As a single mother navigating the unknown, I recognize the quiet resilience in other women who lead, build, and believe – whether partnered, parenting, or simply forging their own way.
More than ever, we need to uplift each other. Competition is no longer the point. Or, as my dear friend Iris Lubitch so brilliantly reframed it: Coopetition. I love that word. A space where collaboration and competition coexist – both sharpening and elevating what we bring to the table.
Today, I am proud to spotlight three women-led brands that are reshaping sustainable fashion – not by following trends, but by embodying values. Their work is bold, crafted with intention, and grounded in deep respect for the planet.
They don’t just make clothes or shoes. They move the industry forward.
Founder: Charlotte Rose Kirkham
London, UK
Rua Carlota is not a fashion label in the conventional sense – it’s a radical act of creative reclamation. Founded by London-based artist and mathematician Charlotte Rose Kirkham, the brand transforms forgotten textiles into wearable sculpture. Working exclusively with pre-loved and deadstock materials, Rua Carlota begins where most labels stop: with the discarded.
Charlotte treats fabric like an artist treats canvas – her stitching is a brush, her silhouettes a kind of wearable geometry. As a self-taught designer with a background in mathematics and a love for portraiture, her work is equal parts logic and intuition. Every Rua Carlota piece is one-of-a-kind. Nothing is reproduced. Nothing is waste.
Born from a personal frustration with the predictability of so-called sustainable fashion, Charlotte’s approach is defiantly fresh. Inspired by the pioneer of the lettuce hem, Stephen Burrows, she builds energy into every piece, favoring asymmetry, deconstruction, and texture as storytelling tools. Each drop becomes a new chapter in a living archive of slow fashion.
Rua Carlota gained early editorial acclaim when VOGUE named it one of the “New Knitwear Brands to Obsess Over” (Vogue UK, 2022). But what makes the brand truly memorable is the timelessness. It offers customers not just a garment, but a narrative: a story of reinvention, individuality, and artistic resilience.
Rua Carlota proves that sustainability doesn’t have to look “sustainable”. It can be subversive, sculptural, and undeniably stylish – a future-facing vision stitched with integrity.
Founder: Marie Gutiérres Hurtado
Barcelona, Spain
Uma Intimates is an eco‑sensual lingerie brand with elegance and ethics at its DNA. Uma blends fine biodegradable fabrics with inclusive sizing and body‑positive storytelling. Marie’s vision is to liberate women from fast fashion’s constraints, offering pieces designed with respect – for the body, for nature, for slow, intimate connection.
Although sustainable lingerie was notoriously difficult to produce, because of the lacked expertise of the local workshops, and the difficulty to source ethical materials, Uma Intimates built everything from scratch (Unsustainable Magazine, 2024), crafted an ethical production chain rooted in Catalonia, using fine Italian fabrics for their unmatched quality.
UMA’s pieces are refined and sensual, designed with care and cut with consciousness. Each one celebrates softness without compromising integrity. More than aesthetics, the brand champions transparency, local economy, and ethical intent—without relying on costly certifications that drain young businesses.
The brand challenges the idea that lingerie must be exploitative or disposable. It’s sensual, conscious, and beautifully crafted.
Founders: Andrea Norberg & Sarah Doyle
Bali, Indonesia
Born in 2020 out of Bali and Berlin, DIRT is what happens when two visionaries – Sarah Doyle and Andrea Norberg – decide to reimagine fashion through playfulness, provocation, and purpose. With no traditional training in fashion design, the duo built their brand not on industry blueprints, but on instinct, experimentation, and deep aesthetic intuition. That absence of convention is precisely what gives DIRT its edge.
Their pieces echo a reworked nostalgia: late-'90s and early-2000s silhouettes, redefined through a regenerative lens. Think low-slung trousers, asymmetrical skirts, unapologetic cuts – but made slowly, responsibly, consciously. DIRT doesn’t just reference the past; it rewires it. Each piece emerges from a hands-on process that prioritizes creativity over mass production and sustainability over trend-chasing.
There’s a tension running through their collections – bold primary colours clashing with candid styling, signature offbeat shapes that feel at once familiar and wildly new. DIRT’s aesthetic is alive, raw, beautifully unfiltered. It draws from the “unsuspecting and the ugly” to craft something striking, wearable, and subtly subversive.
Above all, DIRT is a quiet rebellion against fast fashion’s sameness, and a reminder that style with substance doesn’t have to whisper.
