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Sustainability

There are a number of issues facing the fashion industry today to do with sustainability. Some of these include rising carbon emissions, moving away from production-focused business models and innovative material use. 

Here are a few articles on the topic from my coverage. 

Glossy •

Inside the Global Fashion Summit: The impact of the EU’s regulation on fashion goods

The Global Fashion Summit, which is the largest fashion sustainability event in the world, took place in Copenhagen this week. In attendance were leading conglomerates including LVMH and PVH, innovative startups like Hilos and Circulose, charities like the Or Foundation, and regulators from the E.U.

The focus this year was preparing for the fashion industry’s regulated future. And there were two key takeaways for attendance: Brands should be gathering reliable data across their supply chain. In
Glossy •

Ganni's co-founder on new investments and why 2023 is a 'gap year' for fashion

Amid the brand’s global expansion, Ganni has launched a new material partnership with biotech company Rubi Labs, announced at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen this week. The collaboration is slowly being integrated throughout Ganni’s supply chain.

The 23-year-old brand is focused on reducing its carbon footprint by 50% by 2027 through various initiatives, including decarbonization by installing solar panels in its Portugal factories, carbon insetting and using alternative materials. Gann
Glossy •

Demand for local denim production is on the rise

A growing number of brands are prioritizing supply chain innovation and sustainability, driven by rising costs and growing customer demand. At the same time, small-batch “craft” denim is rising in popularity. Frame recently released a $12,000 pair of jeans, and Hugo Boss launched the high-end denim line Hugo Blue in May. According to a report from the World Economic Forum, new small-scale factories could create 4.5 million jobs globally by 2030 by generating jobs throughout the entire value chai
Glossy •

Fashion Briefing: The potential impact of Coachtopia, the new sub-brand from Coach

This week, we take a look at Coach sub-brand Coachtopia, including the strategy behind it and what sustainability experts are saying. Scroll down to use Glossy+ Comments, giving the Glossy+ community the opportunity to join discussions around industry topics.

Coach’s new sub-brand, Coachtopia, is focused on products for a Gen-Z audience with circularity embedded from the design stage. It has dedicated TikTok and Instagram accounts, as of April 18, and its debut collection has already sold out t
Glossy •

How Wolf & Badger is winning the sustainable retailer race

Sustainability-focused multi-brand retailer Wolf & Badger is on track to hit $100 million in sales this year through a focus on in-store brand activations, a marketplace model and a growing TikTok presence.

The independent fashion and home retailer launched in 2010 in Notting Hill, London. Since then, it has grown its sales year-over-year year, establishing a foothold in the U.K.’s physical and online retail landscapes. It has one local store, in London’s Kings Cross neighborhood. Wolf & Badger
Glossy •

Pangaia breaks new ground in plant-based leather clothing

On Thursday, Pangaia and Natural Fiber Welding launched Air Gilet, a first-of-its-kind, leather-like puffer vest. The style’s interior features Pangaia’s organic cotton fleece as the lining and its FLWRDWN as the filling. Meanwhile, its exterior is made from a newly reformulated and thinner version of Mirum, the plant-based leather alternative previously developed by Natural Fiber Welding.

The $800 vest is the first ready-to-wear item featuring plant-based leather that can be made at scale. Ill
Glossy •

Uniqlo is expanding its repair service to stores in the U.S.

Re:Uniqlo Studios, Uniqlo’s repair-focused shop-in-shops, opened on Wednesday in New York on Fifth Avenue, in Beverly Hills, on State Street in Chicago and in Florida’s Disney Springs. In addition, the company reopened an existing location in NYC’s SoHo.

Uniqlo initially launched the repair service at its Berlin store in fall 2021, but under a different name. In February 2022, Uniqlo opened a second location, in SoHo, New York, before opening a Re:Uniqlo Studio five months later in its newly-op
Techstyler website •

Inside the Fashion Pact: In search of social sustainability targets

While the fashion industry’s biggest companies are focusing on biodiversity, oceans and climate, a crucial step in fully addressing sustainability is including socio-political metrics.

The Fashion Pact has been lauded as the largest consortium on sustainability and climate change-makers in the industry. It was presented at the G7 Summit by Kering Chairman and CEO, François-Henri Pinault and French President, Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and its signatories now account for 33% of the whole industry.
Lampoon Magazine •

Waste, raw materials and data: the role of consulting in sustainability

«A business needs to be profitable: thinking for the longer term appears today as the strongest approach to the market» – Pei Yun Teng, Global Director of Social Impact at Kearney

Patagonia was one of the three companies in the fashion industry that had achieved an acceptable score in the Circular Fashion Index compiled by Kearney by extending the life cycle of their garments, a key metric for reducing the number of clothes sent to landfill.
Lampoon Magazine •

Organic basics’ circular denim project – Re-designing sustainable denim

Danish brand looks to unpick fashion’s processes and start from scratch with a green supply chain that is transparent about its practices

Until 2019, the denim industry was regulated by brands setting their own standards for sustainable and responsible production. However, with the launch of the Jeans Redesign initiative under the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular, the initiative set the standard for sustainable denim.
Lampoon Magazine •

Imitating stone surfaces through wood that is generated from waste

«Foresso is less about trying to emulate stone and more about using the terrazzo style to make good use of the wood», Conor Taylor reveals the motivation behind the circular company

In responsible timber production, older trees are felled and used in industries like design and construction. Many countries around the world contribute towards silviculture, where the guiding principles of forest growth are applied.
Lampoon Magazine •

We need to care about Indian craftworkers – we need to see the other side of what we like

Haute Couture designer – Rahul Mishra, and the founder of Nest – Rebecca Van Bergen on providing artisans with a favourable working environment. Implementing in homework practices

The Fashion Pact, founded last year, has now gone through its one-year review, focusing on biodiversity, climate, and plastics reduction. One of the aspects missing from this year’s review that has attracted criticism is the lack of consideration for the human element of sustainability in fashion – it’s workers.
Lampoon Magazine •

Plasticiet – Tackling the design industry’s plastic waste problem with Terrazzo

Melting plastic in the toast oven has gradually upgraded to the large capacity pizza oven – a story of the Rotterdam-based building company talking with Joost Dingemans

The first human-made plastic, celluloid, was created by John Wesley Hyatt in 1869 as a replacement for ivory, an essential material for the balls used in snooker. The second innovation came with hard-wearing Bakelite, created by Leo Baekeland in 1909 that thrust plastics into their golden age.
Lampoon Magazine •

Is zero waste just a new marketing move or a properly transparent practice?

In conversation with Holly McQuillan, who discusses the misconception in the zero waste term and suggests new machinery and business models as alternatives in promoting the system

From sustainability bloggers in 2016 fitting in a year’s worth of waste into a jar to the continuous greenwashing of the fashion industry, zero waste can become another term that gets lost in the sea of sustainability efforts in fashion.
Lampoon Magazine •

Only 30 percent of the Fashion Pact’s members have mapped their supply chains

Sonia Hylling: The main focus for a sustainable future is creating Net Positive impacts through disruptive innovations in design and system thinking for brands to become regenerative

It has been a year since the foundation of the Fashion Pact – an industry-wide movement looking to align itself with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and approach sustainability issues in global supply chains across some of the world’s biggest companies like Kering, Inditex, and Prada.
Lampoon Magazine •

Edible garments: while eating your hat may not have been a proposition before, it is now

Lecturer Oonagh O’Hagan and researcher Cassandra Quinn from UAL are working on bringing bio-design and edible garments into the industry

At a talk on biodegradable fabrics and digital innovations through modular pigment, lecturer Oonagh O’Hagan began talking about the processes yielding the samples in front of her. These were created by the founder of bio-design company C.Q. Studio Cassandra Quinn sitting next to her before opening up a Petri dish and popping the square of fabric in her mouth.
Lampoon Magazine •

Alexandra Sipa — transfiguring electrical wires into Eurovision-esque aesthetic dresses

The next designer in this series approaches a different area of waste that she turns into one-of-a-kind couture gowns. Taking old wires from scrap dealers across London, Alexandra Sipa takes inspiration from her kitsch and her Romanian heritage to create wire ‘lace’ based on her grandma’s doilies. A collaboration that resonates with how the Eastern bloc used to work under communism. In conversation with Central Saint Martins Womenswear Design graduate Alexandra Sipa.
Lampoon Magazine •

Aged clothing — genre-less upcycled fashion and silk from parachutes

«I changed to menswear design because, in womenswear, the freedom is over the top».

In conversation with Fumika Oshima, founder of Proposition

Fumika Oshima is the designer behind Proposition, an upcycling brand she started with Richard Spandler, a vintage clothing dealer working with French workwear and military clothing. Inspired by the work of modern artists like André Butzer and Margiela, Fumika uses a patching technique to carve out stronger squares to work with.