How ‘Atmos’ Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh Is Building a New Bridge Between Fashion and Climate

“I’m rooting for the style marketplace,” shares the editor-in-chief of the weather and lifestyle journal, “since inherent in its intent is also its ability to alter.”

In our extensive-working series “How I’m Creating It,” we converse to men and women creating a residing in the manner and magnificence industries about how they broke in and observed success.

In 2018, a publishing wunderkind named Willow Defebaugh was challenging at do the job in New York Metropolis, dwelling the editorial desire. In just 6 small years, the fashion editor had already clocked gigs at the likes of Vogue and GQ, climbed the masthead at V Journal and aided launch the U.S. version of French fashion glossy L’Officiel. She was at the top of their sport — but she was also nearing a breaking place.

Exhausted and burnt out, she suggests, Defebaugh was developing ever extra mindful of the techniques in which the trend business was — is — causing irreparable hurt to the planet we all share. She was ready to pack it up in the interest of other, extra secure imaginative pursuits when she was released to Jake Sargent, an entrepreneur who shared their need to tactic the local weather crisis from a placement of creativity and compassion.

In 2019, Atmos, a biannual publication bridging local climate and culture, debuted, its inaugural challenge that includes contributions from hefty-hitters like Yoko Ono and Ryan McGinley. Now, additional than 3 several years and 6 difficulties in, the system is more powerful than at any time with a voice solely unto its possess.

Atmos‘s tone, calculated and buoyant, is as noteworthy as its contents, which in any one problem operate the gamut from TikTok activists to forest ecology. It is reporting to be celebrated even despite of — or maybe, genuinely, in light-weight of — the gravity of the local weather disaster as it continues to unfurl. For Defebaugh, this is on par with their life’s get the job done.

“I generally arrive back again to the point that I will not feel, in our lifetimes, there’s going to be a day exactly where we’re like, ‘Well, we did it, we saved the planet,'” she claims. “It truly is lifelong work, and it’s not sustainable to be miserable for your whole life, so you have to discover house to also have pleasure. Vogue has the ability to do that by also producing space for this conversation.”

Tale continues

Forward, Defebaugh walks us as a result of their profession trajectory — from interning in Vogue‘s fashion closet to interviewing boundary-breaking researchers — and discusses how their identity as a trans lady has impacted the ways in which she views environmental action. Study on for the highlights.

Perspective the primary write-up to see embedded media.

What 1st intrigued you about the intersection of trend and local climate?

The commence of my vocation was additional on the fashion side of matters. When I 1st moved to New York, I commenced as an intern and then freelance assistant functioning at Vogue and GQ, and then at some point built my way downtown to V Journal, exactly where I was for about 5 many years.

Sustainability was generally a growing presence in my intellect. At any time given that I was a baby, character has been my safe position and exactly where I seem to for creative imagination and inspiration. And when I was nonetheless at V — this was again in 2016, 2017 — I felt like I needed to be undertaking much more with my working day-to-day storytelling. I was surrounded by so substantially creativeness, functioning with some of the most proficient photographers and writers and artistic directors, and I held contemplating to myself, ‘What would come about if we put all of this creativeness towards a topic issue we are not able to get adequate men and women to fork out notice to right now?’

When I was at V, I experienced began a column exactly where I was composing about sustainability, and it was creeping a lot more and more into my work, but I also felt a sense of intimidation. There is certainly a large amount of gatekeeping that transpires inside environmentalism, where by men and women feel like they have to be a fantastic environmentalist in buy to treatment about weather, and that’s just not the case. The reality is, we have to have a million imperfect activists, fairly than a few great activists, as the declaring goes. And so these who may well feel they’re section of the underlying brings about of the local climate disaster are the precise people today we need to have to get included. These are the people we need to meet where they are at and not insist they be great from the get-go, but just do the job toward how they can use their unique presents for this individual cause.

What lessons did you understand in that phase in your profession that you continue to carry with you now?

This may well be considerably of a cliched solution, but the word that 1st comes to intellect is perseverance. Vogue publishing is so cutthroat in a lot of ways, and it does breed a selected sense of resolve. I use that instantly to my do the job in the local weather space, which also needs a wonderful offer of perseverance, but in a incredibly diverse way.

One particular of the issues I regularly uncovered doing work at V was how to make it get the job done, so to communicate. No a single ever gave up. It was like, ‘We’re going to consider to make the story come about, and we are going to attempt to make it as impressive as it maybe can be.’ Building remedies and staying resourceful in how we believe about answers is something that has stayed with me throughout my total vocation.

In an industry that’s so cutthroat, it can be pretty simple to shed sight of your values. Which is anything I acquired for myself, how to usually be your individual ethical compass and to make positive you happen to be not sacrificing
that. And Atmos, many years and yrs afterwards, was born out of that perception of becoming a values-driven publication. I uncovered it the hard way in some circumstances, but that was seriously a must have in my occupation.

How did the Atmos possibility occur about?

It came about at the great time for me. I experienced just remaining V and was doing work on the U.S. launch of L’Officiel, and a single of my colleagues there set me in contact with Jake Sargent, who’s my co-founder at Atmos and who stated he was genuinely fascinated in starting a publication that seemed at the intersection of local climate and culture. That’s where by my head had been, as properly.

I was in a area of total burnout, soon after paying most of my twenties performing at different style publications. I felt completely fatigued and was like, ‘Maybe publishing is not ideal for me.’ And then when Jake and I satisfied for the very first time, we were so creatively aligned. It felt like a no-brainer that we have been likely to do the job together on this. So we made the decision to start the magazine and just see where by it would acquire us.

To be sincere, I was definitely stunned. I mean, the 1st difficulty we had Ryan McKinley and Yoko Ono and all of these distinctive photographers and artists who, even at that issue in my vocation, I was not positive I, or we, would be able to provide into the conversation. And what we identified much more than anything at all is that people today just wanted to aid and lend their voices to this trigger. I feel so lucky that we are in a position to operate with the photographers and writers and poets and artists we do, simply because they truly make the journal what it is.

What do you hope to complete in your role as editor-in-main?

My intention, truly, is to alter people’s minds. I usually occur again to a quotation that evokes so substantially of the do the job that we do, from “The Overstory” by Richard Powers. He states that the finest arguments in the environment cannot transform a person’s intellect — only a very good tale can do that. And that’s what claims it all.

I feel the climate crisis, for so prolonged, has been purely knowledge-driven, and in environmental journalism particularly. Greta’s story, why kids are putting and not heading to school because what is actually the level if you you should not have a livable potential? Which is a tale that gets you in your coronary heart. And that’s what I am passionate about doing, telling stories that occur from an psychological position that genuinely reaches people. Simply because that is what storytelling need to do. It should attraction to us in our humanity and who we are as human beings.

If you were to go by way of the highlight reel of your time with Atmos, what would be the massive times that stand out to you?

In Situation 4, I experienced a discussion with the musician Maggie Rogers, who happens to be a superior close friend of mine, and that tale improved how I think about the strategies of formatting stories. We experienced this discussion through the pandemic about slowing down the innovative approach and confronting the burnout a ton of people today had been going through. The images we finished up functioning with for the story had been these beautiful photographs of glaciers in Alaska by a photographer named Daniel Shea to go with this thought of a glacial pace. I like approaching stories from a entirely distinct standpoint.

Grimes, the artist, is on the cover of our new problem in conversation with the sci-fi writer Nnedi Okorafor about science fiction and the spirituality of know-how. That was this kind of a potent conversation to me simply because they chat a whole lot about how we’re all turning out to be a lot more and more related. Grimes employs the analogy of all of us being neurons in a supercomputer, and that is what the online is, right? We’re all battling with being aspect of the exact thing, which is the human race. But to hear it from this tech perspective was these types of an appealing consider on a strategy that we now labored with. A journal ought to challenge people’s views and get them to feel about things from a various angle, and that story challenged my very own imagining in a whole lot of fascinating ways.

And then there are all of the scientific legends: Jane Goodall Dr. Sylvia Earle Dr. Suzanne Simard, a groundbreaking feminine scientist who discovered in Western science that trees are interconnected, some thing Indigenous science has identified that for a extended time. I just geek out about the actuality that we can have musicians and artists and then also have researchers and authors.

There’s still pretty a high accessibility barrier that surrounds conversations of local weather, especially in the manner space in which, for buyers, sustainability is often introduced from a location of disgrace. What do you believe that the industry wants to do to reduced those people barriers?

I like this concern so a lot, simply because I imagine it can be accurate: Persons have this immobilizing feeling that we have triggered this, and the amount of disgrace that creates is so paralyzing that it triggers a great deal of men and women to turn absent. The actuality is that we do all have specific footprints, of training course. And at the same time, numerous people never even comprehend that the plan of calculating your carbon footprint was an creation by big oil. It was a PR tactic and it worked brilliantly simply because you obtained the entire populace to really feel so extremely ashamed to the level wherever they did not want to truly have interaction in earning meaningful modify.

It truly is hugely liberating when you start to comprehend that just 100 companies are accountable for 71% of all world wide emissions. But at the identical time, I am to some degree cautious because in the local weather room, the discussion has just swung in that way, you know? We need to have unique transform and we need to have systemic modify. Knowledge that statistic will not give us cost-free rein to behave how we want to behave and use as considerably as we want to use. Almost everything demands to happen on an personal level and a collective stage, and which is how systemic transform actually takes place.

With that in intellect, how can trend-minded people today who have not still participated in local weather action — and who are maybe feeling demoralized about the point out of the local climate disaster — best get concerned?

This is the place I’m passionate about, of course, advocating for systemic improve. If there is a regional protest, go to your neighborhood protest. If there is a way you can connect with folks in your group, do that, for the reason that activism does operate. But also, individual adjust is essential in hunting at the position you perform in your particular ecosystems. For me, it was like, ‘Okay, I know how to edit journals, so how can I make a journal that’s about these troubles?’

On a additional personal stage, as a trans lady, I assume a good deal about transformation, ideal? This is a massive topic in my lifestyle. And I feel about that by the lens of weather activism and local weather justice. I know that transformation is possible, and I know that human beings are able of reworking and altering. I know for the reason that I am dwelling it and I see i
t just about every day. I see it in the numerous trans individuals who are in my daily life. It can be tricky and it can be brutal, and there are elements that can be complicated. But it’s also impressive.

I am not stating I come to feel optimistic each individual day, but a lot of my optimism does appear from that personal spot of, ‘I know that this is achievable for the reason that I have lived it.’ If I can adjust, other people today can improve, and if we can change, then our species can modify. That is why, with Atmos, we frequently notify stories from a point of view of identity, since identification does shape how we see the entire world.

When you assume about the potential of vogue and local climate, where do you imagine it likely?

I am going to refer to a story that Elizabeth Cline wrote for our third issue. The aim was this strategy that, maybe, fashion isn’t a thing actual physical — that manner is an energy. And she talked about this idea that stylists of the future will assist individuals work with their personal wardrobes. And I loved that thought because it received to the main of what vogue is or ought to be.

Like so a lot of men and women, I was interested in style since I think it really is an unbelievable resource for self-expression, which is an vitality. And that excites me a whole lot due to the fact just one of the principle rules within science is that vitality can’t be developed or destroyed, only transformed. And not to provide it all back to transformation, but trend is also a power of transformation. It will help individuals adjust how they see on their own and how they existing themselves. I’m rooting for the trend marketplace, mainly because inherent in its purpose is also its potential to alter. Vogue does rework, and for that reason I consider the marketplace could change.

What advice would you give to someone just setting up out in the field seeking to observe a equivalent occupation route?

Stick to the threads. If you had told me when I was in my early 20s in New York that I would at some place be founding a publication that seems to be at the intersection of local weather and culture, that correctly weaves all of these unique areas of my vocation into a person factor? I wouldn’t have even recognized what to do with that info.

But which is not how matters come about. They happen one thread at a time. I arrived in this article simply because I was fascinated in fashion, and the a lot more I was interested in style, the extra I was interested in the techniques vogue was unsustainable. And I followed that.

I imagine of all of the times wherever I imagined, ‘Well, I will not know exactly where this is automatically likely to lead, but it feels like the proper subsequent issue for me to do,’ and I think about how essential all of that was. All the odd employment, the internships, the freelance assignments, they all taught me distinct things. And I’m just so happy that I reported certainly to them at the time and that I trustworthy I would be ready to weave them into anything someday.

This job interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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