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For a long time, fashion communicators have managed to escape criticism for their role in supporting overproduction and promoting overconsumption, but that is about to change.
The Sustainable Fashion Communication Playbook, launched today by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Fashion Charter for Climate Change (UNFCCC), calls on fashion communicators to recognise their historic impact when it comes to exacerbating the climate crisis, and to lend their skills towards sustainability goals instead.
“Stories inform the way we understand ourselves, each other, and our place in the world,” says playbook author Rachel Arthur, advocacy lead for sustainable fashion at UNEP. “Fashion’s stories are currently directed towards a linear model of production and consumption. The industry’s dominant narratives will not allow us to reach our sustainability targets.”
Among the 13 new commitments added to the UN Fashion Charter at COP26 was a call for fashion comms to be brought in line with the 1.5°C pathway in the Paris Climate Agreement. What does this mean for fashion PR?
This comes after the UNFCCC was updated at the climate conference COP26 in November 2021, and a clause was added committing signatories to shift communications in line with climate goals. It applies to more than 100 signatories and 41 supporting organisations, including Kering, LVMH, Chanel, H&M Group and Puma, but the playbook is hoping for a much broader reach. If the commitment was the ‘what’, the playbook is the ‘how’.
It’s also a timely response to industry-wide caution: international greenwashing investigations are gaining pace, and regulations around green claims are tightening up, from the US to the European Union, forcing brands to backtrack on their previous strategies and rethink communications.
The focus isn’t just on greenwashing or even green claims. “We’re not just talking about how you communicate about your product that might be sustainable, we’re talking about how you communicate everything to do with your brand — from products to events — in a more sustainable way,” explains Arthur.
A roadmap for sustainable storytelling
The guide is aimed at consumer-facing communicators, covering a wide range of job roles, including marketing, branding and advertising; public relations, creative direction and visual media; event production, content or social media at brands and retailers; and those involved in the wider communication ecosystem. This spans agencies, fashion and news media, image makers, digital platforms; entertainment properties, influencers, advocacy groups and educators. Over 160 of these communicators took part in a year-long consultation process, highlighting challenges, case studies and solutions, which formed the basis of the playbook.
Intended as an actionable guide, the playbook walks communicators through the process of narrative change, shifting from communications that promote a linear, take-make-waste model, towards a sustainable and circular system in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, something the UN is calling “1.5 ºC lifestyle”. It has four key goals: countering misinformation, reducing messages perpetuating overconsumption, redirecting aspiration to more sustainable lifestyles, and empowering consumers to demand greater action from businesses and policymakers.
Underpinning these shifts in storytelling and consumer behaviour are a set of topline instructions that the UN says all communicators should apply to their work, whether they are communicating about sustainability, or simply communicating about fashion in a sustainable way.
According to the playbook, communicators should lead with science — translating technical, science-based information into credible and meaningful messages for consumers, without losing accuracy. Changing behaviours and practices is a priority, leading consumers towards lower impact products and normalising circular solutions such as rental, resale and repair. There is also a need to reimagine values, the playbook states, recalibrating aspirations away from newness and disposability, towards inclusivity and longevity. Finally, communicators are encouraged to drive advocacy, to empower their audiences to think like active citizens rather than insatiable consumers.
Applying the principles
While the playbook takes aim at overconsumption — a phenomenon primarily driven by the Global North — it has been written with a global lens, says Arthur. There are 2 to 3 billion citizens in key developing markets that could be considered a new urban middle class, she explains, and it’s vital that their consumption habits and aspirations do not follow the same misguided “dream” as the Global North. “Fashion has such a huge influence on what societies aspire to, and there is an opportunity to reshape that. Rerouting the ‘dream’ that underpins fashion consumption could help other industries.”
It’s not all about stripping back negative habits, Arthur continues. The playbook encourages communicators to start telling more positive stories about the future of fashion. In theory, as supply chains become more transparent and product life cycles become more circular, there are more diverse stories to tell, from the garment workers, cultural heritage and crafts in the supply chains, to the multiple lives a single garment can have through resale or upcycling.
Case studies range from contemporary brand Nanushka’s digital product IDs powered by Eon, to shoemaker Allbirds’s carbon footprint receipts, and Reformation’s ‘Getting Stuff Done’ campaign, which highlighted people working in sustainable fashion, from climate activist and storyteller Aditi Mayer to marine biologist and policy expert Dr Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. But no single case study embodies all of the principles — that’s why the guidance is needed, says Arthur.
She points to several lesser-known names in the playbook, including B Corp-certified Indonesian fashion brand SukkhaCitta and Kenya-based artisanal brand Lila Bare. These small brands embody the principles with their business models, rather than individual examples of communication, says Arthur. “The most obvious case studies are the big campaigns with huge budgets that use influencers and go viral online, but we tried to look at smaller examples too.” It was a challenge to find well-documented case studies from the Global South, adds UNEP programme officer Bettina Heller, although the work itself is plentiful. “What we’re promoting is close to what they have always done.”
UNEP will launch a masterclass series later in the year, to make the principles of the playbook more accessible to different groups of communicators.
Systemic issues beyond the playbook’s scope
The playbook’s creators are under no illusions that it will solve wide-reaching systemic issues such as social justice, diversity, workers’ rights or gender equality. The voluntary measures are simply meant to help communicators contribute positively to these agendas within the scope of their work, explains Arthur. “Communication is not independently going to solve the triple planetary crisis (climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste),” adds Heller. For broader efforts, she says, the industry should look towards UNEP’s Textile Value Chain Roadmap, published in March. “Communication links to other issues — when you think about green claims, you also need to think about transparency, traceability and data availability. We can highlight that work through the playbook, but the solutions need to be systemic.”
One of those systemic issues is how the industry is set up to favour linear consumption, and how the economic incentives and opportunities available to people shape the stories they tell. “The playbook encourages communicators to eradicate messages of overconsumption, but we’re aware that this fundamentally goes against current marketer goals and how their success is measured,” says Arthur.
The same could be said for other stakeholder groups. “Within PR and influencers, we’re seeing lots of people position themselves as sustainable communicators, but their storytelling still focuses on traditional consumption, even if the products themselves are more sustainable options.” The playbook talks about decoupling value creation from resource extraction and volume growth, while improving wellbeing — a nod to the contentious subject of degrowth — but this isn’t possible without systemic change, says Arthur.
There may be systemic limitations at play, and a technical education gap to overcome, but Arthur is keen to assert that most fashion communicators already possess the creative skills to make this transition. “This has to be underpinned by science, but steps beyond that are about the creative space — storytelling, positivity, creativity — and those things are very much up for grabs.”
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