Elizabeth L. Cline

Elizabeth L. Cline is a New York-based author, researcher, educator, and renowned expert on fast fashion, sustainability, and labor rights in the $2.5 trillion global apparel industry. Cline’s critically-acclaimed 2012 expose, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, was first to reveal the impacts of fast fashion on the environment, economy, and society and is a founding text of the modern global ethical and sustainable fashion movement. Her follow-up sustainable shopping guide, The Conscious Closet: A Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good, was published in August of 2019 by Penguin Random House. Cline's writing has appeared in Forbes, Vogue Business, The New York Times, The Atlantic, among others, and she's appeared as an expert commentator and guest on NPR, MSBC, CBC, CGTN, NBC Nightly News, and ABC Nightline, and clips of her have appeared on the Problem With Jon Stewart and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. 

Cline served for three years as an organizer behind policies advancing labor rights in fashion supply chains, working on the successful campaign to pass the California Garment Worker Protection Act (SB62) in 2021 and to launch the first modern labor rights bill aimed at fashion—the FABRIC Act—in Congress in May of 2022, introduced by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-D). She was part of a coalition to strengthen the human rights elements of the New York Fashion Act. 

Cline currently works as an independent communications strategist and researcher for a number of clients, including the Responsible Contracting Project, which aims to advance human rights in supply chain contracts and engages policymakers on emerging human rights due diligence laws in Europe and the United States. 

As of Spring 2023, Cline also teaches two graduate-level courses at Columbia University: Fashion Policy and the Politics of Government Action and Consumerism and Sustainability within the School of Professional Studies Sustainability Management Master’s Program.