About — A Sustainable Closet

With the purpose of redefining what fashion and style means

**A Sustainable Closet** was founded by sustainability expert and systems change practitioner **Sophie Gripenber**g after a personal journey to reconcile her love for fashion with the realities of the industry's environmental and social impacts.
While studying Development Studies between 2011 and 2014, Sophie learned about the devastating consequences of the global fashion industry. Rather than giving up fashion, she began searching for better alternatives, exploring second-hand, vintage, circular fashion, and the pioneers leading the transition. Along the way, she realised that creating a wardrobe that reflected both your personal style and your values wasn't nearly as easy as it should be.
Unable to find the kind of platform she herself wanted to read, Sophie founded **A Sustainable Closet** to inspire and support others on the same journey.
Since the beginning, our purpose has been simple: to tell sustainable fashion stories. We champion second-hand before first-hand whenever possible, focus on solutions rather than problems, and speak about people instead of consumers.
Based in Sweden with a Scandinavian perspective and a global outlook, we believe fashion is about far more than consumption. It is creativity, culture, craftsmanship, and self-expression. Our mission is to show that style and sustainability can go hand in hand, and to help more people build wardrobes that are good for themselves, for others, and for the planet.
Photo: Elisa Sanvito

Our Journey and Looking Forward

In 2020, Isabelle Lind joined A Sustainable Closet, bringing a background in fashion together with her creative, marketing, and branding expertise. Together, we shared a clear vision: if we were going to build a platform about slow fashion, the platform itself had to embody slow values.

From day one, we chose to feature only the brands, stores, people, and topics that genuinely reflected our values and took responsibility for their social and environmental impact. We also wanted to build A Sustainable Closet in a way that reflected the principles of slow business, growing organically, without compromising our integrity.

Building an independent platform from scratch has not always been easy. We deliberately chose not to seek external investment or pursue opportunities that didn't align with our purpose. While we received many proposals over the years, every partnership and collaboration has been carefully selected because it genuinely contributed to a more sustainable fashion industry.

Despite remaining a small team, we have published hundreds of original research-based articles, always prioritising our own research and editorial voice. As AI transformed the digital landscape, we continued to value human curiosity, critical thinking, and independent journalism. We have also remained committed to respecting our readers' privacy and only collaborating with brands we truly believe are driving positive change.

Over the years, A Sustainable Closet grew organically to more than 10,000 monthly readers from around the world, with Scandinavia, Europe, and North America forming our largest audiences.

Together with our editorial work, we interviewed more than one hundred changemakers, including researchers, designers, upcycling artists, slow fashion advocates, entrepreneurs, and creators, as well as over one hundred responsible fashion brands and more than sixty circular fashion stores. We also developed educational resources, including our materials guide, glossary, sustainability facts, and practical tools to help make sustainable fashion more accessible.

Looking back, we are proud to have witnessed slow fashion evolve from a niche movement into a conversation embraced by mainstream media, brands, and citizens. We hope A Sustainable Closet has played a small part in that transition by inspiring more thoughtful conversations around fashion.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, so do our own lives. After seven wonderful years, we have chosen not to accelerate through investment or endless growth, but instead to slow down, remaining true to the very values that inspired A Sustainable Closet in the first place. As new mothers, we want to create space for the next chapter of our lives while keeping this platform alive as an archive of inspiration, knowledge, and hope.

A Sustainable Closet may no longer publish as frequently as it once did, but its purpose remains the same. The stories, resources, and ideas will continue to live on for everyone seeking a more thoughtful relationship with fashion.

Thank you for being part of this journey.