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Fashion should reflect the world — not just one predetermined portion of it. But making sure there’s a seat at the table for a diverse variety of voices and backgrounds has been a long, evasive task. Change in fashion will only happen thanks to the work of those with a vision for a better future and the ambition to act on it. These innovators are those such visionaries, working on the front lines to ensure that they leave the industry better off than when they entered it.
Founder and creative director
Dima Ayad started her career in public relations, and in 2020, during Covid, started her own PR agency DAC Communications, which caters to clients in the hospitality and beauty sectors. Being one herself, she noticed the scarcity of fashion options for plus-size women and thus began her fashion label as a side hustle in 2010. Eponymously named Dima Ayad, the label is renowned in the Middle East for its size inclusivity, spanning from a size XS to 4XL. It was among the first body-positive brands stocked by e-tailer Net-a-Porter.
Recently, Ayad collaborated with the Italian plus-size label Marina Rinaldi, part of the Max Mara Group, on a capsule collection. The collection includes evening blazers and gold woven kaftans — glamorous, versatile pieces suitable throughout the year, offering shoppers beyond the Gulf region insight into Ayad’s approach to body-inclusive design.
Ayad is vocal about fashion labels that impose a ‘fat tax’, the term used when brands appear to charge higher prices for larger clothing sizes. She also believes the term ‘body positivity’ is inaccurate; she prefers ‘body inclusion’ and hopes to convey this message globally through her designs.
Founder | Black Girl Fest
Representation is one thing, but it is access to education, community and funding that enacts real structural change. Someone who understands this distinction is Nicole Crentsil, a British-Ghanaian entrepreneur, a cultural curator and an angel investor with Ada Ventures, a £34 million fund investing in underrepresented founders. In 2017, she founded Black Girl Fest, the UK’s first festival celebrating Black British women, girls and non-binary individuals, and has since grown it into a 50,000-plus community comprising entrepreneurs, creatives and business owners.
Besides the annual festival, which has welcomed speakers like fashion designer Bianca Saunders, founder of award-winning Adonia Medical Clinic Dr Ifeoma Ejikeme and photographer Adama Jalloh, Black Girl Fest also provides year-round, free online programmes and masterclasses across its platforms. This year, Crentsil officially launched BGF Studios, a cultural studio and consultancy aimed at connecting brands, businesses and institutions more authentically with Black audiences. One of their most recent partnerships included Glossier’s Black Beauty Grant programme, which provided financial and business support to five UK-based Black-owned brands. In April, they celebrated their fifth cohort to enter the BGF x Ebay Seller Academy programme designed to empower Black women-owned businesses selling on the global e-commerce platform.
Founder | Walk Free
Fashion is one of the five top contributors to modern slavery. Australian activist Grace Forrest wants to bring attention to this statistic in order to change it. Forrest founded human rights group and anti-slavery initiative Walk Free and spearheaded the organisation’s Global Slavery Index, which emphasises fashion’s role in the findings; she’s also a UN Goodwill Ambassador for anti-slavery. Since the index’s May 2023 release, Forrest has campaigned heavily to raise awareness and call for the fashion industry to change its mechanisms to eliminate its reliance on — and perpetuation of — global slave labour. Fashion’s exploitation of garment workers is one of Forrest’s key focuses at Walk Free, where she calls for transparency on the brand side and regulation on the government’s.
Forrest is unique in her approach to advocacy, as one of relatively few anti-slavery advocates to have effectively broken through to fashion. She’s featured in magazines including Vogue Australia and Marie Claire Australia, on the blog of UK ready-to-wear brand Mother of Pearl, collaborated with non-profit Fashion Revolution, and, in January, graced the cover of Grazia. These appearances are key because it is placing Forrest and Walk Free’s work in front of industry professionals who too often turn a blind eye to their role in perpetuating climate change and modern slavery. As Forrest frequently reiterates, it’s one of the most exploitative industries on the planet.
Indigenous activist and model
Zaya Guarani was born and raised in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. At the age of 16, she was forced to flee her home due to threats of invasion by loggers and miners. Shortly after, she signed with Ford as the agency’s first Indigenous model and has since worked with the likes of Vogue Brazil, Louis Vuitton and Moncler. Guarani is also an activist: from the beginning, her work as a model has involved consulting clients on the importance of Indigenous representation. She is currently signed with CAA.
Guarani, who is of Kamurape and Guarani Mbya ethnicities, is one of the most prominent Indigenous voices advocating for the protection of Indigenous people and their philosophy about how we should protect the planet. She is passionate about using practical and spiritual Indigenous knowledge to combat the climate crisis and safeguard the ecosystem. She uses her platform to advocate for Indigenous rights and protest deforestation in the Amazon. Guarani co-founded the first Indigenous Creative Collective in 2017.
Co-founder and executive director | Raisefashion
After rising up the ranks at Donna Karan during the label’s heyday, brand consultant Felita Harris co-founded Raisefashion in 2020, a non-profit organisation that supports BIPOC-owned brands. Harris now serves as executive director, using the skills, information and network she cultivated during her years in-house and through her own consultancy firm (also founded in 2020) to frame Raisefashion’s programming of strategic planning, fundraising and development for emerging designers. The organisation now has 400 industry advisors and works with over 200 brands. Harris runs Rasiefashion’s eight-week masterclass fellowship programme, which boasts alumni including Diotima’s Rachel Scott and Agbobly’s Jacques Agbobly. Since 2023, every year, eight qualifying designers receive a $15,000 grant. Through the programme, Harris also helps these emerging designers gain access to grant funding, industry-taught masterclasses, network expansion opportunities, pitch sessions with investors and retailers, and invitations to industry events.
At the helm of the organisation, Harris is pushing for more support across fashion industry touchpoints. On top of brand incubation, Raisefashion also partners with the Anti-Racism Fund on a paid summer internship programme. In 2023, they upped their yearly outreach to 13 HBCUs (it used to be just four). Harris’s goal is to develop a sustainable pipeline for BIPOC designers to sustainably grow their brands — a timely endeavour in an industry where it’s increasingly difficult to survive for the long haul.
Founder | Brother Vellies and 15 Percent Pledge
Since founding accessories brand Brother Vellies in 2013, CFDA vice chair Aurora James has sought to keep traditional African design practices alive by collaborating with artisans and bucking industry norms through investing in fair labour practices and job creation. This gave her a unique insight into the harsh realities of running a Black-owned business in the US. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, James channelled her frustration into 15 Percent Pledge, a non-profit advocating for major retailers to dedicate 15 per cent of their shelf space to Black-owned brands. Today, almost 30 corporations have pledged — including Nordstrom, Sephora and Ulta Beauty — shifting $14 billion of revenue to Black-owned businesses, and helping over 700 of these launch new partnerships.
This year, the pledge went one step further, teaming up with Dream Makers Founder Grant to distribute $25,000 grants to five female entrepreneurs each year, with a particular focus on Black and BIPOC founders. James is a vocal advocate for closing the racial wealth gap, which is why she stood as a vocal advocate for targeted funds when an appeals court blocked the venture capital firm Fearless Fund from issuing grants specifically to Black women-owned businesses in June.
Founder and CEO | McMullen
Sherri McMullen has boosted the work of many now-mainstay designers, from Christopher John Rogers to Rachel Scott of Diotima, via her 2007-founded McMullen boutique, named one of the world’s most innovative retailers. McMullen is a mainstay in the industry, known for hosting in-store events, exhibitions and personal styling sessions with independent designers to bring attention to their work both in-store and in the media.
No stranger to amplifying the work of emerging and BIPOC designers, the founder and CEO is now ramping up her efforts to support emerging talent with Beyond M, an incubator programme she launched at the end of 2023. Through the newly founded incubator, McMullen will provide resources and business mentorship to young designers to help keep their brands operating beyond the three-year mark. Informed by years of supporting designers on her own accord, McMullen is setting up a structural pathway to widen designers’ access to mentorship and support. In the interview process for brand candidates, McMullen identifies brands’ top needs: access to funding, business and financial development, and mentorship. Beyond M will provide mentorship and access to individuals who can help in these areas. On top of her incubation venture, McMullen is currently spearheading a new chapter for McMullen boutique with an opening in San Francisco: the boutique’s second physical space in 17 years.
Model and activist
In the age of artificial intelligence, where any image you come across may have been digitally created or manipulated, what rights do models have? This is a question central to Jade McSorley’s work. The model and activist has positioned herself on the front lines of what comes next for the modelling industry as AI technology works its way inside. She first realised the weight of this moment when she was 3D scanned on a shoot without her consent — and without any ownership over the rights of her 3D image.
McSorley is also founder of Loanhood, a circular fashion community that encourages ethical and responsible consumption. Her time as a model opened her eyes to how much we overconsume, and since then, she’s dedicated her career to bringing other solutions and ways of thinking about shopping to the table. Through her work, McSorley is creating a new version of an industry that tends to prioritise appearance and profit over the people who make it possible.
Founding member | Fashion UK
Burnout and poor working conditions are leading to a heightened sense of disillusionment among creatives in the fashion industry. In the summer of 2023, the strikes in Hollywood saw a knock-on effect across the creative industries, prompting a group of stylists, led by Michael Miller, to set up the Celebrity Stylist Union as a branch of the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union (BECTU) in the UK. Since then, the union has expanded to include other fashion creatives working behind the scenes, including stylists, hair and makeup artists, photographers, PRs and designers. The branch is now known as Fashion UK.
As a celebrity stylist and creative consultant (whose clients include Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Nicholas Galitzine), Miller experienced first-hand how a lack of regulation, standardisation and infrastructure to support creatives in the fashion industry impacts workers, particularly the self-employed. Making a change requires people to come together and collaborate on solutions, a barrier in a competitive and individualistic industry like fashion. Miller’s work to launch Fashion UK — which has been years in the making — has opened up conversations about how the industry should treat its workers and how workers treat each other, laying the groundwork for a better future.
Founder and CEO | Black Pearl
The conversation about the role of culture, human behaviour and societal norms only recently appeared on the public agenda in a meaningful way. Yet Samata Pattinson, founder of Black Pearl, has been focusing on it for years. As former CEO of Red Carpet Green Dress, she spent 12 years shining a spotlight on the power of bringing more sustainable fashion to the red carpet, including at the Oscars and beyond. She appeared in Billie Eilish’s Overheated documentary on climate change, has elevated conversations about culture and sustainability in venues such as the UN’s climate conferences in Glasgow, Egypt and more, and delivered a closing ceremony address last year at COP28 in Dubai.
In July 2023, she left Red Carpet Green Dress to launch Black Pearl, an organisation aiming to champion “cultural sustainability” and shift how people think about sustainability. Her work explores questions such as what we as a society value, what the messages are that celebrities, movies and other cultural role models give off, and why we are driven to make the choices we do. “Operating across design, fashion, music, entertainment and education, we collaborate with global talents, representative communities and major organisations like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the United Nations,” is how the organisation describes itself. In March, the company launched the Sustainable Fashion Guide for Everyone — developed to illustrate that sustainability is “not about sacrificing style but actually about enhancing it through deeper meaning”.
Founder | DPK Consulting & Coaching
Ben de Pfeiffer-Key is a transformational strategist and coach who works with brands to help diverse talent thrive at a time when progress on DE&I is backsliding, with many brands having back-pedalled on past policies. He has over 20 years of experience across talent acquisition, culture transformation and diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I).
His experience with major global brands — including Capri Holdings and Yoox Net-a-Porter Group — has given Pfeiffer-Key a keen understanding of how to implement inclusive talent strategies in practice. Currently, he consults with brands, including Lululemon, and his expertise spans from designing physical locations to creating emotionally safe spaces that support and welcome diversity.
While many DE&I strategies target the lower ranks, true change requires buy-in from the top levels. Pfeiffer-Key has experience coaching leaders on how to develop the behaviours and environments that support underrepresented talent, with a particular focus on the LGBTQ+ community and neurodivergent individuals. He also coaches underrepresented talent on how to advocate for themselves and break through barriers, working with institutions such as Central Saint Martins, London College of Fashion and Fashion Retail Academy to mentor the next generation of industry talent.
Pfeiffer-Key also hosts ‘The Belonging Conversations’ podcast, which launched in April, covering topics like social mobility, the intersection of social justice and neurodiversity, as well as mental health advocacy in the workplace.
Founder | Other Box
Leyya Sattar’s mission is to challenge the industry’s outdated approach to DE&I training and encourage others to take positive action against long-standing injustice and inequity. It’s a big task to tackle. Sattar founded Other Box, a social impact organisation, in 2016 to help spur that change, offering a jobs board, a creative studio and consulting services to both talent and companies operating in the fashion industry. Clients include Nike, the Global Fashion Agenda, Rick Owens, Ganni, Depop and more, and she is known for taking a community-driven approach to social impact fuelled by research and storytelling. To date, Other Box has educated over 45,000 people at over 300 businesses in more than 25 countries.
Sattar is passionate about salary transparency, which she upholds on Other Box’s job board. She believes it is a key step in reducing pay inequality among marginalised communities, particularly women of colour. As a qualified therapist who serves on the advisory group for the Fawcett Society, she is uniquely positioned to support and mentor marginalised people and understand the psychology behind inequality.
Founder and CEO | SevenSix Agency
Charlotte Stavrou is founder and CEO of SevenSix Agency, an award-winning influencer marketing and talent management agency founded in 2019 that helps brands improve the inclusivity of their marketing strategies. As the influencer economy continues to grow and become increasingly professionalised, Stavrou’s work has been pivotal to addressing the wage gap that influencers from marginalised backgrounds continue to face.
Along with running inclusive marketing and influencer marketing training for brands and agencies, she regularly works with platforms including Meta and YouTube, industry bodies such as the Advertising Association and ISBA and coaches influencers on understanding their value. Since 2021, Stavrou has spearheaded a yearly report charting the pay gap between white influencers and influencers of colour, which also has insights on hair texture, age, skin tone and disability, among other intersections of identity.
According to SevenSix’s 2024 report, compared to white influencers, Black influencers earn 34 per cent less, South Asian influencers earn 31 per cent less, East Asian influencers earn 38 per cent less and Southeast Asian influencers earn 57 per cent less. The disparities highlighted in these reports have helped set an industry standard for influencer pricing, which has long lacked transparency.
Director | IMG Models
Plus-size representation in fashion is, as we know, severely lacking — but IMG Models director Mina White is pushing for more. She’s made strides since signing Ashley Graham and four fellow models to the agency in 2014, and in 2016, she got Graham on the cover of Sports Illustrated, making her the first plus-size model to fill the annual SI: Swimsuit Issue slot. Since then, White has made strides, promoting plus-size talent for both runways and campaigns in an uphill battle against continued pushback from brands and casting agents around hiring bigger models.
Behind the scenes, White is consistently scouting for and casting plus-size talent. Now, the mission is to get more curvy models on the runway and in magazines alongside two of White’s biggest success stories: Graham and Paloma Elsesser. White consistently highlights the need for reduced barriers to entry and urges for more synergy between casting directors and stylists, which she says is needed to reduce the gatekeeping — from either side — that bars plus-sized models from walking shows. Beyond this, White is campaigning for those at the top to speak up and join her in campaigning for regulation and mandates about the minimum number of looks required in a given size for each show.
Founder and CEO | Sondr
An entrepreneur at the forefront of youth culture, Hilary Xherimeja founded Sondr in 2023 to create opportunities for young creatives struggling to get their foot in the door. Sondr is fast becoming the go-to platform for ambitious young people to take the first step in their creative careers — and the brands that want to tap into a pool of forward-thinking Gen Z creatives.
Sondr offers the sorts of opportunities Xherimeja says she wishes she had at the age of 16: work experience, internships, mentorship, shadowing and one-to-one calls with industry leaders across fashion, art, music and tech. The platform recently hosted a drop-in Q&A session with Colm Dillane, founder of KidSuper, who offered advice on breaking into the fashion space. Its ‘Out the Box’ initiative allowed emerging creatives to pitch an idea, project, or example of their work for the chance to win a MacBook, a camera, or £1,000 in cash. While there are a number of platforms offering jobs boards, very early, pre-career opportunities are much harder to come by; shadowing or a quick call might typically require pre-existing access. This year, Sondr has collaborated with Nike and New Balance on brand activation events and more. The organisation also runs events and panels for its tight-knit community.
Xherimeja is also known for co-founding cult-favourite Mission Statement Magazine and served as its CEO until 2023. She previously worked in PR and tech.
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Correction: IMG didn't launch a curve division in 2014 as previously reported.
