Fashion

How Fashion Is Finally Working To Tackle Climate Change

Upcycling, recycling, offsetting, traceability… In the January 2020 issue, Tamsin Blanchard examines the world of sustainable style, while contributing fashion director Kate Phelan mixes archive pieces with those from autumn/winter 2019 and resort 2020 to celebrate it.
Image may contain Clothing Apparel Overcoat Coat Human Person Jelena Dokic and Trench Coat
Craig McDean

Perhaps it was seeing the Amazon rainforest burning. Perhaps it was hearing Greta Thunberg’s impassioned speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. Perhaps it was encountering Extinction Rebellion supporters campaigning outside Victoria Beckham’s catwalk venue with placards that read: “Business As Usual Is Killing The Planet.” Whatever the reason, if 2019 was the year the fashion industry owned up to its undeniable impact on climate change, 2020 looks set to be the year it takes action.

There’s a new mood sweeping through fashion right now. It’s a little bit sombre and retrospective. Conversations about the environmental impact of everything we do – from using takeaway coffee cups to the polyester fabrics that shed thousands of microplastic fibres every time we do the washing – are inescapable. So are the statistics: Britain consumes clothes at the fastest rate in Europe; and, by 2030, global apparel consumption is projected to have risen by 63 per cent – the equivalent of more than 500 billion additional T-shirts. The good news? An increased focus on the environment is changing the way many fashion designers are making and showing their collections – not to mention the way consumers are shopping.

Carbon emissions were the big talking point at the spring/summer 2020 shows. In New York, in September, Gabriela Hearst kicked off the discussion when she declared her show carbon neutral, offsetting the emissions resulting from the catwalk presentation with EcoAct. A few days later, she was in London for the opening of her Norman Foster-designed flagship store on Conduit Street (the fashion world doesn’t yet have Thunberg’s zero tolerance for air miles). Rather than showing me the luxurious cashmere knits made by a women’s co-operative in her native Uruguay, or the lovely variations of tone in the chrome-free, vegetable-tanned leather on the shop floor, she ushered me into the basement storage cupboard to present me with the recycled cardboard hangers she had developed as part of her company’s pledge to go plastic-free.

Craig McDean

“This is what I want you to see,” she said, triumphantly holding up a recyclable cardboard hanger produced by an Israeli company, as she told me about the 20 billion plastic hangers that go to landfill each year. “This, for me, is beautiful.” She also pointed out the compostable packaging – “24 weeks versus 500 years” – used to wrap the stock: “I’m showing you this because there are people who talk about things and then there’s the doing. We are the doing and not so much of the talking.”

Next up, at London Fashion Week, Phoebe English, re-energised by a two-season hiatus from the show schedule, unveiled her presentation: Attempts at Sustainability Solutions. She set out ideas for reducing and upcycling her eponymous brand’s waste; shared her material research (smashing through the secrecy that has traditionally stopped designers spreading best practice); provided the email address of her ocean-waste plastic suppliers, Econyl; and the details for her certified organic cotton. They could also join the WhatsApp group she started, Fashion on Earth, which helps designers and educators share their thoughts and resources. The group currently has more than 119 members, including sustainable designer Richard Malone; Cat Teatum and Rob Jones of Teatum Jones; the upcycler Matthew Needham; Martina Spetlova, who is using blockchain technology to track supply chains; representatives from Katharine Hamnett and Extinction Rebellion Fashion Action; Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Fashion Revolution, the campaign that asks #whomademyclothes; and Nina Marenzi, founder of The Sustainable Angle, whose fabric expo at the end of January has become a must-see for brands or designers serious about finding renewable materials. Graeme Raeburn (brother of Christopher) also suggested building a communal fabric-shopping list so that they could pool resources and split up minimum quotas on orders – a pertinent issue for many independent designers trying to source more sustainable fabrics in small quantities. This is a group that is committed to changing the way they work, as well as creating entire new systems for producing, selling and re-circulating clothes and raw materials.

In Milan, Gucci announced it was to become entirely carbon neutral, offsetting any emissions that it is currently unable to reduce or eliminate by partnering with Redd+; a UN project to reduce emissions from deforestation in Peru, Kenya, Indonesia and Cambodia. “The more time that goes by, the more reports from the scientists are clear – the planet has gone too far,” Marco Bizzarri, Gucci’s chief executive, told The Guardian. The LVMH group swiftly followed suit in Paris, drawing attention to its environmental charter and commitment to ensure full traceability of its raw materials by 2025, plus the €10 million it has pledged to safeguard the Amazon.

Other designers spoke of the need to simplify. Miuccia Prada sent a signal that the culture of disposability – which finds its currency in fleeting trends – is over, and declared: “Personal style is more important than clothes.” Her catwalk was filled with wearable wardrobe classics: embroidered pencil skirts, pretty evening dresses, sharply tailored jackets. Even Prada’s famous nylon bags are going green: by 2021, the Re-Nylon project aims to convert all virgin nylon to regenerated nylon. Brands such as Chanel noted that its elaborate show sets would be recycled, and Louis Vuitton’s stripped-back pine set was sourced from sustainably managed pine forests in France, and later donated for reuse as part of a partnership with ArtStock, a company that recycles props, sets and stage equipment.

Craig McDean

With major social, cultural and consumer shifts come seismic changes in business models. High time, too: according to the Waste and Resources Action Programme there is a whopping £30 billion worth of unworn clothing hanging in British wardrobes. We are being urged to stop buying so much, to look into our wardrobes and make use of what is already there, rather than constantly shopping for something new.

Vogue is cognisant of the shift. When researching the looks for this shoot, contributing fashion director Kate Phelan mixed pieces from old collections with those from the latest resort shows. There are some unforgettable blasts from the past, such as Katharine Hamnett’s “Pershing” T-shirt – which she wore to take on then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984. There are also hints at what’s to come, thanks to Amsterdam-based designer Duran Lantink, who finds designer pieces on resale sites before cutting them up and collaging them back together to make something new. “We are looking at the longevity of what designers make and sell,” says Phelan. “They don’t have to start from scratch every time they make a collection. I still have clothes from years ago that I mix in with more recent looks – an old Chanel jacket that can stand the test of time, say. Things you never get bored of.” (Even Taylor Swift is in vintage Chanel on this month’s cover.)

While this is, of course, a reflection of how many of us already dress, it also highlights a hugely disruptive new kid on the retail block: luxury fashion resale sites such as Vestiaire Collective, Hardly Ever Worn It, Farfetch’s Second Life and The RealReal. “I don’t think people are as squeamish about buying second-hand as they used to be,” Phelan says. “Shopping somewhere like Vestiaire is a different experience than rooting through the rails in a vintage clothes store.” The season to which those pieces “belong” is fast becoming irrelevant. “Good clothes do hold their value,” she insists.

Craig McDean

An archival approach is increasingly important – whether in our own wardrobes or as a way for brands to keep their clothes in circulation longer (and perhaps to keep them from being resold elsewhere). The Stockholm-and London-based brand Bite Studios is experimenting with building up its own archive online, where customers can return pieces once they have finished with them so that they can be resold. Creative director Elliot Atkinson is excited about the possibilities of making fashion an investment over time. “It’s working out how to do it so it accrues value, to make an archive and redesign it by naturally dyeing and over-dyeing it, or painting artworks on top of it to add value to the pieces. It becomes something else and evolves. Each piece has handcraft applied to it in some way.”

The traditional bricks-and-mortar department stores are reacting to this shift, too. Selfridges opened a Depop space last September, as part of a push to encourage resale, and 24-year-old Central Saint Martins graduate Patrick McDowell ran an upcycling workshop on the shop floor. “It definitely feels like the old and the new guard in some ways,” he says, as part of the new wave of environmentally conscious designers who are embedding sustainable thinking into their brand DNA. “We are lucky because we are small enough to change with new developments as they happen.”

McDowell’s collections are made using deadstock and salvaged material that might otherwise end up in landfill, and given a heavy dusting of rejected Swarovski crystals. “My profits are now linked to how sustainable I am, and people come to me because of that. I’ve set myself up to potentially fail as a brand if I sell-out. That’s a good situation to have locked yourself into.”

But designers such as McDowell need a whole new ecosystem if they are to thrive. At Selfridges, sustainability consultant Alex McIntosh is well placed to smooth the way for all sorts of new business models. Not only does he give a platform to the burgeoning resale market (a pop-up with Vestiaire Collective opened in October), he also trains the store’s buyers to ask the right questions of brands and designers to ensure that they meet certain ethical standards. All while working with the irregular production cycles and slight variations on product that upcycled and deadstock materials can bring. “It’s the most exciting time right now,” says McIntosh – who also heads up the University of the Arts London’s Fashion Futures MA at the London College of Fashion. “I feel like a lot of stuff I’ve been working on in an academic context is starting to be heard in the business context.”

For Matchesfashion.com, a new generation of brands is making some of the most interesting clothes – the debut collection of Ssone, the latest buzzy sustainable label, is stocked exclusively with them. Caroline Smithson, Ssone’s founder and creative director, says she enjoys spending time going down rabbit holes in search of botanically dyed wool, say, or potato sacks with which to package up her orders. While her brand is new, Smithson has more than 20 years’ experience working everywhere from Levi’s to Louis Vuitton. She knows how wasteful the industry is; how polluting it can be; how disconnected the creative teams can be from their own supply chains, the provenance of their materials, the people who make the clothes. And it is precisely this experience that has shaped her first solo venture, and made her rethink every last detail. Swing tags are made using a by-product of the beer industry; cotton denims are organic and recycled; the beautifully crisp hemp is spun and woven in Italy (requiring a third of the water used in cotton production); zips are made from recycled polyester. “It’s a hell of a lot of research,” she says, “everything is considered.” Ultimately she is designing for other women who share her world-view. “What I buy in a year, I could count on one hand,” Smithson says – and that includes one or two pieces of vintage.

And that, surely, is the crux of the matter. The fashion industry needs to adapt to this palpable desire for things to slow down, be more considerate in how it makes and the resources it uses. If that means taking the time and care to remake something new out of something old, or the consumers of fashion rediscovering something special hanging in the back of the wardrobe, then saving the planet suddenly seems a little less daunting.

More from British Vogue: