The Women Who Build Fashion — And The System That Forgets Them

Women's History Month: It's Time Fashion Paid Us Back | #WisdomWednesday | March '26

Every March, something curious happens. Brands that stay silent on supply chains the other 364 days suddenly find their feminist voices. "Empowered women empower women." "She believed, so she achieved." The messaging is polished, the timing predictable.

And by April, it's gone.

Here's what those glossy posts won't tell you: the fashion industry runs on the labor of women while systematically failing them.

Let's sit with some numbers:

• Only 2% of garment workers worldwide earn enough to cover their basic needs.
• Up to 50% of women in the garment industry have experienced sexual harassment.
• 93% of surveyed brands aren't paying a living wage.

Think about who makes your clothes. The woman spinning cotton in India. The woman stitching seams in Bangladesh. The woman sorting through mountains of textile waste in Ghana. They are predominantly women of color from the Global South. Women make up nearly 80% of global garment workers. And the system they sustain?

It pays them poverty wages. It exposes them to harassment. It renders them invisible while profiting from their hands.

That's not a broken system. That's a system working exactly as designed.

Last year, we spelled this out in a series of infographics. The message was simple but it bears repeating: 

Every time you buy something super cheap, remember: someone down the line has paid for it with their sweat, often without earning a living wage. AND there's an 80% chance that person is a woman of color from a marginalized community.

You can revisit our 8 Facts About Women in the Fashion Industry here.

When Heather Kaye and I met in Shanghai in 2008, we were two designers who loved fashion but hated what it had become. The waste. The exploitation. The way an industry built on women's creativity kept failing the women at its core.

Loop Swim became our answer - not just a brand, but a small proof that fashion could operate differently. Last year, I wrote about the ugly truths we're fighting and how we're turning ocean trash into treasure. Read it here.

That same stubborn hope keeps me going. It's why I'm proud and humbled by our recent inclusion in Good On You's roundup of GREAT women-owned brands making waves in ethical fashion. It's why our swimsuits now live in places like The Peninsula, The Upper House, and Mandarin Oriental, proof that luxury and ethics aren't enemies. They belong together.

Building Something That Lasts

But a brand alone doesn't change an industry. What changes an industry is when we stop treating sustainability as a marketing angle and start treating it as a collective practice.

That's the thinking behind Loop-ED.

On our website you'll find a growing library of free resources - tools we've created because we believe education shouldn't come with a price tag. #WisdomWednesday itself exists for this reason: not to throw facts at you and call it a day, but to shift how we all think about consumption, value, and who really pays the price for "cheap."

This work extends beyond our own platforms. I speak at conferences, visit classrooms, and consult with brands trying to do better - not because it's always profitable, but because transformation happens when knowledge moves from one person to another. From one brand to the next. From one woman to the whole table.

Because at the end of the day, the goal isn't to be the only one doing it right. It's to make "doing it right" the only option.

Where We Go From Here

The fashion industry won't transform overnight. I know that. But I also know that women have always been the ones holding it together - as makers, as menders, as wearers, as advocates. As Eco Age put it so beautifully this month:

"Women are the environmental stewards, the carriers of ancestral knowledge... Women have built fashion's past and they are fundamental to fashion's sustainable future."

So this Women's History Month, I'm not asking for one day of marketing messages. I'm asking for a system that finally, actually, respects the women who power it.

Through Loop-ED, through #WisdomWednesday, through every conversation and keynote and sourcing consultation, that's what we're building toward. Not perfection. Just progress, stitched together one honest step at a time.

The women who build our clothes deserve more than a candle and a hashtag. They deserve a seat at the table. They deserve wages that sustain their dreams. They deserve to be seen.

Thank you for helping us get there.

Itee 🚺
Loop Co-founder