Slow & steady: Meet the duo behind sustainable brand Sloane the Brand

In a fashion landscape increasingly dominated by fast drops and faster trends, Sloane the Brand has taken its time. Founded by Hockaday juniors and best friends Margaret Hohenshelt and Cecilia Chen, the slow-fashion company is a culmination of years of research, which is a pace the co-founders call intentional.

Though Sloane the Brand’s official launch was in 2023, the company’s story starts when Chen and Hohenshelt were in seventh grade. During COVID lockdowns, Hohenshelt started sewing and mending clothes to sell on the fashion resale platform Depop. She quickly realized she enjoyed the business aspect of the work but eventually ran out of ideas for what to make.

“But Cecilia loves to make stuff, and I love to sell them. So it was a perfect combo,” Hohenshelt says.

They went into business together with Chen handling designs and Hohenshelt managing the business. The company’s moniker came from Hohenshelt’s middle name, which her parents chose because of the character Sloane Peterson in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (who Chen and Hohenshelt note is the most fashionable in the film).

Once they committed to developing their company, they say incorporating sustainability into their model was a no-brainer, especially with the rise of fast fashion. This practice, in which clothes are made quickly and at low quality to keep up with rapidly-changing trends, can often involve pollution and poor labor conditions.

“When something that you love so much is so essential to your identity and who you are is facing such a big problem, that’s your problem now,” Hohenshelt says.

Their first line, released in 2023, included T-shirts and tote bags with designs inspired by Hohenshelt and Chen’s favorite art history eras, including impressionism, art deco and surrealism. The designs reflected not only a shared interest but also a way the company tries to be eco-friendly by preemptively reducing waste. The pair says they are intentional about not chasing trends that people won’t want to wear a couple months later, instead drawing on classic art or artists that will always be in style.

Releasing their first line also revealed shortcomings in their original production process. Initially, they ironed all designs on by hand to ensure quality but used ink that was not sustainable. So, they slowed down to reassess.

“The thing that people underestimate the most is how much we genuinely care. How much we care and how long it took for us to make this is really proof that if you’re releasing something very quickly, it’s not sustainable,” Hohenshelt says.

The process stretched into two years of research and trial and error. Last summer, Chen worked with a professor at the University of Virginia to research greenwashing and how brands market themselves as sustainable. She also learned how to evaluate those claims through an environmental lens, which the co-founders say came in handy when trying to source a sustainable supplier for their products.

Hohenshelt had interned at sustainable marketing firm Endicott PR, where she learned how to ethically market their products. Their coursework has also informed their business, with classes like coding and financial accounting helping the pair automate their website and balance their books.

The result of this process was their latest line of T-shirts, which released last month. The shirts are made with modal, which is natural fibers that have been synthetically processed. Hohenshelt says they chose this fabric because it is still 100% biodegradable but lasts longer than many natural fibers.

The new products also came with a revamped marketing strategy. When Sloane the Brand first started, Hohenshelt and Chen say they thought they would rely mostly on social media marketing, but neither enjoyed making short form content. Instead, they shifted to word-of-mouth marketing.

“We definitely didn’t play to our strengths when we first started because we’re both really good at talking to people,” Hohenshelt says.

Philanthropy was part of Sloane from the beginning. Proceeds from the brand’s first line went to the global nonprofit Fashion Revolution, which campaigns for reform and greater transparency in the fashion industry. Over time, however, Chen and Hohenshelt realized they wanted their impact to be more immediate and local.

“We couldn’t really make a dent that we could see, and it kind of became discouraging. So we wanted to find a more specific goal that we thought was really important to us in our community,” Hohenshelt says.

This led to the launch of the Sloane Arts Initiative in 2025, which is dedicated to “combating the loss of art in Texas.” The co-founders both volunteer teaching art at Dallas ISD elementary schools. They say that seeing firsthand how budget cuts have affected arts programs helped clarify how they wanted to help.

Now, profits from Sloane go toward local arts initiatives, including donating supplies to underfunded programs and hosting workshops. It also includes educational content, like art history lessons and videos on hands-on art activities.

Since starting Sloane, Chen and Hohenshelt say they have realized how much misinformation there is surrounding sustainability in fashion. The question they get most often is how to know if a brand you are shopping from is eco-friendly.

“Our biggest tip for shopping sustainably is, if it’s hard for you to find out if a company’s sustainable, they’re probably not sustainable,” Hohenshelt says.

After spending the past two years building the brand’s foundation, Chen and Hohenshelt say they are ready for what comes next. On Feb. 13, Sloane is hosting an event to launch the upcoming Sloane Cares Line at the boutique Bittano on Lovers Lane.

“Our craziest, biggest ambition: we want to be like a sustainable Brandy Melville,” Hohenshelt says.

In the short term, Chen says they want to be able to see their impact. Many of the students they tutor are also the ones they donate to. She says she hopes Sloane can be a resource for students who no longer have access to arts education. In the meantime, the brand wants to encourage locals to support the arts.

“In any way that you can, invest in the arts,” Chen says. “I think it’s what keeps our culture alive and what keeps us thriving as humans.”