About elizabeth

Elizabeth L. Cline is a New York-based author, journalist, and expert on consumer culture, fast fashion, sustainability and labor rights in the apparel industry.

books

Cline’s critically acclaimed 2012 expose, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, was first to reveal the impacts of fast fashion on the environment, economy, and society and is a founding book of the modern global ethical and sustainable fashion movement. Overdressed is still read around the world in seven languages and included on 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 of 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. 

EXPERT FOR INTERVIEWS, DOCUMENTARIES AND RADIO

Elizabeth Cline is one of the world’s leading go-to experts on fast fashion, labor rights and sustainability in the apparel industry, and she is regularly interviewed on television and radio by globally recognized news outlets, including Al Jazeera, MSNBC, China Global Television Network, CBC News, The New York Times, and NPR. Please contact her directly to set up an interview.  You can peruse some recent interviews here.

journalism and other projects

Cline earned her degree 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. She is currently a contributor to Forbes, Sierra and Atmos magaazine. You can read her recent work HERE. Her writing has appeared in Vogue Business, Slate,  Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, AMC.com, SundanceTV.com, The New Republic and The Nation, among others. Beginning in 2012, Cline began extensively researching the growing textile waste crisis in New York City and Nairobi, Kenya, where she filmed a documentary that is still in production. Additionally, she serves on the advisory council of Fashion Revolution USA, an educational nonprofit dedicate to ethical fashion.

An avid thrifter, mender and textile-enthusiast, Cline lives in Brooklyn with her partner, Joseph D. Rowland, of the heavy metal band Pallbearer.

Public speaking

Cline travels year-around to give 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.

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’s written about the subject for The Atlantic and the BF+DA blog, and been interviewed about textile waste by CBC’s Marketplace, The Conscious Chatter podcast, and the Magnifeco podcast.

For access to high-resolution photos of Elizabeth, go here. You may reprint these photos with credit to photographer Keri Wiginton.