The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown fashion retailers in a state of frenzy, and the denim industry is no different. Shoppers, largely battening down at home, aren’t as eager to crack open their wallets for non-essentials, let alone splurge on bottoms that aren’t visible on Zoom calls. The coronavirus doesn’t appear to be going anywhere soon,…
Author: jasmin
Xinjiang Confidential: What Auditor Exodus Means for Apparel Sourcing
A number of supply-chain auditing firms say they will no longer conduct inspections in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of northwestern China, where state-sponsored efforts to coerce and assimilate predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities have rekindled questions about the limits of corporate self-regulation and business-driven social compliance initiatives, particularly in hostile environments ruled by fear….
Are Exotic Skins Out of Fashion?
Something was clearly missing from Stockholm Fashion Week’s virtual catwalk on Aug. 25, and it wasn’t just a physical audience. Five days before, the show’s organizers said that fur and exotic skins had been banned from the lineup. Fur wasn’t surprising; among younger Western consumers, at least, fur has been steadily slipping down the rungs…
Chemical Recycling is Circular Fashion’s Future. Why Aren’t More Companies Doing It?
Nicole Rycroft, founder and executive director of Canadian forestry nonprofit Canopy, compares current efforts to scale up fashion innovations to “being at an awkward teenage dance.” “The producers are still trialing it, it’s a new technology, there’s the potential for a bit of a price up for brands and everyone’s kind of standing around at…
It’s 2020: Why Is The Pumpkin Spice Latte Still Part Of The Zeitgeist?
Batten down your palates and gird your tastebuds: pumpkin spice season is here. Never mind that we’re still basking in the sweltering depths of summer in tank tops and cutoffs. Or that a global pandemic is upending lives, ravaging the economy, and keeping people indoors. Even now, savvy as we have become about being gaslit…
Higg Index, Without Transparency and Incentives, is a ‘Scale Without a Diet’
For the apparel sector, which has traditionally struggled to measure, let alone manage its burgeoning environmental footprint, the Higg Index has been nothing short of transformational. Certainly this was the case in 2011, when the Walmart- and Patagonia-founded Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) rolled out the suite of assessment tools to allow brands, retailers and facilities…
Is Lost Stock Helping or Hurting Bangladeshi Garment Workers?
By many accounts, any attempt to bail out struggling Bangladeshi garment workers facing starvation and ruin amid the COVID-19 pandemic would be a good thing. And for the most part, Lost Stock, a U.K. scheme that repackages jettisoned garments from canceled Western orders as “mystery boxes” for resale, appears to be a brilliant way to…
Rethinking Materials for a Circular Supply Chain and ‘Systemic Shift’
Before material innovation can save fashion, sustainability must save material innovation. And not just any broadly sweeping definition of sustainability: In today’s climate-sensitive milieu, cutting-edge and breakthrough materials made from agricultural waste, biodegradable plastic or mushroom roots must not only tread less heavily on the environment at the outset, but also avoid becoming landfill or…
Taylor Swift Appears to Alter ‘Folklore’ Album Merch After The Folklore Calls Her Out
When Amira Rasool climbed out of bed on Friday morning, she did not expect to be riding into battle against Taylor Swift. Soon, Rasool, founder and CEO of fashion e-tailer The Folklore, was deluged by online buzz about the award-winning singer-songwriter’s surprise quarantine album, folklore, which she had dropped at midnight to breathless anticipation and…
‘Virtually’ All Apparel Industry Is Complicit in Uyghur Human Rights Abuses
The world’s fashion brands need to confront—and abandon—their complicity with human-rights atrocities being perpetuated against Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of northwestern China, a coalition of more than 180 human-rights groups announced Thursday. With Xinjiang producing more than 80 percent of Chinese cotton, according to Washington…
Can Clothing Rental Recover From COVID-19?
For years, sustainability experts have touted rental and resale as eco-friendlier modes of consuming fashion. With a deadly disease ravaging the nation, once bustling thoroughfares reduced to ghost towns, and a long-overdue racial reckoning sweeping all corners of industry, one question looms large: Who has the appetite to shop, let alone the focus to do…
The Ruthless (and Racist) Mom-Shaming of Meghan Markle
Meghan Markle is a duck. Or perhaps she’s a rabbit. It all depends on your point of view. Indeed few figures in modern popular culture have been as polarizing as the erstwhile working royal, who abruptly upped sticks with her husband, Prince Harry, from the United Kingdom to North America in a dramatic whirlwind of…