or do we simply hear more about the ones that do?

The implication was: if the future of sustainable fashion truly is female, we need to understand why. What are women leaders doing differently, and is there causation or just correlation?

Answering that requires more than presumption. That’s why Langan undertook a mini-study, speaking with ten women-led fashion small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across five countries, to start digging into these very issues, a point she hinted at without yet revealing the outcomes.

Before we dive into that, let’s revisit the third question raised on the panel, which is “what needs to change for women-led brands to maximize their impact?”

Here the conversation shifted from identifying gaps to envisioning solutions. Even if women-led businesses are driving positive change in fashion, what barriers are holding them back from scaling that impact?

As Langan bserved, female founders in fashion share many of the same hurdles as all women entrepreneurs do, such as:

• Access to capital: Despite their innovations, women-led companies receive only a tiny fraction of investment funding. A 2024 study showed all female-founded companies continued to be severely underfunded, receiving only 1% of VC capital and 6% of deals that year.

• Structural biases in the industry: Systemic obstacles throughout the industry un-ables the growth of women-owned brands, including male-dominated investor panels and supplier networks, insufficient mentorship opportunities, and limited business support specifically designed for women entrepreneurs.

And these are just two of many other hurdles faced every day.

The question isn’t whether women-led fashion businesses can drive sustainability and ethics in the industry (we see that they can); it’s what would enable them to do it at a much greater scale.

For the women already leading the charge, what would help multiply their impact tenfold? Langan’s panel was an invitation to consider how different the fashion landscape might look if the playing field were truly leveled for women innovators.

Rather than rushing to prescribe solutions, Langan took a more grounded approach. She used these thought-provoking questions as a foundation for meaningful conversations with women who are already on the frontlines of sustainable fashion businesses.

By connecting directly with female entrepreneurs from around the globe, she sought to understand their impact, lived experiences, and challenges firsthand.

Voices of Women-Led Brands Driving Change

A highlight of Patricia Langan's panel was the inclusion of first-hand perspectives from women-led fashion SME brand owners who are steering their brands toward sustainability and ethical production.

Their insights show how these leaders are tackling challenges and reimagining fashion's future from the ground up.

Continue reading as we explore insights from two of the women interviewed, and discover how women-led brands experience and address the genuine challenges of running ethical and sustainable SMEs.

Sentient (Mexico) – Ethics and Innovation in Luxury Accessories

Jimena Suarez– Founder/CEO of Sentient & Activist. Picture sourced from Sentient's web page.

Founded by Jimena Suarez, a former human-rights and environmental lawyer, Sentient is a luxury accessories brand built on the ethos that "luxury and ethics belong together."

Sentient crafts handbags from next-generation vegan materials (such as plant-based leathers), proving that cruelty-free, low-impact materials can meet the standards of quality and style.

The brand reduces environmental impact by using natural resources including land-use and regenerative practices. It operates ethically by addressing animal exploitation in the fashion industry through "not using sentient beings" for their products.

The company also focuses on who makes the handbags, carefully examining and ensuring healthy and fair working conditions for the people producing their products through codes of  conduct.

When asked about the struggles of running a sustainable business, Jimena said, “there is something very real behind the amount of investment needed to actually implement the fashion sustainable agenda.

No matter how much commitment the brands have, the founders have, if there isn't the financial support and systemic support, it's difficult to achieve, so that's where the challenge comes."

Another big challenge for Sentient is getting full traceability on the materials used without investment, especially in an industry where supply chains are already "difficult to navigate and very fragmented."

When asked about changes needed in the overall fashion business model to make their brand more sustainable and ethical, Suarez explains:

I honestly think that if larger companies are facing difficult transition costs, it's important that the ones that are making the machines move forward, it's important they provide help to them, and not necessarily with investment but collaboration.

Suarez here is referring to the industry’s dominant players: if they’re driving the industry, then they also carry responsibility for helping others along the way.

In short, her point was: if the big players decide the rules of the game, they also have a duty to ensure that smaller, often more vulnerable brands aren’t left behind.

In closing, Suarez’s interview positions Sentient as a case study in doing business differently; a bold example of ho women leading with their values in fashion inspire a more compassionate scalable model of impact.

Jackalo (USA) – Durability and Circularity in Kidswear:

Marianna Sachse – Founder/CEO of Jackalo . Picture sourced from Jackalo's web page.

Marianna Sachse, Jackalo’s founder, created her childrenswear brand to “bring back old-fashioned quality to kids’ clothing” without compromising her values of environmental responsibility.

Frustrated by flimsy fast-fashion kids’ clothes that children grow out of too quickly, generating unnecessary waste, Marianna Sachse built Jackalo around durability and circular design.

Jackalo also operates a buy-back program to repair, resell or recycle every garment at end-of-use, making it what Marianna claims is America’s first circular kids’ clothing company.

According to Sachse, the brand reduces environmental impact primarily by using organic and deadstock cotton. 

This approach cuts down on water and energy consumption in clothing production, reduces harmful chemicals in the soil where fibers are grown, and minimizes waste through maintaining the clothes in circulation, by passing clothes down in the family or reselling pieces or recycling garments that can't be resold.

They also partner with Green Story, which offers a carbon credit system where they report all traceable information and quantify water, carbon, and pesticide usage in their process. Tracking and calculating the impact of the circularity piece of Jackalo’s program is a challenge, Sachse says. 

When asked about the struggles of having a sustainable business, she says the MOQs are a challenge for them: “as a small brand we don't really want to over produce. So fabric minimums are a bit of a challenge.”

She also mentions the unpredictability around tariffs, as tariffs "will substantially affect the organics industry in textiles."

When asked about how being female affects her ability to run a sustainable brand, she says:

From a financial business standpoint, it's a disadvantage. I knew when I started this business that there is no way I would get outside funding from a VC.

This underscores how systemic funding barriers for women-led companies hold back the broader sustainability gains, like Suarez mentioned and Langan  highlighted.

It also shows that without equal access to capital, the industry silences some of its most transformative voices.

That said, Jackalo shows that SMEs can put robust systems in place and push sustainability forward, but her experience also makes clear that the hurdles (minimums, tariffs, financing…) are real and must be addressed.

The message is powerful: these challenges may slow the path, but they don’t stop the business, and they shouldn’t stop the industry from supporting more women founders to scale their impact.

The Fashion System Is Stacked Against (Women-led Sustainable and Ethical) SMEs

After the interviews, Patricia traces back to the start of her panel, reminding the audience of how she pointed out some of the blocks SMEs usually face, such as fragmented supply chains, managing outsourcing, unpredictable business environment, and access to the right talent mix (blue blocks in graphic below).

Businesses striving to be ethical and sustainable face additional challenges (green blocks): a fashion system driven by overproduction and trends, difficulty accessing right-sized production capacity, sourcing sustainable materials, uneducated customers, cost of certifications and compliance.

But now, after talking to brands and hearing what each owner had to say, she shows the audience how women-led, sustainable, and ethical SMEs face additional challenges that SMEs generally may not.

The blocks women-led brands face are the same ones SMEs typically encounter, plus new and often larger ones (pink blocks), such as women are vastly underrepresented in leadership, limiting their influence, overlooked when seeking finance, and subject to the so-called “Double Burden,” where women founders often face higher expectations to “prove” themselves.. 

For these owners, the stack of obstacles is both higher and wider. And this is one of the most important takes of Patricia’s panel. But the even greater take? We can overcome these challenges.

From Barriers to Breakthroughs: Empowering Women = Empowering Sustainability

By the end of the panel, one conclusion rang clear: the future of sustainable fashion may well be female, not in a simple, stereotypical or selective sense, but in the profound sense that empowering women at all levels of the industry, and especially women-led brands, is key to driving lasting change.

As Patricia’s talk emphasized, asking “Is the future of sustainable fashion female?” is asking how we can leverage the full talents and perspectives of the majority of fashion’s workforce. But more importantly, it is asking how we can leverage the leadership and impact of the majority of brands for a cleaner and fairer industry.

But of course, she didn't leave the questions hanging. By letting a representative group of micro to medium sized female brand owners speak for themselves, she crafted the four key building blocks of a supportive ecosystem, including production management, collaboration, technology and finance: