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Hello! Looking for a palette cleanser from fashion month coverage? I’ve got you covered.
I’m heading to New York next week for Climate Week, a much nerdier and less glamorous experience than London and Milan promise to be. I can’t wait. Hit me up if you’ll be in town.
Things are looking pretty bleak heading into the event. The world — fashion included — is well off-track on climate commitments and advocacy efforts are running on fumes. The movement needs a new playbook for the current era of uncertainty, partisan politics and disaffection. We’re unpacking that in this week’s newsletter. I’ve also got some more inside details from my recent interview with Brunello Cucinelli, who’s successfully modelling a kinder form of capitalism, as well as a look at the numbers from Textile Exchange’s latest state-of-the-industry report on fashion’s material mix.
As always, send me thoughts, feedback and tips.
Fashion Needs a New Sustainability Playbook
When I first started covering fashion a bit more than half a decade ago, brands were falling over themselves to talk about their sustainability efforts.
The Paris Agreement — a near-universal global pledge to tackle climate change and halt potentially catastrophic temperature increases — was only a few years old and businesses were keen to join an emerging climaterati. In fashion terms, green was the new black.
But as the Paris deal nears its 10th birthday, things are looking a little different. The world is still heating, and the consequences — from raging wildfires to deadly flooding — are already dire. But those heady, hopeful days in which big fashion brands jockeyed to be greenest of them all are long over.
Sustainability teams have been winnowed, political and regulatory momentum has stalled (and in some cases reversed course altogether), big green marketing claims have hushed up and the industry is well off-track to meet its environmental goals. Unfortunately in this context, it is only too true that fashion is a mirror, reflecting wider world trends.
Heading into New York Climate Week, the mood is distinctly downbeat. As one contact wrote to me with a fair bit of understatement, “the vibes are a bit funny.”
What’s the Point?
The marathon week of high-level summits, earnest panel discussions and closed-door dinners matters because it’s a staging ground to tee up the big topics up for discussion at the UN’s annual COP climate summit at the end of the year. (Remember, this one was meant to be a tenth anniversary victory lap for Paris; it’s currently looking like a bit of a damp squib).
Still, this year fashion is showing up in force, with loads of events planned throughout the week. I’ll be speaking at Columbia on Monday morning, moderating a panel with Textile Exchange on Thursday and bopping about events in the city the rest of the week. If you see me, come say hi.
I’m looking forward to some interesting discussions and an on-the-ground pulse check on a movement that looks increasingly lost. One big topic I expect to dominate conversations is how to revive this flagging momentum.
(If you want to go deeper on how the climate movement lost its mojo, I recommend this long-read on why the old climate-activism playbook doesn’t work anymore and this one on how climate politics soured, both from The New York Times).
So What Is Fashion’s New Sustainability Playbook?
Ah, well that is the joy of being a journalist. I often get to lob out questions, and then Homer Simpson into a hedge until smarter heads come up with answers.
But there are a few shoots emerging:
- Make it Commercial: Business for good sounds cute, but these days executives, investors and politicians are more about pragmatic realism. Translation: where’s the money?
- Make it Clean: Turns out most consumers don’t really care that much about the planet when they’re clothes shopping, but they do care about their health. Some brands are flipping the script from “green” to “clean” to try and engage the shopping public. There’s also some opportunity for bipartisan political buy-in here.
- Make it Sexy: Consumers, who are also voters, don’t want to be told to essentially go on a climate diet. They want an Ozempic-like solution that brings all the benefits and takes away the work. As the fashion industry knows well, desire is a much more powerful sales tool than shame.
A Word of Caution
In politics, art and culture, narratives are important, but they just pave the way for action. And there’s no getting around that dealing with this stuff is going to be a long, hard slog.
The Brunello Cucinelli Effect
On a muggy day in late August, I found myself in Solomeo, the out-of-the-way Umbrian hamlet where Brunello Cucinelli has headquartered his luxury cashmere label.
I was there to talk about how the brand has managed to avoid a bruising luxury downturn that has dragged down sales at many of its peers. While the luxury sector is expected to contract between 2 and 5 percent this year, Brunello Cucinelli’s sales rose nearly 11 percent in the first half and are projected to grow at an annual rate of 10 percent through 2026.
“You came here in order to understand the secret, but what secret?” Cucinelli responded when I asked him how he’s done it over cappuccinos in his office. The brand is just doing what it has always done, he said, focusing on steady growth and an “undiluted” approach to luxury that has allowed it to avoid some of the missteps that have left consumers questioning whether the products made by some competitors are actually worth it.
“All along, we have planned for a growth that we like to define as gracious,” he said. “When we went public, we stated clearly to all investors. If you’re looking for a company that is outperforming on its profitability every year and that is pursuing profit maximisation, you know, to the detriment of its workers and supply chain, then do not buy our stock because we will never do that.”
Luxury’s Last Idealist
Speaking to Cucinelli goes a bit like this. Our conversation was presided over by a bust of Augustus, Rome’s first Emperor, and peppered with quotes from famed philosophers. I left with a copy of Pyathagoras’ “Golden Verses.” The company’s corporate communications can equally veer into the philosophical.
Critics argue all this moralising is little more than marketing, but Cucinelli also puts his money where his mouth is. He’s poured millions into restoring Solomeo and other philanthropic works. His company pays its factory workers about 20 percent above Italy’s average industrial wage. Third-party suppliers can have a direct line to Cucinelli himself, a level of access that is “unheard of” elsewhere in the industry, according to Hakan Karaosman, an associate professor at Politecnico di Milano.
At a time when brands built on any kind of values are facing a world of cynicism, Cucinelli has turned it into a virtue. The executive says he doesn’t want to preach. He’s just doing his thing, and everyone else can do what they want.
“I’m like they were in Athens. I’m going to tell you and state what I do. That’s it,” he said. “Then it will be up to you to decide on how you behave in life.”
Making Slow, Hot
In an era of uncertainty and tight money, there are signs more companies may be ready to sign up to a slower growth model. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean more responsible business practices, but there is more space to thoughtfully manage supply chains when companies aren’t chasing exponential expansion.
Take American handbag brand Coach, which is finally reaping the rewards of a years-long comeback plan. While the goal is for the brand to keep getting bigger, this time, it doesn’t want to do so too fast.
“We are not looking to churn,” Coach CEO Todd Kahn told my colleague Diana Pearl in a story this week. “I could add a billion dollars of sales next year, but not in a healthy way. Our growth is much more structured to be sustainable.”
Of course, that is exactly what an executive trying to manage investor expectations while staring down a moment of intense volatility would say…
Broken Records
Every year, industry nonprofit Textile Exchange publishes a check in on how fashion’s material mix is shifting to align with its climate goals.
As I’m sure you’ve been paying attention, it will come as no surprise that the score card is not good.
Sure more companies are using certified lower-impact materials than ever before, but material consumption is hitting such record highs, any climate benefits have been more than offset by the sheer increase in overall volume.
Over the last five years, greenhouse gas emissions from raw material production for the fashion, footwear and home textiles industries have grown 20 percent, according to this year’s report, which published earlier in the week.
Here are a few key stats:
- Record High Consumption: Total material production reached a record-breaking 132 million tonnes in 2024, up nearly 6 percent from a year earlier.
- Blame it on the P-P-P-P-P-Polyester: Polyester (AKA plastic) was the biggest growth driver and extended its market dominance. It now makes up 59 percent of total global fibre production.
- Recycled Problems: More brands are turning to recycled polyester, but not fast enough to offset the growth of virgin production. Its market share declined from 12.5 percent in 2023 to 12 percent in 2024.
For more, read Shayeza Walid’s BoF story from earlier in the week.
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK:
- Network Shein: The ultra-fast-fashion giant has opened up its supply network to other labels in an effort to boost growth. Other fashion brands can now tap into factories that can turn around new designs in less than a week, as long as they open a store on Shein’s online marketplace. [The Business of Fashion]
- Natural Fiber Wind Down: The closure of alternative-leather maker Natural Fiber Welding points to broader challenges facing the material innovation space, even for companies like NFW, which secured hefty funding, big-name partners and accolades like becoming a finalist for the Earthshot Prize. [Sourcing Journal]
- Gassed Up: The fashion industry is ignoring its contribution to a potent form of greenhouse gas pollution: methane. The gas, which is particularly associated with animal agriculture linked to materials like leather and wool, doesn’t linger in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but it traps much more heat while it lasts. [The Wall Street Journal]
- Regulatory Row: Oil giant Exxon Mobil is shelving investments in chemical recycling in Europe worth €100 million ($118 million), claiming overly restrictive rules on plastics make them uneconomic. [Bloomberg]