I emailed Knix about PFAS. What I got back was polished, reassuring, and carefully constructed to tell me almost nothing useful. What it did not mention was the $1.4 million federal class action settlement Knix entered into over the exact leakproof products I asked about — or the court-ordered requirement to stop calling those products PFAS-free. Here's what their email left out, and what every consumer should know before buying from brands like this.

PFAS-Free and Compliant Design Development and Production Solutions

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

The fashion industry has a PFAS problem it has not yet fully confronted.

as the fashion and costume industries scramble to rebuild designs to new standards, here's a toolkit to work through the compliance requirements

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

When a cardboard box is sold as luxury, fashion isn’t evolving, it’s collapsing. A breakdown of hype, pricing and the erosion of real craft.

Microplastics didn’t become a problem overnight. They became a problem the moment we stopped asking what our materials would do over time. For years, they were dismissed as too small to matter — an environmental issue at best, a non-issue at worst. Now, they’re being found inside the human body, and that shift is forcing a different kind of conversation. Government programs are forming to measure and understand them. Documentaries are capturing real-world patterns tied to exp

Circular Fashion Doesn’t End Plastic. It Circulates It.

The Modern Garment District is now open. Four divisions. One system. Designers Guild, Modern Makers Collective, Creative & Editorial Access, Industry Circle This is not a community. This is infrastructure. We are entering an Open Entry Period for our Founding Phase.

Fashion is not failing because of creativity. It is failing because of how garments are developed, produced and scaled. For decades, the industry has operated on a model built around forecasting—predicting what people might want months in advance, producing at scale and hoping it sells.