A green recovery
“How could we ever get out of this problem that we’re facing? Would we ever be able to heal the Earth? It looks like we can. We have to come out with hope.” Stella McCartney in Vogue Global Conversations
Today, 22nd of April 2020, is the 50th Earth Day. Although it’s only been during the past years that the word sustainability has been gaining popularity among retailers, brands, consumers and even a place in the agenda of different governments and international organizations. However, it is difficult to define it — as the word has gained popularity, it has lost consistency.
With this in mind, two Stanford classmates and I delved into a project to understand what stands behind the word Sustainability, to get a sense of what came to mind to people when asked about its intersection with fashion. We got a disparity of answers that could be categorized in the following three buckets: carbon emission along the value chain (used materials, waste, trips…), working conditions and over consumption — the categorization is not mutually exclusive as over consumption is also related to carbon emissions and unfortunately, to working conditions.
One of our conclusions was that companies, governments and consumers are still on different pages. Brands are mostly focused on improving their own value chain — most of them focused on the sourcing of materials (e.g., organic cotton, animal-free), with a smaller group paying also attention to transparency (including talking about working conditions in the factories). As per the largest fashion corporations, international organizations and governments, the focus is on the global carbon emissions (e.g., G7 Fashion Pact signed in june 2019 by 32 companies including some of the largest ones and led by the French Government). On the other hand, consumers are more scattered, mentioning they care about the value chain but not yet ready to change their habits. What we saw was more and more consumers feeling guilty about their meaningless consumption habits — overcrowded closets and still consuming pieces that would be worn once or twice, and then abandoned.
When Coronavirus arrived this year, one of the concerns in the fashion industry was that the huge cost pressures would lead to fashion brands moving back on their sustainability efforts and commitments. And many, especially those for which sustainability was just a strong marketing tool, have done so. However, hasn’t the Coronavirus forced all of us (governments, international organizations, brands, retailers and consumers) to stop and question our habits and their impact on Earth? Whether these have to do with carbon emission along the value chain or working conditions or over consumption. In the words of Giorgio Armani, “the slow down forced by the pandemic is bringing to light a necessary redemption of value to the work and world of designers, which would ultimately bring the customers to the understanding of the value of fashion and its collections”.
Indeed, as Stella McCartney pointed out in the Vogue Global Conversations, there was 25% less carbon emission in China in February. “We’ve seen in such a short period of time how incredible nature is, how she bounces back so quickly when we just stop for a second”. (Although she bounces back quickly for new emissions, unfortunately a lot of damage has been done…).
As per consumers, we’ve proved ourselves how little we need. We’ve been watching from home the crisis, seeing how our countries (and our personal budgets) get impacted, reading about how fashion suppliers in Bangladesh and other countries that depend heavily on this activity have seen so many orders cancelled by Western brands, converting their crisis into a humanitarian one. It would be a disservice not to come out of this crisis with a desire to create the habit of a more mindful consumption: Do I need it? How long will it last, can I contribute to a longer life for this product? Where and how was it produced? What is it made from and where do these materials come from? These four questions should always be on top of mind. We have no more excuses.
Giorgio Armani wrote “United, we will make it. But we have to be united and operate in unison: This is perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from this crisis”. And united means all of us: big and small brands, international organizations, governments and individual consumers. Only united, we’ll make the recovery be a green one. To end on Stella’s words: “It’s an absolute reset button moment in the history of Earth as we know it. And we can still have incredible, desirable, well made timeless pieces.”
For more detail on this:
- Follow what Fashion Revolution is doing this week
- Listen to Stella McCartney and Gabriela Hearst in the last part of this Vogue Global Conversations video (from minute 39)
- Read Founder of Another Tomorrow, Vanessa Barboni Hallik’s article on Vogue: Could COVID-19 Usher in a New Era of Responsibility in Fashion? An Urgent Opportunity for Sustainability and Ethics
