Team Feature: Irys Placida Kornbluth

Title: Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder 



Interests: textiles, costume design, filmmaking and producing, pianist and musician, photography



Irys is an LA-based entrepreneur, designer, and musician. She has been building sustainable fashion brands since 2011 and studied Design at Stanford. She’s performed at Carnegie Hall, worked on Netflix feature films, and co-designed products that are on shelves globally at major retailers.

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I'm currently visiting a textile recycling and weaving facility in Guatemala, and on the daily, I'm either on a manufacturing floor testing new fabric qualities, or working with brands, artists and customers to develop new apparel lines in recycled materials according to their creative vision. I also work with our global brand clients and integrate our materials and finished goods into their supply chains at scale.

As COO, I oversee Everywhere’s team operations across the US and Latin America. And I'm constantly scouring and seeing what other technology companies are developing in the materials space and looking at new sustainable fibers, treatments, washes and replacements for existing and conventional manufacturing processes in apparel. My goal is to basically replace every conventional material with an Everywhere material.

I think my goal changes depending on the evolution of the company, and that's a part of my role. Everywhere is like an organism and we're building a new type of regenerative business from the ground up. Lately, I've been thinking about how Everywhere can support the best creatives in the world with materials that inspire them to be even more creative, while hitting all their sustainability goals. 



I really am passionate about enabling the creative process, which kind of relates back to my love of film. In a film, you're following the director, and you're a creative team that's working in unison towards a certain vision and I think that that's the feeling I want to drive into.

I've been playing music since I was four. I started out as a classical pianist and studied very intensively until I was like 18. I was a nationally competitive classical performer, so my focus in the earlier part of my life was definitely classical music. 

I'm always listening to music, I'm kind of addicted to music. If someone saw how much I listen to music, it'd be like a problem. It’s so cheesy, but it's kind of medicine for me. When I need a pick-me-up, I need to listen to that song.  When I'm working or when I can't focus, I have this set of music.  I drive a lot in LA so I'm always listening to music in the car.

In terms of my own musical practice, I'm getting a little bit more into sampling and digital music production right now, it's just something I'm dabbling with in my small amount of free time. I’m also getting more collaborative with music because in the earlier part of my life, I was very much a solo performer. I would perform occasionally with like one or two other people, but now I'm excited to even just be someone else's producer and kind of take my 10,000 hours plus of experience and help other people find their sound.


I think that a lot of what attracts people to Everywhere is the fact that they can put their artwork + their creativity using our super sustainable products as a canvas. Too many products in the market have a negative impact on the earth, and I think designers and creatives are tired of putting their beautiful work on products that are damaging the environment. I enjoy helping companies develop their creative ideas, which I think speaks to my nature.

I think that part of what drives people to Everywhere is that it feels like a very personal company. We're generating systems of localized production, and on a manufacturing level like that comes into play too.  There's not a factory we've worked with that we haven't been to, we know everyone personally. When you're using materials like ours that are different and more delicate, the system is not designed to just blindfold yourself and let it run.  It doesn't work that way. In order to actually be circular, you have to be way more personal and hands-on at every step of manufacturing and with every supplier, and I think that process reflects in our final product. It brings a different flavor to our product and to our brand. 

We’re also helping other companies localize their production, which gets to the ethos of what we’re trying to accomplish not just with our supply chains, but facilitating this for other companies across our industry.

I definitely think of our company as being at the forefront of the next industrial revolution. We’re basically co opting our existing industry, using all the same machines but just changing out the fibers and materials.

Textiles are ubiquitous. I mean, you look around a room, and 20 percent of it is probably textiles. There’s just the sheer reality of the fact that we produce billions and billions of garments annually in unsustainable ways, and it’s a system that needs to be completely re-engineered and almost reversed. There are ways we can repurpose the existing industry to make it more sustainable, which is what we are trying to do at Everywhere.

Brands are driving the direction of aesthetics in the world. I've done a lot of work with creative teams within those brands, and my goal has been to get them actually excited about the possibilities of recycling and recycled materials. It's gotta feel like a discovery, you know? Not like an obligation or a box to check. It has to have that feeling of utter creative experience. Part of my nature is just wanting to push the boundaries of creativity.

Sustainability is a given for me - it's like the backbone of what I do. When we think about any process or system that is in need of being revolutionized, a sustainable approach is important, but almost more important is what you are actually doing to get people there. You have to offer a rainbow of colors and possibilities and permutations. There are aspects of recycling that I feel are more creative and wild. You can create some super fresh things using different recycled inputs, and that’s what we want to offer people.

Since I was four or five years old, I was  always into drawing fashion. I always wanted to be a fashion designer. But when I hit the phase of going to design school and started actually working hands-on with materials, there was always waste byproduct. I've always had an issue with seeing small scraps of items go in the trash bin. You see these things get thrown out for so many years and it gets really old – to the point where I've been carrying around some bags of scraps for many years.


After school, I decided to take a different direction and focus on sustainability, and now ten years later, that's where the industry has landed anyways, so it worked out in my favor.