making the connection between PFAS contaminated laundry as the source of contaminated municipal waterways.

Maine’s PFAS ban isn’t just a policy shift. It’s exposing how deeply fashion relies on invisible chemical engineering to deliver “performance.” The question now is what happens when those chemicals are no longer allowed.

You can’t mass-produce synthetic performance wear, market it as “wellness,” and expect no consequences. The Lululemon investigation is just the beginning. The real problem? Fashion has no system for validating what it puts into products before scaling them.

The fashion industry produces 30 billion unsold garments every year. That number is not a tragedy. It is a design feature — and I have spent 15 years inside production at the highest levels watching it play out in real time. I am Gina Vincenza Van Epps, Emmy Award-winning celebrity seamstress, author of the Modern Garment District Model, and the person behind Shakira's Super Bowl Halftime Show costumes. I built a system to fix what is broken. Now I am putting the tools in you