Maxine Bédat is the founder and director of sustainable fashion think tank New Standard Institute.
Bédat has spent the last decade trying to figure out how to change the fashion industry.In 2013, she co-founded Zady, an early entrant into the ethical e-commerce space. The idea was to create a platform dedicated to responsibly sourced products, but Bédat quickly found hardly any brands knew enough about how and where their products were made to back up sustainability claims. To try and solve the issue, Zady set about trying to launch its own label with a fully traceable supply chain, publishing its findings along the way. Much bigger brands started reaching out and saying how useful the information was, prompting Bédat to switch gears.
Instead of making more clothes, she turned her focus to filling in the industry’s knowledge gaps. In 2019 she launched the New Standard Institute, a non-profit think tank that deploys data to promote accountability in the industry.
Now she’s drawing on her background as a lawyer to help embed greater transparency and accountability into regulation. In 2021 she spearheaded the introduction of the New York Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act, or, Fashion Act. The bill, if passed, would require companies with more than $100 million in revenue to disclose environmental impact, map at least half of their supply chains and reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.
