Marie Claire UK - 11.2019

WORDS BY JESS WOOD. PHOTOGRAPHS BY CARL DE SOUZA/GETTY IMAGES, JIAN WEI LIM, RUBY WOODHOUSE, ANNIE LAI

@FASH_REV

Promotes kindness over consumption

and asks important questions about

where our clothes come from.

@VENDEURFASHION

Dedicated to beautiful, ethical

shopping and generally living

a kinder, more responsible life.

@ANTIBAD

An online platform and store that

brings the coolest sustainable

designers together in one place.

REFORMATION

BY YAEL AFLALO

INSTAGRAM’S ECO ELITE

Meet the influencers putting sustainable fashion in the spotlight

THE

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Dress, £255,

Reformation

From the food we eat to the clothes

we wear, public awareness about

sustainability is greater now than

ever before, but Yael Aflalo, 42, had her eco

epiphany all of a decade ago. In 2009, the

founder of super-cool sustainable

LA brand Reformation was working as a

freelance designer for a big fashion

company. It was a factory visit to China that made her realise

the scale of fashion’s pollution problem. She was already a

veteran of one brand – Ya-Ya, which she founded in her

twenties – and decided then and there to create a new

‘fashionable, sustainable brand’. And Reformation is

definitely fashionable. Its vintage-inspired silhouettes and

perfect party dresses are loved by LA’s finest – including

Taylor Swift, Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid, to name just a

handful. Aflalo started out upcycling vintage pieces for her

designs, before expanding into a fully-fledged collection. The

company is 100 per cent carbon, water and waste neutral,

and pays all its factory employees more than the Californian

minimum wage. Aflalo still loves incorporating deadstock and

vintage fabrics in her designs, and down-cycles fabric scraps

to be used as insulation at company HQ. The label’s first

European store is now open in London’s Notting Hill and, to

celebrate, we chatted to Aflalo about all things green – and

red, and printed, and floral...