Talking sustainable fashion with VAED founder Veronica Arroyo
Veronica Arroyo, a 21-year-old Miami-based fashion designer, wants to create a new normal for the fashion industry: sustainable, zero-waste custom clothing. A Puerto Rican native, Arroyo grew up on an organic farm, allowing her to experience an eco-friendly business firsthand. Now, after spending time at Columbia College Chicago and the Miami Fashion Institute, she has decided to combine her passion for the environment with her love for design through her sustainable fashion company, VAED.
“It’s pronounced vah-ehd,” Arroyo said when asked about the company’s name. “It stands for Veronica Arroyo Environmental Designs.” The term “environmental” barely scratches the surface, though, when it comes to the care Arroyo takes to ensure her company has as small a footprint as possible.
“Everything is made to order,” Arroyo explained. “It’s so that I don’t produce any more waste, and that I can make pieces custom to your size.” Arroyo customizes pieces in order to limit the number of returns she receives – something she claims is one of the biggest perpetrators of waste and pollution in the fashion industry.
“People don’t realize that half the time, almost all the time, they do not resell those items. They just burn them,” said Arroyo. “They don’t have the time to look at what could be wrong or repackage it.”
She sources the materials to create her pieces by going thrift shopping and buying discontinued (“deadstock”) fabric. Once she has made a piece, she saves her fabric scraps to use as filling for pillows. To ship orders, Arroyo uses plastic-free packaging and water-based tape, and makes tags out of recycled cardboard.
“I make my own paper, too. It’s literally the longest process of my life!” Arroyo laughed.
In a way, Arroyo always knew she would have her own company. She started sewing garments at age 13 and showing her work at fashion shows only three years later.
“I always had, like, my own brand,” Arroyo said. “I’d always keep trying to have, like, a business, but it’d always fail because I never really knew what I was doing.”
Arroyo explained that although she’d been sewing for years, she still didn’t know what kind of designer she wanted to be. Then, when she was attending Columbia College Chicago, she watched the documentary True Cost on Netflix.
“It shows you the whole behind-the-scenes of the fashion industry, like how polluting and terrible it is,” she said. Arroyo was shocked. Despite shopping at fast fashion brands her entire life, she never realized the impact those companies were having on the destruction of the environment.
“I was just not aware of how terrible the industry was,” Arroyo remarked. She decided she didn’t want to continue contributing to the wasteful tendencies of the fashion industry or have a business that caused further harm. Arroyo had discovered her calling: sustainable, slow fashion.
She describes her brand as free-spirited and bohemian, and she enjoys mixing “very colorful prints, but with an edgy look.” Arroyo also does her own styling, photography, and directing for the content found on her website, Instagram, and TikTok.
Despite the labor she puts into each garment, from sourcing the materials to packaging the final product, Arroyo ensures that her prices stay low. She wants customers to feel good shopping at VAED, knowing they’re purchasing a quality, custom product with a low environmental impact at a great price. Nothing she’s done has happened overnight, though, and it’s been a constant process of learning and growing.
“It’s definitely developed over time, like with new things that I keep learning on how I can be better, so I’m sure it’s gonna keep changing,” she explained. “Everyone has to keep growing, we’re not gonna stay the same.”
Although VAED just launched in July, Arroyo already has plans for the future. Eventually, she would like to grow her business and employ more people, but she still wants to keep it small. She also wants to collaborate with artisans around the world, providing work to people in less affluent nations and using natural textiles.
“I don’t want to become a huge brand that’s gonna be whipping out a bunch of stuff all the time, that completely defeats the purpose of being sustainable,” Arroyo explained. “I’ll always keep it very unique and custom so that nothing gets wasted.”
Head to vaedva.com to check out Veronica Arroyo’s latest work.
Strike Out,
Writer: Faith Matson
Editor: Lexi Fernandez
Tallahassee