Alyssa Hardy ’12 is a New York City–based author and fashion journalist focused on the people and impacts behind the clothes we wear. She is the style director at Teen Vogue, and her debut nonfiction book, Worn Out: How Our Clothes Cover Up Fashion’s Sins, brings garment workers’ voices to the forefront while examining fashion’s environmental and human costs. Through her weekly newsletter, “This Stuff,” Hardy invites readers to think more thoughtfully about what’s in their closets — and why it matters.

What called you to write Worn Out — not just as a journalist documenting injustice, but as a human being witnessing the violence woven into what we wear?

Fashion touches everything. It’s a universal connector that takes up so much space in our lives. But it’s also this massively problematic space that’s designed to be overlooked. I didn’t know how to keep telling one story (of significance and power) without telling the other story about the people who are impacted by it on a day-to-day basis.

You center garment workers’ voices with deep care, without speaking over them. What practices guided how you held that responsibility?

Thank you. The voices of the impacted matter most. I have my story of being in fashion and they have theirs. They can exist side by side. I really leaned on the guidance of workers themselves and labor organizers who helped me navigate the storytelling.

You explore fashion’s cost beyond the price tag. How do you understand the true cost — on labor, on land, on culture — when so much is designed to stay unseen?

You really can’t know unless a brand wants to tell you, but fashion is a system. From the fabric, to the cut and sew, to the shipping, to the eventual end of the cycle, someone is handling it. You may not truly get the true cost, but when you see that the price tag looks too good to be true, more likely than not, it is. A corner was cut somewhere, and someone paid the price for it.

Was there a moment during your research when the weight of the industry’s harm truly settled in — when you had to pause, or shift your own understanding?

Every interview for this book, and otherwise, adds to the experience of being a person working in fashion with their eyes open. I don’t know if I can point to a specific moment during the process of Worn Out, because every single worker or advocate who shared their story shifted something in me, just as my own experiences have. There is the idea of fashion, and then there is the reality of it. I allow myself to marvel at how incredibly meaningful and artful this industry is, but I consistently ground myself in the truth of it. I will say that reporting on Kantanmanto, the largest secondhand market in the world — in Accra, Ghana — and seeing the impacts of clothing waste firsthand was life-changing. It truly allowed me to see full circle how exploitation is at every impasse in fashion.

You’ve occupied editorial spaces that often uphold the fashion machine. How did that lived experience shape the way you now challenge its foundations?

It’s tough because it’s so easy to just fall in line with what works at the top of the industry, but from the factory floor to the corporate offices, there are so many thoughtful people who want to see change. Challenging the obvious and real problems is tricky, but there is no choice. We have to address the waste crisis, we have to address the labor issues, and we need to acknowledge that the incessant need for new clothes is part of a huge, huge climate problem we have on our hands.

Your book critiques an industry that seems to thrive on harm, but it also makes room for care. How did you hold that balance while writing — both for the people in the book and for yourself?

The simple truth is that I love fashion. And I love how people use fashion in their lives. I want it to be better because I believe it can be, and I want to be part of an industry that cares for the people who uphold it.

[Editor’s note: Answers have been edited for clarity and space considerations.]

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