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.
France is pressing ahead with a ‘game-changing’ bill that would impose a ‘sin tax’-style penalty on fast-fashion products as high as €10 per item by 2030.
In the weeks since one of the industry’s most promising recycling start-ups filed for bankruptcy, big brands have put more money and more commitment into bringing innovations to market.
Thirty years of providing the world’s finest wool to the fashion house Loro Piana has done almost nothing for the Indigenous people of the Peruvian Andes.
The fast-fashion giant has joined Vargas and TPG to back a new polyester recycling venture following its failed bet on Renewcell.