A college T-shirt is a modest thing on which to build a company. This one, a Strawberry Fields tee, was worn so often and held so much history that its owner could not give it away.
That owner is Stacy Flynn, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Evrnu, and the shirt went on to become the company’s first prototype. It was turned from a solid into a liquid, then back into a solid, with a syringe. “I knew when I saw that sample that my tee would live on,” she writes.
Today, that idea has a name: NuCycl®. The NuCycl® × Bevans 360 Hoodie was designed by Christopher Bevans and printed by Variant 3D in Malibu. Stacy calls him “the talented Mr. Christopher Bevans,” and describes the collaboration as “a masterpiece.”
A Life Lived Against the Skin
Stacy has spent her career in textiles for a reason that is almost tender. She loves how fabric connects us: it is the first thing we touch every morning and the last thing we take off at night. That closeness to our everyday lives is what makes textiles so compelling to her, and it has shaped the direction of her career.
A System Worth Rebuilding
That feeling became a mission: to transform the global textile industry from a linear, extractive system into a truly regenerative one. At Evrnu, the instrument is NuCycl®, a technology designed to keep materials in motion at their highest and best use.
The vision is simple to state. Textile fibers should be reused, reworked, and recycled instead of being discarded after one life. According to Evrnu, NuCycl® fiber can be formed and reformed up to five times without loss of quality or performance, allowing the same resource to serve multiple product lifecycles and bringing fashion closer to a circular model.
Her view of the present is unsparing. To her, a model driven by markdowns, overproduction, and cost averaging is a fragile house of cards. Efficiency, she argues, is not found in chasing lower prices. It is found in designing better systems.
Remove that pressure, and enormous creative and human energy can be freed to build stronger, more resilient businesses and a healthier planet. “I know it sounds simple. It’s not. But that’s the work, and it’s what drives me every day.”
Evrnu, From Concept to Customer
Stacy has led Evrnu as CEO since April 2014. The company is a social purpose corporation focused on regenerating cotton-rich textile waste into new fiber for apparel and other applications. NuCycl® has already featured in product collaborations with brands including Zara, PANGAIA, and Carlos Campos, and Evrnu launched the Bevans 360 Hoodie in 2024. The company’s next challenge is scaling production.
Her responsibilities include setting the vision, recruiting and growing the team, and scaling the technology from concept to customer.
Collectives and Fellowships
Since November 2018, Stacy has been an Unreasonable Fellow, participating in a global network that supports entrepreneurs working to address major social and environmental challenges.
Her earlier venture, the Future Resource Collective (FRC), was founded in Seattle, Washington, in October 2012 as a collaboration hub for regenerative innovation in apparel and textiles.
Its work spans consulting with independent design firms, manufacturers, and retailers; developing technologies to reduce supply-chain inefficiencies through cradle-to-cradle, upcycling, and circular-economy principles; and advocating for change through stakeholder engagement, lectures, and education. The collective also builds capacity among industry leaders. Stacy has managed teams of specialists on projects intended to create positive financial, ecological, and social benefits within clients’ business models.
Experience Across the Supply Chain
She began her career at DuPont, where she spent nearly three years, from August 2000 to April 2003, as Fabric Sourcing & Testing Manager. Her work involved coordinating North American fabric collections for trend presentations, maintaining fabric libraries, preparing for trade shows, and supporting targeted marketing initiatives.
She promoted the use of DuPont fibers by advising internal and external customers on global sourcing and was responsible for U.S. multifiber fabric processing. As liaison for U.S. Lycra® Assured mills, she reviewed seasonal collections and managed the integrity of fabric data entry and images. She managed all department projects for three supervisors and a total of 13 employees.
At Target, from April 2003 to August 2007, she was Fabric Specialist, managing fabric development, sourcing, and specifications for women’s woven fabrics. She partnered with design to upgrade fabric aesthetics while meeting cost targets and researched raw-material trends at trade shows, mills, and sourcing offices around the world.
She piloted outerwear fabric development for all divisions, built alliances with regional sourcing teams, mills, and chemical suppliers, evaluated seasonal fabrics against quality-assurance standards, and negotiated costs by identifying leading mills globally and leveraging volume.
At Eddie Bauer, from September 2007 to June 2010, she was Development Manager for Men’s and Women’s Bottoms/Denim. She guided design teams toward financial objectives while preserving the design intent of seasonal line items, planned vendor allocation and product reservations, and negotiated vendor costs.
She researched trends in wash development, developing a range of wet- and dry-process treatments in partnership with design, and traveled globally to evaluate production and troubleshoot quality issues. She also built strong vendor relationships that supported the category’s growth.
At Rethink Fabrics, from July 2010 to January 2017, she was Director of Sustainable Development. She fostered strategic supplier relationships, advanced recycled-polyester innovation through product differentiation, and led product development from inception through production.
She also established quality-assurance guidelines and standard operating procedures, traveled globally to audit facilities, and implemented social and environmental policies.
The timelines overlap in a revealing way. Stacy founded Future Resource Collective and co-founded Evrnu while still serving as Director of Sustainable Development at Rethink Fabrics. Her career was not a series of neatly separated chapters; it was one sustained argument for a better system, pursued across several roles at once.
From One Shirt to a Circular Future
Stacy’s career spans the chain from fiber sourcing and factory audits to developing a technology designed to turn textile waste into new fiber. The college T-shirt that once seemed too meaningful to discard became Evrnu’s first prototype and a reminder that circular design starts by seeing a material’s next life before its first one is over.
Read more : The Top 10 Visionary Leaders in Sustainable Design of 2026
