CLEVELAND — After discovering her passion for fashion at a young age, one woman is working to take fashion back to being more sustainable for the earth.
What You Need To Know
- Fast fashion is when companies profit off of changing trends, cheap labor and flimsy fabrics
- Cleveland designer Kelsi McCafferty wants to help slow the fashion industry down
- She takes items from the thrift store and reuses them create new, durable designs
Kelma Collection is a sustainable fashion brand located in Cleveland.
“What I’m doing is really looking for those quality pieces and using quality fabric,” said Kelsi McCafferty, owner of Kelma Collection. “The things that I’m making should be able to last a long time.”
Nearly 70 million barrels of oil are used each year to make the world’s polyester fiber, the most commonly-used fiber in clothing, and it takes more than 200 years to decompose, according to research by Forbes.
McCafferty is aware of what fast fashion is doing to the planet, so she created a brand committed to slowing the industry down.
“Fast fashion is really detrimental to the fashion industry,” she said. “Making your own fabric is wasteful in itself because obviously you’re bringing something into the industry that wasn’t there before.”
McCafferty goes to thrift stores around Cleveland to find old clothes and fabric and revamps them into new pieces to sell on her website.
She got her start in fashion at a young age, making jewelry and sewing pillows as a kid. Then she graduated from Kent State University with a degree in fashion design.
After working as a sewing manager for four years, McCafferty was laid off during the pandemic; she took the time to make masks for people, then realized she could make a business out of it.
From making face masks, to a whole collection of tops, skirts, dresses and more, Kelma Collection is now her full-time job.
“My goal in slowing down the fashion industry is to revert back to that initial fashion industry, where we spend time on the pieces we make, we have a smaller closet, maybe,” she said. “But we love everything that we have.”
