ABOUT SEW IMPACT
Building the Future of Sewing Economies
SEW IMPACT is a global fashion entrepreneurship center for impact-driven ventures.
We believe sewing is more than a craft or fashion category. It is an economic ecosystem—one that connects entrepreneurs, designers, manufacturers, educators, suppliers, technology, workforce, infrastructure, and communities.
The Fashion Innovation Hub is SEW IMPACT’s global community and programming platform for emerging and impact-driven fashion businesses.
The Hub provides access to education, industry expertise, collaboration, and shared resources designed to help entrepreneurs move from ideas to action.
Learn. Connect. Build. Grow.
FROM AN ABANDONED FACTORY TO A NEEDLE TRADES DISTRICT
SEW IMPACT’s work extends beyond education and programming.
In Baltimore, our work helped transform an abandoned garment factory into a renewed 20,000+ square-foot center for the needle trades.
The Needle Trades District brings together the history, skills, equipment, businesses, entrepreneurs, and infrastructure of Baltimore’s garment industry while creating space for its next generation.
It demonstrates what is possible when we do more than preserve industrial history—we reactivate it.
WHY SEW IMPACT
Founded in 2021 by Stacy Stube, SEW IMPACT is grounded in more than two decades of experience across luxury fashion, manufacturing, entrepreneurship, and education in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Stacy’s career includes work with internationally recognized fashion houses including Burberry, Alexander McQueen, Hugo Boss, Diane von Furstenberg, and Gucci. In 2013, she founded Elsa Fitzgerald, a social impact-driven fashion company in Bali, Indonesia, serving luxury clients across Asia, Australia, North America, and Europe.
After returning to Baltimore, Stacy served as Head of Innovation at Fashions Unlimited, one of the city’s last garment manufacturers. There, she witnessed firsthand the decline of the people, knowledge, equipment, and infrastructure that once supported Baltimore’s garment industry.
That experience led to a fundamental question:
What happens when an industry loses the people, knowledge, and infrastructure that built it?
SEW IMPACT was created to help build the answer.
Stacy holds a Master’s degree in Fashion Entrepreneurship & Innovation from the London College of Fashion where she studied on a joint New Creative Ventures program with London Business School. She is also pursuing a Doctorate in Public Administration, with research focused on fashion entrepreneurship and social innovation.
Her work brings together fashion, entrepreneurship, innovation, education, and economic development to help preserve valuable industry knowledge while creating new opportunities for the future.
WHAT ARE SEWING ECONOMIES?
Sewing Economies are the interconnected people, businesses, institutions, infrastructure, knowledge, and resources that make sewing and sewn-product industries possible.
They include the full ecosystem—from design and entrepreneurship to manufacturing, education, technology, workforce, supply chains, and community infrastructure.
SEW IMPACT works to strengthen these connections and help communities understand, activate, and grow the economies that surround sewing.