Laura’s beginnings...
Laura could knit before she could read. Throughout her time at the Noble & Greenough school, Laura designed costumes for her school plays and musicals. She was set on going to design school and later moving to New York City to be a fashion designer. The summer before her senior year at Nobles, Laura attended a program at Rhode Island School of Design. Upon reflection, she realized a studio arts college was not the avenue for her and began researching universities with arts programs.
Laura’s classmate at Nobles had recently visited Cornell and recommended she explore the school’s apparel design program. Laura explained that this innovative program was an interesting combination of a Bachelor of Science and a technical degree, while still giving Laura the opportunity to focus on design. Laura was also drawn to Cornell’s diverse and well-rounded study body.
Pivoting to Business School
After she graduated from Cornell, Laura moved to New York City and landed a job at Oscar de la Renta as a knitwear product developer. After four years of working at a design house and living through a management transition, Laura pivoted and applied to business schools. She attended MIT Sloan School of Management to study supply chain and operations for the apparel industry. Laura explained that “going into MIT I was very focused on efficiency and waste reduction as my avenue into seeing a better apparel system.”
Commitment to Sustainable Fashion
Laura has always been interested in sustainability within the apparel industry: “caring about clothes was really my avenue into apparel sustainability. I have inventoried my clothes ever since I was 12 years old. The number of times you wear your clothes and the price per wear have always been really interesting metrics to me, and key indicators for how much you really value your clothes.” While working at Oscar de la Renta, Laura traveled to Italy twice a year on yarn sourcing trips. Different yarn vendors told Laura that they had a “new recycled material” in their yarn collections. In reality, these vendors were merely using leftovers from other collections. In fact, she recounted: “there was nothing actually recycled about it in terms of the technical definition of what it is. The greenwashing and trendiness of sustainability put me off a bit to be honest.” Laura described the many abuses within the apparel system along the supply chain, including human rights, non-payment, and labor abuses in the industry at large. She is extremely passionate about these issues, as she exclaimed to me that “these are real human issues!”
When I asked Laura if fast fashion was on the forefront of people’s minds during her time at Oscar de la Renta, she shared that luxury houses are actually not the worst offenders by any means. She explained that these high-end companies produce their goods in wealthy countries, where workers are treated well, and follow environmental and human rights regulations. The worst offenders, Laura explained, are the companies working in low income countries and mass producing garments that will never be worn because of quality issues.
Laura expressed that “there is really no easy fix surrounding apparel and eco-sustainability vs social sustainability as those two things are functionally at odds with each other.”
Founding Fit for Everybody
Laura shared that her company, Fit for Everybody, initially started as a class project from her undergrad research, which she revisited as another class project while at MIT. Small brands in the start-up ecosystem reached out to Laura, explaining their communication challenges and asking for help. After consulting with these start-up companies, Laura was able to understand the root of the problem which was a serious disconnect between the factory workers and the apparel designers. She explained that “what the designers were saying was functionally different from what was actually happening.” Design decisions that impacted production were often based on samples that were not correct, leading to a poor fit as well as wasted money and time. Laura recognized the significance of this problem and later concluded that it was happening universally, regardless of the size of the factory and the designer.
Laura took this widespread problem and worked to create a solution. Fit for Everybody is focused on improving supply chain efficiency, uniformity, and representation in fit and sizing from the design stage. “What we built is a very minimalist product development platform... we provide point of measurement diagrams, chat with translation in the browser, and quality control templates which are very fundamental.” It is made so a designer with no design background, or a designer with years of experience but no time, is benefitting from design literacy and efficiency on the platform.
Sustainability within Fit for Everybody
It is very simple: Laura wants to reduce waste. In the United States, approximately 2,150 pieces of clothing are thrown out every second (Learn More). By using analytics to create a better fitting clothing industry, Laura is reducing the rounds of sampling and excess fabric that would otherwise be thrown away. “We wanted the apparel industry to be a more pleasant experience and we wanted to go for low level issues that are high impact.”
Additionally, Fit for Everybody works with family-owned factories and solo designers. Laura explained that by“keeping it smaller scale is really helping those who we want to succeed in this industry.” Laura believes that if a company is going to produce an item, at the very least it should be sold and used. She explains that “sell through is so low and the standard for sell through is so low industry wide that you are just producing a lot of stuff the world does not need.”
Fit for Everybody's growth and success is a testament to Laura’s unwavering commitment and dedication to seeing a less wasteful fashion industry.
For more information about Laura Zwanziger's company, please visit: Fit for Everybody
To connect with Laura Zwanziger, please reach out via LinkedIn