Margrethe Vestager, European commissioner for competition, seconded his call to action, referring to the world’s leading business event on sustainable fashion as a “summit for change, a summit for solutions”. She reminded the industry of its collective responsibility to think about the effects of its choices, because fashion will never be separate to society. One single garment, for example, doesn’t just affect the person who wears it, the choice to purchase that garment affects the workers who earn the right to a fair wage, the workers who don’t want to fear for their lives in factories, the workers who need clean air and water, and everyone around the world whose future depends on cutting carbon dioxide emissions. “Sustainability has to be built in every part of change,” Vestager told the summit. “It has to be fundamental. It’s not for the fainthearted, but I don’t think anyone would accuse fashion of being fainthearted.”
Transparency and traceability are enablers of change, but the industry must read from the same definition of these terms, which have become buzzwords. Transparency, Leslie Johnston, executive director of the C&A Foundation, affirmed is the “disclosure of information in a standardised manner that enables comparison”. Traceability is the “ability to discover information as to when and how a product is made.” If transparency is all about trust, then traceability is about accountability.
“Transparency is the first step towards a different culture, one where brands become open and accountable, and customers are ready to become vigilant and ask, ‘who made my clothes?’" expanded Orsola de Castro, founder and creative director of Fashion Revolution. “Transparency provides an open door. We can’t fix what we can’t see… We need to make it as easy for us to see the clothes as it is to buy the clothes.”
The conversation between brands and customers is a step in the right direction, because until now, de Castro said, there was no conversation. Amanda Nusz, vice president of product quality and responsible sourcing at Target Corporation, adds of forming a company-customer alliance: “It’s not only good to do, it’s good for business… people will be loyal to ethical brands.”
But, if transparency is a win-win for both consumer, corporation and the planet, then why is it not happening? The decision has to come from the top, Nusz advised, because it requires a high level of resources and time. It’s not a box ticking exercise that can be paid for and filed away under jobs done, it’s about implementing a “holistic programme”, looking at the issues that are getting in the way of transparency, making transparency a part of the brand’s DNA, and educating and empowering the staff. “Sustainability [has to be] in the room at every meeting at the company,” Mark Walker, OuterknownCEO, said of his ethical start-up, which made transparency the core of the LA-based brand’s ethos or “vibe” when it launched three years ago.
But most “brands don’t trust it and haven’t tried it for long enough,” de Castro continued. “The fashion industry is built on secrecy, elitism, closed doors and unavailability. [Transparency] is disrupting the fabric of the fashion industry as we know it.”
Many brands and manufacturers have been making motions towards supply chain transparency, particularly in the aftermath of the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, which was a “never again” wake-up call. But, the question has to be, how does the industry work together? “It’s too big to tackle alone,” Nusz explained. Mostafiz Uddin, founder and CEO of Bangladesh Apparel Exchange, agreed that there needs to one set of standards to follow, so that each company doesn’t start from scratch. “We need to communicate in one language about transparency,” he said, and have “standardised information” that customers can understand too. Cecilia Strömblad Brännsten, H&MGroup environmental sustainability manager, who outlined H&M’s end goal to become 100 percent transparent, agreed that we must “align on a common vision and agenda and set industry targets.”
Ebru Ozkucuk Guler, senior CSR executive at ISKO, the leading manufacturer in sustainable denim, has completed Life Cycle Assessments for all 25,000-plus of its denim fabrics in order to fully understand the environmental footprint of each fabric from fibre to finished product. These environmental product declarations can be viewed by anyone online, and in November it will share a set of Product Category Rules, so that other manufacturers can establish eco and socially conscious supply chains using the data.
Geraldine Vallejo, Kering sustainability programme director, supported this notion of sharing knowledge and innovation: “If you only focus on your own efficiencies you’re missing the point.” Kering has implemented the Clean by Design programme across tier one of its brand suppliers, and is in the process of expanding the Natural Resources Defense Council-implemented scheme to the upper tiers. Burberry, who were represented at the summit by Pamela Batty, vice president of corporate responsibility at the brand, is investing £3million to London’s Royal College of Art to establish a Burberry material research group. Its mission will be innovation, and its radical research into new ways to sustainably make raw materials will be made publicly available. Nike launched its biggest ever sustainability challenge - the Nike Circulation Challenge – last year, urging innovators to create new ways of making products with its recycled offcuts scheme, known as Nike Grind. “We believe we can innovate our way through any problem, but the problems are extraordinary complex,” Eric Sprunk, Nike COO, said.The Young Designers Pioneering A Sustainable Fashion Revolution.
Nicolaj Reffstrup, Ganni CEO, maintained that it’s up to big businesses to innovate and lead the way. As a “small to medium enterprise” or SME, “there’s no politics, we control everything, so there’s no excuse for not taking control of an ethical supply chain.” But SMEs don’t have “the skills or capacity to create innovative solutions… we can’t produce manuals and work for them.” This needs to come from established, certified business models that not only support a transparent supply chain, but a transparent closed loop fashion system, or circular economy – yet more buzzwords.
An “end to end” production system, where garments are kept in the fashion system for longer and then made into new products at the end of their life cycle, is crucial, because currently 87 percent of fashion gets landfilled or incinerated. When 53 million tonnes of clothes are produced every year, this is a huge problem, and an even bigger one when we consider that in the last 15 years we have doubled the amount of clothes we produce. “We need to paint a vision of what a circular economy can look like,” Ellen MacArthur, whose inaugural Ellen MacArthur Foundation report focusing on circular economy found these harrowing statistics, said. “In a time of creativity and innovation, why would we ever turn anything into waste?”
Major global brands present at the summit, including Nike, H&M and Burberry, have signed up to the Make Fashion Circular initiative, which aims to create an "unstoppable momentum" towards an economy in which clothes are never seen as rubbish to be thrown away. Companies promoting a closed loop economy, such as resale sites Vestiaire Collective and The RealReal, and The Renewal Workshop, which repairs damaged products to make them sellable and profitable for brands again, were also in attendance. But, although each is a prime model of how garments can and should have an afterlife, there is still a huge elephant in the room: overproduction.
Closed loop models are so hard and so precise to achieve that they are putting a huge constraint on the industry, Paul Dillinger, Levi Strauss & Covice president and head of global product innovation, said. “If six out of 10 garments end up in landfill, should we have made those six garments?” Morals must be incorporated in these new business models. “Clothes are regarded as consumables,” Paul van Zyl, CEO of Maiyet, explained, and as long as that model exists, it has a lasting impact on society and the environment.
But it’s not the consumer’s fault. The industry has fed it a “more is more” mindset, and must now change this mindset to become more mindful. “If we think of [transforming] a linear economy into a circle we haven’t taken opportunity of the moment,” William McDonough, chief executive of McDonough Innovation, explained. “For it to be a virtue we have to have ‘goods’ and ‘services’, not ‘bads’ and ‘services’. We need to design goods that are good for the economy.” He described the industry as adults behaving with child supervision, and urged it to look in the mirror and find the “right thing to do, not the right way to do it”.
Thankfully, the consumer is making strides already. There used to be an “obsession with what they put in their body, now they’re becoming obsessed with what they put on their body,” Outerknown’s Mark Walker said, referring to the parallels between the organic food movement and fashion.
Everyone can claim to be an activist though, and every brand can advocate sustainability, because of the filters available to enhance the profiles we present to the outside world. For transparency about sustainability to work, there has to be a total openness about brand practices and consumer beliefs, and an openness for people to put their hands up and ask for help without getting shot down for not doing enough. Above all, the rallying cry of “who made my clothes?” has to be answered with companies taking the responsibility to honestly say, “I made your clothes”. As de Castro said, “it’s a question of shopping but also a question of survival.”
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