Carly Ridloff: Making Style Sustainable (And Smart)

Carly Ridloff marches to the beat of her own fashion parade. She is showing others that they don’t have to choose between looking great and making conscientious choices. Rather, she has built a circular model for clothing that centers on community and carefully chosen pieces.

For a while now, many women have felt like they are facing a tough choice: stick with personal style or commit to more ethical shopping, even if it means buying what isn’t “you.” But the founder and CEO of The Exchange Project is finding a solution by creating a platform where the community is able to keep high-quality clothes in circulation longer while also making buying pre-owned items feel like a high-end experience.

Exchanging Waste For Whimsy

Carly’s motivation is deeply personal. After learning about the fashion industry’s profound environmental impact from documentary films, her view on waste changed completely. Still, her love for clothes remained. The Exchange Project emerged from this struggle, a philosophy that women should be able to maintain their values without giving up their aesthetic.

What started as a simple, friendly clothing swap has grown into a full-service resale system, complete with in-person events, personalized showroom visits, and a curated online store. Carly built the company herself and handles everything from setting prices and managing the inventory to developing the brand and the community it serves. And despite being a smart “girl boss” in business, she is still fueled by a deep understanding of how people feel about their closets and what shapes how they shop, sell, and define themselves.

The Exchange Project is unique in that it was built as a cultural brand first, not just another place to buy and sell used clothes. Carly knew that for resale to become the norm in fashion, it had to look and feel appealing. She resurfaced the look of the “secondhand shop” by making every detail from the pieces she selects to the events she hosts feel deliberate and desirable. Her model isn’t one of resale as a reluctant option but a smart, stylish, and empowering personal choice.

A Fashion-Forward Future

The turning point in Carly’s mission came after a disappointing experience with a major consignment platform. After selling an item, she received a payment of just four dollars. It showed that sellers weren’t getting a fair deal, that middlemen’s fees were undermining good business, and the resale system needed an upgrade to better serve women with quality, often unworn, items. Thus, she founded The Exchange Project on the idea that moving these items between people who can appreciate them can be a profitable and meaningful venture while also breaking away from the current (and painful) linear fashion cycle of manufacturing clothes only for them to wind up in landfills.

But Carly’s vision extends well beyond just the sale. “I’ve always had high standards for how I dress and how I curate my life,” Carly confesses. “I realized there had to be a better way, one that didn’t require people to sacrifice style in order to live consciously.” She sees her work as the intersection of business, sustainability, and personal growth, and her efforts have landed her on the frontlines of mindful consumption and purpose-driven business.

For Carly Ridloff, the future of fashion is one where clothes are thoughtfully chosen, reused, and appreciated by the community. The Exchange Project is making her dream a reality by showing that the finest fashion of tomorrow is not defined by the waste of today.

BDG Media newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.