The Best of BoF 2023: Fashion’s Sustainability Reckoning

Because the world’s hottest 12 months on file attracts to an in depth, trend nonetheless isn’t sweating it. It must be.

Rising temperatures and related climate extremes pose an more and more current — and dear — business threat, whilst large manufacturers proceed to lag on their climate commitments. New rules geared toward curbing trend’s environmental influence found many companies unprepared this 12 months. And extra is coming.

A part of the issue is that tackling the business’s sustainability shortfalls requires going through a tangled internet of interconnected and systemic challenges which have been made even more durable by this 12 months’s gloomy international financial backdrop and geopolitical upheaval.

Vogue’s progress has been powered by low-cost vitality within the type of coal, low-cost supplies within the type of plastic synthetics like polyester and low-cost labour equipped by a precarious workforce increasingly threatened by a broader international shift in the direction of authoritarianism.

Modifications are underway, from client actions that query how much wealthy individuals should shop to new tech platforms that promise to assist manufacturers measure their environmental footprint and meet incoming sustainability rules. However heading into 2024, the business might want to begin to grapple extra significantly with its local weather danger.

Prime Tales

Is Fashion Sleepwalking Into the Climate Crisis?: The intense and lethal climate skilled round a lot of the world in July obtained little point out on large manufacturers’ earnings calls, signalling that buyers and executives nonetheless aren’t treating local weather as a right away enterprise danger.

A ‘Climate of Fear’ in Fashion’s Supply Chains: The killing of a union chief in Bangladesh this summer time has heightened anxiousness over the dangers going through labour organisers amid a broader, typically violent, crackdown on labour rights.

Fashion Isn’t Ready for the Regulation Coming for It: New transparency necessities in France are testing large manufacturers as they put together for an oncoming wave of sustainability regulation.

Is Sustainable Fashion Elitist?: Calling out the business’s environmental footprint and the true value of constructing garments has touched off a fancy and heated debate concerning the accessibility and affordability of lower-impact trend.

Should Fashion Pay for Its ‘Waste Colonialism’?: Yearly, hundreds of thousands of tons of outdated garments are shipped all over the world as a part of the worldwide secondhand clothes commerce. Nonprofit The Or Basis and Vestiaire Collective are lobbying for regulation that advantages the nations the place they find yourself.

The Tech Race to Back Up Fashion’s Green Claims: Manufacturers are turning to AI-powered analytics instruments to enhance their skill to measure environmental influence within the face of latest authorities regulation. However getting maintain of correct knowledge to help these assessments stays a tough and largely guide problem.

The BoF Podcast | The World Is On Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes: BoF’s Imran Amed speaks with Alec Leach about his manifesto on how we are able to transfer in the direction of a greater relationship with trend.