Size inclusiveness may be trending in the fashion industry, but petite women are still falling short of options. The muse of Seventh Avenue is thin, leggy and Amazonian. Just look at Kendall Jenner, Forbes’ freshly crowned highest paid model, who stands at 5 feet 10 inches. She’s in good company, too. Of the professional clotheshorses…

Fur is out, at least at Chanel, which last week became the latest in an expanding roster of luxury brands to declare animal pelts déclassé. The announcement marked a stunning reversal for creative director Karl Lagerfeld, who claimed as recently as 2015 that he didn’t understand the fuss over fur. “For me, as long as…

In the grand hierarchy of animal fibers to ban—foremost of which would be fur, obviously—silk doesn’t seem to warrant as much attention. Animal-rights crusader Stella McCartney deploys silk “from traditional sources in Como, Italy,” regularly at her luxury house, so how heinous can it be? Well, plenty heinous, if you care at all about living…

Christina Dean remembers the precise moment she realized attitudes about clothing in Hong Kong were finally shifting. As the founder and board chair of Redress, a nonprofit that tackles the problem of waste in the apparel industry, Dean had spent more than 10 years chipping away at what appeared to be an insurmountable issue. Roughly…

If the spate of department store and mall closings across the country has taught retailers one thing, it’s that brick-and-mortar business cannot continue as usual. Indeed the centralized, top-down approach that defines globalized trade and manufacturing is already beginning to cede ground to newer, more viable business models that better meet the needs of today’s…

There’s a good reason why home workers are known as the “invisible workforce” or the “shadow economy” of the garment industry. Far less regulated than factory work, home-based work—that is, work performed in households and small workshops rather than the traditional four-wall setting—is little understood by brands and retailers and virtually unknown to the general…

At a meeting in 2014, a PrimaLoft product manager recalled stumbling upon a piece of “compostable” packaging. Sitting in a boardroom at the company’s Latham, N.Y., headquarters, a sudden brain wave seized her: “Why can’t we just make a jacket insulation that we can bury in the backyard?” she asked. PrimaLoft is no stranger to…

The images are graphic, violent and difficult to stomach. Livestock workers are jabbing Angora goats with sharp implements, stomping booted heels on their legs and dunking their heads into tanks of caustic cleaning solution. A shearer drags a struggling goat by its horns and clips off its wool so roughly it begins to bleed. Another…

Whatever you do, don’t call Studio 189 a celebrity brand. “We’re a tiny company with a big idea,” said Abrima Erwiah, the luxury veteran who founded the Ghana-based, artisan-produced label with actress Rosario Dawson in 2013. Well not too little. In June, Studio 189 snagged first place, along with $80,000 in prize money, in the…

When H&M debuts its eighth Conscious Exclusive collection on Thursday, it will be the first time it’s done so for the Autumn/Winter season. “Usually they’re in the springtime,” Emily Scarlett, head of the Swedish retailer’s U.S. communications, said at a luncheon previewing the upcoming pieces at Blue Hill at Stone Farms in Tarrytown, N.Y. last…

Erin Snow is ready to step out of its niche and into the limelight. The brainchild of Erin Isakov, a former merchandiser for Elie Tahari and Theory, Erin Snow began in 2003 as an alternative to the boxy, outmoded and somewhat outré skiwear that had commandeered the market since the ‘90s. “It was not at…

U.K. retailers are plagued by excess stock as weather woes, stagnating incomes and Brexit-fueled economic uncertainty continue to roil the high street, trend forecaster WGSN reported on Friday. As retailers continue to ramp up their e-commerce strategies, volumes of new womenswear have grown 9 percent year on year (YOY), WGSN said. But a squeeze on…