The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
LONDON, United Kingdom — The British Fashion Council will today announce the latest iteration of its Positive Fashion initiative, at the opening of London Fashion Week.
In partnership with Vivienne Westwood and backed by London mayor Sadiq Khan, the Fashion Switch programme will encourage brands to commit to switching to green energy providers by 2020. Other initiatives within the Positive Fashion campaign include sustainability, local manufacturing and craftsmanship.
"We started this project five years ago through a dialogue with Marks & Spencer," Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council, tells BoF. "It is our hope that the Fashion Switch campaign encourages brands and businesses to increase the demand for green energy, helping to accelerate investment and the rate and scale of renewables in the UK.
The project was spearheaded by Vivienne Westwood, who has long been an ambassador for sustainability. "We're at the point of no return, and if we go beyond it then there will be a chain reaction where everything accelerates, all the methane kicks in: life on earth faces mass extinction, and as the Pope has just announced, 'If we don't go back we will go down,'" Westwood tells BoF. "People are really interested in fashion and it's so important that we're working with the BFC, it's a fantastic place to start: the fashion industry. It's a stimulus to get everyone else involved!"
Fashion Switch is a long-term project: energy contracts for businesses means change cannot happen straight away. "If we can get half the country to switch as soon as possible, it would have a global effect," says Westwood, who has been lobbying other brands to commit to the cause.
More than a year after the ultra-fast-fashion company said it would tackle issues of unlawful overtime, 75-hour weeks remain common in its supply chain, Swiss watchdog Public Eye found.
A study published this week found traces of cotton from Xinjiang in nearly a fifth of the products it examined, highlighting the challenges brands face in policing their supply chains even as requirements to do so spread to raw materials from diamonds to leather and palm oil.
Overconsumption and fast fashion have become easy targets for brands flexing their climate-friendly attributes. Consumers may agree with the message — but take issue with a self-righteous tone.
Traces of cotton from Xinjiang were found in nearly a fifth of samples from American and global retailers, highlighting the challenges of complying with a US law aimed at blocking imports that could be linked to forced labour in China.