Elizabeth L. Cline

Elizabeth L. Cline is a critically-acclaimed author, researcher, organizer, and educator on sustainability and labor rights in the $2.5 trillion apparel industry, and she is a regular guest and writer for Al Jazeera, MSNBC, the New York Times, Slate, and NPR. Cline’s critically-acclaimed 2012 expose, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, is a founding text of the modern global ethical and sustainable fashion movement, and her much-anticipated follow-up book, The Conscious Closet: A Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good, was published in August of 2019 by Penguin Random House. As the director of advocacy and policy at Remake, a global advocacy nonprofit, Cline helped spearhead the landmark #PayUp campaign, winning the $22 billion owed from H&M, Zara, Gap, and other brands to garment workers during the pandemic, and in 2021 she organized strategy and communications to pass the historic California Garment Worker Protection Act to extend the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety into Pakistan and to strengthen the New York Fashion Act last year. Cline also codeveloped the FABRIC Act, the first federal fashion bill in generations, which was introduced in Congress last May. 

She received her M.S. in international relations and global studies from Northeastern University College of Professional Studies.

TEACHING:

• Fashion Policy and the Politics of Government Action