Stanislava Pavlova is the founder of Shimani Smart Skincare. For more than 16 years she worked in pharmacy and cosmetics. She has often travelled to Africa and Asia and this has helped her become familiar with many local beauty products and ingredients. Ethiopia became Stanislava Pavlova's second home and every time she brought local ingredients to prepare cosmetic products, for her dearest and relatives in strict accordance with the Ethiopian recipes. She gave an interview to Cantarelli at the Business Lady Excellence Annual Awards 2024.
"Every time I choose a dress for myself, I'm looking for the quality, not the price, because I want to make sure that, like in my childhood, we wear the clothes for years and I don't want to throw the dress or the t-shirt the next year and buy a new one. Um, I have clothes which I wear for years because I'm a very environmentally friendly person."
"I care for the environment and I think I even have clothes which my father and my mother wore. And they're branded clothing which is still fine to wear. So this means in the past, we could wear these clothes. For a few generations could wear these clothes.
Now our world is piled up with clothes, and not only with clothes but with so much stuff.
We need to care more for the environment. Definitely.
I think the young generation will support sustainable fashion. And if they want more consumers, and also the Gen Z consumers are very environmentally friendly.
So sustainable brands will win more clients.
Definitely, there are dark sides to fast fashion. Also, like fast food, the world is piled up with clothes.
I aim to buy as little clothes as possible. I put stress on the quality because I saw how my wardrobe just was full of stuff I don't wear. I have friends who change their wardrobe every season and they just throw these clothes away.
We need to think more sustainably. The dark side is that first about the environment. We pollute the environment.
Then we know that in third-world countries, child labour is used to make these clothes so they can be cheap.
Also, for these clothes to be cheap, the materials used to make the fabric are toxic and not good for the environment.
I'm the founder of Shimani Smart Skincare, which is a Bulgarian cosmetics. Unfortunately, the cosmetic industry is not less pollutant, not smaller pollutant than the fashion industry.
Even I think the cosmetic industry is a bigger pollutant than the fashion industry because you can imagine all these billions of empty bottles, especially plastic ones. That's why we are constantly looking to find more sustainable.
We produce our products locally. We aim to source the ingredients locally so we can eliminate the carbon footprint. And in the future. We are now in search of sustainable packaging. It's hard to find, but we will do it slowly.
We will replace our bottles and our plastic jars with sustainable packaging. The consumers need to put this trend.
If they buy from sustainable fashion brands, if they buy from sustainable cosmetic brands, the manufacturers will be forced to manufacture sustainable clothes and cosmetics products, Stanislava Pavlova was categorical. /BGNES