Fashion Sustainable Development Moves From Edge To Mainstream In China

In just three years, sustainable development (Sustainability) has become the fixed agenda of Shanghai fashion week.

Last Saturday, the French luxury giant, Kai Yun group, which owns Gucci and other brands, held an innovative material forum in Shanghai. Ye Xiaowei, founder of creative consulting firm yehyehyeh, was planning for the forum.

As one of the official activities of the fashion week in Shanghai, the forum discussed in depth how to guide the fashion industry to a more sustainable future and the challenges faced by the innovative materials sector.

This is followed by the opening of the "innovation luxury laboratory" in Shanghai fashion week in October 2017. After launching its environmental small income statement (EP&L) WeChat Mini program, the second issue of sustainable development was put on the official schedule of Shanghai fashion week.

In 2017, the EP&L WeChat applet released by Kai Yun group in China can be regarded as the key node of sustainable fashion to the mainstream.

EP&L can be used to measure the environmental impact caused by the entire supply chain process from raw materials to store operations and the cost to society, and it can be embodied in monetary form.

As a practical tool, it brings a new pragmatism perspective to the industry, and makes the sustainable fashion gradually get rid of the idealism of the past.

For yehyehyeh, a creative advisory body with the core spirit of sustainable development, its initiative on this topic can be traced back to the earlier April 2017. At that time, Ye Xiaowei's EyesWideOpen China designers limited liability forum has put sustainable fashion as an important part of the agenda. It is the first time to link this issue with the emerging Chinese designers to awaken the designers' sense of environmental responsibility.

It is not worth mentioning that the report shows that fashion is one of the most polluted industries in the world after oil and gas.

The endorsement of the head luxury group has laid a high starting point for the continuation of the issue in China.

Then, during the 2019 spring summer Shanghai fashion week in October last year, yehyehyeh and Shanghai Fashion Week held the first public forum devoted to sustainable fashion as the core topic. The forum is called "Can Fashion Be Sustainable".

It means that Chinese fashion is developing from the aesthetic level to a more social sense.

In the past three years, the sustainable development of China's fashion industry has moved from the edge to the mainstream, from superficial to deep.

If we take the forum theme as a clue, from the fuzzy designer responsibility discussion, to the intervention of utility tools, to the self questioning "Can Fashion Be Sustainable?"

(whether fashion can be sustainable), and to this year's focus Forum on sustainable development of material innovation, we can clearly see that the discussion of sustainable fashion focuses on specialization and differentiation.

Cai Jinqing, President of Greater China in Kai Yun group, focused on promoting the development of sustainable fashion in China in September last year. In her opening speech, she said that the construction of ecological civilization should start with the concept of ecological optimization.

The group's important strategy is to play the creative spirit of risk taking, and strive to promote its brand to meet the business potential with a sustainable and responsible business model.

She believes that China's start-ups can bring boundless possibilities to innovation and provide support for the pformation needed urgently by the industry.

In 2017, Gucci of Kai Yun group first overtook Hermes in its revenue scale, and entered the 8 billion euro club in 2018.

At the end of 2017, Gucci promised to stop using fur from the 2018 spring and summer series. In the environment, Gucci promised to reduce its impact on the environment and set up challenging goals to create new standards for the fine retail industry, for example, to ensure that 95% of the rare leather material traced to the origin.

Last December, Kai Yun group set up the K Generation Award Award for sustainable development in China.

The award will be awarded in September this year. The first prize will be 100 thousand euros, and the top three will get the advice, funding and guidance from Kai Yun group investors.

The group said that the establishment of sustainable development awards aims to encourage more Chinese start-ups to use environmentally friendly materials and recyclable supply chain systems.

More than 90% of the potential for sustainable development is in the supply chain, and most of the suppliers are in China.

It is foreseeable that the introduction of incentive mechanism will activate the vitality of the whole industrial chain through business innovation.

Geraldine Vallejo, director of sustainable development of Kai Yun group, has also reviewed the group's sustainable development strategy and vision at the forum.

As early as 15 years ago, Kai Yun group realized that the future direction of the luxury industry depends on innovation and set sustainable development as the core strategy.

In 2017, Kai Yun group formally formulated the strategy of sustainable development in 2025 and became the industry leader in this field.

In January this year, Canadian media company Corporate Knights announced the top 100 list of sustainable development enterprises in the world in 2019 at the global Davos world economic forum. Among them, Kai Yun group jumped from forty-seventh last year to second, ranking first in the list of textile, clothing and luxury categories for two consecutive years.

Driven by industry giants, the recently concluded innovative materials forum has assembled experts and representatives from sustainable, fashion, innovation and other fields.

Sustainable development is the opportunity rather than the cost of supply chain.

As a representative of the supply chain of fashion industry, CHENFENG group is one of the largest apparel manufacturers in China.

In this forum, Yin Guoxin, chairman and CEO of group Limited by Share Ltd, and Wang Lin, director of sustainable development group BSR, China, talk about the "material innovation" in manufacturing sector, focusing on the pain of sustainable pformation in China's manufacturing sector, and tracing back to the environmental practices of the upstream supply chain, including industrial water recycling.

CHENFENG group Limited by Share Ltd, founded in 1967, is a member of the International Fair Labor Association (FLA) certification enterprise and the international sustainable fashion Alliance (SAC).

Yin Guoxin said that the group began contacting FLA in 2003 and 2004 to discuss sustainable development.

He was also very strange about what is corporate social responsibility.

But in the process of contacting with international organizations, the group gradually gained a new understanding of what producers can promote from the concept.

In 2006, CHENFENG Group officially became the first FLA to organize domestic apparel foundry manufacturers.

Yin Guoxin disclosed that in the specific operation of CSR, the 12 factories of the group realized the achievement of greening and water area reaching more than 50%.

In the south of the Yangtze River, where rainwater is gathered, factories collect rainwater as industrial water and domestic water.

The reuse rate of water in the factory is more than 60%, and the part that needs replenish does not use tap water, but comes from rainwater.

In addition, the group installed solar energy on roofs while building factories. At present, the solar engineering of 5 factories has been completed.

In procurement, the group has also been supported by major customers such as UNIQLO, such as the use of organic cotton and organic linen, as well as the "friendly cotton" that can be traced back to planting conditions.

However, he stressed the need to achieve sustainable development from the source rather than after that.

To this end, the group and Hongkong cooperate to set up excipient factories, reduce packaging materials, and use other alternative materials.

Its two fabric factories are also making efforts to reduce water and chemical dyes.

The pain for manufacturers to pursue sustainable development is that they can not get through the links and reach consensus with downstream brands.

Alone, without the support of branding, we can not let the idea of landing.

Yin Guoxin recalled that in 2003, people discussed more about cost, price advantage and how to survive, until today, it is found that far sighted enterprises have more opportunities.

He urged brands and designers to save energy in the early stages of product design and planning.

More importantly, the discussion can be landed.

If branding only considers how to make money, producers will only focus on how to survive and change will not happen.

Also at the raw material and production side, Wu Di, founder and CEO of Lian Lian design group, Fei Xiaojing, Impact Hub Shanghai co-founder and CEO, and singer and bilingual host Cha Kexin discuss the marine plastics.

Wu Di pointed out the problem of the relationship between luxury brands and sustainable development. "A lot of materials are not perfect enough to achieve the perfect pursuit of luxury brands.

So how should we redefine the perfect standards and re create the concept of luxury brands? Designers actually did not receive this training.

She advocated the re examination of sustainable development from the overall view of the whole process. "Many designers think they are doing environmental design, but the product may be pported to Europe from Philippines, which produces many carbon footprints, and the whole process is actually not environmentally friendly.

So there should be a good internal circulation in the brand system, and the internal recycling of UNIQLO may be a more feasible method.

We should thoroughly understand the false proposition of sustainable development and examine whether or not we have helped the environment. "

Suzanne Lee, the founder of bio manufacturing, has brought the world's leading bio materials technology to discuss the feasibility of replacing non degradable materials with biological leather cultivated by fruit and bacteria.

She also reveals one of the pain points in the industry, that is, the promotion of new materials from concept to commercialization usually takes 8 to 10 years. This also determines that any plan and Practice for sustainable development is a long-term endeavor.

She cited the famous Lycra fabric Lycra as an example. After its birth in 1960s, the fabric went through a long promotion period of nearly 20 years after its birth in 1980s, and gradually applied to the production of garments in 1980s. After 1990s, it was widely applied to products with special requirements, such as denim, knitwear, sports shoes, shoes and garments, and high time clothing, which had special requirements for scalability.

It is noteworthy that in February of this year, the domestic textile giant Shandong Ruyi holding group also formally completed the acquisition of the apparel and advanced fabric business of the company, including the world-renowned Lycra LYCRA brand, as well as the production and R & D technology of various fibers.

This means that in the future, domestic fashion brands will have more opportunities to get in touch with the source of Frontier materials and intervene early in the long precipitation process of new materials, so as to seize the advantage of innovation.

Sustainability will be the premise of design

As Yin Guoxin pointed out, the premise of sustainable development of the supply chain is to work hard from the source, which means that the design side must also have sustainable thinking.

The latest generation of young designers is regarded as the most likely group to subvert traditional creative thinking.

On this forum, Zhang Tingting, the designer of Cloud Hat System, put the product design in the context of the whole process of product production.

Zhang Tingting, who had worked in Adidas, discovered loopholes in the traditional creative production process.

"Designers draw pictures, to R & D departments, R & D departments to find suppliers, but suppliers may have to spend a lot of program dyeing and finishing to complete the designer's needs.

Why can't we start to play with materials and feel the characteristics of materials? Maybe this process can design different products.

She advocates making products from materials, constructing the shape of the hat by using the properties and characteristics of the material itself, deciding the structure and shape of a product from material, and saving unnecessary production process and waste of leftover materials.

But this still leaves enough creative space for the design. In a recent special project, she digitized the voice and used the program to visualize the figures. The images were made into the hats of the hat so that each hat had its own three-dimensional character.

One of the irregularly shaped hats is actually a hat made of a whole square of material. It has no cutting and no need for too much plasticity. Because of the interesting shape characteristics of the material, the texture is also made of jacquard and no printing and dyeing.

"Developing new materials, reducing processes and mitigates from the design process, without sacrificing the beauty and social relevance of the product."

The new generation of designers has taken sustainability as a prerequisite for the design's starting point, which is a signal of optimism.

Similarly, the fashion designer Susan Fang, who has entered the LVMH Design Awards semi finalist this year, started her brand in January last year, and regards sustainable development as the guiding design thinking.

She has explained her design concept to fashion headlines earlier, saying that achieving real sustainability in clothing is actually a particularly difficult task, because even using environmentally friendly fabrics, making clothes and tailoring the remaining fabrics will cause waste.

So she invented the Air Weave process, weaving a large number of fabric ribbons in the design. Most of the plates were square and triangular. The version was designed before making the plate, so as to maximize the use of the fabric, ensuring less leftover material, which can be dismantled and used many times.

This will not only reduce waste but also help brands reduce inventory risk, which is also crucial for sustainable development of brand operation.

At the same time, it also expands the possibility of design, such as making gradations and stripes.

In the new season, the excess fabric accumulated over the past few years has been made into embroidery, and the effect of ink painting has been shown through the perspective effect of Eugen yarn.

The excess fabric can be made into a bead bag or an inner lacing design instead of the excess material such as zippers and buttons.

In addition to technology, the brand that has been established for only one year has been inject humanism and naturalism, which is rare in the early designer's brand.

Designers and commonweal organizations have begun to cooperate with minority handicraft. Their symbolic bead beads also draw inspiration from nature, and use crystal glass material to reflect more designers' ideas from the existing materials.

It can be seen that "reducing materials and processes and increasing creativity" is becoming a new "soft power" for the new generation of designers.

Business innovation is a stimulant for sustainable fashion.

Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri has said that in order to change the whole fashion industry, it is necessary to start with little things. There is no shortcut.

Unlike previous discussions on sustainable development in terms of emotion and ideality, this forum will link ideas with industrial practice, and for the first time, introduce business factors to make the discussion of sustainable development more pragmatic.

Hong Boming, chief executive officer and creative director of JP, and Bao Junyi and Qin man, chief designer of Huili shoes, discussed the possibility of achieving sustainable development in the future under the guidance of young management and creative teams.

In particular, Hong Boming, who took over 3 months from the family brand, admitted that his strengths and weaknesses were young.

Because of this, the commercial brand also ushered in the best window period for new thinking empowerment.

In fact, only when the sustainable development penetrated into the commercial brand with large volume and high market share can it really affect the industry and the society, thus subverting the overall situation made in China.

It is noteworthy that the forum also invited Vc firm Plug and Play China enterprise innovation industry director (brand and retail direction) Zhu Yifei, the company has launched Fashion For Good sustainable fashion project, providing financial and platform support for the new generation innovation company.

The project was originally sponsored by C&A fund, and was operated by Plug and Play as accelerator operator, Kai Yun group, Adidas and Lafayette group as partners. It also cooperated with several sustainable development organizations, focusing on four fields: substitution of raw materials, supply chain, retail and use, and circular economy.

The forum also set up a link for start-ups in order to activate business innovation in the field of sustainable development.

Pioneering enterprises in different links such as blue crystal microorganism, Circular Systems, Shokay and so on have been shown at the scene.

It is very necessary to establish a complete market chain and ecosystem.

As Shokay has shown in the exhibition link, materials suppliers want to develop sustainable materials, but to push new materials into the market requires huge amounts of capital. Without market demand, they can not steadily expand their capacity.

Textile supply chain knows that sustainable development is a trend, but lacks the latest industry information. Without clear demand, most manufacturers will not invest too much energy in R & D.

Brand owners are willing to use sustainable materials, but the existing supply chain is unable to provide. The existing materials can not match the brand demand in terms of design sense and price, and the risk of using new materials is also greater.

Global fashion search platform Lyst recently released the latest report shows that since last October, consumer search for sustainable fashion increased by 66% over the same period last year. Social media discussions heated up to 9 million 300 thousand, of which Stella McCartney and Stan Smiths launched a series of cooperation is one of the products that surge in search volume.

In addition, the number of words such as "econyl" and "moral brand" has been rising.

But through all links, the sharing and dissemination of knowledge and experience is very important in the Chinese market.

Due to the lack of relevant knowledge, many practitioners are ignorant of the negative effects they have produced, and many others have chosen to ignore this fact.

In the chain of cognition, emotion and behavior, the main problems currently facing the Chinese market remain in the cognitive stage, and various forums are also playing the role of the education industry.

However, some consumers have begun to wake up, and the change of demand has forced the industry to change.

Sustainable development, especially sustainable fashion, is undoubtedly a new thing in China.

But under the calm water, the whole industry chain has been surging downstream. After all, no one wants to go into a blind alley.