Fashion Has an Acute Case of ‘Tunnel Vision’ and it’s Making Real Transformation Impossible
Federica Marchionni, CEO of Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), corrected a reporter who said there were seven years left to 2030, a pivotal deadline for fashion to hit the United Nations-adopted framework known as the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.
“For me, it’s six,” she said.
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It was, after all, the end of September. And the former longtime Dolce & Gabanna executive is nothing if not keenly aware of how much work remains before the sands run out.
“The pace is not yet where we need,” she said from the lobby of the Revere Hotel Boston Common during a break in the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s annual meeting last Tuesday.
Marchionni was a ball of nervous energy, for good reason. In a matter of hours, she would take to the stage at Liberty Hall to open a satellite edition of the sustainability think tank’s Global Fashion Summit, the second outside of its usual Copenhagen enclave and its first in the United States. There, she would talk about the effects of climate breakdown driven by an “intensity of consumption” that the industry promotes. “The Land of the Free” and the “Land of Opportunity,” which many of fashion’s nameplates call home, could transform that narrative.
Despite the challenging economic conditions, “we need to be more ambitious,” Marchionni would tell the audience. “Globally, we must unite in the mindset that sustainability is a necessity for the future. We do not have time to wait.”
Since GFA emerged as a side event of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, a.k.a. COP15, in 2009, the organization has become an influential champion for a more progressive industry, linking arms with high rollers like H&M Group, Kering and Nike and forging alliances with organizations such as the Apparel Impact Institute, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Textile Exchange.
The theme of its conferences has also become progressively more urgent, from “Prosperity vs. Growth” in 2021 to “Alliances for a New Era” in 2022 to “Ambition to Action” this year.
Intent is one thing, Marchionni said, but implementation is quite another. To get this message across, the nonprofit switched up the format of its flagship event in June, featuring fewer plenary sessions and more breakouts where participants could be inspired by the best practices being discussed.
“We had 16 roundtables and more closed-door meetings to advance specific actions,” she said. “Everyone is aware of the need to be sustainable—we now need to push more sustainable practices and more ethical practices.”
This was also the crux of GFA’s updated Fashion CEO Agenda, the fifth version of what it describes as a “succinct checklist” for creating and rolling out strategies for “achieving a net-positive fashion sector.” For the first time, the document zeroes in on providing tools for brands, retailers and producers via specific “action areas.”
Flagging progress in achieving the SDGs, which span everything from poverty eradication to decent work for all to climate action certainly informed this year’s iteration of the agenda, Holly Syrett, GFA’s impact programs and sustainability director, said over Zoom from Amsterdam the week before the conference. But she said that it focused less on the “doom and gloom” and more on “how can we provide guidance in this really complex matrix of different types of social environmental topics that all need to be acted upon?”
While the five priority areas—respectful and secure work environments, better wage systems, resource stewardship, smart material choices and circular systems—remain largely the same as before, the bullet points they nest have become more granular. They also include sub-issues that the agenda hasn’t broached before, such as addressing overproduction and shifting consumer marketing messages toward the promotion of circular models.
“We feel that the industry needs more specific guidance,” Syrett said. “Also, [we wanted] to make sure nothing gets left behind.”
Her dream, she said, is for companies to print out and hang the pages of the report on their office walls. Syrett wants executives to think about, on a regular if not daily basis, whether their companies are asking the right questions about grievance mechanisms, deforestation-free cellulosic materials, microfiber pollution and living wages, among other things.
It’s easy, when trying to tackle this wide-ranging expanse of issues, for businesses to get a kind of “tunnel vision,” with social areas fading into blind spots that are yet to be supported by legislation—the “stick” that can mandate change, as she put it.
“All of our research is showing us that workers’ positions and the most vulnerable persons’ positions are just declining and becoming weaker and weaker,” Syrett said. “Wages in Bangladesh haven’t been increased in four years. We found wages in Italy as low as $2 an hour. The people who are working in the industry are the ones that are being left behind.”
Even circularity, a subject the industry likes to beat the drum about, has “huge” gaps because companies are trying to retrofit the value chain using the same “global North, brand-oriented approach” while expecting a completely different outcome, she noted.
“If you look at circularity, we’re designing all of these very pioneering circular economy policies. We have these fantastic new technologies. We have recyclers based in northern Scandinavia,” Syrett said. “[But] what does that mean for a manufacturer that is completely dependent on its current way of operating? What does that mean for spinners around the world if we have all of these technologies and recycling hubs being established in the U.S. and Europe?”
It’s for these reasons that GFA launched the Global Circular Fashion Forum, an initiative that builds on the lessons learned from its 2020-2021 Circular Fashion Partnership in Bangladesh. A similar program for Cambodia is now in the works.
“We saw that there’s a huge need for [placing] manufacturers and manufacturing countries at the heart of circular economy discussions, and not only about discussions but actually building a global circular fashion infrastructure,” Syrett said.
GFA plans to measure progress in these areas through the GFA Monitor, which it debuted in 2022 and replaces its previous Pulse of the Fashion Industry reports. Arriving in early December, the next update will include data and insights from the likes of the Apparel Impact Institute and Textile Exchange. But gone is the score that the Pulse reports used to grade the industry as a whole on its “sustainability journey.” Instead, GFA plans to reflect the complexity of the problems by breaking them down into specific areas, such as the number of brands adopting responsible purchasing practices, say, or how many manufacturers are seeing improvements because of those new commercial terms.
Marchionni said that it’s important that fashion moves beyond its carbon-neutrality aspirations and work toward an industry that is “net positive,” which means putting more into the environment and society that it extracts. While she feels like she’s often repeating herself, “it’s needed.”
At her heart, Marchionni is an optimist.
“I also see that we are getting to that crucial tipping point for which the acceleration will be faster,” she said. “In terms of the action, I see a lot of action that is happening.”
But until that action hits the right clip, Marchionni doesn’t mind the repetition.
“I must be patient and keep repeating why it’s important to act now,” she said.
