“Consumers see sustainability as a new norm and punish those companies that do not respect the current rules of the game.” According to the report The State of Fashion 2022 by the consulting firm McKinsey and Business of Fashion“43 percent of Gen Zers actively seek out companies that have a strong sustainable reputation.”
Thus, for example, Burberry has refinanced its revolving credit line (RFC) with a loan linked to sustainability of 300 million pounds, coordinated by Lloyds Bank; Prada has recruited experts in ESG criteria (Environmental, Social and Governance, that is, environmental, social and corporate governance factors that are taken into account when investing in a company) on its board of directors; Hugo Boss has created a new foundation that focuses on ecology; and designers such as Stella McCartney bet on materials such as Mylo, an alternative leather made from fungi that are grown in laboratories — “so they do not use water and hardly any electricity,” he explained at the end of his spring-summer 2022 show -, that Adidas has also used in one of its iconic models, the Stan Smith.
“We are on a journey to create a more sustainable world. But, what if the best way to work for nature was right under our feet?” the brand wonders. We are, in effect, in the midst of a paradigm shift that affects not only the industry, but also consumers. “There have never been garments so cheap and so accessible as today. Megacorporations have conditioned us to believe that this is normal, but it is not. that’s why i wrote fashionopolisto open the eyes of consumers and make them think about what they accumulate in their cupboards”, explains Dana Thomas.
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Indeed, while the pre-industrial function of fashion consisted of a social dialogue to communicate with each other, the production of clothing, as well as the marketing and unbridled consumption of fast fashion they turned fashion into an industrial system to make money at the expense of a system that was not sustainable at all, to the point of becoming the second most polluting industry on the planet, as affirmed by the journalist and founder of the digital platform EcoCult, Alden wicker.
Although it is a statement with which Dana Thomas, her nemesis, does not agree, it is true that fashion currently uses a quarter of the chemical agents produced worldwide. As this writer points out, “synthetic fabrics release microfibers into the water every time they are washed, both in factories and in homes, of which up to 40 percent reach rivers and oceans, are ingested by fish and mollusks and, as researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara reported, make their way into the human food chain.”
That is, today more than ever —and literally—, we are what we wear. That is why it is necessary to stop, or at least slow down, the cycle of fashion consumption and stop to analyze how we want it to be, not in the near future, but here and now. An example: at the last United Nations climate summit, the conclusions were decisive. If five years ago, the LVMH group, which brings together houses luxury companies such as Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Givenchy, Loewe or Marc Jacobs, among others, subscribed to the Charter of the Fashion Industry during the COP24 in Poland, which sought zero impact in 2025, today these conclusions are falsely revealed optimistic.