ISSUE NO. 05: ANDREEA DIACONU

For Andreea Diaconu, the term “sustainability” can feel overly complicated. Growing up lacking a lot of basic resources in post-communist Romania, she reused and conserved and shared with her neighbors out of necessity; protecting the land wasn’t activism, it was natural and went unquestioned—born out of care for the things and the places that sustained daily life. When Andreea moved to the States at 19, in search of financial opportunity, she was shocked by the culture of excess. But as she took up modeling, she had to prioritize her own survival over concerns about the harms of, say, the very industry that paid her bills. This was the experience that formed the basis of her climate philosophy: People can’t meaningfully engage with any reform movement if their basic needs aren’t met.

In that vein, Andreea argues that new policy must move individuals and families out of the red. She’s educated herself on that point at Columbia University’s Climate School, focusing on food systems, river restoration, and how to leverage change from within powerful industries and institutions. “I think it all boils down to the same thing,” she says. “Are the products that you’re selling or the stocks you’re buying affecting people negatively down the supply chain? If they are, then they’re not sustainable.”

MB: When did the sustainability movement first become personal for you?

ANDREEA DIACONU: It’s always been personal, just because of how I grew up. I grew up really poor in Romania; we didn’t have AC or heat or water most of the time. I moved to the US when I was 19, and all of a sudden I had access to watermelons in the winter. I made American friends, and they were just leaving the lights on when they left the room. It’s always been a part of my life because of how I was raised—the circumstances of my life. I wore my grandmother’s clothes that she tailored for my mom, and she tailored them for me, and then we gave them to my aunt. I don’t know—it’s part of most cultures. It’s new to the Western Front, maybe.

MB: So would you say, growing up, your connection to sustainability was an ethos of not wasting? Did you see those practices as directly connected to the environment back then?

AD: There’s this novel that everybody read in eighth grade when [I was growing up]. It’s about the land and how important it is, and how to tend to it. I saw that they recently took that off the curriculum—moving towards a Western modern curriculum. But in post-communist Romania, everybody was so deeply connected to the land, and everybody still farmed. Everybody had a grandfather who had the farmhouse, and you went there during the summer. You’re picking apples and sharing them with other people, and they’re giving you potatoes or onions or whatever they have. I wasn’t actively thinking of, ‘Oh, I want to protect this mountain, because that’s good for the environment.’ It’s just like, ‘This mountain is where I go to hang out by myself, because it makes me feel good.’

MB: You mentioned something earlier—which is that there’s no set definition for sustainability. That it’s a term that’s thrown all the time. Do you think that’s sometimes to the detriment of the movement’s mission? How can the average person understand what’s truly sustainable and what isn’t?

AD: Everything is so siloed, in all industries. Like in the financial system, what does ESG really mean? Then you have sustainable fashion, then regenerative farming. I think it all boils down to the same thing: Are the products that you’re selling or the stocks you’re buying affecting people negatively down the supply chain? If they are, then they’re not sustainable. If multiple people have to suffer at the end of a product, that’s not conducive to the greater good of the whole system—which then impacts you, even if indirectly. It’ll impact your children later on.

We’ve made everything so complicated. There are all these words that you have to learn, and if you’re working with people on the ground, they don’t know how to navigate that system. I think Amber did a great job with [this portfolio], because you have people navigating policy-level things, people working in NGOs, and people on the ground. And generally, if NGOs aren’t listening to the people on the ground, they should just fuck off. You’re just fighting for grant money that’s going towards a report that’s not gonna do shit.

MB: Did you move here to start modeling? How did you transition into the environmental work?

AD: And after I graduated high school, I moved to escape poverty. I started modeling. I would say that I didn’t really think about the impact of fashion on the environment at all in the first two to three years, because I was kind of in survival mode. That’s kind of my thesis for the environmental movement: You can’t care about the environment if your basic needs are not met. If you can’t pay your electricity bill, or if your mental health is impaired, you don’t have the space to [engage]. The main thing [we need is] policy that supports most people getting out of survival mode—which is a big task. But the more people who are out of survival mode, the more people will care about the built environment.

MB: How do you see your activism evolving, post-fashion?

AD: For a long time, I tried to differentiate my persona that’s working in climate from my fashion persona. There are so many wires to unravel… But, you know, speaking with colleagues of mine who have been doing activist work or grassroots organizing or whatever, a lot of them were like, ‘You can change the system more if you’re inside it.’ So I’ve come back to modeling and [I’m trying] to have conversations—getting people [in the industry] to invest in green financing, for instance. I would say that most of my work has been in food systems and river restoration. When I was at Columbia, we did a workshop on reducing their food emissions across their cafeterias. They actually took our implementation suggestions, and then we talked to Cisco, who provides their food, and they were like, ‘We’re gonna implement this in all of our cafeterias.’ That has a huge downstream effect.

MB: Are there any like figures in the sustainability movement with whom you see yourself in a lineage?

AD: My grandmother, and anyone’s grandmother who’s making somebody’s day brighter. I have zero desire to be famous as an activist. I don’t think I am an activist! But I do want to be the type of person who can help people. We’re living in a time that’s so incendiary; a huge form of activism is just regulating your own nervous system and sharing that with people. So yeah—anybody who sees an issue in their community and is an active participant. Localism is where it’s at with this administration, obviously.