The Triple Bottom Line Blog

There are many people spreading the gospel of sustainability these days, and in many different ways – but perhaps none in such a hip and stylish way as Summer Rayne Oakes.


One of the many hats I wear is Chapter Leader of Net Impact Boston, and two nights ago we put on our biggest event yet – the local launch party for SustainLane.com, a new web directory of sustainable businesses. It was a great opportunity to invite a speaker I’ve wanted to meet for some time now: Summer Rayne Oakes.

An environmental activist since childhood, Oakes has put together her unique basket of skills in a very compelling way – all in an effort to mainstream issues of environmental and social justice.

What are those skills? Well, for one, Oakes is about 5’11 and completely gorgeous, so modeling has always been a career path open to her. She is also artistically inclined, with an eye for fashion and an impressive portfolio of drawings. And she’s smart – she earned a degree from Cornell University and has written some impressive academic papers on very non-fashionable topics like sewage sludge. To top it all off, she’s a genuinely nice person who is easy to like and who cares about doing good in the world.

Put all that together, and what do you get? An amazing career that is going in about twenty useful and exciting directions at once. Here’s a small sample:

• Oakes models for many eco-conscious labels, and also works with major companies like Levi’s to develop new earth-friendly apparel. And it’s not anoraks and Birkenstocks – more often it’s lace or leather. Sometimes even latex.
• She produces and writes a regular feature for the European fashion magazine Lucire, each month going “Behind the Label” to explore environmental, social and ethical issues in the apparel industry.
• Recently Oakes started SRO as a consultancy which “couples the power of research with the pulse of current trends” – advising companies on branding and communication strategies that are aligned with sustainable business practices.
• Always the educator on environmental issues, she’s even come up with a K-12 curriculum called Ecofashion 101.
• She’s about to publish a book that encourages girls to integrate environmentalism into their fashion sense. And yes, she actually did write it herself.
• And if all that weren’t impressive enough, she’s working with the United Nations to develop and co-host an Eco For The World (E4W) “edutainment” series.

Her basic philosophy, as far as I can tell, is that fashion and celebrity, and the underlying force of branding, are powerful ways to spread ideas in our society – and can therefore be an asset to the sustainability movement. It’s a radical departure from the strategy that most activists take, but a great way to connect with mainstream audiences.

One of the ideas that Oakes referenced in her talk last night was the power of tapping into everyday conversations as a way to spread meaningful messages. For example, think of this conversation:

-- Hey, great jeans.
-- Thanks, man.
-- Who made them?
-- Her name is Jasmine.

Jasmine is one of the factory workers featured in an recent film called China Blue. Her story is powerful not so much because it is unique but because it is very common – she works long hours in a factory, so long in fact that she uses clothespins to hold her eyes open so she won’t fall asleep. Jasmine is the personification of the sweatshop issue, a familiar face at the end of the “supply chain.” Making sweatshop issues known, making them personal and memorable, and introducing them into everyday conversations – that’s a very powerful combination that can drive a new movement of consumer activism.

Oakes is a good example of two trends:

1. The new generation of activists, who are savvy about motivating stakeholders to influence corporate agendas, and are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of online platforms.
   
2. A push toward the "mainstreaming" of sustainability issues, which are no longer relegated to a small consumer niche.

To learn more about Oakes and her work, and by extension about the direction that young consumers and investors are headed, visit http://www.summerrayne.net/.

Labels: Communications and Marketing, Human Rights and Child Labor, Personal Musings, Sumner Raynes Oakes