Siobhan Britt is the founder and designer of PNKLMN, a vintage t-shirt shop in Athens, Georgia, that practices sustainable fashion.

 Why It’s Newsworthy: The textile industry is the second most polluting industry in the world, and PNKLMN hopes to combat the dangers of fast fashion by contributing to the slow fashion movement. 

 

Melissa Ray, head of the sustainability certificate at the University of Georgia, defines sustainability as “utilizing resources in a way that guarantees their continued availability for future generations.” Britt is passionate about sustainability and fashion, so it was just natural that PNKLMN came to be. PNKLMN is a sustainable business that takes two vintage t-shirts and refurbishes them into one.

In this Instagram TV video, Britt discusses the foundation of PNKLMN and the impact of the textile industry on the environment and its garment workers.

Instagram TV Transcript

VIDEO: Hi I’m Siobhan Britt, I’m a fourth year fashion merchandising student at UGA, and I am the owner and designer of PNKLMN. As I have been growing up learning my love for fashion, I’ve definitely taken a liking to thrifted clothing and very unique vintage clothing and making it my own, and so with PNKLMN, it was sort of the birth of doing that so much that one day I just had an idea to do it with T-shirts, and it just caught on and was really fun.

TEXT: “Melissa Ray is head of the sustainability certificate at the University of Georgia and says that textiles are the second most polluting industry after the fossil fuel industry. PNKLMN is built on sustainable practices in the Athens, GA community.”

VIDEO: To me, sustainability is definitely one of the most important forefront ideas of PNKLMN. I believe that we have to start small to make a difference and sustainability is more than just helping the environment, it’s helping the conditions of people that are working in sweatshops.

TEXT: “The Informal Monitoring Study found that subcontracted garment workers in Thailand work nine hour days and are severely underpaid, only receiving a total of $9 per day.”

TEXT: “According to the US Environmental Protection Agency:
-Only 15% of post-consumer textiles are recycled
-The average American adult throws away around 68 pounds of textiles a year”

VIDEO: The reality is a lot of people throw away their clothes, there’s over 15 million tons of waste a year, just textiles, in America. Only. So crazy, I hate it!

TEXT: “Along with sustainability, PNKLMN also focuses on creativity and how that encourages individuality.”

VIDEO: I definitely just want people to be aware of creativity and just knowing who they are. For me, that is this. For someone else, that may be something different, but I think that it’s important for people to know what they love and to support what they love. I love sustainability and I love fashion, and I love to make people happy. That is definitely the baseline of PNKLMN, so I make sure I do everything I can to make sure people can feel like they can express themselves through the clothes that I make.

Hailey Ahn is a senior majoring in journalism in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.