Influencer Brand Womn. Attempts to Tackle Issues of Sustainability and Female Identity

These days, influencers launching their own brands is becoming the norm among online content creators. From Jeffree Star’s cosmetic line to Emma Chamberlain’s High Key, these brands range from music and books to beauty and fashion. 

Weylie Hoang and Sophia Chang, LA based Youtube influencers, are no exception. Weylie and Sophia are both Asian American (Weylie is of a Chinese descent and Sophia has Korean background) focused on creating contents regarding make-up, beauty, and fashion. Their careers as beauty and style gurus on Youtube have been ongoing for over ten years. With Weylie and Sophia’s long expertise in fashion, there is no doubt that their hundred thousands of Youtube subscribers have high expectations of their newly founded clothing brand “Womn.”. 

In my opinion, the LA-based brand launched in September of 2019 greatly exceeds our expectations and raises the bar for influencer clothing brands. In fact, what makes Womn. such a unique brand is its missions for sustainability and female empowerment. 

Weylie and Sophia acknowledge that one of the largest contributors of global pollution is the fashion industry, which generates a large amount of surplus fabrics that accumulate in the warehouse. They are oftentimes forgotten and dumped into landfills, albeit high-quality. These fashion gurus tackle the issue of over-abundance of fabrics by endowing these dead-stock fabrics with a second life under their brand, Womn. 

Womn. releases a multitude of clothes that are versatile, modern, and chic. Along with the earthy tones and simplistic details of their tops and skirts, the outfits curated from the dead-stock fabrics seem like they jumped out of a Pinterest mood board.    

The brand also prides itself on having female empowerment as one of their core pillars. According to Womn.’s introductory-launch video, Weylie and Sophia stress that they strive to build a “strong community of women where [they] celebrate each other and talk about things that are really important to [them].” Currently, they seem to be achieving this goal through donating parts of the brand’s profits to different organizations that support women’s causes. At the moment, the brand is assisting Downtown Women’s center in downtown LA.

However, as much as I adore the brand, I believe that their attempt to empower women is insufficient so far. I personally would like to see clothing lines that emphasize female-pride through their designs and use of fabrics. For now, looking at the descriptions of their clothes which highlight “comfort” and “chicness,” I could only speculate that they may be attempting to deliver a message of women being able to experience both stylishness and comfort simultaneously – this was never made explicit, though. 

Even so, the founders make sure that their audience and customers understand that this is a learning process for them. Although not yet done, Womn. hopes to be inclusive in its clothing’s sizes in the future. Weylie and Sophia speak of creating plus-size and petite-size for their future products as their current goal. They are also trying to use natural-fibers instead of synthetic-fibers, which are detrimental to the environment. Demonstrating a positive and humble attitude, it seems like they will always welcome constructive criticisms from their viewers and buyers. 

They are not perfect, but we must acknowledge the fact that the two are taking major issues regarding environmental waste and femininity into their own hands while being entrepreneurial. It is definitely refreshing to see two Asian women contributing to the trend of influencer-launched brands, not to mention that their brand is one that is sustainability-conscious and female-empowering. As one of their biggest fans, I cannot wait to see how Womn. will grow and refine their definition of femininity in the future. 

Featured Image, Womn’s Look Book