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BLACK PEARL, a cultural sustainability agency that partners with the fashion, music, and entertainment industries, helped fire victims rebuild their wardrobes while also aiming to inspire a sustainable mindset in the fashion industry.
When the Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed nearly 13,000 homes in Los Angeles in January, Samata Pattinson, an L.A. resident, felt that she had a stake in the recovery efforts. “If you live somewhere and you’re part of something, then you’re part of all of it. You’re not just part of the best bits of it,” she says.
She also knew personally how long it takes to rebuild when you lose your home in a fire. Years ago, Samata lost all of her belongings when a fire ravaged her London apartment.
And she was poised to make a difference in one particular area: helping fire victims rebuild their wardrobes. The CEO of BLACK PEARL, a cultural sustainability agency that partners with the fashion, music, and entertainment industries, Samata has deep connections within the fashion world.
So in the wake of the wildfires, she swiftly put her organization’s usual engagements on pause and began to coordinate clothing donations for fire victims, collecting deadstock items and excess inventory from fashion brands. With these efforts, BLACK PEARL aimed to both support fire victims and inspire a lasting sustainable mindset in the fashion industry.
“We pride ourselves on knowing circular design solutions, so at the time when L.A. needs that, that’s what we should be doing,” Samata says.
Since Samata founded BLACK PEARL in 2023, the organization has collaborated with a number of sustainability events, including Billie Eilish’s Overheated summit. The agency’s work includes offering sustainable apparel solutions to clients such as The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, producing films that highlight topics of sustainability, and crafting sustainable fashion toolkits, such as the Sustainable Red Carpet Fashion guide for the Oscars. Among the tips in the toolkit are wearing vintage and choosing textiles from natural sources such as hemp, linen, and wool.
“Our mission is to expand the way sustainability is considered, the perception that it can be accessible and culturally relevant,” Samata says.
BLACK PEARL spent most of January organizing wildfire relief efforts. In partnership with the Collidescope Foundation, a Pasadena-based nonprofit that works to support social-impact organizations, the agency set up a distribution center where nearly 100 volunteers gathered inventory from brands and created care packages to distribute to families. Brands such as House of Amma, Deborah Lindquist, Proclaim, and MIRTH donated a range of clothing items, including business attire for people who needed to get back to the office.
Though BLACK PEARL is no longer running the distribution center, the organization continues to connect with groups such as Support + Feed and LIVE NATION to distribute clothing items.
Samata hopes that the wildfire response opens people’s eyes about what can be done to combat climate change even when there isn’t an immediate disaster. After the fires, many organizations were able to spring into action, proving, she says, that climate action doesn’t need to be slow, and red tape isn’t much of an excuse.
Eight million tons of textile waste are generated in the U.S. each year, and the fashion industry accounts for about 10% of global carbon emissions. Excess stock, a result of fast-changing trends and inaccurate predictions about demand for certain items, accounts for an average of 20% of fashion brands’ production. These unsold items are often incinerated or sent to the landfill. BLACK PEARL’s clothing donation effort, Samata says, helped brands rethink what could be done with their excess inventory to both limit climate impact and support those affected by climate disasters.
This initiative was very much in line with what BLACK PEARL regularly does: educating fashion brands about how to put sustainability into practice. The organization creates curriculum for a range of clients, including Cambridge University’s Center for Sustainable Leadership and students at design colleges around the world. The organization also hosts workshops to make sustainability accessible. Through education, BLACK PEARL aims to reinforce the idea that “waste is only waste if you waste it,” Samata says.
Samata was heartened by the fashion industry’s eagerness to collaborate for wildfire relief. The fashion industry can be cliquey and competitive, she says, but after the fires, people were ready to put everything else aside in order to help their community. All the brands she reached out to were enthusiastic about joining the effort and were willing to share resources and relationships. “It was all very ego aside, eco first, and we need more of that,” she says.
Samata hopes that the wildfire response opens people’s eyes about what can be done to combat climate change even when there isn’t an immediate disaster. After the fires, many organizations were able to spring into action, proving, she says, that climate action doesn’t need to be slow, and red tape isn’t much of an excuse.
“If you can change when there’s a disaster,” she says, “I feel like you can change when there is not a disaster.”
