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.
Can Levi's Make Life Better for Garment Workers? (Fortune)
"Levis' initiative, 'Improving Worker Well-Being' is an ambitious experiment to improve the lives of the 25 million men and women in the world's apparel supply chain. It aims to build a network of more productive, better-run factories — with happier, healthier employees and lower rates of costly absenteeism and turnover."
Can Chinese Manufacturers Ever Be Clean, Green and Profitable? (South China Morning Post)
"The amount of wastewater discharged by China's textiles, apparel and leather factories is 50 per cent higher than is produced by the nation's coal industry. China's President Xi Jinping has made tackling environmental problems a priority, and clothing manufacturers have found themselves under increased scrutiny."
Banning Size Zero Models Is Small Fry. What Fashion Needs Is Diversity (The Guardian)
"Moves like the LVMH-Kering charter are heralded as great news for 'real women', but as a UK size 20, I struggle to see how I'm meant to feel more represented, more included, more a participant in the fashion industry and the world at large if catwalk models are a UK size 6 rather than a UK size 4."
Sustainable Fashion Is the Next Fashionable Thing (HuffPost)
"We are finally witnessing signs of consumer interest in sustainable fashion, which apparel corporations are responding to. For instance, Reformation offers sustainably manufactured trendy clothes supported by celebrities such as Taylor Swift, and Kering has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2025."
The CurvyCon Takes the Plus-Size Experience Offline (Racked)
"CurvyCon is an event that brings together plus-size bloggers, celebrities, and clothing brands for two days of shopping, panel discussions and parties. Now on its third iteration, this year marks the first time the event will be held during NYFW, and the first time the event will host an NYFW runway show."
Fashion’s biggest sustainable cotton certifier said it found no evidence of non-compliance at farms covered by its standard, but acknowledged weaknesses in its monitoring approach.
As they move to protect their intellectual property, big brands are coming into conflict with a growing class of up-and-coming designers working with refashioned designer gear.
The industry needs to ditch its reliance on fossil-fuel-based materials like polyester in order to meet climate targets, according to a new report from Textile Exchange.
Cotton linked to environmental and human rights abuses in Brazil is leaking into the supply chains of major fashion brands, a new investigation has found, prompting Zara-owner Inditex to send a scathing rebuke to the industry’s biggest sustainable cotton certifier.