Rethinking Fashion’s Future with Ishwari Thopte
In the heart of Europe’s progressive sustainability circles, Ishwari Thopte is making waves. A researcher and educator turned regenerative fashion advocate, she is among a growing chorus of visionaries calling for fashion to go far beyond sustainability. Her journey—from the fast-moving tech labs of London to the tranquil, craft-rich Himalayan villages—has led her to an urgent conclusion. Sustainability is no longer enough. Regeneration is the way forward.
Thopte began her career supporting fashion-tech startups in London, working at the intersection of technology and sustainable entrepreneurship. But a sabbatical in Asia at the onset of the pandemic changed everything. As she traveled through India, she began to see the stark contrast between global supply chains and the deeply rooted ecological intelligence of rural craftspeople. Her time in the Himalayas sparked a deeper questioning of fashion’s impact, not just on the environment but on the cultural and spiritual disconnection from nature that she sees as central to the crisis.
The fashion industry, she notes, is a major contributor to global carbon emissions and textile waste. Much of that waste originates in the global north and ends up in the global south, exacerbating existing inequalities. Despite increased awareness and access to sustainable technologies, Thopte believes fashion is failing to meet its environmental goals because of a lack of transformative leadership. Traditional fashion education focuses on creativity and product design, but seldom teaches the systems thinking or emotional intelligence needed to lead ethically through complex global challenges.
Her revelation came through the writings of Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm, whose book Regenerative Leadership opened up a new framework. Rather than merely minimizing harm, regenerative business actively seeks to heal and restore ecosystems and communities. It asks businesses to reconnect with nature’s rhythms and wisdom, challenging the profit-centric capitalist model that has defined industry for centuries.
Her current PhD research explores this shift, investigating how creatives—particularly fashion designers—are uniquely positioned to bridge the analytical and intuitive, the logical and the emotional. Thopte argues that true leadership in fashion must incorporate this integration, fostering right-brain collaboration alongside left-brain strategy.
She points to multiple examples of regenerative thinking in action. In the Netherlands, where she now lives, she studies entrepreneurs like Joline Jolink, a sustainable fashion designer who left her urban retail space to grow her own flax and dyes on a rural farm. By creating a hyper-local supply chain, Jolink is attempting to shrink the industry’s footprint and rediscover more symbiotic ways of making.
Similarly, Thopte admires the story of Elvis & Kresse, a British brand that began by up-cycling fire hoses into luxury accessories. Their journey eventually led them to buy a farm and embrace regenerative agriculture, realizing that even their innovative recycling efforts were not enough to create true positive impact. The deeper they went into sustainability, the clearer it became that they had to start from the soil up.
Regenerative agriculture is at the core of this paradigm. It recognizes soil as a living ecosystem essential to planetary health. Current mono-cropping practices degrade soil’s ability to retain water and absorb carbon, leading to increased climate volatility. Regenerative methods focus on healing land, restoring biodiversity and creating resilience in the face of growing environmental uncertainty.
Yet, Thopte is quick to acknowledge that regenerative businesses do not match the financial performance of conventional capitalist enterprises—at least not by traditional metrics. Instead, they offer value across ecological, social and financial dimensions. But to appreciate this, society must redefine what business success looks like. The focus must shift from profit to positive impact, a re-calibration that would better align with what she calls “seven-generation thinking”—an indigenous principle that considers the well-being of future descendants.
This expanded worldview demands a recognition of past errors, including the extractive legacy of colonization, the disconnection wrought by industrialization, and the myth of human dominion over nature. Thopte sees these historical forces not as distant events, but as active systems still shaping modern economies and mindsets. She describes the resistance to change—manifested in the rise of authoritarian politics and reactionary movements—as the final flares of an outdated worldview collapsing under its own weight.
Nature, she says, is cyclical. Just as pioneer species prepare the ground for future growth, early regenerative businesses may struggle or even vanish, but they pave the way for more resilient models to flourish. Adaptability, not dominance, is the real key to survival—a truth long misunderstood in popular interpretations of Darwinism.
Thopte’s call to action is clear. Fashion must re-imagine its purpose, realign with ecological systems and embrace a more communal, less extractive existence. This means letting go of endless growth and embracing cycles of restoration, reciprocity and humility. It means planting trees whose shade people may never sit under, businesses whose rewards will continue too bloom.
Joline Jolink – https://www.jolinejolink.com/
Elvis and Kresse – https://www.elvisandkresse.com/
Interview and report by Yvan David Danisa