Achieving sustainability without losing competitiveness in the market for high fashion brands?

Eco-friendly, ethical and sustainable fashion is finally on the industry's agenda - and for many brands and designers, 2019 has been a year of awakening. But, as Tamsin Blanchard argues, every fashion industry stakeholder has a part to play in making fashion truly circular.

This resource shares the perspectives of leading industry experts on the fashion sustainability measures across the value chain with links to their detailed interviews.

This article presents some notable sustainable fashion campaigns that educates the audience about the key sustainable issues within the industry and how brands are dealing with those issues.

Some of the prominent campaign themes include water management, fashion waste, fair fashion and more.

Millions of tonnes of clothes end up in landfill every year - it’s one of the fastest-growing categories of waste in the world. How can the fashion industry continue to grow while addressing the environmental need for people to buy fewer clothes? This video provides insights from leading fashion industry experts on the various ways sustainability can be implemented in the fashion industry to minimize the waste.

Grand view research, a business consultancy predicted that the global faux-fur market alone will be worth $85 Billion by 2025. The age demographic for people who are driving this cause is mostly millennials and consumers under the age of 35. UK, France and the USA, and Germany are among the countries investing most in veganism. The UK showed a 75% increase in products that are described as a vegan. France only showed a 12% growth, but Paris is committed to becoming the world’s sustainable capital by 2024. Denmark is another country that showed a whopping growth of 320% in vegan products. On the other hand, LA has become the biggest city in America to ban the use of fur.

This article provides details on few vegan brands that are paving a way for sustainable fashion.

A large number of fashion brands are now considering environmental sustainability a management agenda, and words such as “green”, “eco”, “organic”, “slow” and “ethical” are increasingly becoming a part of the fashion conversation. Many companies have started building their business models on sustainable production and operation, making sustainability a major focus for long-term growth. In order to gain attention and credibility, as well as to strengthen the emotional connection with their customers, brands have started communicating specific initiatives like supporting charitable organisations and collaborating with influencers focusing on sustainability. They are also employing giving-back-to-the-society strategies by donating a part of each purchase to a cause or community. In this way, the customer not only purchases a sustainable product but also supports a cause beyond the fashion industry. Other often used strategies for communicating an eco-conscious attitude include showing transparency and keeping customers informed, emphasising local manufacturing and sustainable packaging, and collaborating with artisans. Emerging fashion brands entering the market also tend to build their reputations via socially conscious marketing efforts. This article presents successful sustainability marketing efforts by high fashion brands.

Increasing concerns over the adverse environmental impacts of fashion industry has increased a demand towards vegan products. Grand view research, a business consultancy predicted that the global faux-fur market alone will be worth $85 Billion by 2025. The age demographic for people who are driving this cause is mostly millennials and consumers under the age of 35.

Many countries such as the UK, France, USA, Germany and Denmark have shown increased interest and investment in vegan fashion products. This article provides details on some of the prominent vegan fashion brands. 

Even though many new brands are emerging as sustainable and vegan, the luxury sector still has a long way to go. In 2018, many leading brands including Gucci, Chanel, and Burberry decided to remove exotic leather and fur from their products. 

With increasing concerns over unsustainable textile practices, a  large number of fashion brands have started considering environmental sustainability a management agenda. Many companies have started building their business models on sustainable production and operation, making sustainability a major focus for long-term growth. In order to gain attention and credibility, as well as to strengthen the emotional connection with their customers, they have started communicating specific initiatives like supporting charitable organisations and collaborating with influencers focusing on sustainability. This article presents successful sustainability marketing efforts by high fashion brands.

One of the strategies being followed by the large brands include employing giving-back-to-the-society strategies by donating a part of each purchase to a cause or community. In this way, the customer not only purchases a sustainable product but also supports a cause beyond the fashion industry. Other often used strategies for communicating an eco-conscious attitude include showing transparency and keeping customers informed, emphasising local manufacturing and sustainable packaging, and collaborating with artisans. Emerging fashion brands entering the market also tend to build their reputations via socially conscious marketing efforts.

Purchasing power as a tool for activism is a concept that Gen Z views as inherent to who they are as activists. Internationally this trend is quite visible where Gen Z has demonstrated their preference for brands that do more than just sell a product for profit. Ecoalf is a fashion brand that is a rage amongst Spanish Generation Zs as all its products are produced from recycled plastics and materials such as fishing nets. Though they do not have the purchasing power for it,

Gen Z is emerging as a consumer powerhouse in India and if brands want to connect with them, standing up for social upliftment and addressing their ‘Woke’ needs will make an impact. Though to make them truly believe in the brand’s intent, involving them in social activities would help rather than just throwing an ad at them. 

This CFDA Guide to Sustainable Strategies provides a “how to” overview for sustainable fashion with a focus on assisting the industry stakeholders and community create, meet, and exceed their own unique sustainability goals. Their idea is to provide complete details on sustainable fashion practices across the value chain through a simple resources and action guide. 

It provides guidance on various available tools for sustainable strategy development, design strategy, developing business case for sustainable fashion and more. Details on sustainable material sourcing and operational practices are also provided.

With fashion consumers being more environmentally conscious, it has become a necessity for brands to meet the customer needs. However, the challenge of deifining sustainability in fashion still exists and there are no set standards for the same. Further, understanding of the consumer needs by the brands is very limited which results in textile overstock, ultimately leading to negative environmental impacts due to their improper disposal. 

This article discusses the perspectives of leading fashion brands on the same and suggests simple measures for consumer needs understanding.

As the second-largest retail brand in the world, H&M is driven to make more conscious choices aimed at reducing their environmental impact. For example, the brand utilizes green clothing tags that help customers to make eco-friendly choices. The tag promises that their clothing is made with at least 50% sustainable materials, such as organic cotton and recycled polyester.

Outdoor clothing manufacturer Patagonia was founded by climbing enthusiast Yvon Chouinard in 1973 and is using a marketing strategy which could be thought of as being part nudge, part shock tactics. The company initially made climbing equipment but changed its philosophy to focus on environmentally-sound products after Chouinard realised his climbing tools were causing damage to rocky cliff faces. In a world dominated by consumers, it seems that for every one social media marketing strategy there comes an abundance of obstacles. The act of consuming advertising no longer lies in the power of a single marketing team but instead is decided on by the consumer.Although noise on social media can turn consumers off to advertising as a whole, the brands who are doing it right are credited as so much more than just a clothing store, a food chain, a company, etc. When companies can consider “word of mouth” or a lifestyle a successful marketing source it is fair to assume their message has been successful and deeply rooted. Whether the company is executing traditional or non-traditional campaigns they use controversial, unconventional methods. Their website not only provides a place for you to spend your money but also provides you with a space to find information, interaction, and activism on topics and issues you are most likely interested in and compassionate about. Patagonia provides a network for you to get lost in, there are linked partnerships that engage consumers, and unique content that enables individuals to become active and no longer passive consumers.

As the second-largest retail brand in the world, H&M is driven to make more conscious choices aimed at reducing their environmental impact. In this regard, the brand utilizes green clothing tags that help customers to make eco-friendly choices. The tag promises that their clothing is made with at least 50% sustainable materials, such as organic cotton and recycled polyester.

The company is also offering a garment recycling service across all stores, where shoppers can donate their old clothing from any brand. Since the launch of this service in 2013, H&M Japan has collected more than 5,400 tons of old clothing as of the end of July 2020. Since mid-August 2020, the company has also launched Fashion de Action campaign to enable industry stakeholders towards sustainable initiatives. The banners feature orange peels, grape skins, coffee grounds, plastic bottles and fishing nets in the background. Surprisingly, all of these items are used in H&M’s garment production.

Outdoor clothing manufacturer Patagonia is using a marketing strategy away from the modern social media and other advanced technologies. With several challenges emerging in the social media marketing, many brands have started to understand that the act of consuming advertising no longer lies in the power of a single marketing team but instead is decided on by the consumer.

It hence becomes critical for companies to consider “word of mouth” or a lifestyle as a successful marketing source to ensure that their message has been successful and deeply rooted. Whether the company is executing traditional or non-traditional campaigns they use controversial, unconventional methods. Their website not only provides a place for consumers to spend their money but also provides with a space to find information, interaction, and activism on topics and issues the consumers are most likely interested in and compassionate about. It thus creates a platform for active consumers for making sustainable purchasing decisions.

Awareness of the need for continued improvement in fashion industry is growing, and individual companies are optimizing business practices to limit their negative impact. But to maintain its current growth trajectory, the fashion industry as a whole must address its environmental and social footprint. The earth’s natural resources are under pressure, and while the fashion industry is not the most obvious contributor to this stress, it is a considerable one. To realize the large opportunity for the world economy and to safeguard future profitability, the fashion industry needs to take two key steps.

The first step involves pragmatic, concrete actions that are already economically viable - and that leading companies already practice, as shown in numerous proofs of concept. The second consists of two leaps forward: innovating on the basis of exciting developments being explored in research centers and test facilities, and collaborating to drive change throughout the industry faster and with more impact. To guide this work, the report presents a landscape for change that will support smart, sustainable growth for the industry. 

This article discusses about Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), a garment-industry effort to try to improve the way clothes are made to support sustainable practices and workers' rights. They measure the unique areas in the fashion industry which many brands have not considered - the environmental and social performance of apparel and footwear via a tool called the Higg Index, which rates factories, products and brands.

The SAC brings together the entire apparel and footwear value chain including retailers, brands, factories, materials providers and the stakeholders that hold it accountable. Building the Higg Index has been highly challenging as it measures the performance of a brand, the facilities where products are made and the products themselves.

To create the Higg Index, the whole value chain has to agree on its form and function as well as its structure, contents and process for awarding points. SAC's work shows that collaboration is the key for creating a sustainable fashion industry.

The U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol is a knowledge-sharing platform and partnership for the entire cotton supply chain. It offers brands and retailers better access to the cotton data that they need to be more sustainable by filling up the farm-level data gaps. In joining the Trust Protocol, members can prove, measure, and verify that the cotton fiber element of their supply chain is more sustainably grown with lower environmental and social risk. To better understand the sustainability efforts of leading brands, the organization surveyed over 150 respondents.

Brands and retailers are one of the leading drivers of sustainability in fashion. Companies with the most progress implementing their sustainability agenda seem to be understanding the environmental impacts of their supply chain through collaborations. The survey highlighted two ways that companies intended to build sustainability into their business plans during a pandemic - investment and finding external sources of data to track their progress. This shows that collaboration with value chain stakeholders and organizations to track their sustainability progress is the key for an affordable and sustainable fashion.

50 million tons of clothes are produced every year and 87% of them end up incinerated or in a landfill. And as the industry is expected to double, that math would be 87 million tons burned or tossed per year.

Moving the needle on that 100 million tons of clothes will take real partnership and radical collaboration. As an industry, brands need to interact, connect, collaborate and implement sustainable practices across the value chain. They should start pooling up the resources, share the knowledge on sustainable strategies and build transparency across the supply chain, for a sustainable fashion ecosystem.

With that motive, Fashion revolution has launched this Sustainability Roadmap: an open source guide to building and growing an ethical clothing brand.

This article reaffirms the following collaborations with, and between, the industry’s most pioneering sustainable brands can accelerate better practices across the industry. It also gives out short case studies of such successful effective collaborations.Sustainable brand collaborations can also be a great opportunity for knowledge-sharing between businesses. Many social and environmental innovations in the fashion industry are still nascent or unproven at scale, but combining the expertise of smaller pioneering brands with the size and platform of larger businesses can catapult better practices.This article explains the importance of large brands and retailers to use their size and platform to scale up innovation."

Ycloset is an online clothing subscription service leveraging China’s well developed e-commerce infrastructure. The company has formed collaborative partnerships and harnessed digital technology to create a circular business model that keeps clothes in use for longer.

Each month, subscribers can access up to 30 items from a catalogue of over 150,000 mid- to high-end clothing options for a subscription fee of CNY 499 (USD 80). YCloset operates in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and has just received USD 50 million investment from Alibaba, SBCVC, and other companies, to further expand. 

The key to building a loyal customer base is convenience in delivery and trust in cleaning quality. YCloset is essentially a ‘wardrobe in the cloud’, accessed via a smartphone app, and picked up or delivered within a day. YCloset has joined forces with a leading dry-cleaning company to ensure high quality cleaning of clothes. The company has observed that trendy durable clothes can be used by up to 40 different people. There is also the option to buy the clothes after renting them, a popular choice among customers.

This article stresses the need for collaborations between large brands for sustainable practices across the fashion value chain. It also discusses short case studies of successful effective collaborations.

Sustainable brand collaborations can also be a great opportunity for knowledge-sharing between businesses. Many social and environmental innovations in the fashion industry are still nascent or unproven at scale, but combining the expertise of smaller pioneering brands with the size and platform of larger businesses can catapult better practices. The study emphasizes the importance of large brands and retailers to use their size and platform to scale up innovation.

Ycloset is an online clothing subscription service leveraging China’s e-commerce infrastructure. The company has formed collaborative partnerships and harnessed digital technologies to create a circular business model that keeps clothes in use for longer. Each month, subscribers can access up to 30 items from a catalogue of over 150,000 mid- to high-end clothing options for a subscription fee of CNY 499 (USD 80). It operates in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and has just received USD 50 million investment from Alibaba, SBCVC, and other companies, for further expansion.

YCloset is essentially a ‘wardrobe in the cloud’, accessed via a smartphone app, and picked up or delivered within a day. It has partnered with a leading dry-cleaning company to ensure high quality cleaning of clothes. The company has observed that trendy durable clothes can be used by up to 40 different people. There is also an option to buy the clothes after renting them, a popular choice among customers.

Four Source is a B2B sourcing platform for the apparel industry. Their goal is to resolve the transparency issues of the highly-fragmented, global sourcing markets and to make apparel sourcing faster, safer and less costly. They provide solutions that enable all market players to substantially speed-up their cycle time and to leverage their value proposition to their customers.

Through a detailed database of verified sustainable fabric suppliers and apparel manufacturers, the platform enables both buyers to make sustainable purchase decisions as well as manufacturers to promote their sustainable products.

With countless ways to source materials, process them into fabric and sew the clothes, the fashion supply chain reaches thousands of factories big and small across the globe. Within a complex system like this, it can be extremely difficult to stay sustainable. 

This article provides step by step guidance on the best sustainable practices for an eco-friendly fashion supply chain. 

This study uncovers the potential of building supply chain relations and their impacts on the fashion supply chain transparency in an industrial context characterized by mistrust, complexity and privacy. By conducting a case study involving a multinational fashion group and an influential NGO, this study investigates how a fashion group forms supply chain relations that eventually influence their transparency performance. 

Results suggest that supply chain engagement is fundamental for supply chain transparency, and that NGOs play a pivotal role to enhance transparency through knowledge sharing and awareness increasing.

Treadler is an initiative from the H&M Group which offers access to the group’s global supply chain, as a B2B service, with the aim of accelerating sustainable change in the industry. Through Treadler, H&M will be offering other companies access to its global supply chain, expertise, long-term partnerships and sustainability strategies.

It will initially work on small-scale projects tailored to suit the needs of each company, covering the eco-friendliness of all supply chain operations from product development to sourcing and logistics.

This report reflects the perspectives of 64 participating sourcing executives from the fashion industry, who are responsible for a total sourcing value of over USD 100 billion. These respondents cover the full spectrum of the market, including vertical apparel retailers, hybrid wholesalers, and sportswear companies. 

The study stresses the need for sustainable sourcing at scale by the apparel companies in the next 5 years with increasing demand for sustainable fashion from the consumer sector.

Google is partnering with WWF Sweden to develop an environmental data platform to encourage the fashion industry make more responsible sourcing decisions. It aims to give brands a detailed view into the use of raw materials in the manufacturing and supply chains, to follow sustainable practices. 

These raw materials are analysed on sustainability factors like water scarcity, pollution, greenhouse gas emission, drawing on Google Earth Engine Data. Earth Engine combines satellite imagery and geospatial data to track the changes and map trends on earth surface.

Issues such as climate change, excess waste and unethical labor practices are much more salient than they used to be. This has a knock-on effect when it comes to our purchasing habits. A 2017 study by Cone Communications shows how much sustainability dictates our purchasing decisions. They found that 87% of Americans would purchase products from businesses who advocate for social and environmental responsibility. So, it is high time that fashion brands explore sustainable opportunities across the value chain, in particular retail. It is learnt that smaller retailers often struggle to find ways of lowering their footprint that are scalable to their operations. However, there are some simple, affordable initiatives which fashion brands can adopt to become more sustainable irrespective of their sizes.  

Some of the measures discussed in the article include chossing energy efficient equipment, adopting sustainable packaging practices, enabling customers to offset their impacts, good promotional tools to display the retailers' sustainability practices and avoiding greenwashing.

US outdoor apparel brand Patagonia is offering to teach its customers how to carry out their own repairs so they can make their garments last longer. The company has launched the concept - in partnership with the iFixit online repair service - as part of its Worn Wear initiative to make its clothing last longer.

Through detailed product care guides, FAQs and simple videos, the company attempts to help its customers automatically repair and manage the quality of their clothes to last longer at lesser costs.

Retailing, as a part of the fashion supply chain is facing dramatic changes in consumption. In many ways, consumerism has become a defining characteristic of modern societies, while at the same time sustainability has been an important issue arousing social concerns around the world. In modern times, shopping is increasingly becoming a leisure activity done not out of necessity, but rather out of luxury. Although fashion producers and retailers offer one-off sustainable options, they still rely on hyper-consumption and low prices to meet their business goals.

To solve the problems related to the lack of sustainability in disposable fashion and fast fashion, few leading fast fashion brands have launched sustainability programs. This research provides perspectives on how high end fashion brands can redefine or expand their retailing service models in order to improve their sustainability.

A good rule of thumb for knowing whether an investment piece is a certified investment piece is to consider how long it will last. So many items of clothing we buy rarely last a couple of washes before they begin to deteriorate and with the world’s eyes firmly on the environmental impact of fashion, it’s worth keeping in mind how you can make your clothes last longer. Here’s a round-up of menswear brands that offer repair services to beloved garments.

Taylor Stitch is a San Francisco based fashion brand which has been advocating for a slower and sustainable approach towards sustainability. In order to integrate circularity into their business model, Taylor Stitch launched a programme called "Restitch", which will enable the company to take back used, worn Taylor Stitch clothing in need of repair.

The company remanufactures these old clothes by partnering with Yerdle, a startup backed by Patagonia’s Tin Shed Ventures and working with brands such as Eileen Fisher and REI.

Alongside the carbon-intensive processes of producing and shipping fast fashion, how we dispose of our clothes carries a significant environmental impact. According to WRAP, around 300,000 tonnes of clothing – worth about £140 million – go to landfill every year in the UK alone. With organisations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation urging us to move towards a circular fashion economy, putting an end to our current linear and highly unsustainable model, it’s clear that repairing, alongside reselling and renting, is an intrinsic part of the solution.

The trend towards sustainable fashion may be in its infancy but there are few large brands who are offering sustainable textile repairing services to their customers through online training platforms. This article provides details about efforts taken by high fashion brands in improving their sustainability performance by providing repair services either directly through retailers or by forging partnerships with retailers and exo-laundry shops.

Notable among these is Patagonia, which has shown a longstanding commitment to environmental activism and whose products are guaranteed for life. In 2016, the company launched its Worn Wear repair tours, travelling around European ski resorts offering free clothing repairs, whatever the brand. Another brand, a British heritage label Barbour is also known to reproof, repair and alter its premium wax jackets in-house.