VOGUE Runway reports— “Gabriela Hearst Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY NICOLE PHELPS FOR VOGUE Runway. Read Full Article.

It was a big Monday for women designers in Paris. Gabriela Hearst followed Sacai’s Chitose Abe and Marine Serre, and preceded Paula Canovas de Vas, and Nicky Zimmerman’s Zimmermann show. Five in a row must be some kind of record. If you ask Hearst, the scarcity of women designers in fashion is part of a long continuum, but it wasn’t always this way.

Hearst’s research into the subject of women’s inequality recently led her to the work of archeologist Marija Gimbutas, whose scholarly book, The Language of the Goddess, reveals that tens of thousands of years ago, aeons before any of the dominant world religions of today emerged, we were goddess worshippers, living in Earth-oriented, matriarchal societies. How did things go so wrong is a question we’re asking ourselves more and more lately. Hearst doesn’t have the answers but she likes prodding at sensitive subjects.

So she used some of the imagery of cave markings in Gimbutas’s book as decoration, spray painting them on shearling and embroidering black leather cords on a white dress. If the snaking lines look like the female sexual anatomy to you, you’re not wrong; Hearst pointed to illustrations of cave drawings depicting the same thing that date back to 30,000 B.C.

She’s built an earth-centered brand, all things being relative in this wildly wasteful industry. Among the notable developments on the responsible design front was the opening look, a coat that might be mistaken for shearling or fake fur, but is in fact silk. The snakeskin that came later was from INVERSA, a Florida company that ethically sources python skin from invasive Burmese snakes in the Everglades. And the denim dyed vibrant shades of yellow and lapis blue was made from 100% recycled cotton. Refurbing vintage handbags with new straps was a clever way to say “new is not always better.”

But, of course, newness is what a fashion show is about. Hearst’s experiments in that area included the leather woven to resemble snakeskin that she used on a bustier top and a midi skirt and the cashmere yarn knitted to look like the same thing on a pullover jacket. Her clothes are at their best when they’re close enough to touch.

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VOGUE reports— “KHAITE Pre-Fall 2025 Collection”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY NICOLE PHELPS FOR VOGUE. Read Full Article.

Catherine Holstein is opening her second Khaite store in Manhattan in a matter of days. Its Madison Avenue address shaped this pre-fall collection, at least in part. During a preview, she pointed to a crocodile bag (real not faux) and said her uptown customers have been requesting high-end pieces of the sort, though this one will be offered on a made-to-order basis only, “so there’s no wastage,” she explained. She’s also working with Inversa, a Florida company that ethically sources python skin from invasive Burmese snakes in the Everglades, and with artisans in Madagascar who hand make the summery woven totes with leather handles you see in these photos.

Holstein herself remains a downtown girl, and it’s her personal taste for fashions of the ’80s and ’90s and a broody palette that powers this brand. An oversized leather bomber with exaggerated epaulettes and pockets is exemplary here, while a t-shirt with a cartoon graphic shows off a looser, more playful aspect than we’ve seen from her. But the really interesting developments are the suits with collarless jackets and trim, slightly tapered trousers that look like they could go to Albany or Washington DC, or maybe the courthouse here in New York City. Not conservative per se, but buttoned-up in a surprising way.

For the evening we’re back below 14th Street again. Holstein’s long lean strapless dresses are designed with a front panel that slouches asymmetrically across the torso, like movable sculpture. These are more art crowd than power attorney. Another new addition this season is Khaite optical frames made in collaboration with Oliver Peoples.

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BRITISH VOGUE reports— “Can Ethical Exotics Ever Be Ethical? Gabriela Hearst Says Yes”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY EMILY CHAN FOR BRITISH VOGUE. Read Full Article.

“Exotic leathers are increasingly being phased out by the fashion industry, amid concerns about the inhumane treatment of animals. In recent years, the likes of Chanel, Burberry and Marc Jacobs have all banned the use of crocodile, snakeskin and ostrich leather in their products.

It may have come as a surprise, then, when Gabriela Hearst – known for her commitment to sustainable and ethically produced fashion – quietly introduced real python leather in her spring/summer 2025 collection, sourced from Florida-based materials company INVERSA. “I meet with start-ups all the time, but I was so impressed with what INVERSA is doing,” the designer, who has created a pump and sling-back flat using the leather, tells Vogue. “It’s a game-changer – the leathers are actually having a positive impact in these ecosystems.”

That’s because INVERSA’s exotic leathers come from invasive species – species that are otherwise causing extreme harm to the ecosystems in which they’re living. Its python leather, for example, is sourced from the Greater Everglades in Florida, where non-native pythons are reducing some native species populations by a shocking 90 per cent. According to the company, each INVERSA python hide can help protect up to 460 animals that each 13ft python consumes in its lifetime, as well as helping the survival chances of 39 endangered species.

When you have an invasive species that’s introduced into an ecosystem, there’s no evolutionary learnings that have evolved within the native population,” Aarav Chavda, co-founder and CEO of INVERSA, explains. That means that the prey don’t know that the invasive species are a threat to them, and the predators don’t know they’re potential prey – so the invasive species are free to “consume like crazy”. Given it’s primarily an issue caused by humans (by keeping pets that than escape into the wild, for example, or transporting animals by boat), Chavda considers it our responsibility to tackle the issue.

Along with invasive pythons, INVERSA also helps tackle the issue of invasive silverfin in the Mississippi river basin, and invasive lionfish in the Caribbean Sea. It was the latter that inspired Chavda to launch the company in the first place. “I’ve been diving my whole life, and I’ve been watching coral reefs die slowly in the most painful, dramatic death,” he reflects. “No one was doing anything about the invasive lionfish; they’re like the poster child for invasive species. They kill about 80 per cent of juvenile populations within five weeks of showing up on a coral reef.”

So far, INVERSA has culled 50,000 invasive species so far, in keeping with strict ethical standards, but has even bigger ambitions moving forward. “For us, it’s about getting to 500,000, getting to five million, because the problem is so much bigger than any of us realise,” Chavda says, noting that invasive species, which are linked with 60 per cent of species extinctions, are one of the top drivers of biodiversity decline on the planet.

While Hearst notes that there are some challenges when it comes to importing and exporting exotic leathers (which is why the brand’s python shoes will be direct-to-consumer to begin with), INVERSA – unlike many new-gen materials – is ready to scale up. “I think we will run out of shoes before we run out of problems, unfortunately,” Chavda says of the ability of its leathers to reach a mass audience. “It’s about bringing the message to as many people as possible, and letting them know there’s no trade-off here.”

Indeed, INVERSA offers the rare proposition that buying a shoe might actually be good for the planet, as well as turning the conversation about exotic leathers on its head. “We call ourselves ethical exotics for a reason,” Chavda concludes.“There’s few other ways to have that massive of an impact, [simply by] buying a shoe.”

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WWD reports— “Gabriela Hearst Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear: Summoning the Goddesses”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY BOOTH MOORE FOR WWD. Read Full Article.

“Speaking ahead of the show, Hearst was particularly proud of an eco-friendly material she was using for the first time on accessories — INVERSA Python, an “ethical exotic” that protects the biodiversity of the Florida Everglades by hunting the invasive species for use as a leather product.

There was something poetic about having the material crafted into her popular pointy Edwina pumps, letting goddess women slay snakes with every confident stride. “

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FINANCIAL TIMES reports— “Why leather from fishskin and fungi fibres are becoming the height of fashion”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY JESSICA RAWNSLEY FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES Read Full Article

“As an avid scuba diver, Aarav Chavda was dismayed to witness the slow demise of the coral reef off the coast near his hometown in Florida. Over the years, the reef’s kaleidoscopic colours vanished along with the ocean dwellers it sustained —buffeted by rising global temperatures, warmer oceans and heat stress/pollution – until one day the entire reef was desolate, resembling a ghostly underwater grave. But there was one creature that thrived: the lionfish.

First imported for aquariums, lionfish are an invasive species that decimate reef ecosystems in the Caribbean, Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. With no natural predators, each fish can gobble up to 70,000 native reef fish over its lifetime – devouring 79 percent of young marine life within five weeks of entering a habitat. Since 1960, invasive species (not just lion fish) have cost $ 1.2 trillion of damage in US waters alone and eaten into the livelihoods of thousands of local fishermen.

In 2020, Chavda and some other scuba divers devised an ingenious solution: turning lionfish skin into the world’s first invasive leather product that actively restores ecosystems. INVERSA, the company he founded, employs local hunters to catch the otherwise unprofitable fish, providing alternative livelihoods and dampening some demand for overfished species.

Partnering with fashion brands – 40 to date – Inversa turns the skin into exotic leather handbags, shoes, belts and footballs. The business now works across six countries and has expanded to incorporate two more invasive species: Burmese pythons from the Florida Everglades and carp from the Mississippi River. Some 50,000 invasive animals have been removed so far. “The game is 500,000, five million, 50 million,” Chavda says.

Invasives are responsible for about 60 per cent of species extinctions around the planet today,” he continues. “The biggest challenge was that there wasn’t the scale needed to tackle this problem. And we see biodiversity bounce back in such a spectacular way: biomass regeneration is about 50 to 70 percent when there’s active management on a coral reef.”

It’s exciting that fashion consumers can buy products that actively benefit the planet,” Chavda says. “It isn’t just a race to less bad or net neutral: we’re firmly regenerative and beneficial for the ecosystem.”

Read full article via the Financial Times

WASHINGTON POST reports— “Sustainable fabrics help the fashion industry rid itself of a global waste problem”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY BRITT PETERSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Read Full Article

“Every year Aarav Chavda goes scuba diving in the same Florida reefs. A former McKinsey analyst and mechanical engineer, Chavda has watched the corals blanch white over time, and he has noticed species dwindle— except the lionfish.

Local and federal officials near Atlantic and Caribbean waters have tried a number of methods to eradicate the lionfish, a gorgeously striped and spiny invasive species that has no predators in the region and eats many other fish. Chavda had a new idea: Make it fashion. Along with two other avid divers, Chavda founded a startup called Inversa and invented a process that transforms lionfish skin into a supple, attractive leather. Next, they added two other invasive species— Burmese pythons from the Florida Everglades and carp from the Mississippi River. They’ve achieved some real success: a number of brands, including Piper and Skye and Rex Shoes, have used their leathers for wallets, footballs, flip- flops, and a cool-looking python dagger and sheath.

The toxic impact of the fashion industry – meaning not high fashion brands, but the companies that make the materials that form our clothes, as well as the companies constructing the clothes – is well- known. Up to 4 percent of global climate emissions, according to a McKinsey report, and an unknown but substantial percent of global water pollution also derive from it. This is a baffling, often overwhelming problem. Humans require clothing to survive – plus, we love our clothes and derive deep meaning from how we present ourselves to the world.

“It’s two sides of the coin,” says Monica Buchan-Ng, a sustainability expert at the London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion. “[Clothes] can be this incredible creative force of self- expression and identity. But also we know that the way the fashion system works at present, it’s just destruction after destruction.”

However, the sheer reach of the industry also makes it a tremendous potential tool for innovation and change, and a number of new fabrics are a crucial part of that change. So far, Chavda says, Inversa has removed 50,000 lionfish, burmese pythons, and carp. In a few years, he hopes to be removing tens of millions. “I’m bullish,” Chavda says, “because I think the consumer cares.”

Read full article via Washington Post

WSJ reports— “New Sustainable Fabrics: Lionfish Leather, CO2 Fibers and More”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED By Chavie Lieber FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Read Full Article.

“Scientists are hoping to start a fashion trend: making clothes from materials that reduce environmental harm.

They’re developing new textiles that could curb the industry’s reliance on resource-intensive cotton and plastic-filled polyester. Potential benefits include cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions and slowing the pace of deforestation. 

Big brands such as Lululemon and H&M are already investing in what they see as the future of textile innovation. 

Here are some of the materials that scientists hope to see on shelves in the next three to five years. “

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INNOVATION IN TEXTILES interviews INVERSA CEO, Aarav Chavda

ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY INNOVATION IN TEXTILES. Read full interview.

Founded in 2020, Sanibel, Florida-headquartered Inversa is the developer of a new luxury exotic leather alternative made from the lionfish which has already secured partnerships with Teton Leather, of Idaho Falls, Idaho.

With no natural predators, the invasive lionfish species kills up to 79% of young marine life within five weeks of entering a coral reef system. As a result reefs are over grown with algae and left to die.

This is important, explains Inversa CEO Aarav Chavda, because coral reefs generate half of the Earth’s oxygen and absorb nearly one-third of the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels.

What is the extent of the lionfish problem and is it likely to grow?

The story of the invasive lionfish starts in the late 1980s. It is native to the Pacific Ocean, but human error led to a handful of lionfish slipping undetected into Atlantic waters off the coast of Florida. Forty years later, the invasion sweeps from Boston to Brazil to Barcelona, killing up to 80% of marine life in every coral reef these fish hit.

The problem is that they eat everything in their surrounding ecosystem and prey on more than 70 marine fish and invertebrate species. The net result is the degradation of entire coral reef systems. Left unchecked, the lionfish pose a great threat to the existing biodiversity and the planet’s oxygen supply that comes from the coral reefs.

Inversa is joining the movement to remove these invasive fish and protect our coral reefs – one leather hide at a time. Throughout the history of fashion, consumers have bought at the expense of the planet. Recently, more sustainable options are getting better at minimising this damage, but we are looking beyond the leather we make, to help fashion heal the planet.

How is the lionfish being fished/collected/separated and who does this?

We source from anywhere lionfish is invasive. Today we source from Florida and parts of the Caribbean, where the lionfish is preying on fishing livelihoods as well as the coral reefs. However, all our tanning, dyeing and finishing is done entirely in the USA.

Is the fish itself edible?

Yes. In fact, our sister brand, Salatino Seafood, sells the fillets in effort to utilise the entire fish. The lionfish has an incredibly soft, buttery texture and is quick to absorb any flavour incorporated into it. Gordon Ramsey and many other chefs have celebrated the subtle and delicate flavours of lionfish in television, cookbooks, and, of course, in restaurants.

Is Inversa leather made solely from the discarded fish skins?

It is made from lionfish that are intentionally removed from the environment, rather than as a discarded by-product.

We are very specific about minimising waste and using all parts of the fish. In partnership with other groups and our sister brand, we use almost every part of the fish. As mentioned before, Salatino Seafood delivers the fillets to restaurants. We have even created some partnerships with jewellery manufacturers to turn the spines of the lionfish into artisan pieces.

What are the properties that make it suited to being turned into an artificial leather?

Inversa leather is a genuine leather that is extremely strong, durable, and best of all, environmentally regenerative. We don’t use the term artificial leather to describe our material because it is truly leather. Instead, we categorise our leather as an exotic alternative leather.

Its high texture and durability make it a prime exotic leather alternative. Consumers can experience a beautiful texture and rugged durability, but most importantly, it is environmentally regenerative, and its use in fashion is actively beneficial for the coral reefs and the native biodiversity that depends on them .

How is it made, what are the process steps involved?

There are three main steps. Firstly, divers and environmentalists remove the lionfish from the ocean. Secondly, the hides are tanned into leather using  clean tanning chemicals and processes, and third the leather is then dyed and finished to brand specifications.

How is it coloured?

We dye and finish to the vision our partner brands want to bring to life. We started with a high- gloss style that comes in a wide range of bright colours. Since then, we have also developed our natural style of leather that is also achieved with an alcohol-based dye. We’re really excited about this style because we’ve been able to achieve zero plastic end-to-end.

How durable are the hides?

One of the best parts of our leather is the strength. Third-party testing shows that it ranks among the strongest exotic leathers per millimetre of thickness. Our leather is currently used across multiple product categories in fashion such as wallets, purses, watch straps, and footwear.

How many fish go into a single hide and what is the size of the hides you are providing?

Each hide is made of one lionfish. Each hide ranges from 40 to 75 square inches, and is on average 58 square inches. Each hide being one invasive lionfish makes it possible for our partner brands to know the impact we are making together. With each hide, we are protecting up to 70,000 native reef fish that one single lionfish would have consumed in its lifetime and up to 79% of young reef fish that are killed within five weeks of an invasion.

FAST COMPANY reports— “Lionfish destroy Atlantic Ocean ecosystems. This brand transforms their skins into functional fashion accessories.”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY ELIZABETH SEGRAN for FAST COMPANY. Read Full Article.

“Many fashion brands are working to become more sustainable. But what if sustaining the planet is not enough? What if we need to actively repair damaged ecosystems?

That’s the vision behind Inversa, a Florida-based startup that creates leathers from invasive animals. The company pays fishermen and hunters for the skins of predatory creatures, including Lionfish, Dragonfin, and Everglade pythons, that threaten natural ecosystems because they have no natural predators. Inversa then treats these skins, transforming them into leathers that can be used to make fashion accessories.

For its latest product, Inversa has partnered with the women-owned luxury brand Oleada, which creates functional accessories designed to make women’s lives easier. Together, the companies have incorporated Lionfish leather into a sleek $245 laptop sleeve, which converts into a portable stand that props up your computer, making it more ergonomic to type. The sleeve also uses vegan leather made from 34 plastic bottles that have been removed from the ocean.

The Lionfish have a striking appearance, with bright white stripes covering their maroon-colored bodies, and a long venomous spine that must be handled with care. Inversa takes their skins, tanning them with a nontoxic chrome so that they are durable and then dyed in a wide array of colors. (The leathers have been subjected to third-party testing to ensure they are robust.) The final leather has a scaly texture, looking like snakeskin. The Oleada laptop bag has a medallion in the center that prominently features the Lionfish skin.

In the past, there has not been a market for Lionfish, since they are not typically consumed as food. Aarav Chavda, Inversa cofounder and CEO, says that the most challenging part of creating this leather has been educating fishermen about the crisis and encouraging them to hunt Lionfish instead of other seafood.

“We go to fishermen who have been fishing for 10 generations,” says Chavda. “We pay them a high price to hunt the creature that has been killing off the groupers and snappers that they rely on for food. Sometimes, it takes a while for them to understand our mission.”

WWD reports— “Lionfish Leather Makes First Foray to Fashion, Saving Reef Fish in the Process”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED By KALEY ROSHITSH for WWD. Read Full Article

“The highly invasive lionfish may be the enemy of many marine wildlife habitats — but it’s also turning out to be a fashionable (and regenerative) godsend of a material.

Though human error led to the species entering waterways decades ago from recreational aquariums, the lionfish’s no known predators and quick spawning advantage made them a nightmare problem stretching from the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico all the way up the East Coast. Today, the average lionfish kills 79 percent of baby native reef fish within five weeks and decimates entire food chains. One Florida-based start-up called Inversa Leathers (founded by a bunch of scuba divers in 2020) is hoping to tackle the problem while providing a premium leather alternative that acts as a replacement for exotics.

Invasive species don’t just happen by accident. This is a human-caused problem. It’s now time for us to step up to the responsibility,” Deepika Nagarajan, chief marketing officer of Inversa Leathers, told WWD. Off the heels of being named a finalist in the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance competition, the start-up is revealing its first commercial fashion collaboration in partnership with Italian sneaker label P448 that drops June 28. Nagarajan said, “It’s the first big go-to-market that we’ve had but it is just the beginning of a long journey.”

Launching in five colorways, the P448 sneaker comes in red, pink, blue, silver and black and retails for $325. It will be available in a limited run at the Le Bon Marché department store in Paris.

Along with boasting Mark Wahlberg as a strategic investor, P448 counts a number of attention-grabbing global artist collaborations and sustainability callouts with the lionfish as its latest and most out-there play. The label opened its first U.S. retail pop-up location on Fifth Avenue (celebrating graffitied walls, arcade games and a speakeasy in the back) in September 2021. In all, around 1,400 store locations worldwide carry the label with North America being the core market.

"Not only a “cool fashion product that is also saving the planet,” in Nagarajan’s words, each sneaker is the equivalent of one lionfish removed and tens of thousands of native reef fish saved.

Hoping to popularize the concept of “invasive leathers” as a replacement for exotics, the premium material also has local enthusiasts (be it fishers or biologists) behind it. The company works with local fishing cooperatives in Quintana Roo, Mexico, by underwriting the fishers’ risk with a 100 percent catch-to-cash guarantee and providing upfront financing for materials. Inversa Leathers produces and tans its hides in the U.S., with tanning done in Cincinnati according to Reach certifications.

Aarav Chavda, cofounder and chief executive officer of Inversa Leathers, said tanning a lionfish hide takes just 200 ml (or less than a cup per hide) compared to common bovine leather. This comes out to 55 square inches on average (best tuned for small accessories), or 600 ml per square foot. Third-party testing and an LCA is also underway to prove the performance attributes.

As for the fishing cooperatives, Chavda said: “These are places where a lot of social enterprises and government funding dollars don’t really exist. They know the lionfish but they can’t get paid for it. They have to get money for it.”

Florida boasts one of the largest artificial reef resiliency programs in the country, and marine biologists like Alex Fogg, a coastal resource manager for Okaloosa County, Florida, see how it all goes down underwater.

Dialing in from a site visit for reef deployment (using concrete and limestone as mock reef structures for marine wildlife), Fogg spoke to the invasiveness of the lionfish. “We realized we’re never going to get rid of lionfish…The more things you can identify to do with lionfish — the more you can do to alleviate it.” It’s in this case, that Fogg says creativity and local solutions help. One collaborative solution is that the region hosts the world’s largest lionfish tournament that saw 11,000 lionfish removed in May.

The opportunities are pretty endless, with lionfish being a healthy and premium fish to consume, leather alternative and jewelry material (contorting fins and spine into jewelry). Fogg said the local market rate for lionfish is about $6.25 per pound compared to about $4 per pound of grouper. He also said, as with many sustainability survey findings, that “People don’t mind paying extra for lionfish, given the story behind it.”

With a round of investment to be announced in the coming days for Inversa Leathers, the only convincing may be to definition-bound vegans.

“The dialogue around it has been pretty enlightening for us,” Nagarajan said. “Recently, we’ve had some LinkedIn commentary around it. People tend to recognize it as ‘protecting the other species,’ and protecting biodiversity. We haven’t had as much difficulty with getting people to understand this as we’ve thought.”

THE GUARDIAN reports— “Fish leather is here, it’s sustainable, and it’s made from invasive species to boot”

ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY Betsy Reed for THE GAURDIAN. Read Full Article

“Aarav Chavda has been diving off the coast of Florida for years. Each time he became increasingly depressed by the ever-growing void, as colourful species of fish and coral reefs continued to disappear.

A significant reason for that disappearance is the lionfish, an invasive species that has boomed in Atlantic waters from Florida to the Caribbean in recent decades, and in numerous other places from Brazil and Mexico to the Mediterranean.

Lionfish have no natural predators outside their native range – in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the Red Sea – and are all-consuming, devouring an estimated 79% of young marine life within five weeks of entering a coral reef system. “You can see the impacts on the reefs when you dive now – it’s less vibrant, it’s less cacophonous,” Chavda said.

“We know there are solutions for some of the problems – such as coral-friendly sunscreens to help protect the reefs – but nobody’s been able to do anything about the lionfish.”

So Chavda and a team of ecologically aware fellow scuba enthusiasts decided to act by establishing Inversa, which turns lionfish into a new product: fish leather. On Wednesday, World Oceans Day, the team was recognised as one of nine finalists in the Global Ocean Resilience Innovation Challenge (Oric).

Chavda, 27, and his childhood friend from Texas, Roland Salatino, set up the Florida-based company to make the leather. They process the fish hides by tanning them with drying agents and dye them before selling the leather to partner companies to fashion into high-end products including wallets, belts and handbags. Fish skin is thin but because the fibre structure runs crossways, it is stronger than many other types of leather."

The hides are also more sustainable than traditional animal leathers, which generally require grazing on huge amounts of pasture – degrading soils and producing high carbon emissions.

Inversa does not hunt the lionfish itself. Instead, it relies on educating and encouraging largely poor fishermen and women in often remote places to catch them.

“A lot of the geographies, especially the lower-income Caribbean area, have no market at all [for lionfish] – and so this fish is not only destroying the coral reefs, which sustain these fishing cooperatives’ livelihoods, but they also can’t do anything about it,” Chavda said.

“They could hunt lionfish, but that takes time, and it means they’re not hunting other things. They’d be spending their precious time not on lobster, not on grouper – so it’s very unfortunate.”

The Inversa project that impressed the Oric judges seeks to address that problem. The company is proposing to set up well-equipped fishing cooperatives in Quintana Roo, Mexico, by underwriting the fishers’ risk with a “100% catch-to-cash guarantee” for lionfish. This would finance the purchase of equipment, then offer premium incentives and prompt payment for lionfish.

“We’re really sort of empowering the consumer and fashion by doing something for the planet – then we empower dive communities in the fishing cooperatives all throughout the Caribbean to do something for themselves,” Chavda said.

FORBES names INVERSA Co-Founders on 30-Under-30 List

Forbes 30 Under 30 is a set of lists of 30 notable people under 30 years old in various industries issued annually by Forbes magazine. In 2023, they included INVERSA Co-Founders, Aarav Chavda and Roland Salatino, for their Manufacturing and Industry List.

FROM FORBES: "Aarav Chavda and Roland Salatino-avid scuba divers and rock climbers-founded Inversa Leathers to make environmentally regenerative leathers from invasive species, including lionfish and Burmese python. They took the two-year-old company through Harvard's startup accelerator and raised $2 million in funding.”