Annabelle Kajbaf (Photo by Margot Judge) Annabelle Azadé Kajbaf has spent over a decade reporting on fashion trends around the world. As a renowned fashion expert and journalist, her style virtuosity tends to stand out amongst most in the news media (who often only pay attention to fashion if it involves a red carpet or fad). As a fashion journalist in Hollywood, the spotlight is always on.
Annabelle (as she prefers to be called in the media) has an exquisite eye for style. For her interview with the Journal she was clad in a black beret, a green, cowgirl-style shirt adorned with two stitched hearts. On her wrist was a colorful and treasured bracelet. It was an unusually cold day in Los Angeles, so she excused her little dog Bisou for wearing a Hanukkah sweater in February.
The 34-year-old Paris native has reported on many facets of fashion over an illustrious career. As a talented writer and discerning editor, Annabelle scoffs at the word “career” to refer to her life’s work. She prefers to call it her “love story” between fashion and writing. She’s been immersed in the fashion worlds of where she’s lived: Tel Aviv, London, Bangkok and New York. And after half a decade working in Los Angeles, Annabelle has become one of the go-to reporters when it comes to fashion sustainability. Although she was born and raised in France, writing feature-length news in English is a non-issue for Annabelle — she’s been speaking it since she was 9. Her writing is succinct and unembellished. Her interviewing style is sharp, short and curious.
“Fashion sustainability to me means that it’s the opposite of fast fashion — it’s something that is ideally built to last because it’s helping people and the environment,” Annabelle explained to the Journal. “A sustainable brand incorporates something that was used before and impacts humans in positive ways.”
A 2018 study by McKinsey & Company reported that “the fashion industry accounts for around 4% emissions globally, equivalent to the combined annual greenhouse gas emissions of France, Germany and the United Kingdom.” The same report found that over 70% of these emissions are from “energy-intensive raw material production, preparation and processing, and that “the remaining 30% are generated by downstream activities such as transport, packaging, retail operations, usage and end of use.”
Fashion sustainability is becoming more and more en vogue amongst manufacturers. Some environmentally-conscious figures in the fashion industry are even urging the Biden Administration to appoint a “Fashion Czar” to fast-track addressing the issues.
Annabelle is quick to list fashion industry leaders who are excelling in incorporating sustainability in their fashion brand: Danit Peleg and Inbal Dror in Israel, Marita Moreno in Portugal, Kaiane Designs the United Arab Emirates. Here in the United States, the first leader in sustainable fashion that came to mind for Annabelle was outdoor clothing brand Patagonia.
It was “one of the mainstream ignitions of what sustainable fashion is all about,” Annabelle said. “[Patagonia] also became a social status thing because it’s also super expensive. But at the end of the day, I feel like they kind of sparked that part of consciousness for people who didn’t know what sustainable fashion was.”
The list went on at a rapid pace, which helps to explain why her expertise is so often in demand. She was once a member of the United Nations Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, which works to engage the fashion industry “to accelerate action in support of the sustainable development goals.” She has also been a speaker at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, participated in panel discussions at New York Fashion Week and was a featured speaker at the Talent Land Conference in Guadalajara, Mexico. Her influence was recently covered by Harper’s Bazaar.
She explained some of the lesser-known practices in fashion sustainability. Around the world, there are brands hiring women who were trafficked, women with babies, women who do not know how to read and write and giving them jobs because they have very special know-how on weaving, for example.
“They’re going to be helped financially to sustain their family and help the environment by using sustainable methods including using dead stock, upcycled fabrics and plastics from the ocean,” Annabelle said.
Annabelle traces her love for fashion and journalism to when she was 15 years old while growing up only a short walk from the Eiffel Tower.
Blogs were a budding medium at the time, and Annabelle maintained a popular one chronicling the “worst dressed” contest results each month. “I knew I was falling in love with fashion because in high school, I was doing a monthly contest of the worst dressed people. It was a satirical thing,” Annabelle said, reiterating that all of the contestants were willfully participating. “Every month, from sophomore to senior year, I organized the contest. It actually took a lot of work because you had to be the tackiest possible — you had to mismatch the worst fabrics together, the worst textures together, the worst colors together. It was hilarious. You had to have good taste to do it because you had to know what was right and what was … not.”
This made the future journalist a de facto leader amongst her classmates in the fashion and written arts. Little did Annabelle know then that she’d become one of the foremost expert voices on the proliferation of sustainable fashion.
From there, Annabelle graduated from Université Paris-Sorbonne where she studied English, Spanish and German. She earned advanced degrees from the prestigious Centre de Formation des Journalistes de Paris (Paris Journalist Training Center) in 2010. Annabelle even earned a music mixing and producing degree from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Her first job was as a reporter at the publication Rue89, started by former journalists from the newspaper,Libération. She moved to Bangkok, Thailand where she reported for the famed London lifestyle magazine,Monocle. There, Annabelle reported as an on-air radio English-language reporter, covering one of the first Fashion Weeks in the city’s history. That would lead to a web television gig at Bangkok 101. During her time in Bangkok, Annabelle would learn about the subset of the fashion industry that would pique her interest most — sustainable fashion.
“I saw that sustainable fashion was already a thing in some Southeast Asian countries,” Annabelle said. “I knew this would definitely be a good historical angle, but I had no idea how to talk about it. But new people were not very interested in it. So I started writing about this, which led to a huge opportunity to be a TV presenter in Israel for i24NEWS.”
It was after moving to Israel that Annabelle really hit her stride—and hasn’t slowed since.
“I had my own segment about fashion in tech,” Annabelle said. “You know, Israel is known as ‘startup nation,’ so I started interviewing people and doing video packages about 3D printed fashion and how technology in Israel is reshaping the fashion industry around the world.”
Her portfolio goes way beyond the fashion sustainability scene.
She covered London Fashion Week for the Associated Press. Annabelle also covered counterterrorism and politics in Paris for Buzzfeed. She reported on Tel Aviv’s Fashion and nightlife for Le Parisien. She wrote for the Fashion Network, the biggest B2B magazine in all of Europe, reporting on the latest from Dior, Agnès b., Yohji Yamamoto and many others. She interviewed actress Abigail Spencer for Cosmopolitan, and K-pop boy band P1Harmony for Bazaar.
The Journal humbly recommends reading Annabelle’s Tablet piece, “The Future of Fashion is Jewish.”)
As the West Coast correspondent for Acualité Juive (Jewish News), she can be seen all around Los Angeles. And for nearly two years, she has also worked as the West Coast correspondent for Bayard Presse, a 153-year-old French publishing company.
All roads still lead Annabelle back to sustainability in fashion.
After a pause, shrug and a sigh, Annabelle lamented that there are too many clothing manufacturers that are still using toxic chemical dyes and dumping them in the oceans, harming humans and animals up and down the food chain. She went off on how millions of workers are being harmed while weaving, hemming and mixing — and that too many influential brands who have the power to do better … aren’t. Some dyes have led to a high rate of cancers concentrated in manufacturing communities throughout Southeast Asia. There’s few supply chain checks, which leads to child labor and other inhumane labor practices.
“The idea is really that fashion is fun from the outside, but inside fashion is a science,” Annabelle said. “It’s extremely serious. You have to be very thorough — your work and reputation are everything. It will eventually come back to you like a boomerang.”
And in her home base in Los Angeles, Annabelle sees many brands putting an emphasis on sustainable fashion including Reformation (a favorite of Blake Lively and Meghan Markle) and Summersalt (a size-inclusive swimsuit brand).
“I also love to wear Nandanie ties — an iconic women’s luxury tie brand that sources its materials from upscale brands with excess upcycled couture fabrics,” Annabelle said.
But there’s a particular brand that Annabelle thinks stands out amongst them, the luxury designer Eileen Fisher.
“Most of the time when people think about sustainable fashion, they think about hippie boho people who spit fire at the circus,” she said. “But I’m so happy to be a fashion journalist in Los Angeles because in the past five years, I feel like there’s been a switch in consciousness in American consumers that sustainable can be fun. And it’s not only about fashion, it is also sustainable furniture, getting more conscious with your car, gas, carbon emissions, your food and everything. Sustainable fashion has become a part of a movement of not only consuming like we did and our parents did in the 1990s, but maybe you buy less, but you buy better. With Eileen Fisher, I think she is to me one of the pioneers of showing that sustainability can be elegant and fun. It’s not just like, ‘oh, I got this t-shirt because it follows the guidelines that I impose on myself.’ It’s pretty, it’s high fashion and it’s good for the planet. So it’s a win-win for all.”
Another facet of Annabelle’s writing, beyond her expertise in fashion, revolves around her Jewish faith. In fact, one of her earliest professional experiences came at age 17 after traveling to Auschwitz-Birkenau with fellow high school students—a trip for young adults of all faiths to raise awareness about the Holocaust. Prior to this time, Annabelle’s family did not practice Judaism nor did they connect her with the stories of their Jewish ancestors who survived the Holocaust.
Upon returning home, Annabelle won a writing and art contest through the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris. The challenge was to write something inspired by a philosopher. She chose Primo Levi as her inspiration — he was a Holocaust survivor and author of “Se questo è un uomo” (“If This Is A Man”). Annabelle’s winning submission, “Refuser Notre Consentement” (“Refusing Our Permission”) featured photos from the Auschwitz and a vivid reaction written by the young Annabelle:
(Translated from French)
Corpses, similar sordid stories, I saw nothing, knew nothing. Today, people lie down and assume themselves: the mirror faces a reality, the whirlwind becomes dizzying.
The implacable truth is these two mirrors facing each other: them and us, novices of all kinds.
No matter how much we search, try, cry, listen, no one knows except the survivors, how much death has been present.
Pull yourself together, pull yourself together, hang yourself, face the facts: if your family has been there, has walked in this hostile snow, you have even more reasons to be there. I didn’t know them, so what? They are part of me unconsciously and that’s where they come in: the blocks, the smell that I don’t know, the screams that I don’t hear.
You, shut up, without roofs they slept, without them they came back. You leave a part of your soul when you lose a part of your body, that’s for sure.
I’m ashamed to feel involved, yet it’s really Humanity in question?!
And without any ethnocentrism, I refuse. Say no, no and no and act. Here is all that we have to make the most deaf among us understand and hear that a man remains a man, even if he is emaciated alive, dead, undead or monstrous.
Feeling that we can all be guilty is probably the best blackmail of all.
Her words hung in the Paris Shoah Museum for a year. Annabelle still treasures the grainy pre-iPhone digital photo of the exhibition. Prior to the trip to Poland, she already had Jewish friends and felt some connection with the Paris Jewish community. But from then on, she fully embraced her Jewish roots.
“Jewish culture has so much in terms of stories and storytelling, which is I think why I ended up being a journalist,” Annabelle said. “I love stories, I just love listening to them. And I also love talking, telling and sharing stories. So it’s like give and take, really. And I feel like going through the Holocaust Memorial [in Paris] really brought me back to the core of a story that was kind of hidden in my family.”
She has lived three out of four hemispheres on the planet, yet never forgets where her roots are, nor where her boots have been. When asked to generalize the fashion vibe of Tel Aviv, she said that their fashion prioritizes comfort.
She says London is “very much written in the 1980s, with retro plaids, the rainy leathers and the fierce looks inspired by rock music and super edgy, glam and desperate romantic identity.”
Bangkok, Annabelle remembers, is very influenced by Japanese fashion, with an affinity for vintage 1970s chiffon dresses, but also futuristic looks which are inspired by dystopian mangas.
She sees New York as “the most visionary city.” What stands out in Los Angeles? Annabelle said that Los Angeles is the sportswear fashion capital of the world.
And of course, Annabelle can never forget Paris. She characterized her native town’s fashion motifs as “always looking back to the 18th century for their fashion influence — its everlasting beauty is very set in its own mind.”
And that’s what separates Annabelle’s vast experience in fashion reporting worldwide: her mind is wide open. She said that there’s rampant misconceptions that fashion only promotes and glorifies beauty in old shapes.
“It’s the intentions that matter, and it doesn’t always mean fancy,” she said. In that moment, Annabelle reflected on her keen awareness for how far she has come over the course of her long and continued “love story” with fashion and journalism.
“Life and love are stronger than death,” Annabelle said. “You have to be super strong in life because you never know what life’s going to throw at you. But having a positive attitude is the strongest ally, and it’s the factor that will bring you the stronger chance of meeting people who are happy. Surround yourself with people who are trying to make a change. My life is a mission to leave a legacy for people to change things for the better.”
You can follow Annabelle Azadé Kajbaf’s fashion reporting via Instagram www.instagram.com/annabellekajbaf or her website www.annabellekajbaf.com.
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