Happy Nice Mall

Fashion came to an official for the first time United Nations climate conference as in 2009 just held in Glasgow. COP15 (COP means “conference of the parties”) and was held in Copenhagen. I’m writing “soon” to a COP because fashion was not at the center of the climate debate back then. It wasn’t, somehow, really sufficient.

In fact, fashion has been so marginalized that it has had to hold its own conference to talk about its role in creating and tackling climate change. and so on Copenhagen Fashion SummitA company focused on sustainability was born.

It took more than a decade, but things have changed. There’s been a lot of talk this year about the financial big guys finally coming to the COP table, but this is the first year fashion has had a meaningful and broad presence. Aspect Stella McCartneycreating a special “Future of Fashion” material exhibition At the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, after nearly two decades of insisting she acknowledge fashion’s impact on the environment, she said she was no longer a “COP virgin.”

Here are some other things I have left of COP26.

1. A large number of official actions were taken.

Right in the middle of the Blue Zone (the official delegate area – that is, where world leaders speak) was an installation by a fashion collective called Waste Generation to mimic the bar graph of the various stages of textile waste. , from design to raw material, garment production, etc.

The United Nations Environment Program has released a new version of the project. fashion charter It was originally founded in 2018, now with 130 signatory companies, including the first-ever LVMH, and with stronger commitments to halve carbon emissions by 2030 (and reach net zero by 2050).

On the sidelines, Federico Marchetti, former head of Yoox Net a Porter, made a statement. digital identity It was created by the fashion task force of Prince Charles’ Sustainable Markets Initiative: a scannable garment tag that uses blockchain technology to act as a DNA trace for a product’s manufacturing history.

And Textile Exchange, an NGO that sounds like a fabric trade center but is actually focused on creating global standards in fashion, made a presentation. trade policy request To national governments, backed by 50 brands. By the way, most used material in the entire fashion industry.

2. A false truth has finally been abandoned.

No one uttered the now discredited but once-popular adage that “fashion is the second most polluting industry on the planet.” fake statistics. In the end, everyone agrees that this is one of the worst, and that’s bad enough.

3. “Shrink” is the word of the moment.

Shrinkage: It means making fewer products. In other words, the action taken in response to the 36 percent decrease in the number of times a garment is worn before it is thrown, while the volume of clothing production doubled in the first 15 years of this century. For a long time, the response to such data was to encourage consumers to “buy less”. and “wear longer!” It seems that brands are now claiming their role in the problem.

However, it’s hard to imagine Bernard Arnault or Ralph Lauren of LVMH standing up at their annual shareholders meeting and declaring their strategy for 2022 to be “downsizing.” (It almost sounds like a potential “Saturday Night Live” sketch.) Other than that, Halide Alagöz, head of sustainability at Ralph Lauren, said: clarified During the New York Times Climate Center panel, he said the brand had been secretly experimenting.

Yes: Ralph Lauren is practicing shrinking. Not exactly because they say so.

According to Ms. Alagöz, the company calls this “financial growth through downsizing of resources”. It’s a terrible name for an interesting venture, but Lauren is working on it. What he discovered was that he could separate production from profit, so that even if the company made fewer goods, it could largely make money by maximizing the rate of sales. It resulted in less waste product that had to be downloaded to Outstream stores.

Alagöz said, “Although we produced fewer units than five years ago, we saw that our financials improved.”

4. Resale becomes reuse.

Designers are also creative when it comes to the product that exists in the world. One of my favorite points came from William McDonough, author of “Cradle to Cradle,” a kind of founding manifesto on the circular economy, and he pointed out that we need to think of clothing as source materials that can be resupplied second- and second-time. third use.

This is exactly what British designer Priya Ahluwalia thought when she teamed up with Microsoft to create the platform. circulation, which allows consumers to send their used clothing to their company. If the garments are in acceptable condition, they will be remade and included in their next collection, and the donor will receive “reward points” for a new purchase with the brand. Ms. Ahluwalia said she opened up a whole new channel for fabric and ideas for herself.

5. But beware of “regenerative” situations.

It’s a buzzword that has grown in vogue thanks to regenerative agriculture, a farming technique that helps restore soil health and nutrients. One of the less discussed aspects of fashion is how intertwined it is with agriculture. brands are investing now promotes regenerative agriculture – but the word derailed and crept up to companies that boasted “regenerative strategy” and “regenerative tactics”, which means… it’s not clear what it means. But it sounds good, right?

This is the kind of fuzzy language that could lead to greenwashing accusations, so Textile Exchange is working on a specific definition next year.

Honestly, they could expand the definition to an entire fashion dictionary so everyone uses the same language. For example, I bet we’ll hear more of another word, a McKinsey report: “nearhoring” means using suppliers that are not necessarily in your country but not on the other side of the world. After all, according to the presentation of the British brand Bamford, average merino wool sweater it travels 18,000 miles through the production cycle from raw material to factory, workshop to store.

Maybe a project for COP27.