Dispatches from Fashion: Industry Leaders Take a Leap, Prove Hemingway Right
Many economists believe in what is now called the Hemingway Law of Motion, that is:
“The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.”
(Derived from Ernest Hemingway’s, The Sun Also Rises
“How did you go bankrupt?”
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”)
It is a poignant reminder that the world is not smooth or linear but perhaps full of tell-tale signs of tipping points and thresholds that are often ignored in quotidian living. These small increments lead to drastic change, often only understood in hindsight.
While there are varied schools of thought on this law, which has its own fallacies, the truth is that if the last month is anything to go by, Hemingway might have been on to something.
In the back-drop of the deadliest health crisis known to mankind, the Covid-19 pandemic, some fashion brands and organisations have prepared themselves for needle-moving leaps towards sustainability.
Lack of equity for workers is not a dirty secret of the fashion industry anymore. When some brands and retailers abandoned their suppliers and factories to fend for themselves at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone saw it. Thousands of garment workers globally received no compensation from their clients, multinational giants, despite having completed orders way before the pandemic started. Consumers had eyes on everything as the industry practices unraveled globally. One might assume, the lens is also on the consumer to tip the scales. Not gradually, but suddenly. Not later, but now.
However, according to Vogue’s Business Index, customers don’t care enough, just yet, to create change at scale.
For luxury brands, despite surveys suggesting that consumers increasingly want to put their money where their mouth is, there’s little, if any, data to show their actions match their beliefs. According to this Index, with the exception of the small minority of hyper-conscientious customers, most people don’t look critically at brands’ sustainability policies before choosing where and how to spend their money.
So, if waiting for customers to demand sustainability is like sitting on a ticking time-bomb? What must be the driver of sustainability in the industry in the near future?
The onus and the answer lies with brands and their leaders.
The good news? Some have taken a step in the right direction.
1. Walmart x ThredUp: Making second-hand clothing mainstream
Walmart decided to team up with online resale site ThredUP.com to offer nearly 750,000 items of used clothing and accessories items on its website. As an online thrift store, ThredUp accepts clothes, shoes, handbags and more in good condition from customers. ThredUp claims that upto 70% of consumers have bought, or are now willing to buy, second hand merchandise. (ThredUp Resale Report, 2019)
What does this mean?
Globally, fashion is grappling with unwanted merchandise since stores were closed, and most stores are looking for outlets to take this unsold, aging product off their hands. ThredUp offers retailers the opportunity to get rid of the merchandise at scale (still new, though now dated), and that very likely will strengthen Walmart’s offering in fashion, especially for the age group 18–30 years, who are the primary drivers of shopping for thrifted clothes . Win-win.
2. Gucci says farewell to fashion shows: A new chapter for luxury
It is no surprise that the Kering Group is deeply rooted in making the luxury industry shift to sustainable practices. Even then, Gucci’s announcement to completely discard seasonal fashion shows, is being seen as needle-moving in the industry.
Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele announced that the brand wants to “abandon the worn-out ritual of seasonalities and shows to regain a new cadence” by bowing out of the rota of fashion shows: spring/summer, autumn/winter, cruise and pre-fall.
“We will meet just twice a year, to share the chapters of a new story,” he said. “Irregular, joyful and absolutely free chapters, which will be written blending rules and genres, feeding on new spaces, linguistic codes and communication platforms.
“I would like to leave behind the paraphernalia of leitmotifs that colonized our prior world: cruise, pre-fall, spring-summer, fall-winter. I think these are stale and underfed words.”
“Above all, we understand we went way too far,” Michele adds. “Our reckless actions have burned the house we live in. We conceived of ourselves as separated from nature, we felt cunning and almighty.”
Why does it matter?
For a leading luxury brand to take this step only means that many competitor brands will match this strategy and follow suit or will be forced to reconsider their marketing calendars.
3. Zalando : EU’s largest e-retailer makes transparency a must-have base requirement
From 2023, all of the 2,000 fashion brands featured on Zalando, EU’s largest e-retailer generating 6.84 billion euros in revenue in 2019, will have to provide supply chain information. The screening will involve a 250-question audit, looking into every part of a company’s supply chain.
While Zalando has given its partners three years to measure up to these new requirements, 400 of Zalando’s brands are already engaged with the first stage of the programme, expecting first results by November.
If partners do not meet these standards on human rights or environmental measures, they will be banned from 2023 on. Brava!
Why does it matter?
Historically, it’s the first ever move by a large fashion corporation calling out sustainability as a mandate. Period.
4. Oracle launches block-chain platform ‘Retraced’: creating efficient supplier transparency at scale
Global Fashion Agenda and McKinsey & Company ‘s CEO Agenda (COVID-19 edition) highlights the need for raising the bar on supplier relationships and shift to equal partnerships, given that the current pandemic is the biggest disruption in the supplier landscape since production moved from Europe & US to Asia.
To push this agenda to scale, the fashion industry will have to deploy tech-support much like Oracle’s block-chain platform Retraced.
By mapping its supply chain data into Retraced’s application — including certified details about the cotton growers, textile manufacturers, brands can update order, delivery, and production schedules and then create, print, and affix QR codes to both physical and digital garment tags.
How is it better?
Consumers can use their mobile devices to scan the QR code and see instantly that the cotton was grown organically by a local farmer, processed without hazardous chemicals at a nearby textile factory, dyed using environmentally friendly plant-based extracts, and then woven into biodegradable fabrics, which are then cut, sewn, and embellished by a fair trade artisan.
5. Ellen McArthur Foundation: Enabling analytical approach to circular economy using consumer-facing technology
Earlier this year, Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched a digital tool, Circulytics, in January which enables businesses of all sizes and sectors to measure their contribution to the circular economy and identify ways in which to close the loop further.
It enables users to track the extent to which their business is contributing to the Foundation’s three principles of a circular economy — designing out waste and pollution; keeping products and materials in use; and regenerating natural systems — by assessing data across 18 metrics.
Why does it matter?
Until now there was no tool to effectively measure and quantify the transition of a business from linear to circular. Many businesses are starting to embrace the opportunity of a circular economy, but for the transition to happen at scale and speed, they need accurate data and clear analysis. Circulytics helps businesses recognise their responsibility in addressing global resource-related challenges, and take strategic action on the circular economy using comparable metrics by which to measure baselines, risks and opportunities.
More than 100 businesses have pre-registered to use Circulytics ahead of its launch. As of today, the tool is being made open-source and free-to-use.
I’ll leave you with something from the world of brands that I’ve found inspiring.
In one of the rare public sightings of Phil Knight, the co-founder and Chair Emeritus of Nike, at an interview at Stanford Business School’s View From the Top speakers series, was asked “What would you choose, Adidas or barefoot?” He takes a moment to deliberate albeit precociously, because we already know the answer, and with a chuckle, retorts, “Barefoot!”
Which is why the newfound social-media collaboration of the two powerhouse brands, Adidas and Nike, is a peak into the power of tipping points, much like Hemingway predicted.
Is this the new face of the fashion industry ready to take bold steps to mitigate issues in the way it functions? Maybe, maybe not.
Regardless, it is a sliver of optimism and we’ll take it.
