Millie Dunstan ’15: Sustainable Fashion

This spring, fashion designer Millie Dunstan ’15 stood by the door to a storefront on Eldridge Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, eager to celebrate a pivotal moment for her growing fashion company: the opening of its first brick-and-mortar retail location.

Dunstan co-founded Mindblown, a New York City streetwear line that promotes individuality and environmentally conscious fashion practices, in 2019 with Ben Lucas Jones, an Australian musician and graphic designer who is now her husband. Like its co-founders, the label is edgy yet fun — modern streetwear set against a backdrop of alternative grunge, skate and punk.

Prior to the opening, they operated out of a studio in Brooklyn, but they wanted a place where the community could discover the Mindblown brand in real life. Now the store will be the creative hub: Jones will have space to airbrush his graphic designs, and Dunstan will deconstruct, sew and bring to life the one-of-kind “streetwear couture” garments that have come to define the brand.

Dunstan developed her signature upcycling methods as a fashion student at Parsons School of Design, but she graduated in 2019 with some major reservations about the field. “The fashion industry can be very unsustainable,” she says, “and unethical even in the way things are produced. It made me want to start my own company and create new systems to make fashion more sustainable.”

She has been doing just that with Mindblown, which uses either upcycled materials like damaged, thrifted or vintage garments, or deadstock fabric that is no longer needed for its original purpose. Neither method is perfect. Upcycling is time-intensive and usually produces one item at a time. Deadstock, which is what Mindblown uses for its hoodies and tees, is ideal for designing in larger quantities, but Dunstan says the process of finding U.S.-based sources and production facilities is tough to navigate.

Together, Dunstan and Jones found their way, producing two successful New York Fashion Week shows, in 2024 and 2025, and working tirelessly to cultivate a following within New York’s indie arts scene. Mindblown’s celebrity fans include the pop star Tyla, the rapper Lizzo and the British singer-songwriter Lola Young, who wore a custom outfit made of patchwork pieces of colorful vintage sports jerseys during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Colorful corsets embellished with upcycled strips of plaid and lace. Pleated miniskirts proportioned from high-quality deadstock denim. Men’s pants patched together from salvaged work wear in a mix of colors and prints. Amid all of the subculture collaborations and Vivienne Westwood runway-punk vibes, it’s easy to miss that Dunstan is doing something more challenging than it seems: making sustainable fashion that is legitimately fashionable.

It’s a full-circle moment for Dunstan, who first explored fashion at Exeter. Using a sewing machine under the guidance of Art Instructor Tara Lewis, she participated in Print to Fit, a special fashion-plus-3Dprinter challenge in which students created wearable garments from scratch. For another project, she created clothing out of candy wrappers.

“Looking back now, I realize that I was upcycling even back then,” Dunstan says. “I remember tumbling glass bottles to put them onto clothing and shoes. It was my very early experimentation.”

With the store officially open, Dunstan says she and Jones are preparing a Mindblown show for New York Fashion Week in September — this time with official sponsors and outside help. They’re also producing more of their signature pieces in quantity, starting with unisex pants made from deadstock denim.

“We developed what we consider the ‘perfect fit,’” Dunstan says. “We named them the Forever Denim Pant because they should last forever.”