Sustainability in Fashion: An Interview with the Founder of One Magazine
Building a business is about more than just strategy—it’s about laying a strong foundation with bold ideas that shape company culture and inspire everyone involved. The values instilled from the beginning leave a lasting impact, helping define the company’s identity and answering essential questions: Who are we? What do we stand for? What do we hope to achieve? For me, this means constantly asking why and how, learning from industry leaders, and studying practices that create better, more ethical environments.
At Ensemble, we have the opportunity to build something truly meaningful. Even in our early stages, our development has been constant, despite our deep loyalty to our mission. To achieve this, we must remain inquisitive, conduct thorough research, and engage in thoughtful conversations that shape a brand rooted in sustainability and integrity. In that spirit, I had the chance to speak with Nicole Gavrilles, the founder of One Magazine, about ethical practices and the realities of building a sustainability platform.
Our conversation dives into the complexities of sustainable fashion and how to integrate responsible practices into daily collaborations. By ensuring transparency and inspiring meaningful change, green founders are always finding new ways to get creative. Nicole shares insights on working with small factories, the importance of slow fashion, and how creative storytelling plays a key role in shifting the conversation.
Join us for an in-depth discussion on ethical fashion, sustainability, and the power of personal style.
How do you integrate sustainability into your daily collaborations and partnerships?
We have strict guidelines in place that took hours of research to put together. We send each collaborator our guidelines that clearly communicate ethical production practices, list of vetted brands, materials to avoid and more. In 2024, we collaborated with Collective Fashion Justice to make clear guidelines (post about it here). We provide resources for each collaborator to follow and strengthen their knowledge when pulling pieces by asking brands and PR companies the right questions about how their products are made, where the materials are sourced and treated, to healthy garment working conditions, and more.
What steps ensure transparency and accountability in sustainability efforts?
The more you showcase your sustainable development, the better. There’s no perfection in sustainability but I think the best thing a brand can do is showcase annual reports of their efforts towards sustainability and the ways they give back.
What key elements should a sustainability platform include?
Knowledge sharing - I don’t see One as educators. One takes on the role of knowledge sharers and the platform showcases the incredible work from small brands to organizations and more.
How do you approach brands about adopting sustainable practices?
I typically focus on the brands that are doing the work from the ground up or are already transparently communicating their sustainable development journey. I hope by the stories we tell, we help inspire other brands and creatives to move towards implementing sustainable efforts into their business.
What should emerging brands prioritize when building a sustainable and ethical business model?
Working and supporting small factories. I want to see and hear more from brands working to sustain traditional weaving and milling practices. It’s the small family-run businesses that are the heart and soul of artistic handmade creations, and it’s our duty as artists to support them the best way we can. We need to embrace slower production processes. We don’t need to be creating multiple collections a year. We need to focus more efforts on seasonless collections and the longevity of the items produced. But in a capitalistic world run by strict fashion buying rules within the industry, it’s going to take a long time for those models to change.
How do you use creative direction and imagery to tell compelling stories?
I spend months curating ideas for each print issue. It first starts with brand research and collecting a list of creatives I want to work with and brands I want to feature. Next comes developing the theme. Once I have the overall theme of the issue solid, I start to build out the concepts for each story. I build visual moodboards for each story to help visualize the idea I have for the story to then pitch to creatives. From there, I give them creative control to pitch to me how they see interpreting the story. My creative direction is mostly executed in the beginning of a story's conceptual phase but who I select to bring the story to life has a lot of thought and intention behind my selection based on their body of work. The creatives I work with, I trust and know that the outcome will be better than I envisioned.
How can brands elevate the sustainability conversation to inspire others?
Sharing information on how to go about transitioning or starting a sustainable brand. By helping others share their experience, it’ll only aid shifting more brands towards a greener future. It’s okay to share the vulnerable sides too, the things they learned throughout the process, the mistakes made, and the successes from the trial and error. I resonate with that fully as I started this publication on my own and learned as I went through building its presence.
Personal Style & Sustainability
What kind of clothing are you wearing today?
I mostly wear vintage, secondhand, or small sustainable brands I feature and love to support. If I buy an item (new or vintage), I look for non-plastic materials such as wool, cotton, hemp, alpaca, cashmere. I do a lot of research on new brands for One, so if I choose to buy from them, I already know their traceable practices.
What does your everyday wardrobe look like—do you follow a capsule wardrobe, shop secondhand, or mix styles?
I’ve been following a capsule wardrobe of timeless pieces for a while now. I’ll add here and there a few vintage staples or unique pieces I can remix with my current wardrobe. I don’t typically buy new pieces unless I really need it or feel like it will add to the rest of the pieces I already own. Some of my favorite pieces lately are ones I’ve inherited from my mother.
Could you highlight some sustainable brands big or small that I should look into?
I’ve been a huge advocate of Danish brands for over 7 years as the small leaders bringing a spotlight onto sustainable practices within fashion before others. Some recent favorites are Bonnetje, Skall Studio, TG Botanical.
We interviewed Oshadi collective, a seed-to-sew regenerative farm based in India. Their pieces are stunning and I’ve got a few items in my cart at the moment.
Story MFG is a favorite of mine. I love the custom pieces and the details they put into each item.
We recently interviewed Norlha and I’m so captivated by their dedication to preserving the work of nomadic artisans by opening the Tibetan Plateau’s first yak khullu atelier.