Smaller brands are leading fashion towards “a true systems-change approach”, the only viable way to a sustainable future, according to a new report.
The nonprofit Remake revamped the assessment criteria for its most recent fashion accountability report to track brands’ tangible progress towards “intersectional social, environmental, economic and political issues” in the supply chain. The report found smaller brands achieved significantly higher scores and provided the authors with “a glimpse into a reimagined fashion future”. Smaller brands were also more transparent, says Elizabeth Cline, Remake’s advocacy and policy director.
The overall findings from the report, published in December, showed the discrepancy between the industry’s plans and its current actions. In doing so, it highlighted the need for a narrative shift around what the industry needs to work towards when it talks about sustainability. Right now, fashion brands’ sustainability strategies largely focus on reducing negative impacts. That approach may trim the footprint of individual products in key areas including emissions and deforestation, but it doesn’t go far enough to actually retrain fashion to be a planet-positive, equitable industry.
Remake evaluated brands on common metrics like raw materials and emissions, as well as a range of more nuanced criteria, such as buying practices, product output and the transparency and accountability of clothing take-back schemes. The average brand score was 17 points out of a possible 150, with the highest score coming in at 83 points and the lowest at -13. (The report allowed for negative scores, an industry first — and issued plenty of them.) In general, large brands and retailers across the industry, from fast fashion to luxury, failed to demonstrate any notable progress on the industry’s most pressing issues.
These shortcomings are a wakeup call to the fact that, in fashion’s push for sustainability, a clear definition of what the industry needs to be working toward is missing. “In the industry, there’s a consistent moving of the goalposts, and an ongoing redefining of sustainability seemingly just about every day,” says Patrick Woodyard, founder and CEO of footwear and accessories brand Nisolo. “How can we know what the next steps are if we don't know where we're trying to be long-term?”
What’s needed, say advocates, is a systems-change approach that would mean people and companies working toward a common goal rooted in what sustainability means: the ability for society to meet people’s needs and express their greatest potential without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same.
Not only are fashion sustainability strategies lacking a unified mission, but brands that set strong environmental and social standards in their supply chains say they risk jeopardising their businesses in doing so because it makes them less competitive on price. For Bayard Winthrop, founder and CEO of activewear brand American Giant, the disconnect between the way fashion talks about sustainability and the way it acts has never been clearer.
Fashion has been abuzz with talk of nearshoring production, for example, since it started grappling with supply chain disruptions at the beginning of the pandemic. American Giant, which produces its goods in the US, has seen the surge firsthand.
“We're getting lots of inbound requests for everything, from T-shirts to pants to barbecue covers, to make stuff domestically,” he says. However, he’s not convinced the trend is a result of brands having a change of heart, and thinks instead it's a direction brands go in when they run out of other options. This means they may just as easily shift back when it's cheaper and feasible to do so again, even if it drives a higher carbon footprint or greater human cost. “We're not seeing, that I'm aware of, longer-term investment or trying to change behaviour a decade down the road," he says.
A label to communicate sustainability better, and measure it better too
Smaller brands are offering some exciting potential.
Last month, while the industry struggled with supply chain obstacles and shipping delays just before Christmas, Nisolo launched a “sustainability facts” label to detail a product’s performance on metrics such as durability, packaging, post-use product lifecycle and wages — including the percentage of workers in the supply chain earning a living wage. Woodyard says that the label supports long-term goals by maintaining a focus on sustainability as a whole, not as a topic to be divided into pieces.
The lack of a cohesive approach to sustainability in fashion is a big part of why Nisolo, which was founded in 2011 and employs 135 people in the US and Peru, created the sustainability facts label. There are plenty of tools for measuring different aspects of fashion’s progress, but none that accounted for the full picture, he says. “No one was really looking at gender equality, for the most part, across these assessments, health care and benefits were largely absent — and a lot of people are talking about carbon emissions, but very few include the durability of a product. What good is it to know a product's carbon footprint if you don't know how long you're going to get to wear it?”
By definition, brands choosing to adopt the label will expose their vulnerabilities and shortcomings. Woodyard doesn’t think that will serve brands negatively, though; rather, it’s a crucial component of the reckoning that needs to happen, both to rebuild trust with consumers and to drive faster progress on more issues simultaneously. “[Incremental progress], one step at a time — it's going to take 100 years for the industry to change in the way that it needs to if that's the approach,” he says. “You can be fully transparent before you have to be perfect. I think that's a critical flaw in the conversation today. I also don't think the average consumer is actually expecting that. It's an archaic way of thought.”
That’s a mindset shift that Woodyard shares with other young brands and founders, and may be part of why smaller brands as a category received the highest scores in the Remake report. “The people who run them really do seem to think differently. They want to engage in a conversation, they don't fear being held to account and they don't see [our metrics] as an attack,” says Cline. “They are more committed, seemingly, to the idea that their businesses have to be built on fair pay. With the big brands, we continue to see resistance.”
Measured strictly by total environmental impact, many small brands might automatically perform better than large ones; their size alone means they are likely to use fewer natural resources and produce less waste. However, Cline says Remake tried to adjust for that. “There were many, many places where the brands could have caught up and surpassed the small companies. We did that intentionally — we didn’t necessarily want to weigh the index. But, the big companies just weren’t meeting those expectations.”
The industry needs leading players to adapt, though, if it’s going to change course. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but Woodyard is confident that eventually, they will have no alternative.
“The choice is going to have to be made over the course of the next decade, and I think that those who are going to still be around are those who decide to take action,” he says. “We’re talking about a massively complex and beast of a supply chain. It feels, at first glance, impossible — but it's not a lack of technology, it's not a lack of economic ability or possibility. It’s a matter of decision-making and prioritisation.”
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