Enjoy the video recording of the 7.26.21 live interview with Soreyda Begley, or read a few excerpts below.
Speaking Out for Sustainability in Fashion and so much more…
by Meriah Kruse
This article shares excerpts from an interview with Soreyda Benedit-Begley on July 26, 2021. The interview was part of a series entitled HEAR TELL: Spotlight on Pathfinders, a program of Life Force Marketing.
Who is Soreyda Begley?
Soreyda is a fashion designer focused on personalization and sustainability in fashion, on a mission to shift the public perception of the fashion industry. In a previous interview, she explained, “A big part of the goal (working in the fashion industry) is to raise the perception of fashion from frivolous shopping and celebrity gawking. It is our art. I wouldn’t be doing it at all if it wasn’t for my passion to teach the public about the reality behind the fashion industry.”
In addition to fashion, Soreyda is a radio host, community organizer and activist originally from Honduras, now based in Lexington, Kentucky. She’s passionate about community involvement and has served on a number of boards for local and state organizations. Because of her experience working in sweatshops as a teenager in her native country, she has become an advocate for fair trade, women’s rights and sustainable development.
She’s known for using unconventional recycled materials, including paper, plastic bags and even tree bark. During her time in Lexington, she has been awarded for her fashion design work and activist work. She has also been able to collaborate with many diverse artists; their work has been featured in national and international fashion and art publications, as well as in theater, film, and gallery productions. About her earlier Life, she says:
I’m very ambiguous culturally, racially speaking, because I’m bi-racial. My mother is from an indigenous background, a Honduran, and my father was a Garifuna, which is an ethnic group who settled in Honduras that were descendants of people who were slaves in America and they formed this very strong ethnic group.
I’ve always been curious about connecting with people… that’s just in my nature… Being between different cultures and different types of people, it just set us up to be very curious about other people’s Life experiences and sharing ours as well.
I’m very lucky to have such a multi-cultural Life experience.
When asked if her views about sustainability and personalization in fashion have put her at odds with other leaders in the industry or defined the people she’s worked with, Soreyda answered,
(around 11 minutes into the interview)
It has, (for instance) one time when I was interviewed by Project Runway. I’ve applied 14 times and have been interviewed twice.
In one of the interviews, they saw the pieces I brought to show and they said ‘We can’t see you as a designer through your work, because the pieces that you brought, they don’t look like a collection, they don’t look cohesive.’
…They were thinking about it from a (purely) commercial perspective..
Of course we can have the same approach when it comes to our body of work as artists, but because I do costume work, and mostly individual pieces for individuals, I have to try to fit what the demands or needs of the customer is, individually.
I’m not thinking about consumers as a mass! I’m used to getting to know them, what is it they need, when they’re going to wear the pieces…
People think of designers as someone who has a brand, and you’re just gonna go to the rack and grab whatever… so you’re basically just telling people: ‘This is what I’m making, so this is what you’re gonna wear!”
As part of her outreach efforts to influence the fashion industry and the world-at-large toward more equitable and sustainable practices, Soreyda has been active on Clubhouse, the new social media platform that’s all about voices and conversations – no images, no recordings, just live conversations taking place in hundreds of different rooms.
I’ve been on Clubhouse since March of this year. It’s different (than Facebook, for instance). Here you can just listen to people’s voices, their tone, the way they communicate is definitely special. I started to join different rooms; I’ve been invited to speak in several rooms related to fashion, but also indigenous topics, women’s rights, and factory workers rights. It’s been an exciting experience.
(around 19 minutes into the interview)
photo: (left to right) Esmeralda Deya Martin, Mercedes Harn, and Soreyda Benedit-Begley
I’m working now with a friend from Costa Rica who I met through Clubhouse and we are collaborating to create a room to talk about sustainability in Spanish because there are very few rooms that speak about this and we want to invite Spanish speaking people from all over the world to share their ideas.
…This concludes the excerpt from Soreyda’s interview.
