Sustainable fashion is going through a tough transition, and that played out onstage last week at the annual Textile Exchange conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Over 1,600 stakeholders from across the fashion supply chain showed up, hoping to make sense of the chaos we find ourselves working through.
An audience poll taken on the first day reveals that 52 per cent of attendees feel somewhat optimistic about the state of sustainability in fashion. Seventy-five per cent say their organisation was already set up to facilitate change, and had a clear pathway towards meeting its sustainability goals. When asked how confident they feel in the broader industry’s ability to meet its goals, only 4 per cent are very confident, while the largest segment — 37 per cent — are somewhat pessimistic.
Textile Exchange’s annual Materials Market report reveals ballooning global fibre production and no end in sight for the growth of fossil fuel-based synthetics.
There’s a concerted effort on the part of Textile Exchange to channel the current moment — with all its confusion and disillusionment — into something constructive. It’s a difficult tone to strike. As Textile Exchange CEO Claire Bergkamp says in her opening speech: “This work is not easy, but it is important. It requires vision, commitment and a deep sense of purpose. The survey tells us that optimism is there, but it’s measured. It’s not blind optimism anymore.”
The movement is currently facing setbacks in the face of global instability, as it slips further down the business agenda in favour of financial survival. Bergkamp, who previously led sustainability at Stella McCartney, didn’t seem fazed by this. “Our movement has gone through many phases,” she explained. “We had a moment where we were a group of passionate people driving change inside companies, on the ground. Then, we had a moment where we were a little more mainstream, a little bit cool. Then, we shifted to being a bit more compliance-driven, in response to regulation. Now, we’re in a more demanding phase. I won’t pretend it’s going to be easy, but there is opportunity in challenge.”
So, what exactly does that opportunity look like, and how can sustainability professionals leverage it best? Here, Vogue Business distils the views from speakers and attendees into six key takeaways.
Sustainability teams need to flex new muscles
“We’re not living in a moment of uncertainty; we’re living in an era of disruption — and climate change is the biggest disruptor of all,” says Jonathan Hall, managing partner of the Sustainable Transformation Practice at marketing data and analytics company Kantar, in the opening plenary. This sentiment was repeated throughout the conference. At every turn, stakeholders from brands to Tier 4 producers describe dealing with increasing uncertainty. Rather than an exception, this is the new norm. “This uncertainty is not incidental,” explains Hall. “It’s an upturn of the global economic order by design. If we think this is just going to be a few years of turbulence, which will go away eventually, we need to think again.”
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