This and the previous blog post are looking into two major reports about the state of sustainability in the fashion world. “The Business of Fashion Index 2022” is looking at the 30 largest companies in fashion and how they are doing over a variety of fields of sustainability.
“The Business of Fashion Index 2022” by The Business of Fashion
The Business of Fashion Index 2022 “examine the performance of the industry’s 30 largest publicly traded companies by revenue across three market segments: luxury, sportswear and high street (ed. ordinary clothes).” Although the original 15 companies from the last years report had some progress, this was “eclipsed” by the new additions’ inaction.
Business of Fashion (BoF) points at “limited accountability within the sector, poor-quality data and a lack of investment“ as some of the biggest obstacles. This is very clear when BoF writes that “some of the industry’s biggest players — including URBN, Skechers, Fila Holdings, Anta and HLA Group — provided little or no public detail about plans to tackle their environmental and social impact.”
Although this is quite dark, there are also positive news. Fast retailing had the biggest improvement (of 11 points) from last years report, showing some of the “technological innovation, policy cues and standardised reporting frameworks” in action. If the fashion industry can do more of this, if can lead to real change.
As we see in the figure, waste is one of the areas that has the lowest score overall. This is something “very easy” to work on by not overproducing (resulting in landfill material before it has even been in the store) and to use scrap products and cuttings in a mindful way. Transparency is also something that is also obvious to focus on as a smaller company as this is one of the advantages of being smaller.
For me it would be interesting to read the full report (behind a paywall) as a designer to make sure that I follow the parameters given by BoF. To take part in the politics of fashion would also be an impactful way of taking part of this world.
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