For interest
Joe Zammit-Lucia
Biarritz in August is a pleasure to die for. Biarritz in August 2019 was also where Kering chief executive François-Henri Pinault and French president Emmanuel Macron won applause for a new “fashion pact”, which included agreements by Burberry, Inditex, Prada and other clothing companies to arrest global warming, restore biodiversity and protect oceans. Since then, Burberry, Chanel and others have issued sustainability bonds that have been oversubscribed.
Despite all this good news there is a big problem — customers are not interested. According to an October 22 report from Morgan Stanley on brands’ sustainability, consumers say they value sustainability when picking clothing, but “we have not yet seen any evidence that confirms this”.
“Consumers are generally not ready to pay more for environmentally friendly products,” the bank said. As evidence, Morgan Stanley said “sustainable” brands did not make money, specifically Stella McCartney was “barely profitable”/ (FT Weekend’s Grace Cook spoke with the designer about her A-Z manifesto for environmental change here.)
Consumers are actually getting less sustainable as “generation selfie” and Instagram’s popularity mean people don’t want to be seen in the same look twice online. Today, the average consumer in the UK buys 40 pieces of clothing a year, Morgan Stanley said. This compares with about 20 items 20 years ago — and today these clothes are only worn seven times on average.
For now, brands’ sustainability efforts are not being developed to grow sales but to boost reputation and ward off pesky activists. This is a major problem because companies’ desire for potential sales is surely stronger than the desire to mitigate risks.
Government officials, including Mr Macron, could do more. A mix of taxes, subsidies and enforcement penalties could upend the economics so that sustainable options get less expensive. For now, the free market appears incapable of reversing the garment sector’s position as one of the most polluting industries in the world. (Patrick Temple-West)
Tom Abeles
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Cohen, Maurie
While Joe is correct to urge caution about recent happenings in the fashion world, there does seem to have been some potentially noteworthy developments over the past few months. See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/style/upcycling-fashion.html (copy also attached if you can't get past the NYT paywall). In addition, McKinsey had a recent flurry of activity on the subject a few days ago and even the high-fashion maven Anna Wintour (parodied in the book/film The Devil Wears Prada) seems to be changing her tune. One explanation is that COVID has seriously disrupted supply chains from low-cost production centers so designers have started to look for ideas closer to home.SSPP is in the process of preparing to issue a call for papers on sustainability and the global fashion industry in coming weeks so stay tuned if this is a topic on which you are engaged.
Maurie J. Cohen
Professor and Chair
Humanities Department
mco...@njit.edu • (973) 596-5281
A Top 100 National University
U.S. News & World ReportManagement Team Member | Future Earth Knowledge-Action Network on Systems of Sustainable Consumption & ProductionWebsite | https://mauriecohen.net/
