How Fashion Revolution’s Transparency Index Encourages a Culture of Control
A former garment factory manager on race, stereotypes, and why the sustainability agenda should focus on equal partnership.
The 2020 Fashion Revolution Transparency Index launched this week inadvertently contributes to sustainability solutions that emphasize brands’ control over their supply chains rather than meaningful partnership with their supply chains.
It’s worth rewinding for a moment to articulate the theory of change put forward in the Transparency Index. Transparency itself is not the end goal, it “provides a window into the conditions in which our clothes are being made.” The disclosure of more credible and comparable information enables accountability, and accountability drives change. The logic is intuitive and appealing.
The focus on credible and comparable information about what companies are doing overshadows transparency about why the fashion industry has such a big social and environmental problem in the first place. This might seem benign — no report can tackle everything. But when transparency isn’t coupled with a robust discussion about why the fashion industry’s social and environmental footprint is so bad, people will fill in the blanks themselves.
