CONSCIOUS As Consumers Distance Themselves from Mass-Produced Goods, Fashion Brands Are Realising Their Value Lies in a Sustainable, Ethical Future
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105 {moral fibre} NAVIGATE Sass & Bide’s luxury clutch is handmade by impoverished women from East African tribes. LABEL CONSCIOUS As consumers distance themselves from mass-produced goods, fashion brands are realising their value lies in a sustainable, ethical future. WORDS CLARE PRESS oogle ‘clean cut’ and you’re likely Ballard’s online store, Indigo Bazaar, sells ethical to find a picture of a short-haired, fashion brands, including her own: products handmade suited Zac Efron. But (luckily for in an Indian workshop set up to empower local women. society), higher up in the search Clean Cut was born a little under two years ago, when results is the much more important Ballard and three friends active in the sustainability Clean Cut fashion. It is Australia’s community — fellow designer Kelly Ekin, marketing Gmajor sustainable fashion industry body, launched manager Lisa Heinze and blogger Yatu Widders Hunt — this year, aiming to get both industry and consumers started workshopping ways to get their message to wider thinking more about ethically produced clothing. fashion circles. Australia, they felt, was dragging its feet. Sustainability might not be a sexy word, but, says “We saw a need for an industry body offering tangible Clean Cut’s co-founder Carlie Ballard — a Sydney-based solutions for shoppers, and particularly brands looking designer and retailer — it is becoming a fashionable to produce their collections more sustainably,” says one. “Consumers are more aware. They are starting Ballard. “[The conversation] can’t be all about fear, so to question how their $7 T-shirt got made.” child labour, sweat shops, environmental devastation ► virginaustralia SEPTEMBER 2014 | 105 106 (clockwise from top) Clean Cut’s Carlie Ballard and Kelly Ekin; Stella Jean production development in Haiti; Lily Cole models her eco-trainers; Stella McCartney handbag and hand-stitching; Simone Capriani, founder of the Ethical Fashion Initiative; Nudie Jeans. are difficult, but we want to start positive greater consumption of, fashion at both worth. Do we really need a bunch of conversations, too. What can be done? the luxury and budget ends — and cheap new tops bought on a whim in What should be done to make change?” considering the global fashion industry our lunchbreak? Could we live without By definition fashion is built on the was worth US$1.5 trillion in 2013, we’re that 19th pair of jeans? Instead, we’re new, but even by its own standards talking a lot of cash. starting to value the slower stuff — change has been dizzying. Over the past the handmade, the limited edition, the five years we’ve seen a revolution in the SLOWLY BUT SURELY bespoke and environmentally aware. way clothes are made, marketed and sold. There’s another, more surprising, We might even be willing to save up for I’m talking, of course, about the rise of consequence of this increase in choice: fashion again, to delay our gratification, such fast-fashion giants as H&M, Zara, for some it’s making us question its to research and ponder carefully what we Topshop and friends, as well as an might need to make our wardrobes sing. increase in online retail and social media. Now there’s a radical idea. The latter has transformed the way in THE VALUE OF In May, Time magazine ran a story about which designers present their collections. A SKIRT OR A SHOE the ‘maker movement’ in the US, where Yes, there is still Paris Fashion Week, but consumers are becoming producers on an gone are the days of waiting patiently for LIES AS MUCH IN artisanal scale. Whether by hand or using trends to hit stores six months later. ITS ORIGINS AS technology such as 3D printers, they are Designers are producing more collections crafting objects at home and in small more quickly, and the high street is IN ITS PRICE TAG. workshops. Adweek defines the movement knocking them off like never before. All as a reaction against “generic, mass- this adds up to greater demand for, and produced, made-in-China merchandise”. ”“ 106 | virginaustralia 107 {moral fibre} NAVIGATE (clockwise from top) Maiyet AW2014 collection, and founder Paul van Zyl; longtime ethical manufacturing advocate Vivienne Westwood visits Kenya; Maiyet runway models; a Vivienne Westwood garment in production. I think we can draw a parallel between daggy? These days the two concepts are this and the rise of what Simone Cipriani, increasingly becoming happy bedfellows, founder of the United Nations’ Ethical as more fashion tastemakers are Fashion Initiative, calls “responsible embracing sustainability as a fashion fashion”, the idea that the value of a skirt, ideal. Cipriani’s list of luxury partners a shoe or a pair of pants lies as much in includes Vivienne Westwood, Stella its origins, materials and the hands that McCartney and Sass & Bide. Models made it as in its price tag or glossy ad are all over it, with Lily Cole designing campaign. As Cipriani puts it: “Beauty eco-friendly trainers and Amber Valetta is always linked to responsibility.” running an online ethical fashion Beauty is a key word, and one with boutique. Colin Firth’s wife, Livia, is which fashion has always been obsessed. even encouraging Hollywood to take Sydney-based product designer and up her Green Carpet Challenge. upcycler Liane Rossler said recently in Ethical fashion consultant Melinda The Australian, “No one wants to support Tually says the garment factory disaster modern slavery. I mean, are you going at the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh last year, to feel glamorous in a new dress if you where 1133 workers were killed and many know someone suffered to make it?” more injured, was a game changer. “That But how does beauty sit with forced many in the fashion industry to sustainable fashion, which has a engage in the conversation about working reputation for being, dare I say it, conditions,” she says. ► SEPTEMBER 2014 | 107 109 {moral fibre} NAVIGATE Fast and fair? Italian Vogue’s editor Franca Sozzani Can fast-fashion retailers be sustainable, agrees: “You know, we will never forget ethical and responsible? H&M, the world’s that. What happened in Bangladesh is not sustainable. So factory culture is the second-largest clothing retailer, thinks it can. first thing we as an industry must change.” There is plenty of good news, however. BY SARAH NORRIS Tually points to outdoorwear brand Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles, which H&M reportedly made sustainability at the customer level, as looks at how its cotton is grown, its wool about $2.7 billion profit well as production and value change.” and down harvested and how finished last year. That translates Working with WWF, H&M has goods are shipped. Nudie Jeans has to a lot of clothing, and begun to tackle issues of water a commitment to Fair Wear-accredited that makes H&M’s aim scarcity in areas of its Asian producers and organic cotton supply, of being a leader and operations, a plan that builds on the as has Stella McCartney to vegan a catalyst for industry change successful Better Cotton Initiative it accessories. H&M has even made a even more ambitious and surprising. Yet joined in 2005 to address water-use commitment to pay producers a fair it’s what the company has set out to do issues at the product source. It locks in ‘living wage’ by 2018, and is pouring for the past 10 years, launching H&M a commitment for the company to use money into organic cotton and recycled Conscious Collection and a number of 100 per cent cotton from sustainable polyester [see box, opposite]. “Brands environmental and ethical initiatives that sources by 2020. (At the moment that prioritise the use of sustainable materials figure is 15.8 per cent.) and improve the conditions of the people Helmersson doesn’t deny these factorY culture who make its clothes. initiatives are driven by cost. “One of H&M — a company with 3300 stores the reasons we manage to keep our IS THE first in 54 countries — has also partnered with costs down is because we are cost key lobby groups such as the Sustainable conscious across the whole process,” THING WE AS AN Apparel Coalition, and also works with she says. “But [with these policies] we INDustrY must organisations including UNICEF, WaterAid are thinking long term. Of course organic and CARE. H&M say it’s so it can deliver cotton is more expensive… but as CHANGE. more fashion choices that are good for availability grows and we increase our people, the planet and our wallets. demand, prices tend to drop a little.” “ “We were pioneers within the field Helmersson adds: “We’re a big ” in many ways when we began this company, we can put the resources and are realising there has to be more process in 2005,” says H&M’s investment into these materials to transparency in their supply chains across head of sustainability, Helena start the process because in the board, from an environmental and a Helmersson. “We’re the only the long run, it will really labour perspective,” says Tually. “What company working with make a difference.” we need is more customers to demand it.” Maiyet is the rare high-end fashion house that has good ethics in its DNA. (clockwise from top) H&M In a former life, founder Paul van Zyl was Gold singlet, an international human rights lawyer $19.95; Sol jacket, $99.95, who sat on South Africa’s Truth and and embellished Reconciliation Committee. “Through my jumpsuit, $99.95; cream jacket, work I became convinced that while part $69.95; magenta of what makes a successful country is top, $29.95, and shorts, $29.95.