Sustainability Trends in Fashion 2021

Within the past months, our world’s landscape has been dramatically reshaped. Economies have been strongly affected and no industry was spared from the affects. The fashion industry, as one of the most polluting industries on this planet, has given its increasingly favourite topic of sustainability a greater push.

The combination of the pandemic and the cohering crisis has brands focusing even more on their goals to address all three pillars of sustainability, to avoid that the next calamity to hit the industry is circumstantial. It might seem like years have passed for brands to see the need to align with both increased consumer interest in sustainability as well as global climate goals, yet apparently the understanding is growing.

While there is definitely no deficiency of issues to address, there are a few main problems brands have been more recently addressing, including the following;

CIRCULARITY

Minimising waste has been a much talked about topic in the industry, with the solutions of keeping the clothes in circulation or reusing them being the forerunners. While it has been discussed for years, 2021 looks set to be a crucial point for the development.

The pandemic really shone a spotlight onto the fashion industry’s tremendous over-production and waste problem, as brands of all sub-sections struggled to manage their excess inventory. This did however boost profiles of the quickly developing resale market, which could already be seen through the increased usage of websites and apps such as Vestiaire, Rebelle, Vinted, Carousell, Ebay, the list going on with new portals popping up what seems like monthly. It also provoked the curiosity of the luxury labels who have priorly been careful about those marketplaces, creating a partnership between Gucci and The RealReal, and LVMH hailing they were looking how to coordinate resale approaches into their business. On the other side of the industry, brands such as Levi’s created their own resale possibilities, and second-hand site Poshmark is going public, testing their investor attractiveness.

Despite the fact that the second-hand clothing market is still quite moderate, it's developing quick, an anticipated dramatic increase of tripling the current market within the next 3 years. The numbers are especially engaging for the companies who are still looking for the needed little push to jump, and those searching to improve their sustainability.

Undoubtedly, high volumes will stay inside the setting of the industry, therefore requiring widespread collaboration and long-term commitment, as circularity is a lot greater than only one innovation or change.

BIODIVERSITY

Another initiative fashion brands have been looking at, beyond those that simply reduce harm, is their effect on biodiversity. It is a moderately eminent theme inside the industry, mirroring a more extensive and developing consciousness of the overwhelming effect environmental change and mechanical agrarian practices have had on the regular world. For example, WWF shared new numbers which showed that animal populace sizes have declined an insane 68 percent within the last 50 years, because of around three fourths of the planets ice-free land has been affected by ecological disturbance, strongly linking to farm land of which the fashion industry’s raw materials are sourced from.

This problem is set to acquire greater consideration in the upcoming year as a focal segment of The Fashion Pact, an alliance set up by Kering CEO Francois-Henri Pinault in line with French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019. It includes around a third of the world’s fashion companies, around 60, ranging from the H&M Group and Inditex to Chanel and Prada. As a component of this, those who have committed are expected to set clearer targets and arrangements based on their discoveries, such as regenerative agriculture, an area liable to acquire more prominent consideration.

As we are so offset with nature, we cannot anticipate that it can halt and reverse damage on its own, therefore the need of understanding and tending to biodiversity can prove to be the crucial puzzle piece needed in our environmental emergency. Especially as agriculture is a leading initiator of this emergency, further worsened by the fashion industry, it really depends on how these two are handled to dictate how our future will look like, if we are to hopefully evade a disaster.

SUPPLY CHAIN TRANSPARENCY

While the pillar of environmental sustainability has ruled fashion's talk as of late, the social and monetary destruction brought about by the pandemic has directed the narrative back onto long-standing social difficulties.

Reports of labour rights violations in the textile industry around the world, have caught the attention of stakeholders, not only as an igniter for PR scandals, they have awakened multiple investigations and raised campaigns of human rights and labour activists to address this. Many brands have been pressured by these campaigns, especially during the pandemic, which grants success to these campaigns, yet this does not mean the issue is solved, as living wages and working conditions remain problematic amongst other concerns.

The emergency has raised the profile of calls from basic freedoms campaigners and work supporters to address long-standing issues in the style store network. A prominent mission a year ago drove by moral garments crusade bunch Remake effectively forced a significant number of the business' greatest brands to resolve to pay for orders set with providers all through the pandemic. As the residue settles, campaigners are pushing for more foundational change to guarantee labourers are paid living wages and ensured good working conditions. Especially as this issue is becoming political in some cases, depending on the region in question.

It remains quite a difficult challenge for the fashion industry, as the supply chain and the origins of raw materials have until recently been barely transparent, traceable or at least acknowledged, however it is a pressing factor to do more. Further pressured by the rising consumer demands to do exactly this, for brands to show more socio-political and environment engagement. While the year 2020 presented its own set of obstacles and dug up previous issues which had been neglected, it has also created a remarkable chance to improve exactly those, pushing progress.

Linking to the aforementioned trends, are the partnerships on the rise between sustainability start-ups and the fashion industry, which you can read about here.

British Vogue, August 2020