The future of fashion

Lisa Armstrong

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Chatham House webinar on The Future of Fashion, and thank you so much for joining us on this beautiful day. I know that you’ll be richly rewarded by a lively debate from our wonderful panellists who I’m just going to introduce now. So, we have Dax Lovegrove, who is Global Director of Sustainability at Jimmy Choo and, I’ve put ‘and’ in capital letters in my notes, Versace, and he’s been working in corporate sustainability for two decades, assisting companies to get to net zero, amongst other things, so we’ve got lots to quiz him about.

We have Dr Patsy Perry, who is Reader in Fashion Marketing at the Manchester Fashion Institute, which is part of Manchester Metropolitan University. Patsy wrote her PhD on corporate social responsibility in the fashion supply chain. So, again, lots of rich material we can scrutinise there. And, finally, Lucy Siegle, who’s a pioneering Journalist on the eco front and Lucy’s been writing about sustainability long before most people had heard of the term. I was, sort of, gripped by her pieces in The Observer years ago, when no-one else was doing that kind of thing. Her books, Turning the Tide on Plastic and To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World?, are must-reads, and the latter is also the basis for the hit Netflix documentary, The True Cost, which is a must-watch.

So, I think what I’m really hoping is that you are going to put forward your own questions. You’re very welcome to ask them directly or put them in the Q&A. I’m going to kick off and ask Dax, Dax, do you think that we’re going about this the right way in the industry? I mean, are we selling this as something too worthy, or are we just greenwashing? How sincere do you – that’s about three questions, we’re not going to answer that yet. I mean, do you think broadly the industry is now finally twigging that this is big?

Dax Lovegrove

Yes, Lisa, I think the industry is definitely waking up. I mean, you know, as we all know, over the last two or three years, it’s had a lot of bad press, hasn’t it, and the numbers are always corrected, but, you know, fashion is something like eight to 10% of all global house – greenhouse gas emissions, isn’t it, and, you know, the waste, the…

Lisa Armstrong

Sorry, Dax, did you say 80%?

Dax Lovegrove

No, no, sorry, fashion is responsible for something like eight to ten…

Lisa Armstrong

Oh, eight to ten, okay.

Dax Lovegrove

…percent of greenhouse gas emissions across the world, across all private sectors. We know about the pollution, the waste, and the ill-treat – and the mistreatment of people in the supply chain, you know, there’s been so many, sort of, you know, uncovered crises in the supply chain that have blown up in the faces of brands. So, you know, we’ve got a shock and rightly so, you know, this is good, healthy pressure, we now have to step up.

The other context you will know, Lisa, is this is the decade of delivery. You know, this decade, we’ve got to globally get on track to reduce carbon in line with the latest climate science. So, fashion’s got to play its part. We can’t just protect nature, we’ve got to restore nature by 2030, and then there’s the Sustainable Development Goals, which, again, have to be reached by 2030. So, I think fashion is starting to get it, and I think what is happening is every week there’s a new, you know, announcement, commitment, partnership. Mulberry is now building its products to last with an incredible repair service and getting into resale and Burberry, I think, in the last couple of days, wants to be climate friendly…

Lisa Armstrong

Yeah.

Dax Lovegrove

…by 2040. So, we’re getting the wake-up call and I think the response is starting to happen.

Lisa Armstrong

I mean, the reason I put ‘and’ in capital letters between Jimmy Choo and Versace is because Versace is not a brand, I think, that many people would necessarily associate with sustainability and caring about the environment. Indeed, you know, those of us who can remember it in the 90s and the late 80s, it was very much about more is more, excess. I mean, that was its DNA and, you know, Donatella looking fabulous with a cigarette and diamonds and fur, you know, it’s – they’ve done a 180 there, haven’t they? I mean, do we – should we believe it?

Dax Lovegrove

Well, you’re right. I mean, luxury used to be all about conspicuous consumption. Displays of, you know, ostentatious wealth, I think that was across the luxury industry, and now the luxury industry, including us, know we need to change. I’ve been brought in, I’m really quite new, I’m still really quite recent, recently, sort of, started, but, you know, I’ve met the teams there and the Chief Exec and the Senior Management Team, and they really want to turn a corner. And so, I think what’s exciting about Jimmy Choo and Versace is we’re in this environment where the people are really up for it, my colleagues in materials research, in design, in production, in merchandising, they know that we have to step up because it’s what the customer is demanding of us. So, we’re definitely going to get it right, and then when we start to really get it right, we can talk about it, but at the moment I think you’ll see quite low-key communications until – you know, action comes first, we’re very clear on that, and communications comes second.

Lisa Armstrong

That’s very, very interesting. Lucy, you’re a Journalist, I’m a Journalist, I’m sure, like me, you’ve been in situations where Designers are telling you how green they are, while drinking out of a miniature plastic Evian bottle, through a plastic straw, you probably have received items in the kind of plastic packaging that make you want to scream, and it’s still going on, you know, what are – I mean, are you encouraged by what you’re – are you more encouraged than discouraged by what you’re seeing happening in the fashion industry right now?

Lucy Siegle

Well, I try not to judge individual behaviours, because I know there’s a gap between what we say we do and what we do, and I don’t know if this happens to you, but ever since I wrote my book on plastic, before I enter a room, I can hear rustling and I know it’s people hiding their plastic. So, you know, I’m a woman of the world, I know this goes on, but in terms of the fashion industry, I think that I would make a distinction between business models. So, I think some of the stuff that’s happening in luxury is super interesting and I think we could, sort of, talk a bit about why that might be, but Dax mentioned conspicuous consumption, which is a really – I’ve always found it a really thrilling phrase, ‘cause more than anything, I’m interested in anthropology and psychology really, you know, like so many Journalists, that’s what I’m really interested in, and I think that conspicuous consumption, so it’s – you know, was obviously very big in the 90s and early noughties and it’s about enhancing your status, your prestige, through buying stuff that’s got, you know, cache. And as soon as that is not the best way to enhance your prestige, then obviously, you’re going to look for a different way of enhancing your prestige and that’s really what these brands are, sort of, very cleverly doing. And I think they are doing that in some very interesting ways, and that’s their business model and that’s the psychology and the consumer they tap into.

I think that fast fashion is a different case entirely, and fast fashion’s business model is not as agile. It can’t change or respond to the psychology of the consumers and the consumers, the demographic is much larger and made up of lots of different people who are buying for different reasons, at different speeds, and at different times. So, it’s a much more complicated beast, and I don’t think that fast fashion is doing very much at all. I think there’s a lot of greenwashing and greenwishing, as far as fast fashion goes. So, I think we’ve got – we call it – the fashion industry is an umbrella and we’re talking about different business models, some of which have more leverage and are more agile and more able to respond to the climate and ecological emergency, Fast fashion, by and large, is embedded in trying to preserve the status quo and actually hanging on by its fingernails increasingly.

Will it be able to change? I don’t think so. Will it last? No, not in its current format, because the planetary boundaries and the dictats of the crises, the dual crises that we find ourselves in, mean that its sustainable initiatives are not fast enough, big enough, or really doing what they need to do. So, it’s just two things, I think: it’s to address the ecological emergency and Dax spoke to the fact that you have to be regenerative. You can’t just lower your emissions or whatever, you’ve got to actually, like, put something back in, they’re certainly not able to do that. And then the second thing is social equity, which we’ve just seen, after a year of COVID, you’re probably aware that lots of the brands, when COVID struck, realising they wouldn’t be able to sell through, left their orders at the ports, they knew, even the ones that were eventually forced into paying up, they knew that that would leave garment workers on the brink of, you know, starvation, let’s say it – call it how it is. So, these are all tremendous markers that they’re not able to change in the way that they would need to change.

Lisa Armstrong

So, I think you’ve just raised so many incredibly important points there. I mean, one of the things I’m just taking from that, Lucy, is how many different issues there are at stake here. I mean, there is the environment, and there is the treatment of workers, that’s just two big things, and those are very enormous concepts for consumers to get their heads around. You know, so consumers might just about be knowledgeable about what happened in Bangladesh, you know, a few years ago with the terrible fire at Rana Plaza and the awful working conditions. Or they might know that jeans are humongously wasteful when it comes to water, but actually putting all those things together and finding one garment that speaks to both those and also is the right price, I think is something that consumers struggle with. And I think that sometimes, then – well, I will ask you all this in a minute, whether you think there’s a bit of wilful ignorance sometimes amongst us the consumer?

I found myself sitting at a dinner a year or two, just before lockdown, next to one of the Chief Executives at Primark, an incredibly nice man actually, very interesting, and it was a private party, so I wasn’t there to quiz him as a Journalist, but of course I did a bit of probing, and I got onto my high horse and said, “Why is Primark not doing more for the environment?” And he said, “Well, you know, we did put bins into the stores for customers to bring their old clothes in, so that we could recycle them or donate them to charity, whatever,” and he said that they got filled with plastic coffee cups.

Lucy Siegle

Well, maybe they should have done one for coffee cups, then.

Lisa Armstrong

Good point.

Lucy Siegle

I mean, it’s not rocket science, is it?

Lisa Armstrong

No, no, but I think that sometimes – I know that, you know, not you, Lucy, but, you know, I can be – I, you know, I see something. I promised myself I’m not going to buy anything in polyester anymore, at least not unless it’s recycled, but then you see something absolutely lovely in polyester and you start to do those tricks on yourself, those ethical tricks. Patsy, bringing you in, how engaged are your students with sustainability?

Patsy Perry

[Pause] Sorry, you’d think I’d get the hang of it by now, wouldn’t you?

Lisa Armstrong

Oh, no, no, no, no. But thanks, and maybe I had found it easier.

Patsy Perry

No, our students have a huge appetite for all things sustainability and they really want to, you know, make a difference and go out there into industry, whether working for a company, or starting up their own brand, or some other kind of business model, and really, you know, use their skills and their education to really develop fashion for good and make a difference and build a more positive future. Whether that’s looking at, you know, reducing waste, or modular garments, whether it’s design, looking at how to treat workers better, you know, different resale models, and also thinking about equality, diversity and inclusivity, in terms of making fashion available for all people rather than just, you know, light, skinny, White people. So, I think it’s really interesting where the ideas are coming from now and there is a huge appetite for all of this, and it’s great to hear, you know, Dax saying that consumers are holding brands accountable and that’s, kind of, pushing companies to want to do better on all fronts.

Lisa Armstrong

And we’re starting to get some questions – really interesting questions coming in, and I’m going to go straight to them, so that I don’t, you know, get left with a backlog that we can’t answer at the end. There’s one here, Patsy, that I think is really – you know, seems targeted at you. I’m not sure how to pronounce the name, Uighur Kulich, I’m so sorry if I’ve got that hopelessly wrong, but anyway, he’s – I hope it’s a he, oh, I don’t even know that, “I’m a Behavioural Economist, brands like boohoo use every kind of psychological trick to sell one-time use products, how do we educate customers to focus on long-term usage of fashion items?” I mean, do you discuss that kind of thing, Patsy, with your students?

Patsy Perry

Yeah, such an interesting question, and it really is about taking a, you know, critical view of marketing and thinking about whether marketing is good for society, ‘cause there’s lots of these, kind of, psychological mechanisms in, you know, online website marketing that is really about encouraging consumers to buy more stuff. So, on the one hand, we’re told that, you know, we should take account of sustainability and, you know, be more conscious in our purchasing. But on the other hand, we’re constantly bombarded with all sorts of marketing messages and tactics on websites and so on, which is saying something completely opposite. I think, you know, especially for certain types of business model, like fast fashion, as Lucy said, they haven’t really thought about how to reengineer the business model away from just selling more items to generate greater revenues. And whatever we say, you know, we are very much focused on the growth, aren’t we, international expansion, growth of businesses, so how are we ever going to achieve our climate goals against that backdrop? I think that’s an interesting one, isn’t it?

Lisa Armstrong

Well, I think it’s – that is the nux, isn’t it? And, Dax, what – I mean, how do you square that seemingly circular circle?

Dax Lovegrove

With increasing sales, you mean?

Lisa Armstrong

Yeah, the demand for increasing sales and with, you know – I mean, fashion is predicated on new, new, new.

Dax Lovegrove

Yeah, it’s a difficult one and I think brands are knowing that the future will be different. So, I guess the short-term focus is how do you at least make the products as responsibly as they can be, and, you know, we’re upping our game on all the materials we use to be very clearly defined, internally and with our suppliers, what are the materials we’re after that we feel are much more responsible in future? But the long-term, yes, the whole fundamental business model has to shift.

Jimmy Choo, I will say, does – first of all, of course, designs its products to last, but also, there’s a five-year repair service, so a customer can bring an accessory back into a store and say, “Look, I bought this four years ago, can I get it repaired?” It’s a pay for service and that does instil a kind of ethos in the customer’s mind that, you know, Jimmy Choos can be for life. They can have at least a long life and you can bring them back to be repaired.

What we’re trying to look at now in the future is how can we develop that service even further and link up with re-commerce, and I think we’re starting to see innovations in the marketplace, aren’t we, around re-commerce, whether that’s repair or resale or rental. And I think L’Autre was never really open to that a few years ago, it was seen to devalue their brands, were they to go into such areas, whereas now they can see the benefit. And so, that’s quite encouraging ‘cause the industry is shifting and I think now we’ve got to, sort of, unlock our brain power and our creative juices and think, well, actually, that, if we get it right, can be an alternative revenue stream.

Lisa Armstrong

Rental, can that honestly be – I mean, would Jimmy Choo – I mean, I know it’s particularly difficult with shoes for rental propositions, so maybe we could talk about Versace, might they start doing rental?

Dax Lovegrove

Well, it’s perfectly possible. I mean, we’re – we’ve put it, let’s say, in the plan for the future. I mean, it’s already happening in the marketplace, isn’t it? We’re seeing these incredible market disrupters, like My Wardrobe. So, instead of spending a huge amount of money on a dress you might not wear very often, you can rent it for the evening and, you know, it’s happening by the smaller start-ups, and I think the big players are waking up, thinking, well, if that is the future. I mean, the other point, in 2019, before the pandemic, the second-hand market was growing something like 20 times faster than the primary market, so, again, all eyes are on that. So, I think it’s just a question of – it’s not easy for an established player, but if at least know that is starting to shift, they can work out, well, how do we slowly unlock new revenue opportunities, and then how do we shift the business into new ways of working? So, I think it’s happening.

Lisa Armstrong

So, it’s definitely happening, it’s happening in front of our eyes. I mean, I think, Carrie Johnson, as she now is, I mean, whatever you think of her and Boris, the – all the rentals she’s been wearing in the last ten days have absolutely pivoted things. I mean, now people who didn’t really know about rental are talking about it. And I’ve just come back today from Royal Ascot, where I was reporting for The Telegraph, and there were women there proudly wearing outfits they’d bought on eBay for £8, outfits they’d borrowed, outfits they’d hired, and outfits that they’d got in, you know, in charity shops. There is now a cache to it. You know, 20 years ago, the cache was, sort of, either in high, high Designer, or saying, “Ooh, I found this in Primark and it looks just like Prada,” that has gone, I think. But it’s still interesting to see how a brand like Versace, that’s predicated on selling, you know, a dress that costs £1,500, as well as perfume obviously, might – you know, how does then renting a dress for £30 a day, you know, how do you do the maths on that?

Dax Lovegrove

You’re right, Lisa, I mean, those are all the things to work out and those explorations are underway, and when you’ve got smart brains in the business who can look at those issues and we collaborative – we put together taskforces to work out how can it work? And I think when any luxury brand or any fashion business is looking at re-commerce models in the future, I think the trick is experimentation. You know, you pick a city, with a number of your stores, you work out that half of how it might work, not fully formed by any means, and you test things out and you fail, you fail, you learn, you learn, and then eventually you get to the winning, sort of, formula where actually, maybe the customer is coming more frequently, they’re renting more frequently, which makes up – you know, it’s competitive to a purchase, so that the provider, the fashion brand, is earning. So, I think it’s about testing and piloting and I think, you know, what I’d love us to do in the future is start to test out those things and work out what does the customer particularly respond to? And I think that will give us some of the answers, ‘cause we might find the frequency goes up, you know, where purchases are perhaps less frequent and rental can be more frequent and so on, and there’s other things to look at as well. So, it’s all about brand enhancement, as well as, you know, the sales as well. And I think if any brand wants to be around in five, ten, 20 years’ time, that they have no option to move into these kinds of things, but I think the short-term, it’s experimentation.

Lisa Armstrong

Patsy, I want to ask you about nudging, nudging the consumer, I mean, do consumers still need nudging, or is it the brands that need nudging?

Patsy Perry

I think, you know, there’s a lot of debate, isn’t it, whether it’s consumers’ responsibility or brands or a bit of both, and then brands say, “Oh, you know, consumers demand fashion,” but really, we only respond to what’s presented in front of us, don’t we, I would argue, and if you’re constantly doing all these marketing messages and you’re, you know, putting strawberries under the nose of a donkey, he’s going to bite, isn’t it? So…

Lisa Armstrong

Yes.

Patsy Perry

So, I think we, kind of, know, but, as you said before, we, kind of, put it to the back of our minds when we see that gorgeous new outfit, we just have to have it. We can’t take on all of that responsibility and I think consumers can’t really make a vast change themselves anyway. So I think collectively that we can do that, and also there’s a lot of, you know, cynicism around greenwashing by brands. So I think consumers don’t know what to believe, there’s, you know, not – how much they lead.

Lisa Armstrong

I think Journalists don’t know what to believe, it’s just…

Patsy Perry

I see somebody’s asked in the chat, you know, which brands used forced Chinese labour, you know, they wouldn’t – even a brand wouldn’t even know, would they. So there isn’t that real hard knowledge about how the product is made. You know, there’s still a lot of outsourcing, even in the luxury industry, so not everything is, you know, made in Italy anymore by these artisan family firms. And I think, you know, we’ve kind of lost that connection and that definitive knowledge of what happens at each of the different production processes, from raw material to finished garment. So, is it any wonder that brands can’t give that information to consumers? But then also, consumers would need to interpret that, you know, so how much is less water and what sort of figures do we need to know, how, sort of, less water being used, or less chemicals, or, you know, what are the alternatives to toxic chemicals and pesticides and so on? It’s really quite a complex area and it can be quite overwhelming, I think, for people.

Lisa Armstrong

And probably overwhelming for brands as well. There’s a question here, from Melita Lazell, which I think is really pertinent, which is, you know, “In the context of very slow-moving and profit-driven change by the fashion industry, you know, can state regulation regarding environmental and labour standards have a role to play?” I mean, obviously they do have a role to play, but how, you know, how realistic is it when our governments have taken so long even to tax companies, you know, properly? And Lucy, what do you think?

Lucy Siegle

Can I rollback and come in on a couple of other points as well? Sorry.

Lisa Armstrong

Of course.

Lucy Siegle

Yeah, so, I mean, I completely agree with Patsy that consumers will – so, the thing about fast fashion in particular, so we often frame the fast fashion story as in, oh, today’s – like a runaway train, like today’s consumers are so awful and they just don’t know when to stop, and we would never know when to stop. So, in my writing, I’ve researched, you know, the rise of fast fashion back to the invention of the spinning jenny. So the moment that we worked out how to spin cotton faster into yarn by using steam, then pretty much fast fashion consumers, they were hooked. There was no escape for them, and you even had, you know, in the 19th Century and even the late 18th Century, you had gentlemen writing to The Times complaining that their housemaids were buying too many dresses. You know, it’s always been a thing, and there are no limits. So the limits, I keep going back to this point, have to be set elsewhere, and the limits are now being set by the Buyersphere, right, because we can’t outrun them and we get into all these feedback loops and, you know, we know that there are severe consequences, not even necessarily for us immediately, but for low-lying isle of nations that will not exist, so this becomes an existential crisis, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, the limits, because they’re being set by the Buyersphere and that’s very complicated, and it’s absolute nonsense to suggest that the consumer of fast fashion is going to be able to make the right decisions.

Lisa Armstrong

Lucy, sorry, what is the Buyerspit?

Lucy Siegle

Buyersphere is the earth.

Lisa Armstrong

Oh, Buyersphere, sorry, I thought you said Buyerspit. Buyersphere.

Lucy Siegle

No, sorry.

Lisa Armstrong

No, I think everyone knows what the Buyersphere is.

Lucy Siegle

I think that’s my diction, I’m not very clearly spoken. But no, the Buyersphere, so the limits are being set by the earth, so it’s a complete nonsense to suggest that the consumer is going to be able to reverse engineer some sort of buying strategy, which will help solve this huge crisis. We don’t expect to do them with energy particularly. We don’t expect them to do with other, like, really gargantuan fossil fuel industries, and fashion and plastics, which are slowly merging to become the same industry, you know, they are one of the heavy-hitters, as Dax said, the fashion industry is responsible for a huge amount of emissions. So, of course, we need legislation, and the – what we need is legislation that is going to bring it on course with the other legislation that we have, like net zero, which is, you know, net zero legislation is taken from one line in the Paris Agreement in Annex 12B of, you know, subsection 14. Someone’s just given it life and turned it into a thing, and then there’s a whole, like, massive global movement behind that.

So, you know, the fashion industry really needs to get onboard and one of the things that’s needed is regulation, because we have an industry that will not regulate itself, or will not bring up its own borders, because, as we’ve discussed or we’ve hedged around, it is driven by a growth mindset. Some areas, and I’ll go back to my first point, some parts of the industry, the business models are more agile and more alert and are more invested in change because they stand to gain more than a whole massive portion of the industry, which I would characterise as fast fashion, which is how most people get dressed, is absolutely predicated on growth, and that’s, you know, that is their only game in town. But as you’ve left, I’m just going to carry on very quickly.

Lisa Armstrong

No, no, sorry, I had to close my door because someone started to strim their hedge at this very antisocial hour.

Lucy Siegle

They do that. They do that.

Lisa Armstrong

Not very environmental, is it?

Lucy Siegle

So just very quickly, there are small pockets, even in fast fashion, where we will – there is still some opportunity for change and we heard about, like, where radical change kind of comes from, or where innovation comes from. Within fast fashion, because fast fashion is about not owning stuff, it’s about getting your share price high, expansion, growth, but not owning factories or having responsibility for the supply chain, that will only really be brought in by other innovation. So, one of the things I’m thinking around rental at the moment is, as I understand it, there’s a brand called Hirestreet or – and Zoa, they’re the same person, Isabella West, who is an Entrepreneur, she’s talking to major fast fashion labels about hiring and rental on their platforms, and why will they do it? They’ll do it ‘cause they’ve got a massive problem with returns, and imagine if some legislation came in and said, “Right, you’re respon – you push X amount of tons of clothing out onto the world each year, you are therefore responsible, you’ll be fined if you don’t collect it, ‘cause you’re clogging up the waste stream.” So then, they will be forced to offset that cost by putting in rental to divert it from landfill, as we always say, what we mean is incineration, so that’s how those, kind of, mechanisms start to make sense.

Lisa Armstrong

Yes, well, I think we can all see, when we go onto websites, that there are clothes that are – look as though they’re brand new, so that’s – you know, and that’s particularly handy for Designers who’ve had the most terrible year and have a lot of stock and rental actually could be a kind of lifeline for them. Patsy, I just wonder whether we need to rebrand fashion big time. I mean, should we stop calling it fashion, shall we call it style?

Patsy Perry

Yeah, I think there’s a big difference between fashion and style and, kind of, mindlessly following trends and fashions and we maybe need to, kind of, reconnect with – have an emotional attachment to our clothing and kind of develop our own style. You know, we consume much more fashion per head in the UK than any other country in Europe.

Lisa Armstrong

Wow, I didn’t know that.

Patsy Perry

Our wardrobes are overflowing. Yeah, almost as much as the Americans.

Lisa Armstrong

And why is that? Sorry, why is that?

Patsy Perry

But we still have nothing to wear, do we? So…

Lisa Armstrong

Exactly, exactly, exactly, whereas French women always have something to wear because they always have the little black jumper, the little black dress, but is that because we’ve had traditionally an incr – I mean, not at the moment, but we did have a very competitive and rather good British high street?

Patsy Perry

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was so much choice, wasn’t there?

Lisa Armstrong

So much choice.

Patsy Perry

Very competitive, you know, not very expensive, so you could really, kind of, buy into things and, you know, we were pushed – all these trends were pushed onto us. So this week you need to be wearing yellow, whether or not yellow suits you or not, and of course you buy that…

Lisa Armstrong

Exactly.

Patsy Perry

…and it sits in the back of the wardrobe.

Lisa Armstrong

So, in a way, it’s like our food culture…

Patsy Perry

Hmmm.

Lisa Armstrong

…which is very – it’s very polarised, isn’t it, our food culture? We have some of the best food and we absolutely have some of the worst food, and, you know, I would say that we’ve got some wonderful craftspeople in fashion still here. I mean, we always think it’s Italy, Italy, Italy where the craft is, but we do have pockets of it here, but we also, as we all know from last year and the scandals around companies that I shall not name, for fear of litigation, but, you know, in Leicester, we know the problems that there were.

Patsy Perry

I think you could just say, ‘cause I think it’s a matter of public record.

Lisa Armstrong

Well, I mean…

Patsy Perry

The Home Secretary called it slave labour, I mean…

Lisa Armstrong

Yeah, okay, so, you know – so, I think we’re talking about boohoo, aren’t we?

Patsy Perry

Yeah, and look at what’s happened to their share price. So, to go back to…

Lisa Armstrong

Well, but then it went up again, and this is the problem.

Patsy Perry

Yes, but this is what – so, when we were talking before about consumers and, you know, I think you mentioned, Lisa, which is very, very true, that the tolerance for greenwash and the, sort of, ennui of all of this stuff all the time is just people are not acting on it anymore. They’re not really responding in it, because they’re just so sick of it all, but one of the things that I think there is still a job to do is to stop talking about fashion consumers as consumers actually, and just appeal to them as citizens of the world and members of civil society, because…

Lisa Armstrong

Very good idea.

Patsy Perry

…actually, it’s rather boring, but, you know, supposing we just had some fashion editorial where we just talked about – it’s not boring actually, it’s thrilling. Let’s look at where the money goes, let’s start following the money in some of this and let’s look at this playbook that has been employed by boohoo.com, and their dividends that they have paid, you know, their Directors, they’re absolutely eye-watering. It’s been noted by different Commons committees, the share price is super, super interesting, and what’s also interesting is – are the reports that they now have a retired Judge or something, brings out these reports once a quarter, which are just – I’ve had a read through and they are a word salad of some proportion, I can’t find one substantive action in there. But when a brand is allowed to move itself across the line from a problem to a solution and inflate its share price to investors, that is where the action and that’s where the disruption needs to come in, or the intervention, if you like. So, really, we just need to become much more savvy about what these companies are doing and how they’re moving money around to solve some of the other problems, I think.

Lisa Armstrong

And Dina Mufti is saying, well, asking, “Maybe there needs to be a rating system for every fashion brand by an independent agency that looks at labour, environment and supply chains. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” I’m sure the panellists will agree with me, but, you know, how the heck do we institute that? I mean, you know, we probably all watched Seaspiracy and seen, you know, just how little the, you know, that little dolphin counts for that you see on your tins of tuna, that’s supposed to tell you that this is all ethical, you know, I don’t even trust the FDA, the Federal Drug Administration, to be completely straight. So, is that something – is that a realistic proposition? I mean, who would police that?

Dax Lovegrove

I think, Lisa, there needs to be a number of things. First of all, when you look at, you know, making sure that there’s the right kind of labour protections in the supply chain, there are all sorts of companies you can compare notes with, and what you start to – you know, when you consult and talk to peers around you, you start to arrive at what does best practice look like? So, that’s a very voluntary kind of approach and businesses learning from each other and then developing an approach in their own business about – around best practice.

I think government regulations, of course, will help and, I mean, actually – I mean, Patsy’s right, it’s an international supply chain now, but actually, I will say luxury is still – a lot of it still is in Italy and Western Europe and therefore, at least the regulations are reasonably good. You still have to check that you haven’t got any blind spots. You can’t rely that the regulations are being enforced, because we’ve seen they’ve not been enforced even in the UK and other, sort of, Western parts of Europe. And I think the investors, you know, they’re really getting into ESG investing now, which is another way of – to try and standardise it, so they’re trying to compare the fashion brands that they invest in, as investors, to work out are they responsible in the way they police and treat people in the supply chain, or not police, but police, you know, the right kind of practices? So, I think it’s a combination of voluntary innovation around best practice, you know, engaging governments to say can we get stronger regulations, and investors standardising things.

I think – I would love to see a rating system, but we’re not ready for it yet, because you have to allow for a bit of – brands are different and their supply chains are different, and you have to allow them to get to best practice and when we’ve got to that space, then perhaps we can get into rating systems.

Lisa Armstrong

You know, I…

Lucy Siegle

Could I just add something, sorry, Lisa.

Lisa Armstrong

Of course. No, of course.

Lucy Siegle

I just want to bring back the emergency framing and voluntary stuff has got to go ‘cause it’s not working, and what we really need is super disclosure. So, we tried this a while ago with the plastics, so all of the big companies that push out the most consumer goods made – wrapped in plastic, without any plan for how they’re going to collect or dispose or recycle that plastic, would basically, you know, publish how much tons of plastic they use each year. So, we need those kind of figures so that we can work within the planetary boundaries, which I keep coming back to, ‘cause we’re in an ecological emergency. We also need similar work on disgorgement of money throughout the supply chain, because – so, I work with The Circle and we have a new report, our third report, out, led by Jessica Simor QC, and evidence has been taken from 14 textile-producing countries to understand living wage. We still can’t find a single example of living wage being paid within the fast fashion ecology. So…

Lisa Armstrong

Which is interesting because a…

Lucy Siegle

…it’s got to change.

Lisa Armstrong

…a brand like – well, a monolith like H&M makes such a big deal about all their sustainability and their, you know, their corporate social responsibility in places, in countries like Bangladesh, they make a big thing about it, it’s all over their website.

Lucy Siegle

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that’s also this distance between the amount of stuff that’s being generated and the amount of publicity and marketing and what that’s actually, you know, aggregating into, and the point is that garment workers, millions of them, are still on the poverty line and, you know, we’re moving into really serious territory now when we’re talking about adaptation and how different countries adapt, and the problem is that if you can’t even afford to fulfil your basic needs, you’re not going to be able to do climate adaptation, and that impacts on all of the global goals. It impacts on Goal 5, which I’m very exercised about, which is, you know, gender equality and women and girls and protecting them from violence, because when all of this starts to hit, the whole thing starts to crumble and we are facing such, like, incredible threats, especially in some garment-producing regions, who also happen to be on the frontline of climate impact. So, you know, voluntary, no, I really think that we have to look at legislation, and if anyone has a chance to read the Living Wage Report, you’ll find it on The Circle NGO website, it is really a proposal, this third report, to the EU Commission on how you make living wage part of trade law essentially, and what – how you police it, because you’ve got to have ways of bringing brands to the table. They’re not going to do this voluntarily, ‘cause otherwise they would have already done it.

Lisa Armstrong

There’s a great question here from Kieran O’Meara, and I’m going to direct it to Patsy initially because Patsy’s working with students and that’s, sort of, grassroots, I think. Kieran is a Political Theorist, we’ve got some great subjects being studied here, and he says he’ll be kicking himself if he doesn’t ask, “Legislation, globalisation, ecology and ethics aside, how does the panel understand fashion as political, or even fashion as political action?” I mean, I’ve always thought fashion is political, so I’m going to ask Patsy, what – you know, are your students now seeing it as well as a sort of wonderful forum for creativity and aesthetics, are they seizing on its political potential?

Patsy Perry

Yeah, I mean, they’re quite interested in fashion activism, I think, in recent times and, you know, thinking about, you know, what is the role of fashion and is it just about buying into brands, or is it more about anti-fashion, is it more about being part of a subtribe in some way? So, you can use clothing either to signify being part of the, you know, the mainstream, or signifying that you’re, you know, well away from the mainstream. So, I think it’s interesting, in terms of how different generations, kind of, use fashion, but in terms of its political, I’m not, yeah, I’m probably not best placed to answer that, sorry.

Lucy Siegle

But we’re talking about politics, aren’t we? I mean, we’ve mentioned post-growthism. I mean, I think I’ve referred to it, or I should have done, but we’re seeing – you know, but fast fashion now, in its current incarnation, is basically like late stage capitalism and it’s failing. So, I mean, you – even if – I feel sorry for people who come into fashion just wanting to do the creative bit and express themselves, as has been done in the past, but the framing is all different, because we go back to the existential crisis, climate and nature, and the fact that the planet is going to have to draw the boundaries and the political systems are failing. I don’t know how you would study this subject.

Lisa Armstrong

Well, actually, Lucy, I would say that the people who are going into it purely for creativity and not to build a global brand, they might be the ones that actually, you know, thrive. I think what Fashion Designers…

Lucy Siegle

Exactly.

Lisa Armstrong

…now have to maybe appreciate, you know, ‘cause in the 90s, it was all driven by groups like LVMH buying up, buying up, producing more results for shareholders, you know, the Chanels of this world, the Diors of this world, sure, they made a very nice living, but it wasn’t about, you know, faster, faster, more and more furious, it was still about making beautiful things that lasted. So, actually, I think there will be a place for creativity.

Just to go back to the politics, I was really struck last year when Black Lives Matter blew up, you know, and there was a lot of stuff kicking off on Instagram about brands that were seen – were thought to be acting – not reacting in the right ways to Black Lives Matter, were being called out. And actually. there was quite a lot of vigilantism, I think, I mean, I don’t know, Dax, whether you – any of your brands were on the wrong end of that, but I did think it was, in a way, very exciting to see how central fashion was becoming to people’s intellectual thought. It wasn’t just about buying something nice or something expensive or something cheap, it was about does this brand stand for something that I can get behind?

Dax Lovegrove

I’m with you all the way, I think fashion is very political. I think what fashion should be about and is about often is self-expression and, you know, when you can buy into a brand, what a brand stands for, you feel prouder about wearing it because you stand for those values, and you’ll know better than me probably that Jimmy Choo, but particularly Versace, in its history, has been very active on the diversity and inclusion front, and we always celebrate gay Pride and LGBTQ issues, and any – and Black Lives Matter, and those sorts of things, and that is highly political right now. I mean, there’s huge criticisms about whether institutions have become too woke and woke is almost seen as a negative thing. Are they really doing something meaningfully, or are they just saying the right D&I things? And I think what we’re conscious of is, in the business, when you have to act on D&I, you want to stand for it in your promotions, in your campaigns, but you want to get it right in the business. And so D&I, I think what the fashion industry has to do is get equality between men and women in senior positions, but also make sure that they’re representative of all kinds of minority groups, within senior management, within the workforce, and so on, and I think that is a bit of a journey for anyone. So, I think it’s getting right – getting it right internally, so that you’re authentic, but also, just keeping those campaigns going. So, I think Versace has always been highly active on the D&I front for decades, so, definitely we are and should be political.

Lisa Armstrong

Yeah, yeah, and when fashion wants to be, it can move damn fast, you know. I mean, we’ve seen suddenly from not using ethnically diverse models, there are many, many now, and, you know, and it’s about time too. But when they want to do something, they can really do it, and it’s like I remember years ago saying to brands, whose names I will not mention, why are the models so thin? Because working on a newspaper, as opposed to a magazine like Vogue or Dazed and Confused, I couldn’t use very thin models because, I mean, even if I wanted to, which I don’t, as the mother of, you know, daughters, I did not want to do that kind of thing. But the readers would complain, like, stink if they were – if the models looked ill, and I was just told, “Well, that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is.” Well, it’s not the way it is, is it, because look now, on the catwalks even, you see a wide range of bodies.

There’s a question here from Dorothy Staunton, which I think is actually also appropriate for Dax, which is, “What the views on recycling of garments in textiles are and how brands do this effectively,” ‘cause I think this is such a horribly complex area. Anya Hindmarch was telling me the other day that she’d been looking into recycled leather and had discovered that actually, it uses an awful lot of plastic.

Dax Lovegrove

This is a complex one and it’s a great question, and I think – I mean, let me just go wider a little bit, please, because I think every brand has to define clearly what are responsible materials. And I think it’s a range of things, and it’s sometimes a bit different for every brand because it could be natural-based materials, it could be recycled materials, it could be recyclable materials, it could be plant-based materials, fossil-free derivatives, you know, any wood plants that are used have to be FSC certified, and so on, and so on, and so on. So, first of all, you have to clearly define what is a responsible material, which we include recycled and recyclable materials, and I think, once you’ve done that, we will – we are increasing our use of recycled and recyclable content.

I think the other thing that the Greenpeace video pointed out beautifully, the one called Wasteminster, was that even if plastics or materials are recyclable, it doesn’t mean they’re recycled. And I think what we’re trying to do is making sure that we facilitate recycling, and it’s something that the British Fashion Council and the Institute of Positive Fashion is always looking at. How do we not just make something recyclable, but facilitate active recycling, take things back from our customers, possibly through a collaborative infrastructure of some kind, or within our own stores? So, I think – and also I think the wider piece is, how do we have a circular economy plan, so it’s not just about using recycled content, it’s about the things we talked about earlier about having different models in future around re-commerce. And so, I think every brand should have a holistic, that horrible phrase, circular economy plan that breaks it down into materials and models and remanufacturing and taking back waste and so on.

Lisa Armstrong

Are there any sustainable materials that you are truly excited about for use, say, at Jimmy Choo, I mean mushroom leather or peach skin, you know, there’s something new every few months, but, you know, it’s yet to break through it seems, particularly for luxury brands?

Dax Lovegrove

No, you’re spot on, that’s what we’re trying to mainstream right now. So, at the moment, there’s just the standard materials like the Better Cotton Initiative, Recycle Polyester, you know, your standard materials and making sure those are responsibly sourced, but then there are these incredible alternative materials, and we have placed orders for Mylo leather, you know, the mushroom leather everyone’s talking about right now, we’ve placed orders for Bananatex, which is this incredible, wonder material, a canvas that is really made in the Philippines, with an incredible backstory about reforestation and supporting communities and using banana wood plants and so on. So, we are also – in the mix is innovative materials.

The challenge is, in the short-term, that some of those alternative materials don’t quite have the aesthetics, or they’re not quite in the cost structure, or they haven’t quite got the performance issues that Designers need, and so we’ve got to first of all change Designer mindsets, but also, the materials themselves have to improve. So, I think in the middle of the decade, it’ll be all change. We will start using responsible materials fully and by the middle of the decade. I think there’s just a few teething problems to get over, because all those materials, as you just said, Lisa, they’re not readily available and when you can access them, they haven’t necessarily got the right performance, you know, issues that Designers can easily work with. So, I think there’s a few things to get over.

Lisa Armstrong

There’s a question here about inclusion of ethnic and gender minorities at the editorial table, which – from Natalie Wynette, which at first I thought well, this is about sustainability, but then, you know, is this industry, is any industry sustainable, if you don’t make it more diverse? I mean, what I would say to that is that we are finally seeing more diversity and we are understanding, I think, a bit better how to reach applicants who wouldn’t normally have applied for those jobs. You know, it’s taking time, but it’s definitely happening. I don’t know what anybody else thinks about that?

Lucy Siegle

Sorry, what’s the question?

Lisa Armstrong

The question is, “What is the future of fashion without the inclusion of ethnic and gender minorities at the editorial table?” I mean, at the top, I think, ‘cause obviously we know that – we know who’s making our fast fashion, but, you know, we need more ethnic and gender minorities at the top of companies, but I think we are starting to see that.

Lucy Siegle

Yeah, I imagine that it feels painfully slow for people who are from ethnic minorities, but I would just also say that we could – we need lots more representation for other parts of the fashion industry. I know that question was about editorial, but, I mean, if I think of living wage, for example, as you’ve just said, Lisa, you know, most of the people who are working in the supply chain around cut, make and trim are, you know, Asian women on the poverty line. And, you know, there is a huge racism and fashion story there, which isn’t spoken about in those terms very much, but then if you look at the board members who set living wage, they are all White. They always are, and there’s no representation from host countries, which is why our living wage report was very important to take evidence and work with Lawyers in fashion-producing countries, and it’s not just to do with representation. It’s also to do with factual evidence and because we don’t have – we haven’t traditionally had much discussion really with women, say, in Bangladesh who are making the clothes, because garment workers have so little time to jump on Zoom calls with Journalists and all the rest of it, you just don’t get a flow of information. So, lack of representation also leads to a very skewed idea of how the industry works, as well as anything else.

Lisa Armstrong

Lisa, I’m going to ask you one more question before turning to the other panellists, ‘cause I didn’t realise, we are really close to the end now, it’s flowing past, do you – who do you think, if anyone, is doing a good job of greening on the high street?

Lucy Siegle

None of them.

Lisa Armstrong

Not just greening – none of them.

Lucy Siegle

No, the – and we haven’t got time to discuss it, but I would have loved to, but the metrics are completely skewed and then we have these ridiculous league tables of which high street store is better than which high street store, and those are reinforcing real problems because the methodology they’re using is so flawed and what they’re doing is driving up share price.

Lisa Armstrong

Patsy, you’re with students, young people, I mean, are you feeling optimistic?

Patsy Perry

I am. I think, yeah, there’s just different ways of thinking about things and the main thing we need to do is extend product lifetimes and I think the interesting business models arounds resale, reuse, hiring, re-commerce and so on, and thinking about how we can build fewer – make fewer better things, that’s of interest in the future, I think, and sort of slow down the volume of stuff that’s being produced, because that’s just greenwashing really, isn’t it? There’s no way that we can achieve on some of these things, if we’re constantly increasing product volumes every year.

Lisa Armstrong

And, I mean, finally, Dax, ‘cause you are at the, sort of, tooth and claw end of this in a way, because you are actually – you’re running businesses, or you’re involved in businesses who have to sell new product, do you think that that model can change? I mean, should it change?

Dax Lovegrove

I think it will change, and I think, Lisa, as we said, I think it is already changing. I think the smaller, as we said before, the smaller innovative start-up who are the disrupters in the marketplace, and that creates the push and pull with the consumer to say, you know, the customers are going to start to rethink and say, “Oh, actually, as you said, I don’t really need to perhaps own things in the future. I can borrow or share or rent things,” and there might be different models around subscriptions and so on. So, I think the rest of the industry has to look at that and we are looking at that and we’re thinking, well, that is part of our future.

I think the question is, to what extent will it be part of our future? Can we move partly into a service model and not just sell products on their own, or could we move fully into a service model? You know, I think in the short-term or the mid-term, let’s say, it’ll be a mix of product sales and more of a service model together, but who knows, in the long-term I think I’m with everyone else. I’d love to see a service model, and I think the pandemic has woken us up to we can be much more considered, you know, people are going – lots of brands like us are going seasonless, fewer collections, more considered products, that’s a start at least, and I think let’s see what happens in the future. We do need to move into the things we’ve all been talking about, so I think it will – it is all change.

Lisa Armstrong

Thank you so much, everyone, we’re pretty much at the end. Thank you, panellists, so much, it’s fascinating, we could have gone on. I’ve got so many more questions I wanted to ask, and thank you everyone for tuning in and for your questions, and I think we all just need to be conscious and spread the word and try and act on our best instincts probably.

Dax Lovegrove

Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa Armstrong

Thank you very much.

Lucy Siegle

Thanks, Lisa. Thank you.

Patsy Perry

Thank you.

Lisa Armstrong

Have a good evening.

Dax Lovegrove

You, too.

Lucy Siegle

You, too.

Lisa Armstrong

Enjoy this beautiful weather. Bye.