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| Tia Robinson and Mya Love Griesbaum present sustainable fashion during Atlanta Tech Week |
Both Robinson, the founder of Vertical, a sustainable apparel brand, and Griesbaum, CEO and founder of Mycorrhiza Fashion, a company that creates sustainable materials through biofabrication experimentation, are passionate about decreasing the carbon footprint put out by the fashion industry. The talks, organized by Ideas Into Action, the nonprofit behind TEDX Atlanta, in partnership with Atlanta Tech Week, come at a moment when the fashion industry is under fire for its sustainability practices - or lack thereof. Jacqui Chew, President of Ideas Into Action and TEDx Atlanta Licensee, says the event couldn’t take place a more opportune time.
"It is very much serendipitous,” Chew says. “We want to show that tech isn't just bits, bites, 1s and 0s. Innovation can happen in different ways.”
As fashion tech founders Robinson and Griesbaum use their individual skillsets to drive change in an industry that seems incapable of pivoting from its current business model.
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| A model wearing Vertical apparel Photos courtesy of Vertical Apparel |
“It’s not the typical way people manufacture clothes,” Robinson says. "Usually companies mass produce and 30% of the clothes don’t sale and end up in landfills polluting the air, water and soil.”
All Vertical clothing is size inclusive and is made to order in the U.S. - a core component of fashion sustainability. By manufacturing the garments and products in her own backyard Robinson is contributing to the circular fashion economy in Georgia. She authored the 10% Shift, a book that focuses on shifting 10% of your purchases to products that are made to order, in hopes that consumers understand small purchasing changes make a big difference over time.
“It helps keeps clothes out of landfills and has a significant effect on the fashion manufacturing industry and the environment,” Robinson says.
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| A models pose in Vertical active wear Photos courtesy of Vertical Apparel |
The innovative process has attracted the attention of other businesses owners who want to utilize the same production method. Robinson now manufactures clothing, home goods, swimwear, pet wear and corporate merchandise at her Duluth facility. But what began as a production crisis turned into a valuable lesson she shares with her clients as President Donald Trump’s tariffs increase the cost of importing goods to the U.S.
“When it comes to my B2B clients, I’ve been telling them it's important to diversify your supply chain,” Robinson says. “If you have manufacturers overseas you might find yourself between and rock and a hard place.”
Currently, Robinson is using U.S. Mills to manufacture her clothing that is also produced from U.S. based materials made of recycled water bottles. The savvy entrepreneur adopted a process called sublimation printing – a digital printing technique that uses heat to saturate the garment with color without using water. Sublimation printing creates rich hues with crisper logos and allows Robinson to produce multiple pieces for multiple brands. The system is more efficient than traditional printing which uses one color at time – a process that runs up manufacturing costs and results in tons of wasted fabric.
“Alot of garments like polyester take 100 years to breakdown, they’ll be here longer than we are,” Robinson says.
That’s where Griesbaum’s Mycorrhiza comes into play. The mission is to foster a relationship between plant, fungi, and humans to combat the contamination of our environment. Griesbaum employs a form of biofabrication that uses fungi to eat the waste omitted during textile manufacturing to generate a material comparable to leather. Fungi has been used to help depollute marine environments contaminated by oil. When Griesbaum realized the fungi eats the contaminants, or garbage, and completely metabolizes and neutralizes its harmful effects on the environment, her powerful brain started working over-time. A materials science student at Georgia Tech, she instinctively began experimenting with the process by applying it to fashion.
“People are introducing fungi into landfills, but not addressing the problem of over consumption and the endless textiles that are in our landfills,” Griesbaum says.
Her team made the first garment - a top and then went back to the drawing board to refine the process. They sent the material out to designers and in 2024 Knotti Sustainable Sandal designed Elizabeth Kelly won the Sustainable/Other Sustainable Footwear and Fashion Sneakers/Sandals categories of the Global Footwear Awards. The team went back into the lab a second time to improve the material resulting in a full-length dress designed in collaboration with Bojana Ginn for the 2025 Atlanta Sustainable Fashion Week.
Right now, she is developing a new material and ensuring each product is as durable as leather and other textiles.
“I feel like a lot of progress is stifled by people thinking they need to stay in their own lane,” Griesbaum says. "So, it’s exciting to be at the intersection of fashion, science and climate change.’
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