Informally called “The Italy Project,” the new initiative is focused on improving the environmental footprint of Italy’s luxury fashion supply chain.
Stella McCartney, Burberry, and Kering Forge a New Kind of Sustainable Partnership
Unity has been the theme of the week, with most of our attention focused on the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. We heard messages of harmony in their speeches and saw it in their clothes, Harris’s Christopher John Rogers violet coat (a mix of blue and red) being the most obvious nod to a new era of bipartisanship. But even outside of politics, we’ve begun to recognize that a better future depends on collaboration, openness, and connection—from our personal experiences to the way we do business.
How does that apply to fashion, an industry so rooted in exclusivity and competition? Just a few years ago, you’d be hard-pressed to get a designer to share their factories or outline their supply chain. They were expected to work alone, protect their sources, and generally avoid transparency. That’s understandable when it comes to design and intellectual property, but it simply doesn’t work if you’re trying to make better choices for the planet.
Despite the consumer’s growing interest in sustainable fashion and designers’ individual efforts to do better, studies have found that progress isn’t happening fast enough. In 2019, the Global Fashion Agenda estimated that the global apparel industry will grow by 81% before 2030, effectively undoing any improvements we’ve made. It inspired a few game-changing industry partnerships, like president of France Emmanuel Macron’s Fashion Pact, a coalition of CEOs who are working toward shared environmental goals. Led by Kering, the Pact’s other signatories include PVH Corp, Ralph Lauren, Capri Holdings, Adidas, Nike, Nordstrom, Farfetch, Inditex, and H&M—also known as fierce competitors. “The results [of working alone] don’t work,” Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault said. “We really need to define targets together…and commit to working towards them together to find solutions. I’m [confident] we will reach a level that none of us individually could reach by working alone.” (The old proverb comes to mind: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”)
Today, the Apparel Impact Institute is announcing another project with Burberry, Stella McCartney, and Kering (the parent company of Gucci, Alexander McQueen, and Bottega Veneta, among other brands). Informally called “The Italy Project,” it’s focused on improving the environmental footprint of Italy’s luxury fashion supply chain. The top-line goal is to “establish a platform for manufacturers to coordinate, fund, and scale environmental programs with measurable impact” following AII’s scientific guidelines. The brands will then collaborate with each other and with the factories to implement the best practices (centered around energy, water, and chemistry) and continue “unlocking” solutions together. “Fashion brands have always been a little quiet and secretive about their supply chains,” Lewis Perkins, the president of AII, said on a recent call. “With this project, Burberry, Stella, and Kering are coming to the table and publicly collaborating across a shared supply chain. It’s really exciting to see that even in the pandemic, these brands were so willing to get behind it.”
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Emily Farra
