The Future is Youth: Threading Change at the 2025 ChangeNOW Summit
Written by Isabella Hamilton, Communications Assistant @ Threading Change
June 3rd, 2025.
10-minute read.
The Future is Youth: Threading Change at the 2025 ChangeNOW Summit
Against a backdrop of mounting geopolitical tensions, the rollback of environmental regulations, and a widening gap between fast fashion and ethical production, the sustainable fashion industry faces a complex and uncertain future. Threading Change’s Founder & Executive Director, Sophia Yang, and Director of Programs and Partnerships, Sara McQuaid, joined hundreds of ethical fashion leaders at ChangeNOW in Paris this past April to spotlight these urgent challenges and call for collective action.
What is ChangeNOW?
Since 2017, ChangeNOW has brought together over 40,000 attendees and 10,000 companies to accelerate the transition toward a more sustainable world. The 2025 summit holds particular significance as the midpoint of the decisive decade for climate action and the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. This year’s event featured 70 conferences covering a wide range of topics, from the circular economy to corporate responsibility. Notably, ChangeNOW also dedicated 10 days, both before and during the summit, to engage 150 youth from underserved urban neighborhoods and rural areas in shaping a more sustainable future. At Threading Change, we believe deeply in the power of youth and their role as changemakers—this initiative was truly inspiring to witness.
Threading Change’s Impact
In collaboration with UNEP and the Fédération de la Mode Circulaire, Threading Change hosted ChangeNOW’s official Ethical Fashion Meetup. The event brought together textile innovators, policymakers, fashion brands, luxury fashion consultants, and youth changemakers for a dynamic exchange of ideas. At Threading Change, we regularly organize Youth Ideation Jams, collaborative brainstorming sessions designed to develop actionable solutions to sustainability and policy challenges.
During the Ethical Fashion Meetup, more than 40 participants explored key issues including finance, waste, gender equity, education, innovation, biodiversity, and policy. The session offered a valuable space for changemakers to examine the intersection of these topics within the fashion industry and collaborate on innovative, systemic solutions to pressing global challenges.
Sara hosted a bilingual, creative, and empowering session where over 30 participants made vision boards reflecting their ideal future for fashion—one that’s fossil-fuel-free, feminist, and sustainable. This event focused on the reuse of materials such as magazines and fabric scraps to create personal collages that expressed participants’ dreams and ideas for a just and ethical fashion industry. In a content-heavy summit, we felt that it was important to channel creativity and imagination and provide the space for individuals to visualize the future they’re working towards. The fashion industry produces over 92 million tonnes of textile waste annually, so by turning waste into art, we can keep textiles out of landfills and promote a more circular industry. The event raised important questions, such as the effectiveness of rental clothing companies like Vestiaire Collective, Rent the Runway, and Nuuly. Are they explorative or helpful in the grander scheme of the textile waste crisis? Do we really need more fashion brands, or do we produce enough already? How do we inspire children to make change? What’s the role of engineering in changing fashion? Who’s responsible for driving innovation - businesses or universities? Or both? Why do we buy clothes? Does every piece really need to be unique or special? What’s in our clothing? Why don’t we have ingredient labels?
“In a content-heavy summit, we felt that it was important to channel creativity and imagination and provide the space for individuals to visualize the future they’re working towards. ”
How to Build a Better Fashion Industry, at ChangeNOW & Beyond
At Threading Change, we believe that creating a truly sustainable fashion future requires collaboration across diverse voices and sectors. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but youth must be at the center of both the conversation and the decision-making process. During our recent Ethical Fashion Meetup, our Founder and Executive Director shared powerful reflections and thought-provoking questions to help guide the dialogue forward.
“I think we can’t just place the onus on the consumer. There needs to be a lot of policy, regulation, and collaboration between different stakeholders. So my question is two-pronged: the first part is how can we use the power of … competitive collaboration, a true collaboration between industry policymakers and regulators, to really move us towards a positive direction? And the second part is how can we make sure that education is paramount for both consumers and industry, and that it’s actually being realized in the fashion industry?”
Policy & Regulation
We recognize that policy and regulation go hand in hand with innovation. Voluntary brand commitments can no longer sustain ethical fashion; the fashion industry needs stringent regulation that tackles a number of issues, including fair wages, safe working conditions, and environmental protections. Youth have the power to bring fresh perspectives and urgency to the issues that matter most, making their involvement not just valuable, but essential.
We continue to push for structural change through advocacy and education, exemplified by our most recent experiential learning high school workshops, led by our Education & Policy Director, Isabelle Sain. These workshops explored ethical fashion, the environmental impacts of the industry, and the circular economy, by providing information and hands-on activities for students. By making this accessible for youth, we’re empowering them to foster an understanding of themselves and the world around them, while teaching them how to be more conscious consumers.
Transparency & Traceability
Transparency across the industry, from fibre to waste disposal, is another non-negotiable facet of sustainable fashion. ChangeNOW hosted a conference titled “Tailoring Tomorrow: Shifting the Fashion Industry Thread by Thread” with speakers such as Zsofia Kollar (the Founder & CEO of Human Material Loop), Brett Cotten (Co-founder & CEO of Arda Biomaterials), Ashley Gill (Chief Strategy Officer of Textile Exchange), Timothée Macé Dubois (Co-founder of Circular Fashion Federation), Zaya Guarani (Indigenous Rights Activist), and Roberta Annan (Founder of African Fashion Fund and African Fashion Foundation). This conference touched upon the topics of regenerative practices, circular economies, and material innovation, and how to use them to drive change within the fashion industry. Ashley Gill shared that she grew up on a cotton farm in Texas, and her family knew that the cotton that they harvested would be used in Levi’s jeans because they had a direct relationship with the company.
“That’s really not the case anymore. A lot of farms today have no idea where their material goes. They may have had a relationship with the first person that they sell to, but beyond that they often don’t. We understand this is a gap that consumers have, of not knowing where their material comes from, but … companies don’t actually know where their material comes from.”
This relationship gap makes traceability virtually impossible, and often allows companies to forgo accountability when it comes to environmental protections and working conditions. If they don’t know what’s going on in their supply chains, they can’t be held responsible. At Threading Change, we’re working to drive change through our SDGs x Fashion Policy Program. The program’s growth and impact will be initiated and conducted by youth cohorts from 2025 to 2030, focusing on industry engagement, research, policy advocacy, and community involvement. By 2030, the goal is to have the comprehensive program integrate global youth consultation, targeted research, and actionable projects supporting policy implementation recommendations to transform the fashion industry. Our mentor organizations include the Fair Labour Association, Fashion Revolution, Canopy Planet, and the United Nations Environment Programme. Through connecting youth leaders, mentors, and global organizations, the program strives to amplify impactful solutions, strengthen partnerships, and shape a sustainable future.
Recycling
ChangeNOW hosted a session titled “Circular Economy: Sending Overconsumption to the Bin” with speakers Luna Aslan, the CEO of NOOSA and Paul Guinard, Co-Founder and MD of NOLT. Using a patented chemical recycling technology, NOOSA fibers can be recycled endlessly, all without deterioration. This serves as an alternative to composting biodegradable fiber, and the chemical recycling allows NOOSA fibers to be recycled without damaging the other textile fibers blended in the textiles. NOLT is a leader in eco-responsible sports equipment, offering circular and certified custom football jerseys. They also turn clothing into items such as sports cups or football cones, make sports socks from bio-sourced fiber, and host a digital platform to allow customers to visualize all types of sportswear in 3D, try them on virtually, and limit waste. The session touched on the infrastructure necessary to reduce resources and product overconsumption, as well as the practices that can extend product life cycles, such as sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, buying second-hand, and refurbishing. In 2024, Threading Change effectively diverted over 4000 pounds of textile waste from landfills through our global clothing swaps and upcycling workshops. We also hosted 4 mending workshops that led to the repair of over 50 garments. Circularity is a central tenet of the work we do and it is terrific to see it being discussed on a global stage.
Conclusion
ChangeNOW 2025 reaffirmed that collaboration, creativity, and youth engagement are essential pillars in building a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. From hosting the official Ethical Fashion Meetup to facilitating a hands-on, imaginative session of vision board making, Threading Change contributed to an ecosystem of ideas and action grounded in justice, equity, and innovation. The summit showcased groundbreaking advancements in circularity and material science while emphasizing the urgency of policy reform and supply chain transparency. As the midpoint between the Paris Agreement and 2030 climate goals, this year’s ChangeNOW was not just a moment, it was a movement. Threading Change remains committed to amplifying youth voices, connecting stakeholders, and catalyzing long-term, systemic change in fashion. The road ahead is complex, but with collective momentum and unwavering purpose, a just fashion future is not only possible, it’s within reach.
Edited by: Luiza Giocondo Teixeira, Communications & Engagement Director @ Threading Change
Isabella Hamilton
Isabella is a recent graduate of Queen’s University, where she completed a Bachelor’s of Science, majoring in Life Sciences and minoring in Global Development. Her undergraduate thesis, titled “An Assessment of the Current Strategies for Addressing the Global Textile Waste Crisis: Biomaterials & Student Engagement,” reflects her commitment to sustainability initiatives. Isabella is passionate about advocating for a more equitable fashion industry and has a particular interest in sustainable textile innovation. With prior leadership experience as Co-President of Queen’s University’s premier sustainable fashion club, she is dedicated to fostering youth engagement in sustainability initiatives.
