Latest news with #GlobalFashionAgenda
Fashion United
08-07-2025
- Business
- Fashion United
Accompanying report helps navigate new GFA Fashion Impact Toolkit
A new Fashion Impact Toolkit, presented by the Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) and Deloitte at the Global Fashion Summit in June, wants to share a meaningful inventory of industry impacts for guidance on strategy assessment. But how to use it? And what are some of the key findings from the impact inventory? An accompanying report, published recently, offers guidance as well as insights on transforming these learnings into actionable strategies for sustainable impact. It also outlines the background, purpose and framework of the Fashion Impact Toolkit, thus serving as a first step to engage with it, ultimately helping companies identify their potential impacts, make better informed decisions, become more resilient, boost stakeholder confidence in their operations and maintain competitiveness in a rapidly evolving market. New Fashion Impact Toolkit is a valuable resource 'We hope that the Fashion Impact Toolkit will be a valuable resource for the textile industry as it navigates increasing regulatory and stakeholder pressure. By identifying and acting upon the most critical sustainability implications across the value chain, companies can foster greater resilience, trust and long-term transformation. We are proud to collaborate with Deloitte to support this much-needed shift,' commented GFA CEO Federica Marchionni in a press release. The report is divided into five chapters, starting with setting the context and why companies should identify sustainability impacts. Chapter Two deals with how and why to create an impact inventory, while Chapter Three explains how the textile sector's value chain was mapped: into 20 main activities and 101 sub- activities that were narrowed down to the 88 most relevant sub-activities. By outlining almost 3,000 impacts across value chain stages such as material production, garment manufacturing, product distribution and use, end-of-life management and material recycling, Chapter Four highlights key hotspots and pressure points that were identified through the research conducted to construct the Fashion Impact Toolkit. Chapter Five lists the six key questions for turning impacts into actionable strategies. 'An early outcome of Deloitte's collaboration with the Global Fashion Agenda, the Fashion Impact Toolkit is designed to help textile company leaders better understand their footprint across the value chain and help inform how they adapt their strategies to be more resilient. These adapted strategies can help organizations identify opportunities to enhance performance, helping drive industry-wide progress,' added Cecilia Dall' Acqua, partner strategy sustainability leader, Deloitte Global Circular Economy Hub. The full report can be downloaded from the Global Fashion Agenda's website.
DW
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- DW
Indian-German design duo highlight fashion waste – DW – 06/23/2025
An Indian architect and German fashion designer work as Bouley Gandhi, making recycled artworks that shine a light on throwaway fast fashion. It was a collaboration that neither expected, but both needed. When Mumbai-based architect Kanhai Gandhi met Hedwig Bouley, the German founder of fashion brand LPJ Studios in 2018, the duo could have hardly known their sustainable artistic project would last years. Working from their respective studios in Bavaria and Mumbai under the name Bouley Gandhi, the duo create large-scale artworks out of upcycled fabrics, bringing awareness to the need for more sustainability in the fashion industry — one of the biggest polluters on the planet. "I've been a fashion designer for 40 years," Bouley told DW. "About eight years ago, I decided I wanted to do something with all of the leftovers and waste from the fashion industry." Some 92 million tons of annual textile waste is produced globally, according to the Global Fashion Agenda, a Copenhagen-based non-profit organization that supports the transition to a more sustainable future. That's the equivalent of a garbage truck full of clothing being disposed of each second. "We know the fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters on the planet, so we thought, let's get out of that. Art is a good way to create awareness. We don't use any new materials in our works," said large-scale wall hangings use a unique needle punch technique to sew used scraps of wool and cashmere. Gandhi uses his architectural background to create a design, while Bouley sews a small mockup by hand. Finally, they make the large-scale pieces using a rare technique where materials are worked into each other with the help of small needles. Upcycling, the process of transforming waste materials into new products of higher value, is becoming more commonplace in the fashion industry as concern for the environment grows. In Europe, fashion designer Marine Serre, for example, has gained traction for her use of waste fabrics. In India, too, upcycling is being embraced by both established and upcoming designers and artisans in recent years. Doodlage, a studio in New Delhi, makes clothes out of scraps of fabric and second-hand garments, for example. In April, Bouley Gandhi showed their latest collection at Milan Design Week at Rossana Orlandi collectable art space. In an interview with DW, they explained how they met back in 2018 at design trade show Maison & Objet in Paris. Gandhi was struck by the pieces displayed at Bouley booth and asked if he could visit her studio in the small town of Aschau in Chiemgau in Bavaria. "I thought he was making a joke and then a month later he really came!" Bouley recalled, smiling. "I said 'I'm coming from India, are you ok to meet me on a Sunday?'" added Gandhi. He was eager to respect German customs — including observing Sunday as a day of rest — despite coming halfway across the globe. Their collaboration has been a successful experiment in bridging often wide cultural differences between Germany and India, leading to new, positive experiences for both of them — including a style revamp. "Now you see more color on her and I wear more black now!" points out Ghandi, who himself has become a huge fan of Bavarian food during his regular visits to Aschau. The duo is busy working on new projects that also utilize recycled materials and look to the future. As Bouley says: "Our partnership is very nice and we think about what we can do in some years, for example. We always think about 'us' not only him or only me. It's really a good collaboration." Aside from the environmental aspect, Bouley Gandhi wants their work to spread a message of shared human experiences. In a time of division as conflicts rage and right-wing extremism is on the rise, the duo believe that art can help unite humanity by reminding us of our similarities. One Bouley Gandhi piece depicts a face with lips and mouth rising from the surface of a body of water, and was conceived of during the pandemic. Gandhi wanted the work to represent the human element of resilience and titled it "Hope in Depth." "A good part of the human mind is that if there is a strong will, you tend to survive," said Gandhi. "This characteristic of the human psyche is universal. It's not limited to a German or Indian or an American — it's about everyone."To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
CBS News
13-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Thrifting interest explodes for Americans worried about rising clothing prices and waste
Young Americans are embracing thrifting as a way to save and stand out St. Petersburg, Florida — Brooklyn Karasack loves to thrift and sew. She thrifts in her hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, and then uses her grandmother's sewing machine to whip up her fantastical creations. "This is probably $3 or something like that," Karasack told CBS News, referring to an old pillowcase she turned into a tote bag as an example of her work. Her creativity has paid off. The 28-year-old, who works as an auditor during the day, has more than 800,000 online followers, who watch her take her thrift store finds on her social accounts and turn the old items into new ideas. Karasack said she got into thrifting and sewing after deciding to stop buying fast fashion. Fast fashion, a term for low-priced, trendy clothes made by companies like H&M, Forever 21 and others, has become a big contributor to textile waste, producing 92 million tons a year, according to Global Fashion Agenda's Pulse of the Fashion Industry report. A piece of clothing is worn only seven to ten times, on average, before being thrown out, according to Uniform Market. She said that after she started thrifting, she hasn't "bought anything fast fashion." Karasack isn't alone in turning toward thrifting. With a trade war underway, Americans worried about costs have flocked to the used clothing market. Thrifting is an easy way to avoid tariffs, with prices generally 50% to 75% off of retail. The secondhand market is expected to more than double by 2028, growing 6.4 times faster than the broader retail sector, according to a 2024 resale report from Thredup, an online thrift store. Small businesses are also jumping on the trend — Sew Pinellas offers beginner sewing classes for DIYers of all ages. They've been full since they began last year. Sewing jumps in popularity during economic slowdowns, data from Statista shows that 26% of 18- to 29-year-olds engage in some form of sewing activity. Kristen Hester, who manages Out Of The Closet, a thrift store with 24 locations, says customers now expect thrift stores to offer more. Customers used to think of thrifting happening in a charity shop where everything is thrown around and they had to dig through dirty bins. Hester grew up thrifting with her mom and likens it to a treasure hunt, but notes back then it wasn't as popular as it is today. "Thrift stores had stuff that the regular retail stores just didn't have," Hester said. "...You think of a small little charity shop, where maybe everything is thrown around; you have to dig through dirty bins." The 38-year-old says that her store is "more of a curated, boutique experience." Out of The Closet, like many secondhand shops, is mission-driven. When you shop or donate at Out of the Closet, 96 cents of every dollar made goes to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's HIV prevention and treatment services, the shop said. She adds, "It really has created this really cool kind of niche community where everybody is just so accepting. Everybody's in the same mindset. Everyone is happy to be there."
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How the Garment Supply Chain's Gender Pay Gap Undermines Social Compliance
A few steps forward but still a long way to go. That's the gist of the Social & Labor Convergence Program's latest impact report, which delved into data gathered by the multi-stakeholder initiative's harmonized audit framework—including, for the first time, information pertaining to gender dynamics—as it enters its sixth year of adoption by the apparel, footwear and textiles supply chain. Broadly speaking, the 10,200 SLCP assessments conducted in more than 50 countries in 2024—10 percent more than in 2023—found fewer violations of national and international labor laws. By replacing multiple, often redundant, audits, the Converged Assessment Framework also unlocked a potential $39 million for reinvesting in—ideally—improving labor conditions for roughly 7.3 million workers, a 39 percent uptick from the year before. There remained glaring paint points such as excessive overtime and shortfalls in wages and benefits, but overall, CEO Janet Mensink views the results as a validation of the Cascale spinoff's 'theory of change.' More from Sourcing Journal Can Fashion's 'Bridges' Overcome Its 'Barriers'? Families of 'Kidnapped' L.A. Garment Workers Arrested in ICE Raids Plead for Justice National Guard Arrives in Los Angeles Following Protests Over Immigration Raids 'One of our principles and theories is that facility ownership of their data will drive accountability and change because they also take responsibility for the outcomes,' she said. 'So there's that whole process that starts with self-assessment and then continues with verification, but they are the ones that get to decide whether they share it with brands or any other stakeholders.' Mensink had just stepped off the main stage at the Global Fashion Summit: Copenhagen Edition, where she had been speaking on a panel about the gender pay gap. The session's initial hook was PricewaterhouseCoopers and Global Fashion Agenda's report about wage inequities in Italy's fashion manufacturing value chain, where women are overrepresented in lower-paying positions on the production line and underrepresented in the higher executive echelons. The same is true of countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Turkey, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, where SLCP's assessments are most embraced, Mensink said. Although women comprise 59 percent of the workforce in SLCP facilities, men account for 67 percent of the supervisory or managerial positions, the report found. As in Italy, the women toil in so-called 'less-skilled' jobs that, if one would put a positive spin on things, means plenty of untapped opportunities to leverage the 'diversity dividend' of investing in inclusive leadership. On the flip side, such disparate power dynamics have been linked to increased incidences of gender-based violence and harassment that lead to psychological, physical and sexual abuse. Despite women representing 60 percent of workers, 45 percent of SLCP facilities paid men more than women in the same or similar positions in 2024. While the gap can vary wildly, ranging from a fraction of a percentage to more than 10 percent, the fact that it exists signals what the report said is a 'troubling imbalance in opportunity, recognition and reward' and undermines the fundamental concept of equal pay for equal work. Despite the overall growth in SLCP users—2024 alone saw a 10 percent bump—there has been 'no meaningful increase' in the representation of women in supervisory roles. Only 25 percent of SLCP facilities are managed or owned by women. And while 61 percent of them offered promotions to men in 2024, just 39 percent did the same for their female counterparts. Men, the report pointed out, are still largely favored for advancement at the individual facility level. Overtime is 'very much' connected with the pay gap, Mensink said, since workers who earn less than what they can survive on will seek to rack up hours to make up for the deficiency. A root cause of this is unfair purchasing practices. 'If you want to address over time, you cannot just you can't just ask your supplier, hey, remediate this,' she said. 'This is a collective effort that is a supply chain issue, not a sustainability issue in itself. There isn't a training to fix overtime.' At the same time, she added, the data shows that factories led by women have better control over their working hours, which means setting them up for success can have larger positive implications. This means providing things like childcare assistance (which is mandatory in Bangladesh and India), menstrual products and maternity leave, which are all valuable data points for SLCP and important subjects of dialogue between buyers and suppliers. That facilities should have autonomy over their own data, however, is something of a no-brainer for Mensink. She said she doesn't believe in a 'top-down approach' where buyers call all the shots because 'that's actually one of the underlying issues why there are non-compliances in the first place.' Mensink said that non-compliance isn't easy to fix in facilities because they're so systemic and often come with nested dependencies. It isn't for nothing, after all, that 92 percent of SLCP assessments in 2024 found at least one occurrence of non-compliance, a 1 percent decrease from 2023. The average number of legal non-compliances per assessment? 10.3, a 3 percent increase from the year before. At the same time, the report found, repeat users of the Converged Assessment Framework reported 1.9 fewer incidents of non-compliance compared with first-time users. In 2024, the average frequency of non-compliant behavior for repeat users of the assessment over four years was 2.4 times lower than repeat users over two years. 'But there's still so much work to do,' Mensink said. 'We're finding cases also on harassment, discrimination, forced labor, issues with migrant labor, but these are way more challenging in an assessment context. There's also a lot that we need to do in collaboration with other organizations that are better equipped to get the true worker voice. I mean, freedom of association is one of the key things to address, but how do you do that? Plus, there are limitations in an annual on-site inspection. It's a snapshot. And you need a skilled verifier to identify more salient issues, so we're constantly updating and building the capacity of our verifiers.' SLCP is often flooded with requests for new data points. Mensink thinks there needs to be a balance, however, between making the Converged Assessment Framework fit for purpose and plunging into ever-more granular levels of information that could make assessments unwieldy or unsuitable for drawing out long-term trends. So far, beyond the addition of wage and gender data, last year, the organization has kept to incremental annual improvements. A climate element could be the next big one. 'We're also looking at, probably in the future, ways to work with other organizations on grievance mechanisms, hotlines, etc., because the idea of finding everything in one assessment as good as it is is probably a bit ambitious,' she said. 'It's about finding a middle ground through modularity. But we will never be a static system.'
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Can Fashion's ‘Bridges' Overcome Its ‘Barriers'?
Even Queen Mary of Denmark had nothing to say at this year's Global Fashion Summit, perhaps the industry's most boldface of sustainability conclaves. The longtime patron of the Global Fashion Agenda typically delivers a brief speech to kick things off, usually along the lines of the need for collective action for transformation to occur. Or she might joke about her daughters stealing her shoes as a form of reuse. Somewhere between the opening smooth-jazz jam and a H&M Foundation-helmed panel on operationalizing circularity, however, the royal consort slipped away from her front seat at the Copenhagen Opera House, her exit barely announced by the fading click of her stilettos. More from Sourcing Journal Refiberd Wins Trailblazer 2025 With AI-Powered Textile Recycling Global Fashion Agenda's Innovation Incubator Returns, Opens Call for Solutions What Will a Second Trump Term Mean for Fashion's Sustainability Ambitions? It was a stealthy retreat that, inadvertently or not, reflected the muted mood of the two-day conference, which one attendee described as 'somber,' another as 'a bit flat' and a third as evocative of a 'palpable decline of interest.' Fewer high-level brands abounded, a consequence of throttled travel budgets, a fear of appearing overtly political—and potentially ticking off a certain White House inhabitant—and cannibalization by concurrent events such as SXSW's first London foray and, we were told, an especially buzzy textile recycling expo in Brussels where shoulders were slapped and hands shaken over business deals. For the thousand or so people who converged on Copenhagen, just a hair fewer than those who turned up for last year's 15th anniversary, there was very little to feel celebratory about. Geopolitical turmoil, tariff uncertainty and environmental deregulation hung heavily in the air. Even attempts to put a positive gloss on corporate efforts that were already lagging before the rightwing shift in both Europe and the United States, but could now be actively backsliding, felt more perfunctory than usual. The same week, a analysis of more than 40 apparel companies found that 40 percent increased their carbon footprint versus their baseline, outlapping those on a 1.5-degree Celsius trajectory by a nearly six-to-one margin. In the latest iteration of the International Trade Union Confederation's global rights index, data showed a 'sharp escalation' in violations of fundamental labor rights, including freedom of association and collective bargaining. 'Apparently more was happening in the roundtables,' one attendee said of the closed-to-press executive-level sessions, which had the likes of Kering diving into what a just transition means in the age of climate change, Target speaking about moving production closer to consumer markets and The Fashion Pact hosting a conversation about corporate financial engagement in decarbonization. The more accessible stages—the concert hall, 'action' and 'ignite'—stuck to broader, more anodyne issues such as fiber innovations, resale, regenerative materials and the gender pay gap. The biggest ripple in all that taut placidity was occasioned by Veja co-founder Sébastien Kopp, who described sustainability as a 'bag of vomit.' Kalpona Akter's heartfelt description of garment workers' struggles in Bangladesh produced little response and, by the time the 'celebration dinner' rolled around, no offers of help that might relieve her organization's loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID for short. Eileen Fisher's call for everyone to 'show up more and collaborate more' offered a burst of inspiration. Things flattened from there. 'Some feedback I heard is that some people feel the brands are too restrained and they prefer the speakers that are more candid and speak more openly,' an attendee said. But the event's dour note was hardly unexpected. There is simply no way to spin the current climate, whether political, environmental or otherwise, no matter how many times someone insists that there is no business on a dead planet. For brands grappling with the existential threat of tariffs, sustainability has dropped several rungs in priority. The Trump administration's crackdown on so-called 'woke' notions such as climate action or DEI in the United States isn't even the half of it. In Europe, the omnibus package, a series of amendments designed to simplify—and many say water down—the corporate sustainability due diligence directive, the corporate sustainability reporting directive and other legislative instruments, threatens to unravel years of progress holding corporations liable for their environmental and social impacts. It's still unclear how other forthcoming regulations involving extended producer responsibility, greener design requirements and traceability compliance will play out. 'There's a general backlash on sustainability in Brussels,' Lara Wolters, the Dutch politician who was the European Parliament's lead negotiator on the CSDD, said at a pre-game policy masterclass at the Danish Architecture Center. 'None of this is for a good reason, but maybe to take a step back. What the Commission has done is roll out a deregulatory agenda under pressure from a lot of large lobby groups in some of the member states. The intention, I think, is to give a political signal that we, too, are going to do things differently. I would even call it a sort of 'Trump Lite.'' She said that the result of this reversal would be more paperwork and less impact, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. For the politicians who have been clamoring for fewer guardrails, however, the 'intention is to do things as fast as possible, never mind the consequences.' Across the Atlantic, the Trump administration has pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement (again), dismantled critical climate safeguards and obliterated other regulations governing clean water, toxic pollutants and wildlife. It has clawed back most forms of foreign assistance, including grants for programs that strengthened workers' rights and combated child and forced labor. 'I spent a good chunk of my flight over breaking through President Trump's proposed 2026 budget,' said Chelsea Murtha, senior director of sustainability at the American Apparel & Footwear Association. 'And, of course, USAID is completely eliminated, and a lot of the functions that it had are not even fully being transposed over to the State Department. The U.S., in particular, was a very large funder of the [International Labour Organization's] Better Work program, and all of that funding is gone now.' The outcome has been a 'sort of paralysis,' she said. Brands, squeezed by higher import costs, are hard-pressed to fill the breach. And while individual states could step up with rulemaking to counter the White House's actions, there's also only so much they can do. 'It's not like they can't step in and do things, but they're constricted in their authorities,' she said. 'They cannot negotiate trade deals, and they can't control imports. They can pass EPR programs, because EPR programs regulate products within their state, but what they can't do is institute something like an export ban.' On the first day of the Global Fashion Summit, themed 'Barriers and Bridges,' Federica Marchionni, CEO of Global Fashion Agenda, didn't mince words, either, calling this an 'extremely challenging time for sustainability' that is hampering fashion's ability to be a 'force for good.' At the same time, she said, the only certainty in an uncertain world is climate change. And a 'strong absence' of leadership requires 'collective courage' to build supply chain resilience. The few suppliers who spoke—their attendance likely, again, constrained by a lack of financial wherewithal—alluded to their struggles. 'The volumes are lower than they used to be a couple of years ago,' said Attila Kiss, CEO of Gruppo Florence, an integrated manufacturing hub in Italy. 'The brands are asking for lower prices because they have pressure on the margins. And from the other side, we have all the ethical issues, the social issues to manage.' In a panel that discussed Arvind Limited and Fashion for Good's plans for 'near-carbon-neutral' textile factory in India that would bring online tested and emergent solutions that could collective slash greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 93 percent, Abhishek Bansal, the former's head of sustainability, said that most of the industry's climate mitigation efforts either involve setting targets or pushing the supply chain to do so. 'Unfortunately, I have seen very little money going into helping build the hard assets that are going to actually reduce emissions,' he said. 'If you honestly ask how many industry stakeholders have set aside funds to build plants or invest in technologies to achieve those targets, I think you can count them on the fingers of one hand.' 'It's a big thing to say,' Bansal added quietly, 'but I don't think we are going to meet 2030 targets.' The dearth of representation—from suppliers, from economists, from investors—was noticeable, more than one attendee said. Speaking to an audience, Tara St. James, senior director of sustainability at the Canadian retailer Moose Knuckles, said that brands could take more responsibility for fostering inclusion by bringing their suppliers to conferences or having them speak on panels with them or in their stead. 'We talk about making changes in our supply chain, which is where most of the impact is, but then we don't invite suppliers into every conversation,' one attendee said. 'And when we do, it's usually farmers and manufacturers, which is great, but I want to hear from a mom-and-pop mill, a dye house. I want more doers on the panels. And that includes more brands.' Yayra Agbofah, founder and creative director of The Revival, an organization that tackles global textile waste in Ghana, including through the Global Change Award-winning Revival Circularity Hub, said there's a difference between being ready—say, for circularity—and showing readiness based on actions. Fulfilling the second part requires reexamining fashion's business model, which he described as a failure because it fails to recognize communities like Accra's secondhand Kantamanto Market as stakeholders. 'We are dealing with the waste we didn't create, and not having a decision on how to deal with this crisis is a big problem,' he said. 'We need to be part of the decision-making. We shouldn't be left out and be an afterthought.' It was during the Q&A portion of Agbofah's panel that Brooke Roberts-Islam, a sustainable fashion journalist and consultant, nearly leaped out of her chair. Just minutes before, Golnaz Armin, vice president of color and materials at Nike, was speaking about the footwear giant's efforts to 'imagine and create meaning' with post-consumer waste. She said that Nike's size was both its advantage and disadvantage. 'Kantamanto is the only example of a scaled circular economy,' Roberts-Islam said. 'It seems so strange to have this framing of 'Why can't we scale this up for Nike because we're such a large organization?' and, you know, a lot of Nike products end up in Accra. Kanatamanto has tens of thousands of businesses that do this. They know the answer, and Nike says you're trying to find the answer, so can you, Yayra, give Nike the answer?' One of the most incisive sentiments of the conference was uttered during the very first session, but it remains to be seen if it made an impression. 'Someone told me once that a wall lying down is actually a bridge,' said Christiane Dolva, head of innovation, research and demonstration at H&M Foundation. 'I think that some of the barriers that a lot of us feel that we're running into, which literally can be like running into the wall, can be part of the solution if we shift our perspective. We need to shift our perspective.'
