Remake Says Fashion’s Penchant for ‘Great Stagnation’ is Holding Back Progress

Jasmin Malik Chua
·6 min read

“Stagnant” is the single word that Alexa Roccanova thinks best describes the fashion industry’s progress—or rather lack thereof—toward a more socially and environmentally equitable system.

Roccanova is a senior advocacy manager at Remake, the nonprofit behind the annual Fashion Accountability Report. For the 52 brands and retailers that made up the class of 2024, the average score was a mere 14 out of 150 points, the same as last year’s.

More from Sourcing Journal

The analysis covers a lot of ground with its 88 individual metrics, which measure everything from the depth of companies’ public disclosures on carbon emissions to how much headway they’ve made in reducing the amount of textile waste being sent to landfills. Some of these, the organization admits, are aspirational. But even if it were to grade on a curve by discounting the 63 points that no brand or retailer mustered, such as advancement toward paying all workers a living wage, the top-performing businesses—Everlane at 40, H&M Group at 37, Puma at 36, Reformation at 34 and Ralph Lauren at 30—still present “vast room for improvement,” Roccanova said.

And those are the high fliers. The average score, she told Sourcing Journal, indicates a “kind of plateauing of progress toward the lofty environmental and human rights commitments that brands have been increasingly making over the past decade.”

On the other end of the scale are the zero-scorers, including Fashion Nova, Missguided, Skims and Congressional bogeyman Temu.

“Companies are still coming up short and key areas that urgently need action if the industry is to operate within our finite planet planetary boundaries and deliver equity for fashion workers across the value chain,” Roccanova said. “And these include overproduction, decarbonization of supply chains, climate adaptation, living wages, commercial practices and support for good legislation.”

All the issues, in other words, that fashion’s finest have been drumming on about in order to present themselves as the antithesis of human exploitation, abject pollution and capitalist greed.

Remake frames its Fashion Accountability Report as a different sort of benchmark. For one, it grades companies on meaningful progress, not empty promises. For another, it doesn’t separate social and environmental impacts, considering them “inherently intertwined.” Whether it’s supply chain traceability, worker well-being, purchasing practices, environmental justice or corporate governance, the report covers them all.

Doing this wasn’t easy, said Alden Wicker, a journalist and author who co-wrote the report. Much of the information that piques Remake’s interest lacks a standardized or even consistent set of reporting criteria, which means many elements aren’t comparable.

“What is the difference between a marketing statement and a disclosure or actual effort with money behind it and measurements behind it?” she asked. “Is this just a box-ticking exercise? So there was [a lot of] discussion around what counts.”

One good example? Exit strategies, or the ways a business might divest from a supplier or country.

“Some brands use the words exit strategy. A couple of brands say, ‘Our exit strategy includes making sure this and this happens.’ But no brand has an exit strategy enshrined in a contract,” Wicker said. Remake ultimately decided to use the last as its bar.

One thing that became clear, however, is that the growing volume of production remains the main driver of fashion’s “still increasing” impact, Roccanova said. Of the companies that divulged their annual production volumes, such as Cotopaxi, Zara owner Inditex and VF Corp., all reported year-over-year increases.

“No company has expressed any intent to replace linear production with these alternative models,” she said. “And so without an intentional reduction of annual product output, circularity initiatives, improvements in energy efficiency and increased use of preferred materials aren’t going to be enough to sufficiently reduce fashion’s overall climate footprint.”

Roccanova is both surprised and not so surprised by what the report characterizes as the “great stagnation of grandiose promises” amid growing demand for transparency and action, including from regulators.

“I think the plateauing is in part, because a lot of these strategies, some of them are relatively new, and so it’s going to take a bit of time to see the results and the outcomes of said strategies,” she said. “But I think because there’s legislation coming down the pipeline, companies not scoring on particular things now doesn’t necessarily indicate that they’re not working on it behind the scenes. They [just] haven’t publicly disclosed it.”

Because Remake relies on information in the public domain, any so-called “greenhushing” doesn’t translate into higher scores. Not that brands and retailers should be focusing on racking up points, Roccanova said.

“Instead of trying to score as many points as possible, I encourage brands and other stakeholders to use this report as a roadmap for measuring what happens because it’s not [happening],” she said. “It’s not about the scores. It’s about looking at their sustainability strategies holistically and making sure that they are worker-centered because that’s a huge gap in any of the strategies that we’ve been seeing.”

Another thing: The Fashion Accountability Report isn’t a gauge of how sustainable or ethical a brand or retailer is.

“I noticed that a couple of people, as they always do, are like, ‘How can H&M be No. 2?’” Wicker said. “We’re not saying that H&M isn’t overproducing and doesn’t have an outsize environmental impact. What the report does say is that H&M is very transparent. It shares a lot of information, it responds to questions and it shares numbers and progress toward the commitments that it’s made. It’s also the brand that shows up the most in actively supporting legislation.”

The industry is still riddled with blind spots, Roccanova said. Overproduction and living wages, as mentioned, are two of them. Improving purchasing practices, which are still replete with “self-serving pricing and contract terms,” is another. And though climate impacts are poised to wipe out some $65 billion from the ledgers of four of the world’s top garment exporters, including Bangladesh, companies aren’t investing in adaptation efforts.

“We also need more contextual emissions reduction initiatives that account for the unique capabilities and limitations of suppliers themselves,” she said. “These decarbonization strategies need to be co-created between companies and their manufacturers. That’s something that we haven’t seen demonstrated at all by any company. It’s not even a topic of conversation.”

Fashion companies aren’t monoliths, and the report can apply differently to different people, Wicker said.

“For an entry-level or mid-level person or designer, the report is saying to them, ‘Here’s a lot of things that you can advocate for and also we see that you’re trying and in many cases being thwarted by this fashion system,’” she said. “If you’re in the executive suite at a brand, this report is saying, ‘Your fashion company is not a net benefit to the world. Don’t think that throwing a little bit of money over here is enough to change the system. There are so many different things that need to be changed.’”

“And if you’re a PR or marketing person, this report isn’t for you,” Wicker quipped.

Roccanova isn’t sure about that last statement but she agrees that de-siloing fashion is necessary if anything is to improve, scored or unscored.

“We want more radical collaboration not only internally within these companies but between different stakeholders within fashion, so that everyone can take action and advocate for a fairer, more equitable or regenerative global industry,” she said.