The Future Of The Fashion Industry Must Be Sustainable Innovation.

"Sustainability" has obviously become one of the hottest buzzwords in fashion circles. It is hard to regard "sustainability" as "environmental protection" or "charity" anymore. It has become a design idea, production method, lifestyle and even a marketing strategy. "Sustainability" seems to represent the "future", a new world picture.

"Sustainability" is becoming the political correctness of the fashion industry.

There is no doubt that "sustainability" and "regeneration" are becoming the new golden rule of the fashion industry.

In the 2020 autumn and winter series just released, Tommy Hilfiger claims that the material of the new series 75% is sustainable. Prada raised the figure to 90%. Giorgio Armani allows Emporio Armani's subseries "R-EA" to reach 100%. This series, called Recycled Emporio Armani, all uses "renewable" materials.

In the third Moncler Genius project released on Milan fashion week, the designer of the 1017 ALYX 9SM Matthew Williams also used recyclable bright nylon and remaking technology. In his last season's work, he used this recycled nylon Econyl for the first time. This material has been adopted as a new type of fabric in the fashion industry, Prada, Burberry, Gucci, Mulberry, Adidas, Stella McCartney... They are using it.

The word "Re-" has also begun to affect the design. This month, Marni's designer Francesco Risso spliced the old fabrics together, which is just like the "patchwork" in traditional Chinese culture, showing the same aesthetic feeling as Gustav Klimt. Tod s, the new designer Walter Chiapponi, also used this "patch" in his first Tod 's series, which came from old leather leftover materials for making Tod's leather shoes (see picture in the first picture). Gabriela Hearst built a waste wall on its own "Repurpose With Purpose" theme show. The new clothes on the model were also made from the two use of Ji Dan pin.

The hottest Bottega Veneta at present is making use of cotton to make the projection wall of the show ground as much as possible to recycle and use it. Bottega Veneta, the current director of design Daniel Lee, has worked for Pheobe Philo. The former CELINE design director has recently been preparing for his personal brand. According to WWD's disclosure, Pheobe Philo will also return from an environmental and sustainable perspective.

In the case of sustainability, the fashion industry is lagging behind. In the 1962 silent spring, environmental issues entered the public eye. Until the Rio Summit in 1992, the environmental problems in the fashion industry began to be noticed. As British designer Stella McCartney said, "I realize that fashion industry is one of the most destructive industries on the planet." The Rio World Summit put forward a series of environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity. These discussions were then combined with the clothing industry by periodicals.

Outdoor sports brand Patagonia is one of the earliest commercial brands to practice sustainable development. The two founders, Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins, are outdoor sports enthusiasts. In close contact with nature, they gradually realize that over production and over consumption are bringing heavy burdens to the environment. In 1993, they extracted polyester fiber Synchilla fabrics that could be reused from recycled plastic beverage bottles. 25 litres of water bottles or steam bottles produced a Synchilla sweater. In 1996, they began to use organic cotton comprehensively. In 2005, they launched a recycling campaign to encourage consumers to send back their old clothes to help brands recover and reuse them.

In the field of high fashion, Stella McCartney is one of the most faithful pursuers and pioneers of sustainable fashion. Over the past decade, she has been developing new sustainable environmentally friendly fabrics. In her latest spring and summer series of 2020, about 78% of the fabrics were environmentally-friendly materials. "We introduced a fully recyclable polyester fiber into tailoring. Without using any PVC, PVC is petroleum based plastic, which is not really necessary. All of our sunglasses are bio acetate, which comes from plant materials and is completely biodegradable. "

She is also the first prize winner of the green carpet fashion award. This award has been held jointly by the Italy National Fashion Association for three years. You can see Giorgio Armani, Muiccia Prada, Valentino Garavani, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, all of the leading figures in Italy fashion world are on the platform. "Green carpet fashion awards" may be seen as the voice of Italy fashion circles in the British and American fashion circles to voice their voices, in order to check the "British Fashion Awards" and the American Fashion Association's "CFDA".

The luxury industry is making new rules, and "sustainability" is the stepping stone to this game. "Fast fashion" represents the problem of environmental destruction. "Luxury" should stand on its opposite side. "If a thing destroys the health of the earth or children, how can it be a luxury?" Erwan Rambourg, CO head of HSBC global consumer and retail research, made such a statement before the G7 conference held in France in August 2019.

One day before the opening of G7, Kering group led by 32 A fashion and textile giant signed a fashion agreement aimed at promoting sustainable development at the Elysee Palace, the French presidential residence, which focuses on mitigating climate change, harnessing marine pollution and restoring species diversity. The main contents include the elimination of disposable plastics, the use of renewable energy sources and the development of renewable agriculture.

The company that signed the agreement covered the whole industry, luxury goods companies, light luxury brands, fashion electric providers, high-end department stores, fast fashion and supply chain companies. Kering group, Michael Kors parent group Capri group, Coach parent Tapestry group, Calvin Klein parent company PVH group, Chanel, Herm, Chanel, Herm, cable, cable, cable, cable, cable, cable, etc. Lafayette department store, Selfridges department store, Nordstrom department store, luxury electricity supplier Matchesfashion, France wholesaler Fashion3, Europe's largest retail chain group Carrefour, H&M group, Zara parent company Inditex group, Gap group, Only parent company Danish group, company, company, technology group, Li Feng Group, Shandong Ruyi group.

Although LVMH group was absent from the agreement, the group reached an investment cooperation agreement with Stella McCartney last year. What she sees is her efforts in sustainable development. "Stella McCartney will help us further strengthen our awareness of these important issues."

At that time, Stella received a lot of investment intentions, and eventually she chose LVMH. It is not difficult to understand that for her sustainable plan, the support and accession of large groups are crucial: organic raw materials and repeated recycling are behind the adjustment and change of the entire industrial chain.

"Sustainability" is a business.

Since the concept was put forward nearly thirty years ago, the promotion of sustainable fashion in the fashion industry has been slow. The cost control in the inherent production mode is an important reason. For example, in the clothing industry, the most common raw material cotton is not to use pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and other chemical products in the process of planting. It will face the risk of instability in output and quality, and also need more labor costs. Similarly, the use of a large number of petroleum based dyes for jeans production is stable and cheap, and can be put into operation for twelve months a year, unlike natural dyes, which are difficult to produce and store. However, chemical agents are very harmful to the environment.

Another example is organic fabric, which is usually about 5%-10% more expensive than ordinary fabrics. This is because the United States USDA has set strict organic certification standards, in addition to the use of pesticides and herbicides, and even planting land has not been exposed to chemical substances in the past three years. Every link in the supply chain will be affected and eventually raise the price.

Difficult to quantify benefits and unpredictable market reaction has become an important factor hindering sustainable development. Measures related to environmental protection and pollution reduction have one characteristic: concealment. In the short term, there is no visible change, so it is very difficult for the joint consumers. The participation and acceptance of consumers also need time to reflect. At the same time, the financial model only calculates the past gains and losses, and is backward looking.

"Looking ahead is very important for sustainability." Leonie Schreve, director of global sustainable finance at ING, a financial consultancy, points out that a new reporting system needs to be formed between investment institutions and companies to incorporate more environmental related indicators from the sustainability report released by ING in 2018. The good news is that this report has visited more than 200 US listed companies and investment institutions, and more and more teams are beginning to introduce non-traditional financial indicators. For example, 46% of respondents will be concerned about the energy efficiency of the company, 42% will be concerned about the overall water consumption, and 36% will be concerned about the company's greenhouse gas emissions and so on.

Similar cases are emerging in the fashion industry. Prada launched the reclaimed nylon project "Re-Nylon" in June 2019. They worked with Aquafil, a spinning manufacturer in Italy, to produce recycled nylon materials Econyl Econyl by collecting waste plastics, fishing nets and textile fiber waste in the ocean to reduce marine pollution caused by abandoned fishing nets. Aquafil, which works with Prada, located in Jiangxi, China, has appeared in Prada's short films in collaboration with National Geographic.

Prada plans to complete the transformation from pure nylon to recycled nylon before 2021, which is why Prada has the courage to use renewable nylon as one of the key indicators linked to its own loan. Last year, the brand signed a loan contract of more than fifty million euros, of which three key indicators were sustainable nylon material usage, staff training and store building materials standards. This led Prada to become the first luxury company to link sustainable development goals with loans.

It is becoming a trend to link the vision of sustainable development to production indicators and to link up with financial models. Investors are also willing to see that enterprises are spending their efforts in sustainable development, rather than doing short-term businesses that kill chicken and eggs.

Another example is the existence of fur in the fashion industry. This may be one of the earliest materials used for clothing production. Archaeologists discovered that the old stone age had already seen the skin garment. By the early twentieth Century, fur clothing became popular in large areas. In addition to fox fur, lamb skin and squirrel skin are common materials.

This luxurious fabric has been declining under the tireless protests of various animal protection organizations. Instead of artificial fur that is more and more quality. Pierre Grzybowski, a researcher at the US humanitarian organization, has been working on the front line to combat animal fur sports. In an interview with the Losangeles times, he said that even now he needs to be careful to distinguish the difference between artificial fur and animal fur.

Since 2017, luxury brands such as Gucci, Tom Ford and Versace have said they will abandon animal fur. In March 2018, San Francisco banned the sale of animal fur, followed by Losangeles. In September, the series of fur used in London Fashion Week was zero. At that time, Riccardo Tisci, the new design director of Burberry, started her own job with a series of animals without any animal fur. He painted the topic of #modernluxury in Instagram, announcing the coming of the new era.

Do consumers pay?

"Sustainability" has become a way of life.

What is behind the "luxury" of Riccardo Tisci? The answer is the change of consumers. The English media Mic released a questionnaire in the millennial generation. Over 66% of the one thousand respondents said that fur clothing was not comfortable, and 70% did not want to buy fur when it was installed.

The rise and fall of any trend must be strongly related to consumer behavior. In Forbes's report, 52% of respondents expressed the hope of practicing sustainability. China's Chain Store Industry Association issued a report that more than 70% of consumers in China have a certain degree of sustainable consumption awareness. 30.14% of respondents agreed with the "personal consumption behavior directly related to the environment" option.

A visible change is that organic food and vegetarian restaurants are becoming more and more popular. First finance reported that a vegetarian restaurant in Shanghai, Kush, its founder, Steffen, said that its main customers were foreigners in China, and now 7 of the diners are Chinese. The report quoted the British Mint report 2014 data, China's new listing of organic fruits and vegetables accounted for 4% of the total.

The shift of consumers is taking place and the movement of brands is accelerating. In October last year, Japanese giant Shiseido bought the popular skin care brand Drunk Elephant for 845 million yuan. This is a typical new generation environmental brand, flagship antioxidant pure pure Lula oil, and rejected artificial dyes, twelve alkyl sulfate, essential oil and other six ingredients. Drunk Elephant was once a popular takeover bid, and Estee Lauder began to contact with it as early as 2016. Unilever also offered a price of $one hundred thousand.

It is worth noting that consumption, especially the consumption of extravagant and extravagant consumption, is often regarded as an act of flaunting social status. This analytical framework is not wrong, but it is weak in the environmental and sustainable wave. Compared with the obvious logo, logo design, brand efforts in environmental protection are behind, if not through the marketing team propaganda, consumers are hard to realize.

No longer bear the significance of showing off, what will it be? In the wave of sustainability, consumer behavior is more of a dialogue with social trends. Whether it is to join the old clothes recycling team or to mark its own organic make-up on micro-blog Xiao Hong book is the voice of expressing itself as a big force. This explains why Drunk Elephant's market performance is so excellent. In 2018, its sales volume reached 150 million US dollars, often occupying the list of hot sellers.

The dialogue is destined not to be limited to clothing and clothing: the natural beauty market in the United States has been increasing for three consecutive years, rising from 9% in 2015 to 16% in 2017 (the future of Nelson 2018). 55% of urban consumers said that "health and natural raw materials" were the primary factor in their purchase of food (McKinsey 2020 China consumer survey report).

Sustainability is becoming a real "wave", which is more diffuse and deeper.