Rayene “Ray” Arruda Esteves isn’t just a designer of fashion – she’s a designer of the future. Fueled by a passion for fashion and a commitment to social change, she created Three Graces (Três Graças) to empower vulnerable women and raise awareness about environmental responsibility within the fashion industry.
“Firstly, I’m a dreamer! Everything I’ve achieved so far, I just did because I gave myself a chance to dream,” Esteves said. “Fashion Design has always been my dream, and now I’m creating my own way to transform the industry into a safe space for those who produce and those who consume.”
Esteves’ journey began while pursuing a bachelors in Fashion Design, where she worked with an NGO supporting vulnerable women. This experience exposed her to the transformative power of sustainable fashion and led her to volunteer as a Fashion Revolution Student Ambassador. In 2019, she opened a second-hand clothing store, which unfortunately closed due to the pandemic. Though discouraged, she saw this setback as an opportunity to reimagine her business.
“In August a group of people I know created an acceleration program to enable social impact projects with more tools. I applied my idea of giving job training on textile crafts(wo)manship and entrepreneurship to women in the slum to the program,” Esteves said.
Following the program, Esteves joined the Shell Youth Initiative in 2021, which further refined Three Graces and led to its certification as a Sustainable Business. Now, Three Graces serves as a bridge between social responsibility and fashion, offering job training to women in challenging environments and guiding brands toward sustainable practices. “Since then, I’m not pursuing anyone else’s dreams. Now, I’m chasing my own and transforming them into achievable goals,” she said. “I use fashion as a tool to make people more conscious about the planet. That’s the reason I created Three Graces: to give job training to vulnerable women in entrepreneurship and textile crafts(wo)manship and to assist fashion brands to adopt sustainable processes.”
As of 2023, she continued to refine the prototype for the job training program to vulnerable women in neighborhoods often affected by violence, which made finding safe locations for classes a more complex task. Additionally, she expressed how lonely this entrepreneurship journey could be.
“Sometimes it’s hard to dream alone,” she admitted. Through her mentorships and networking opportunities, she was able to overcome these challenges. “I really love exchanging ideas and meeting new people from all over the world. I feel better when I meet another entrepreneur who faces the same issues as I do and we can talk about it to find solutions together.”
Esteves continued to grow her business as a Y&Y fellow, finding support in a community of social entrepreneurs and valuable mentorship. “It’s a great opportunity to look closer at social businesses and connect to people around the world with similar ideas of changing realities with our own hands,” Esteves said. “Now I’m learning how to make my social business to be more social than just a business.”
As Esteves continues to shape the fashion industry and sustainability, she draws strength from her vision of a fashion sector that values ethics, sustainability, and inclusivity. In her own words, “I’m not pursuing anyone else’s dreams anymore, now I’m pursuing my own dreams and transforming them into achievable goals.”
As a final word of advice to other social entrepreneurs, she encourages contacting like-minded people, and to keep your goals in mind: “Dream and keep going. Never forget where you came from, but you need to know where you want to go.”
