Maheen Khan: Forging a New Path for Fashion in Bangladesh

From Her View

The media paints a very bleak picture of the garment industry in Bangladesh.

Today, I’m talking to someone who made it a life mission to change this and create a new narrative around ethical fashion in her home country: Maheen Khan.

To give a bit of context, Bangladesh is the second-largest individual country in the world for apparel manufacturing, second only to China.

The garment industry is the largest business in the country, and it has a history of disaster and mistreated, underpaid workers, exemplified in the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in April 2013, in which more than 1,000 garment workers lost their lives.

Maheen broke the mold when in 2017 she founded a sustainable fashion start-up called Monokrome, with the hope of offering Bangladeshi women in particular local fashion options that are tailored to their needs.

This episode is chock-full of wisdom about how to do intersectional work in fashion and the ways in which the industry has evolved to offer more opportunities to empower women.

You’ll hear about Maheen’s love for storytelling, why sustainability is so important in fashion, and the memories of moments in Dhaka that give her goosebumps. I hope you enjoy.