Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Isabella David. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Isabella thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

In 2015, I began my (now defunct) sustainable fashion blog which turned into a thriving Instagram page and recently a Substack called The Conscious Closet, because I wanted to connect with other like-minded individuals who both care about the planet and have a passion for fashion. Because one of my sisters is a water scientist– an effluvial geomorphologist to be exact– can you say that fast twice lol– I was vaguely aware of climate issues, but it wasn’t until the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 that I made the connection between what I wear and how widely polluting and exploitative the fashion industry has become. The day after the plaza collapsed with so many factory workers inside it, I happened to receive an order from Baby Gap. Devastatingly enough, “Made with love” was embroidered onto the baby jean jacket collar while “made in Bangladesh” was on the inside jacket on the actual clothing tag. Maybe that piece was even made in the Rana Plaza? Or in a place equally as terrible for the workers? Who knows? I’ll never get over that feeling. I wanted to figure out a way to continue to love fashion and beauty as a love of color and pretty things is integral to my happiness and sense of self but without feeling as if I was indifferent to the pain and harm it can cause people and the planet, so I began to learn about sustainable fashion and to live more sustainably. Coincidentally, I also haven’t flown since 2013, actually! I don’t share that to make anyone feel badly, because partially, it’s also down to coincidence. I haven’t flown since then more because I didn’t have anyone to sit with my kids when I’ve been invited to weddings or because I acquired so many pets that that became an issue– but I do share it just to show it is probably possible to fly less or to be more conscious of our choices. I’m also aware our individual choices won’t move the needle on climate change, but that doesn’t mean collectively our awareness can’t change things when we demand through votes a world that reflects our values. I also thought at first when I became interested in sustainable fashion that I was going to have to “give up” so much, but I’m happy to report my love for sustainable fashion has never made me feel the least deprive. In fact, it has given me back much more than I’ve ever had to give up. I feel as if I’ve actually become the queen of secondhand shopping and my wardrobe is far more fabulous than it used to be when it was filled with cheaply made fast fashion.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve really loved clothes. I used to spend hours playing with Victorian-era paper dolls or cutting up outfits out of old French handkerchiefs for my Barbies. (My father is French, and my French grandmother used to give me all this beautiful old lace and bits of cloth from her own sewing projects. She was very handy!) Meanwhile, my American mother even had to forbid me from cutting up my own clothes to make them look more unique. My New Yorker mother moved us to a small town in the South because she loved hiking, but I still looked to the city where the rest of our family and my French lived for my fashion inspiration. At 14, I was voted “most unique” because I wore a thrifted blue velvet jacket with cloth frog buttons to my conservative high school. It was not meant as a compliment, but I took it as such. (I knew exactly what I was doing the day I wore that jacket I’d thrifted from a Goodwill in Murray Hill.) I started off thrifting before it was fashionable to do so, because I grew up in a one-parent household without funds for frivolous things like fashion. My mother also rebelled against HER mother who loved fashion by having no interest in it herself. She was flummoxed at first that she created this child that loved color, fabric, texture, playing with makeup and hairstyles, but now she loves seeing what I’m up to. After college where I dutifully got my degree in something (semi) serious (Comp Lit) and after working for a year in a very serious job (I taught French and English to grades 9-12), I decided against grad school and went on to work as an actor and model for years in Manhattan. I loved dressing up in costumes whether it was a John Galliano haute couture gown for the Village Voice’s Cover Issue (which is, sadly, a very old-fashioned sentence) or a raggedy witch for an Off-Off Broadway play, but I still didn’t feel like the kind of fashion I loved to wear on set was accessible to me on a personal level. I’ve really loved learning about sustainable fashion because I finally learned how to create my own colorful, whimsical wardrobe on a budget through a combination of vintage treasure finds and investing in good basics, and I’m so grateful to the community of makers and bloggers that inspired me and whom I’ve met through social media.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

We need to create more grants for artists. Working in New York City from about 2007-2018, I’ll never forget the sense that an old New York City of thriving artists was vanishing before my eyes. One by one all the rent-controlled apartments were being phased out as tenants moved away or died. That was part of it. For example I remember going to see this really kooky unique moving unforgettable piece of performance art by Edgar Oliver in the East Village, and out of curiosity I looked it up, because I’d already been priced out of the East Village at that point, and of course he had a rent-controlled apartment. There was one particular day in which the where and why of this sea change became crystal clear to me. I was returning home from an audition or a shoot– I forget that part– but a middle-aged woman whose cane was propped beside her on a subway seat began to chat with me. She was an artist, just a lovely, warm person– one of those deeply talented and light-hearted and open and wise old souls you can only encounter in a big city– and she told me about all the grants that used to be available to artists and how they were all vanishing like the rent-controlled apartments were. The thing that made New York City so great once upon a time were the artists: the musicians, the actors, the sense that you could move there with nothing but hope in your pockets and a head full of dreams and become whatever you wanted to be. I feel like I’m one of the last generation of penniless dreamers who got to experience that. (Full disclosure: I moved there with my college boyfriend and then when we broke up, he let me keep our apartment that had been guaranteed by his parents. And then I moved in with my now-husband or I could have never afforded living in Manhattan even back then when my East Village apartment was “only” $1400 a month. It rents for over $4200 now and it was so small a couch couldn’t fit in it. I got really lucky.)

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As I’ve already shared, I loved fashion my whole life, but it hasn’t always been a great relationship. Fashion in New York City was a bad boyfriend. I also modeled in New York City at a time when an obsession with the Y2K obsession with skinniness was at its height, but, luckily, because I was older when I started I was reluctant to lose the kind of weight I was being pressured to lose. I knew how bad that could be for your body. I had had an “accidental” eating disorder at 17, when I cut fat from my diet. My reasoning: everyone says fat is “bad” so why should I eat it? And I lost so much weight my period stopped for several months, my hair fell out, and my complexion turned gray. At 17, no one had taught me about nutrition, and I didn’t know how bad what I was doing was for my body. As soon as I figured that out, I cut those behaviors out. Now, I always go out of my way to tell my kids now how great fat is for you! It makes your hair shine! It makes your skin glow! That kind of thing. They’re already receiving messages from the media and from other kids that food can be a problem, so I think it’s important to combat that negativity around food with positive, factual talk about how great food is for you. It’s fuel! It’s energy! It’s fun. Still, even though I didn’t eat poorly as a model, I also didn’t eat so great. It was hard not to obsess over food and my diet when things would happen like an agent telling me I was this close to a lucrative opportunity like being a fit model for a major brand like Susana Monaco “if only I could lose another 3/4 of an inch from my hips”. The only thing that really stopped me then was knowing I’d have to shave the bone to do so. I weighed 30 lbs less than I do now and still was relatively miserable about my appearance whereas now I feel great if not annoyed on days my pants won’t close. There was not another pound I could have lost back then and remained healthy, which was important to me even then in those days of calorie counting and “disordered eating”, I think I would call that obsession with what I was eating. After my first child, I went straight back to modeling and acting, but by my second child I had moved out of New York to Philly where there’s less of the high fashion stuff and a far more thriving food scene. In New York, you have to be super wealthy or in the know to find great chow, but in Philly, great food is everywhere. I’d also become more interested in fashion as self-expression than as a costume to express someone else’s brand vision or directorial vision. Somehow, my interest in workers being treated well and the planet, our home, being honored also translated into treating myself better. I did not bother to even lose all the baby weight the second time, because I started realizing I was even healthier and felt better at a higher weight. Now, I realize clothes are meant to fit me, not the other way around and that all these things are related: a healthy self-image and a regard for the planet are deeply interrelated issues. I’d once heard that once you’ve had eating issues you can never get over it, but I share all this to show that I don’t think that’s true. Of course, I get triggered now and then by some of the self-sabotaging talk that can be common amongst some women or by a comment from a troll online, but overall those are blips. I’m a lot happier and healthier now at 30 lbs heavier and my relationship with fashion is a much happier and healthier one as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://isabelladavidvintage.substack.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabelladavidvintage/
• Other: Tik Tok @IsabellaDavidVintage

Image Credits
Images by Ryan McCaffrey and Isabella David. Rights and permissions certified.