COMMUNITY is a fashion boutique in Downtown Athens known for its innovative, handmade styles using all recycled materials. Sanni Baumgärtner, a native of Germany and owner of the boutique, expressed the store’s central values of being sustainable and transparent.

Baumgärtner shared it was her main priority to have the sewing room inside the boutique to boost transparency, allowing consumers to see the clothing-making process.

Allowing customers to see this complex and time-consuming process was an essential value in her shop due to the recent fast fashion trends of clothing that lacked quality and came from overseas.

She hopes that through this transparency, individuals will see the purpose of investing in higher quality pieces that last in your closet because of the labor that went into making them.

 

Riley Kehoe is a fourth-year journalism student with a political science minor and a completed news literacy certificate at the University of Georgia.