ABOUT ELIZABETH

Please contact Elizabeth (Elizabeth.l.cline AT gmail.com).

Elizabeth L. Cline is an independent researcher, author, educator, and expert in the field of sustainability and labor rights in the fashion industry. Cline has written two seminal books, Overdressed (2012) and The Conscious Closet (2019). She is a Lecturer at Columbia University’s Sustainability Management Masters Program (SUMA), teaching Fashion Policy and Consumerism and Sustainability.

Books

Cline is perhaps best known as the author of the prescient and critically acclaimed 2012 expose, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. It was the first to reveal the impacts of fast fashion on the environment, economy, and society and is a founding text of the modern global ethical and sustainable fashion movement. Overdressed is read around the world in seven languages and remains in the curriculum of numerous leading universities. Cline’s much-anticipated follow-up book, The Conscious Closet: A Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good, was published in August 2019 by Penguin Random House [ORDER HERE]. In it, Cline delves into fresh research on fashion’s impacts and illustrates how consumers and fashion lovers can leverage our everyday choices to transform the apparel industry and change the world for the better. 

ADVOCACY & POLICY

In 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Cline turned her expertise towards strategic organizing and campaigning for labor rights in fashion, working independently on strategy for the landmark #PayUp campaign, which won back $22 billion for garment workers and factories during the early months of the crisis. She served as the Director of Advocacy and Policy for the non-profit Remake from late 2021 to early 2023, conducting strategy and communications on the successful campaign to pass the California Garment Worker Protection Act (SB62), to extend the Bangladesh Accord (International Accord / Pakistan Accord), and to introduce the first modern fashion bill aimed at labor rights —the FABRIC Act —in Congress in May of 2021, introduced by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-D).

journalism and other projects

Cline earned a B.A. in Political Philosophy from Syracuse University in 2001 and has almost two decades of experience in journalism, covering fashion, technology, labor, women’s rights, and the environment. Her writing has appeared in Vogue Business, Slate,  Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Forbes, Atmos, AMC.com, SundanceTV.com, The New Republic, and The Nation, among others.

Public speaking & MEDIA APPEARANCES

Cline has nearly a decade of experience giving lectures and presentations on fast fashion, textile waste, fashion sustainability, labor rights, and ethical consumerism. You may read more about bringing her to your event here.

Cline is a go-to commentator on fast fashion brands such as Shein, labor rights, and sustainability in the apparel industry. She is regularly interviewed on television and radio and online and in print by globally recognized news outlets, including Al Jazeera, Fashionista, Vogue Business, MSNBC, CBC News, The New York Times, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, WWD, Sourcing Journal, and NPR.

TEXTILE WASTE / SECONDHAND CLOTHING RESEARCH PROJECT

Cline is an expert in post-consumer textile waste and, since 2012, has conducted extensive research into the global secondhand clothing trade with a focus on New York City and Nairobi, Kenya’s secondhand trades. She has written about the subject for The Atlantic and the BF+DA blog, and has been interviewed about textile waste by CBC’s Marketplace, The Conscious Chatter podcast, and the Magnifeco podcast.