How fashion found new purpose in sustainability

Fash­ion, at its best, acts as a mir­ror of our time; it’s always pushed bound­aries and I believe nowhere is this more preva­lent than in Lon­don. The cap­i­tal has a long-stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion for attract­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, cham­pi­oning free­dom of speech, and plays a key role in inno­vat­ing and ini­ti­at­ing cul­tur­al change which res­onates across the glob­al fash­ion indus­try.

All busi­ness­es need to focus on pur­pose, action and pos­i­tive change. The fash­ion indus­try is no excep­tion and works at an incred­i­ble pace; busi­ness­es have to be reac­tive, deliv­er­ing prod­uct in step with con­sumer demand and investor pres­sure, while also embrac­ing a more sus­tain­able future.

The gov­ern­ment has declared a cli­mate emer­gency and the fash­ion indus­try, along­side all oth­ers, must take action. But it’s a pos­i­tive change that has to come from brands and busi­ness­es, dri­ving inno­va­tion and new ways of work­ing, while also col­lec­tive­ly shift­ing con­sumer habits. This isn’t about com­pro­mis­ing, it’s redress­ing the bal­ance of craft and con­sumerism.

How fashion can promote sustainable growth

In the UK, the fash­ion indus­try employs around 890,000 peo­ple and con­tributes £32 bil­lion to the econ­o­my, which is sim­i­lar in size to tele­coms or car man­u­fac­tur­ing. But like the bold designs on the cat­walk, it’s more debat­ed than either of these sec­tors because its voice is much loud­er. It’s with­in our cul­tur­al and social dia­logue and con­scious­ness, so busi­ness­es have greater oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage in mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions that will lead to con­scious con­sumerism.

The British Fash­ion Coun­cil (BFC) is a not-for-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion whose mis­sion is to har­ness the col­lec­tive pow­er of the fash­ion indus­try to enable sus­tain­able growth. Now is the time to ensure we do this. We have estab­lished a Pos­i­tive Fash­ion com­mit­tee of sus­tain­able and com­mu­ni­ca­tions experts to help focus our engage­ment and adop­tion of sus­tain­able and eth­i­cal prac­tices, cre­at­ing a sig­nif­i­cant net­work to embrace and pro­mote this move­ment of change.

Sup­port­ing sus­tain­able growth has meant cre­at­ing glob­al plat­forms, such as Lon­don Fash­ion Week and The Fash­ion Awards, to show­case UK busi­ness­es to glob­al audi­ences, and helps cre­ate strong and long-last­ing part­ner­ships with busi­ness and cre­ative net­works in key mar­kets over­seas. Now we are engag­ing this glob­al net­work, enabling knowl­edge-shar­ing between large busi­ness­es and lux­u­ry groups with small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es to ensure busi­ness­es can con­tin­ue to grow, but also eas­i­ly switch to more sus­tain­able prac­tices.

Steps the industry has taken towards sustainability

The BFC estab­lished Pos­i­tive Fash­ion in 2014, a stream of work that would enhance our strate­gic pil­lars of edu­ca­tion, busi­ness and rep­u­ta­tion. Since then Pos­i­tive Fash­ion has cham­pi­oned more acces­si­ble local high-end man­u­fac­tur­ing, Vivi­enne Westwood’s SWITCH to green ener­gy cam­paign, and is focus­ing on the cre­ation of prac­ti­cal guides and toolk­its to enable us to cre­ate a pro­gramme to help the indus­try become net car­bon neu­tral.

The good news is that sig­nif­i­cant work is already being done by many of the large respon­si­ble busi­ness­es. Ker­ing Group have been iden­ti­fied as lux­u­ry lead­ers, while Marks & Spencer were first to focus on the envi­ron­ment on the high street; both have rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the BFC Pos­i­tive Fash­ion com­mit­tee. The design­er fash­ion busi­ness­es, start­ing today, are doing so through a sense of pur­pose and with an intent to be sus­tain­able.

This is a direct reflec­tion of our grad­u­at­ing generation’s view of the world and the role they want to play as cre­atives in the future of our glob­al indus­try. This is some­thing we should all sup­port. Our aim is to cre­ate momen­tum for change, yet still cham­pi­on the incred­i­ble cre­ativ­i­ty, crafts­man­ship and inge­nu­ity that comes from inspi­ra­tional and orig­i­nal design.