How Fashion is Taking on the Plastic Crisis, One Polybag at a Time

There’s no getting around it: the fashion industry is drowning in plastic, and the single-use polybag is a big part of the reason. Thin, lightweight and derived from low-density polyethylene, roughly 180 billion of these bags, both large and small, are employed by the apparel supply chain every year to protect stock in warehouses and…

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H&M’s Green Machine: A Recycling Solution?

H&M calls it the Green Machine: a piece of technology it says is the first to separate and recycle polyester and cotton-blended clothing at scale. Later this month, Monki, the Gen Z targeting womenswear brand owned by H&M, will drop the first commercial products made using its recycled fibres. The collection — a £40 hooded…

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Why Less Might Be More When it Comes to Factory Audits

In a globalized supply chain where clothing production is typically outsourced to developing nations with low-wage labor and shaky social and environmental protections, audits have become a non-negotiable means of managing risks and protecting brands from potential scandal. With multiple, often disparate standards for assessing compliance, however, it isn’t unusual for one supplier to field…

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Leather Lowdown: Fruit, Fungi and a Focus on Planet-Friendly Processing

News of traditional leather’s demise has been greatly exaggerated. Despite spiking demand for vegan and other eco-friendly alternatives—a trend that tracks with the growing consumer predilection for plant-based diets—cowhides, a byproduct of beef and dairy consumption, have continued to conduct brisk trade. This is especially true of the luxury sector, where high-quality leather remains synonymous…

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The Rise in ESG Ratings: What’s the Score?

When Michael Beutler joined Kering’s sustainability operations team as its director in 2011, the fashion conglomerate, then known as PPR, fielded at most four investor requests a year about its environmental practices. Nearly a decade later, the Gucci and Saint Laurent owner receives at least four of these questionnaires a month. “If not double that,”…

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Can a Pair of Jeans Kill the Coronavirus?

Are we asking too much from our jeans? Maybe. They’re expected to wick sweat, sculpt our behinds, and provide full-body motion for squats and lunges, all while exuding a cool-but-not-trying-too-hard vibe. And now, in these After Times, they’re also supposed to keep the coronavirus — the same one that has killed more than 1 million…

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Now or Never: Sustainability is Denim Industry’s Covid-19 Lifeline

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,…

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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….

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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…

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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…

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