There’s no doubt that sustainability has fallen down the fashion agenda in recent years, with brands increasingly concerned about their bottom lines. But now a new initiative, The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition, hopes to reignite the conversation – and more importantly, accelerate action – when it comes to tackling the industry’s impact on the planet. More than 60 brands, retailers, manufacturers and innovators have joined so far, with each signatory committing to reaching net zero emissions by 2040.
Among the key names involved? Stella McCartney, who has been one of fashion’s most outspoken proponents for change since launching her eponymous brand more than 20 years ago. “The conversation has been happening for a long time now,” the designer tells , speaking via Zoom from her London studio. “I think people have good intentions; it’s just a big problem to solve. [There’s] not an overnight solution, and it does take care and commitment.”
Of course, it’s not the first time that leading fashion brands have come together and pledged to take climate action. Back in 2018, 43 major brands including Adidas, Burberry and H&M signed the UN Fashion Charter, committing to net zero emissions by 2050. The following year, 250 brands, including Chanel, Prada and Nike, signed the G7 Fashion Pact – spearheaded by French president Emmanuel Macron and Gucci owner Kering – which also committed to net zero emissions by 2050, restoring biodiversity, and protecting the oceans.
While some progress has been made by those initiatives, momentum has largely stalled. “Sadly, we know a lot of people will greenwash a situation or sign up for something, and then just kind of leave the room pretty quickly, even though they’re being seen to be part of that movement,” McCartney, an original signatory of both the UN Fashion Charter and the G7 Fashion Pact, reflects.
What sets the newly formed Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition apart, the designer says, is its focus on creating tangible change. “I think that this feels like a real shift in a very solutions-driven direction,” she explains. Over the years, McCartney has frequently showcased new innovations via her brand, from Brewed Protein, a wool alternative produced by Japanese start-up Spiber, to RCO100, a 100 per cent recycled cotton yarn made from consumer waste. The challenge, though, has been scaling up these technologies, with seemingly promising innovators in the space, including vegan leather alternatives Mylo and Piñatex, falling by the wayside in recent years.
It’s why one of the key priorities of the Fashion Coalition – whose signatories also include Anna Sui, Collina Strada, Another Tomorrow and Vestiaire Collective – is to encourage investment into some of these solutions, both by getting brands to commit to ordering minimum volumes, and by working with the World Economic Forum to unlock private capital. “The breakthrough materials already exist. What does not exist yet is the demand to make them affordable,” explains Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon, which co-founded The Climate Pledge with the non-profit Global Optimism in 2019. “More demand makes greater scale possible, greater scale helps bring costs down, and lower costs make these solutions more accessible and more compelling for the rest of the industry.”
Alongside this, The Climate Pledge is also launching a new app, the Fashion Coalition Lever Library, which will give signatories access to over 100 proven and emerging solutions, guidance on different fibres, and a directory of innovators. “The more shared information [there is], hopefully the faster we can address the issue,” McCartney says.
The final area of focus for the Fashion Coalition is policy change – something that McCartney believes is still being majorly underutilised, despite EU legislation around textile waste and supply chain transparency coming into effect. “This is an industry with no real policy in place to actually penalise the people that are truly killing the planet,” the designer says. “They’re not really held responsible; I think that financial taxation [tied to environmental impact] is very much needed.”
While sustainability may no longer be a trending topic for the vast majority of the industry, McCartney says it’s crucial that fashion doesn’t forget about its hugely damaging impact on the environment. “We’re the one industry that kind of uses every [other] industry, from start to finish,” she says. “We strain the resources of Mother Earth massively. If we don’t have a planet, all the other things that we get consumed by, all of those [other] problems, [will] pale into insignificance.”