Meet the Entrepreneur Changing the Way Fashion Works

Adriana Herrera has a dream: "We want to make it very simple for you to find things based on your interests and likes. Right now, no-one is doing that in the world of fashion."

Adriana Herrera has a dream: "We want to make it very simple for you to find things based on your interests and likes. Right now, no-one is doing that in the world of fashion."

As founder and CEO of US start-up company Fashioning Change Adriana is already well on her to making that dream come true.

A cross between Amazon and Netflix, Fashioning Change uses information about what you like (automatically gleaned from your Facebook profile, if you so wish) to recommend products you might be interested in. All of the goodies listed on Fashioning Change are ethically and sustainably produced. "Everything we do is stylish and well-made," she says. "It's just fashion done better."

With a childhood spent desperately trying to find cool clothes that lived up to the ethical expectations of her socially-conscious Father and an early career spent making eco-friendly handbags in LA's fashion district, Adriana - who self-financed the launch of Fashioning Change in 2011 - is uniquely placed to understand the challenges of creating stylish sustainable fashion.

Yet it's the technical side of the business that seems to really excite her. "Our platform is based on machine learning and artificial intelligence," she says with all the confidence of someone who has spent recent years shunning party invitations in favour of nights in learning to code. "We connect you with the alternatives based on your personal preferences. The more you use it, the smarter it gets.

"I wanted to make products that I wasn't finding. I would find things that were green but they were very hippy dippy, very Granola! I wanted things that were stylish. There was a bunch of amazing designers who wanted to be ethical and sustainable but they had no business acumen."

Without that acumen ethical fashion - like the excellent stuff on show at London Fashion Week's Estethica exhibition recently - recently - has no chance of competing in the mainstream.

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