The problem with fashion’s sustainability awards

To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Sustainability Edit newsletter, click here. Gucci went home with a prestigious award over the weekend, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Award for Circular Economy at the CNMI Sustainable Fashion Awards in Milan. Critics, however, are quick to point out that in fashion today, there’s no circular economy to speak of — at Gucci or anywhere else. The prize was awarded specifically for a recent denim project by the Kering-owned brand that incorporated regeneratively grown cotton with post-consumer recycled fibres. In 2024, it will include a digital product passport to trace the journey from raw materials to manufacturing and production, as well as provide information about product care and repair services. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the London-based organisation created in 2010 specifically to accelerate a shift towards a circular economy — and chair of the Sustainable Fashion Awards jury — advises Italy’s governing fashion body Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI) on the criteria for selecting award winners. The circular economy award was meant to recognise companies that, according to Ellen MacArthur Foundation project manager Matteo Magnani, apply the three principles of a circular economy to their business at scale: product durability, keeping products in use, and sourcing raw materials in ways that regenerate nature rather than harm it. Ideally, the winner applies “all of the principles, not just one of the principles”, he says, and has proven them at scale rather than in a one-off pilot. However, while Gucci’s efforts are significant — along with those of other award finalists Chloé and ACS Clothing, recognised for their strides to use durable, traceable, safe and recycled materials in denim and for building a platform that enables brands and retailers to offer rental, repair and resale services — they do not amount to a circular model. (Gucci declined to be interviewed for this story.) The CNMI awards are not alone. The Council of Fashion Designers of America gives awards for sustainability, as does the British Fashion Council, and independent groups have their own awards initiatives, such as the Green Carpet Fashion Awards from consultancy Eco-Age and the Redress Design Award from Hong Kong non-profit Redress — not to mention brands and companies such as Kering and H&M doling out their own accolades. For experts, that raises some difficult questions: is it appropriate to celebrate progress when there’s still so much more work to do? And who gets to do the celebrating? “This is a double-edged sword. We need to be talking about and celebrating circularity whenever we can, to get consumers engaged [and] educated to make real change. But, the wins are still so small in comparison to the multitude of things society and particularly fashion are looking past every day,” says Geren Lockhart, independent consultant, and CEO and co-founder of “profit-for-purpose” apparel brand Canava. “Across their businesses, [Kering has] catalysed more than almost any other entity for a decade or more. Can they do more? Yes. Should they do more? Yes. Should they move a million times faster than they are? Yes.” Others say that while it’s important to recognise progress, the climate and other environmental crises are so dire that celebrating baby steps when complete transformation is what’s needed risks distracting attention and resources from the work itself — or, worse, being counterproductive to the task at hand. “Authentic fashion circular systems remain exceptionally rare and exaggerated claims can divert attention from the hard work of decarbonisation and ecosystem preservation that needs to occur deep within supply chains,” says Ken Pucker, professor of the practice at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Redesigning business models, not just products Katia Dayan Vladimirova, senior lecturer at the University of Geneva and founder of the Sustainable Fashion Consumption research network, worries that awards with bold, sweeping titles such as circular economy, and giving them to large brands that have admirable projects but have not changed their overall business models, end up creating the false impression that fashion is further along on sustainability than it is. “We’re looking at some small part [of the circle] — not a full loop. We're not looking at the takeback scheme. We’re not looking at recycling. The fact that [a company is] using recycled content doesn’t mean that this content comes from their resources,” she says. “The idea of a fully circular brand is when the brand manages to loop in its own used resources — [and] at the end of life, they would be recycled again.” Magnani, who heads the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s relationship with CNMI on the awards, acknowledges that the award recognises Gucci’s adoption of specific circular principles — which represent progress towards a more circular system, but do not translate to full circularity. “The reality is, today, the industry is still very much linear. An organisation can even apply all the principles — keeping products in use, durability, regenerative sourcing — and the product may still end in a system that is fundamentally linear,” he says. “There is a long way to go, but we think what we’ve seen with these awards, [they] can set the direction of travel for the rest of the industry.” He acknowledges that industry-wide, there is more progress towards certain aspects of circularity — in the product design stage, for instance — while there’s largely a standstill on others, end-of-life in particular. Getting customers to be engaged, and building the infrastructure and logistics capacity to take products back and process them for recirculation is where the industry still has much work to do. “What we’ve seen very much in practice and at scale is the redesign of products. What we haven’t seen, and that may be where the bar gets raised in the future, [is that] we need to not only recognise efforts on product redesign, but also business model redesign — changing the way the customers of this industry deal with products,” says Magnani. “The idea of a circular economy was born within industry and is heavily focused on production, while true circularity must involve the end user,” says Cosette M Joyner Martinez, associate professor of fashion merchandising at Texas State University. “Gucci relates the experience of emotional durability to the importance of product testing. However, emotional durability is an idiosyncratic experience that occurs among clothing users.” For Joyner Martinez, that’s an indication that many luxury brands are evolving the product design process to align with circular principles but not yet connecting it “to the actual system in which these designs are acquired, used, and reused”, she says. And, while brands may offer repairs, she’s unconvinced that this is shifting consumer expectations or behaviour in any meaningful way. “There is little evidence that it is encouraging brands to take responsibility for their products after sale. Until this industry connects the faucet to the hose, real circularity, as nature does it, will be impossible.” That doesn’t mean there’s no room for celebration. Experts just question the merits of placing major brands in the spotlight for work that represents a fraction of their businesses — especially when there is so much potential to uplift both the small or independent brands that are dedicated to operating in a fundamentally different manner, as well as the people and organisations throughout the supply chain that are doing the work that enables brands to claim progress in the first place. That, says Lockhart, is where an award could offer potential for meaningful impact. “If recognition moves the needle inside the prominent players to expand on the work they are being celebrated for or if it incentivises their competition to meet and beat them, I find it hard to say we shouldn’t be celebrating the ones doing the early, complex, expensive work when it is this deep,” she says. However, she adds: “Wouldn’t it be great if instead of a big gala to host the awards, the organisations invested those resources to benefit some of the stakeholders further down the supply chain for the winning projects as a part of the award — at the farm, mill and factory level. That would feel like a new world of ‘awards’ and could translate into consumer engagement and goodwill that can’t be bought.” Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More from this author: Can fashion ever quit fossil fuels? India’s Ōshadi Collective renews its fashion credentials The world is taking action on plastic pollution. Where is fashion?

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