Born just outside Stockholm in 2000, Samantha Esfandiari has quickly emerged as a powerful new voice in the Swedish fashion industry. One that merges skilled craftsmanship with a deep commitment to sustainability and circular design. As a designer, entrepreneur, and educator, she is shaping a bold vision of what fashion can become when creativity is paired with responsibility. This became the starting point of a journey that would soon lead her away from traditional industry frameworks, toward becoming both a changemaker and entrepreneur.
As Esfandiari entered the fashion world she was confronted with a reality marked by overproduction, waste, and widespread disregard for the environmental impact of fashion. This realization became crucial. She began immersing herself in sustainable fashion, circular economy principles, and alternative production models and quickly understood that she could not continue creating within a system built on disposability. Out of that came a vision for a different way forward: one where fashion could be both imaginative and responsible.
Fueled by this vision, Samantha has since dedicated herself entirely to sustainable fashion. Her work is grounded in the belief that fashion must become part of the climate solution and not a catalyst for the crisis. Through design, education, and entrepreneurship, she is building new platforms for change, where each garment and initiative is rooted in environmental responsibility.
After stepping outside traditional industry norms, Esfandiari began working as a freelance designer. She supported emerging brands in developing their first collections, always with sustainability at the core. By guiding them through circular methods and environmentally conscious production solutions, she helped lay the foundation for more responsible fashion businesses from the ground up.
It soon became clear that knowledge of sustainable fashion was often lacking even among established professionals. “Many wanted to do the right thing, but didn’t know how,” she recalls. This insight sparked her next major initiative: RE:WORK CAMP.
RE:WORK CAMP is an educational platform founded by Esfandiari in collaboration with the Värmeverket foundation, created to equip both industry professionals and young creatives with practical tools to work sustainably in fashion. The course blends theory and hands-on practice, focusing on circular design, upcycling, material literacy, and business models rooted in responsibility and innovation. Participants work directly with dead stock and second-hand textiles while exploring strategies to build collections and companies with the environment at heart.
More than a training program, RE:WORK CAMP serves as an incubator for the next generation of sustainable fashion creatives – a space for learning, collaboration, and exchange. Through workshops, lectures, and mentorship from industry experts, it offers an environment where creativity and environmental awareness converge. The aim is not just to inform, but to inspire new ways of thinking and help redefine how the next generation will shape the fashion industry.
With RE:WORK CAMP, Samantha Esfandiari solidifies her position as a designer, educator, and agent of change. She sees the platform as a vital tool in accelerating the shift toward a circular fashion system, where conscious choices, reuse, and sustainability are the starting point not the afterthought.
At the same time, Esfandiari is now launching her next major venture: her own fashion label, ESFANDIARI.
The brand ESFANDIARI is the result of years of reflection, research, and hands-on creation. It is both a response to a throwaway industry and a statement that style does not have to come at the expense of the planet. Every garment under the brand is crafted exclusively from surplus materials, dead stock textiles from factories and companies that would otherwise have been discarded or destroyed. By breathing new life into these resources, Samantha Esfandiari creates unique, handmade, one-of-a-kind pieces with soul, story, and substance.
All production takes place in-house, in Esfandiari’s own studio from first stitch to finished garment. She personally handles the entire process: design, pattern-making, and sewing. This way of working ensures each piece carries a personal signature, crafted with care and precision, completely outside the traditional fashion supply chain.
Production is entirely material-driven. There are no standard collections, no mass editions. Each garment is created based on what materials are available in the moment, making every creation unique in both form and story. Some pieces may exist in only one or two examples, a deliberate counterpoint to the anonymity of mass production.
“Only three of this jacket were made and I’m one of the three people who has it. That’s the kind of thinking I want to encourage,” says Samantha Esfandiari.
With ESFANDIARI, Samantha sets out to redefine luxury. Not as a matter of price or volume, but of story, value, and purpose. In her vision the future of fashion is small-scale, circular, and deeply personal. A reflection of identity but also of responsibility.
Samantha Esfandiari represents a new kind of entrepreneurship within fashion. By combining design, education, and activism, she proves that change is not only necessary but possible.
