Rewoven: How a new generation is stitching sustainability into fashion’s future

By Ella Katona/Kent State NewsLab

On a gray Saturday morning in Kent, Ohio, the fashion studio buzzes with the low, steady energy of designers at work. Bolts of fabric lean like tired soldiers against the wall, scraps of muslin curl across the floor and someone’s half-finished garment hangs from a dress form, eager to be completed. 

In the middle of it all stands Catherine MacGregor, a Kent State University BFA fashion design student whose senior collection is built entirely from recycled fabrics. Her journey into sustainable fashion didn’t begin with trend forecasts or industry reports. It began at home, with a hand-me-down sewing machine and a lot of unexpected free time.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, “I was a senior in high school, and my grandma gave me her old sewing machine,” MacGregor said. “I was so bored, and so I just started using YouTube videos…I didn’t even really realize it, but that’s when I started getting into sustainable fashion.”

She laughs when she says it, but her year as a teenager alone with a sewing machine sparked a design philosophy rooted in creativity and a refusal to look away from fashion’s environmental cost.

“I would just take old clothes or clothes from a donate bin and play with them and take them apart,” she said. “That was really good practice.”

She’s now building a senior collection made entirely from recycled and upcycled materials, a collection that’s as much a critique of overconsumption as it is a celebration of reinvention.

The fabric problem no one can ignore

The fashion industry’s environmental impact stretches from water consumption to chemical pollution to mountains of textile waste each year. Synthetic fabrics shed microplastics. Leather production raises ethical and ecological concerns. Even cotton, the innocent darling of natural fibers, demands staggering amounts of water and pesticides.

Designers and researchers have been pushing for alternatives. Guides like Greenly’s breakdown of sustainable fabrics, have become essential reading for anyone trying to understand the environmental stakes. Even leather, one of fashion’s most controversial materials, is being reimagined through plant-based and lab-grown alternatives documented by Collective Fashion Justice.

But the reality, according to Kent State professor Noël Palomo-Lovinski, is that the industry is still producing clothes far too fast to meaningfully change.

“If you’re in fast fashion, you have to put something out every two weeks,” Palomo-Lovinski said. “There is no possible way that you are going to come even remotely close to trying to be innovative.”

The pressure to deliver quickly leaves little room for research. When brands try, Palomo-Lovinski explains they often rely on mills pitching “sustainable” fabrics without evidence.

“Mills come to brands and say, ‘This is our sustainable stuff,’ without necessarily having any kind of evidence or provable metrics,” she said. “You’re just winging and praying.”

Even materials that are naturally sustainable can become environmentally harmful once they undergo certain finishing processes. Palomo-Lovinski notes that denim is a prime example. Although cotton itself is biodegradable, denim is typically treated with so many chemical-heavy finishes that the final product becomes highly polluting, no longer biodegradable or so slow to break down that it can take 300 to 500 years to decompose.

A class that changes everything

The more MacGregor learned about the environmental impact of the fashion industry, the harder it became to imagine entering the industry without trying to change it.

“It felt kind of daunting to go into the industry and contribute to that waste,” she said. “I want to find a company or a technique that isn’t contributing to that, maybe redirect the industry to more sustainable practices.”

Palomo-Lovinski has seen that moment of realization many times among fashion students. 

“When I was working in the fashion industry, nobody was talking about sustainability,” she said. “Once you find out what happens, then you just can’t look away.”

Her courses now weave sustainability and circularity into design education. The challenge, she said, is teaching the truth without overwhelming students.

“It’s hard to not become too much of a downer,” she said. “It’s hard to not make them feel despondent, like there’s nothing they can do.”

Misconceptions that muddy the waters

As sustainability becomes a marketing buzzword, misconceptions multiply, especially among materials.

One of the biggest, Palomo-Lovinski said, is the belief that donating clothes is inherently good.

“Roughly 80% goes to another country,” she said. “It degrades their textile economy…and inevitably, [ends up] in their landfills, not ours.”

Recycling isn’t the solution people imagine, either. Polyester can only be recycled once. Cotton, when chopped and respun, becomes too short to be useful, she explained.

Instead, recycled cotton often becomes disposable wipes, which are then coated in chemicals and no longer biodegradable.

“We’re doing things thinking that we’re doing a really good job,” Palomo-Lovinski said. “Unfortunately, we’re not.”

Ultimately, Palomo-Lovinski recommends buying less and choosing good quality items that are not fast fashion, so they last for longer periods of time.

A regional movement stitching together a different future

Just a few miles from the Kent State studios, another student has been thinking about those same questions from, literally, the ground up.

Cate McNamara, a senior double major in fashion design and fashion merchandising, has spent the last few years as a student ambassador for Rust Belt Fibershed, a grassroots movement dedicated to rebuilding local textile economies.

If MacGregor’s journey began with a sewing machine, McNamara’s began with yarn, and a growing curiosity about where materials actually come from. She makes her own yarn and textiles and works as a production intern at Powers Acres Fiber Mill, a small wool farm and mill in the Akron area.

“They make yarn, felt, roving and felted products,” she said. “It’s been a really big part of my development in textiles.”

Her work with the mill led her to the Rust Belt Fibershed, which she describes as “farm to table, but for fashion.” Instead of food, the focus is fibers–wool, flax, leather and natural dyes, all sourced and processed within 250 miles of Cleveland.

“We have a really strong community of manufacturers, farmers, designers, artisans, vendors… the whole supply chain,” McNamara said. “It’s about local sourcing, reducing carbon emissions, reducing labor exploitation and boosting small business.”

One of the organization’s most ambitious projects encourages people across the region to grow flax, the plant that becomes linen, on their own land. 

“Flax is native to Ohio,” McNamara said. “So it’s good for the environment, but also helpful for you guys.”

McNamara has hosted small workshops at Kent State where participants gather to process and spin these fibers together, reviving a craft that once thrived in the region.

Another initiative, One Year One Outfit, challenges participants to create an entire outfit using only materials sourced within the 250‑mile radius.

“People get really creative,” she said. “Wool, leather, flax.”

The finished garments are showcased in art galleries and at the Fibershed’s annual symposium.

“The past three years, it’s been sold out,” she said. “That day, I was saying, this is my Super Bowl.”

The symposium brings together speakers from across the region; farmers, designers, historians and members of other Fibershed chapters, along with vendors and hands-on workshops. This year’s lineup from January included everything from knitting and weaving to flax spinning, silk screening and natural dyeing. There was even a sheep-shearing demonstration.

“You would never, ever think that there are this many people who are into, like, spinning yarn and shearing sheep,” McNamara said, laughing. “But it’s so crazy.”

The event also features a clothing exchange run by the student ambassador program in partnership with a Columbus business, a tradition that has become one of the symposium’s most popular attractions. 

Each year, the organizers push to broaden the conversation beyond fashion alone.

“One of the goals has been trying to involve people outside of fashion,” McNamara said. “Because eventually you just have people saying the same things to each other. But when you have people from architecture or agriculture…that’s when you really start seeing things connect.”

This year, a Kent State architecture professor presented research on growing furniture from mycelium, which is the vegetative, root-like part of a fungus, consisting of an immense, branching network of thread-like filaments called hyphae.

Another speaker explored the historical and sociological roots of textile production. The cross-disciplinary energy, McNamara said, is what makes the event feel electric.

“I go in there and I leave being like, oh my god, my life is so weird,” she said. “I just talked for six hours about yarn.”

When she took the stage at the symposium herself, her message was simple: young people matter.

“I spoke about why students and young people are so important in this movement,” McNamara said. “There’s a stereotype that textile arts are for grandmas, and, like, older women are very into it, and it is true. But the foundation of literally what we wear is this. And there’s a really big gap in the passing down of knowledge.”

Her talk was brief, but it underscored a truth that threads through both her work and MacGregor’s: the future of sustainable fashion depends on a generation willing to learn what was forgotten, and willing to imagine what could be rebuilt.

Innovation, skepticism and the uncertain future

McNamara has also seen the industry’s attempts, and failures, to respond to environmental pressure. Some innovations excite her — like CO₂ dyeing, compressing color into fibers without the water pollution that plagues dye houses. Others feel more like marketing.

“A lot of companies are taking advantage of consumer interest in sustainability,” she said. “It’s hard for me to fully trust that it’s genuine.” 

She points to take-back bins at fast fashion retailers, which are in-store collection points designed for customers to drop off old, unwanted clothing, regardless of the brand or its current condition. Then, they are either repurposed, resold or recycled.

“We don’t know where that actually goes,” McNamara said. “They don’t give you any transparency.”

Palomo‑Lovinski shares that skepticism, though she sees real promise in emerging technologies. CO₂ dyeing, she said, is “a huge advance.” Another innovation, circulose, turns cotton waste into a paper-like material that can be respun into lyocell, and potentially recycled infinitely.

“It just goes on forever,” Palomo‑Lovinski said. “They haven’t really figured out how to do things on scale. But it’s getting there.”

As for plant-based leathers, like those made from mushroom, cactus and orange fiber, Palomo‑Lovinski sees potential, but also limits.

“Our biggest problem is how much we want,” she said. “Even if you’re being sustainable… if you’re doing it to the scale that people might want it, you just made it unsustainable.”

The education gap and students trying to fill it

The Rust Belt Fibershed ambassador program, still informal and not yet a registered student organization, focuses on hands-on education. They host flax processing workshops, natural dye sessions, mending circles, field trips to local farms and designers. The goal is simple: to show students what they can’t see in a classroom.

“People don’t really learn much about the production of fabric or yarns,” McNamara said. “It’s kind of like an object permanence thing. They don’t see it here, because that manufacturing doesn’t exist here.”

She’s noticed that design students tend to connect more quickly with sustainability, because they physically handle materials. Merchandising students, the ones who will eventually make sourcing decisions, often feel more removed.

“Material is very important, but there are also problems rooted in the merchandising side,” she said. “They’re the ones who will eventually be making sourcing decisions.”

Still, McNamara sees promising trends: a growing interest in natural dyeing, more students upcycling and a rising enthusiasm for secondhand fashion.

“People really put effort in when they can,” she said. “It’s really cool to see.”

What the next generation needs

For Palomo‑Lovinski, the most important skill students can carry into the industry isn’t technical, it’s mental.

“The ability to think, the ability to problem solve,” she said. “There’s so much information that you need to know. The ability to continuously strive and aim toward trying to find a solution and not getting frustrated by it, that’s everything.”

When students ask her what materials they should use, she gives an answer that surprises them.

“It doesn’t actually really matter what you’re using,” she said. “It’s the scale at which you’re using it.”

The industry, she believes, is not moving fast enough to adopt more sustainable practices.

“It’s an emphatic no,” she said. “The fashion industry is only putting a lot of band-aids in places hoping that the water holds. But it’s not going to. Something new has to be built.”

This story was originally published by the Kent State NewsLab, a collaborative news outlet publishing journalism by Kent State students.