Behind the Story: Sustainable Fashion Line Her Fruit Launched by a Cal Poly Student

Scrolling through instagram these days is the perfect way to see what people are up to during the pandemic. I was going through mine one day and saw that one of the people I was following, Malia Sine, had launched her own fashion business ‘Her Fruit.’ Immediately, I followed the account knowing that I could come back to it and check out her website because it might be story worthy.

From her posts alone, I knew that the clothing she was making was unconventional. I went through her website and read her mission statement. 

“Malia Sine launched her label showcasing her one-of-a-kind wearable art lovingly made by hand in 2020 at the age of 21 after returning from Italy. She was inspired by the up and coming designers who debuted their latest collections at Milan Fashion Week and knew that was her calling. Channeling the whimsical world she dreamed up as a child, her vision behind the brand is to create her very own fashion house full of couture-esque pieces while doing her best to honor Mother Earth. She wants to change the world of fashion by curating unique vintage pieces and deconstructing the materials to create a dreamy universe of sustainable opulence.”

I knew that this brand was special. Not only was it sustainable, hand-made, one-of-a-kind and gender inclusive, it was also launched by a current Cal Poly student. I decided to reach out to her to see if she would be interested in doing an interview. She replied almost immediately, and Grace Nielsen and I set up a date. We knew that there were many angles this story could take, so we wanted to make sure to ask as many questions as possible during our interview to get the most whole-rounded view of her business. 

We conducted a recorded Zoom interview during which Malia explained to us that her main mission for launching her brand, apart from her love of fashion and creativity, was to educate her generation on sustainability. This was something that she passionately explained to us, and we could see that she was definitely basing her business around being as sustainable as possible. We also wanted her to talk about launching the business while finishing school as well as being in a pandemic, to understand the reasons she decided to do so and the difficulties that came with it. 

“My main message is sustainability,” Sine said. “ I’m trying to teach our generation about what sustainability is, how to be sustainable, and how to boycott fast fashion. I created something of my own to share with my friends and to teach people more about sustainability because I don’t really think it’s become an issue that people have heard about until very recently, myself included.”

Since Malia had been living at home and was about to relocate to LA, we weren’t able to get the footage for the video ourselves. Grace coached her over Zoom and through text to provide us with footage that we could use for the video element of our story. Since the Instagram page for Her Fruit was already very professional and appealing, we thought that a really great interactive addition to the story would be to add pictures from her instagram that she had posted. All the models are wearing Her Fruit in the posts and are posing in ways that are as avant-garde as the clothing itself.

“It was a bit hard at first not to have control over the footage,” Nielsen said. “I had an idea in my mind for what I wanted, and at first she didn’t send me everything I needed, so I had to make sure to really vocalize my needs for footage  for the video because I wanted it to represent her business in the best way possible. In the end it came together well.”

After the interview, we decided that the answers we got from Malia would be best represented in a Q & A format. That left leaving that readers with an introduction to the story that would really encapsulate Sine’s business and message without giving too much away before the Q & A segment of the story.

“I really wanted the lead to grab the readers and let them imagine the brand,” Abdollahi said. “Since it’s a fashion story, it’s so obviously visual. The video and interactives are super important, but I wanted to make sure that readers were hooked off the bat, and that they were eager to read on. I decided to go with a descriptive lead that introduced a few of her pieces to create intrigue for the readers.”  

Once that was done, the story easily came together. Occasionally we messaged Malia for a few questions and some footage, but we worked together to create a cohesive story that really represented Malia’s  business and mission as well as we could. Together, Grace and I shorted and edited Malia’s interview answers for length and clarity, and then we were able to upload the writing, videos, and interactives to WordPress and Trello for final review.

Overall, we felt that this story could be a breath of fresh air for readers because it was something that wasn’t completely about COVID. In contrast, it was the story of someone using this huge roadblock to their advantage to create a business. It was also very visually interesting with a great message that is very relevant, because sustainable fashion is becoming a lot more mainstream. We brought the impact of COVID into the story which added relevancy and newsworthiness. We are so happy with how the story came together and that we got the opportunity to share it.