A postcard from Global Fashion Summit
Are we overcomplicating this?
[all opinions expressed are my own]
This week, while my home in Edinburgh was flooded with a month’s worth of rain in 36 hours, I was in Copenhagen for the Global Fashion Summit for my work pushing fashion to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The organisers at Global Fashion Agenda did an absolutely fantastic job at convening the ‘sustainable’ fashion industry for talks, panels and, more importantly, behind-the-scenes meetings (and gossip) while celebrating its 15-year anniversary. But as I reflect on the hectic few days of networking - hell for a clandestine introvert - I keep coming back to a question: are we overcomplicating this?
Why yes, that is the Queen of Denmark
I have been told, repeatedly, that my views are oversimplistic. Only by men, I might add. Whether it’s degrowth (you don’t understand economics!!), Palestinian liberation (there is not enough nuance!!), Scottish independence (emotions are clouding your logic!!) or ending all new oil and gas extraction (there are exceptions to the rule!!). I have bitten my tongue and held back tears, as I know I will fail to satisfy devil’s advocates on any given political issue.
However, this week reminded me of the power of simplicity in cutting through corporate bullshit. I am well aware of how complicated solving intersectional social and environmental challenges in the fashion system can be, but here are my fundamental (and simplified) beliefs - fossil fuel extraction, overproduction, and low pay are the foundations of every sub-topic we discuss at conferences, from cotton traceability to eco-design principles. Unless the KPIs of our sustainability initiatives are reducing fossil fuels and production volumes, and increasing wages for workers, we might just be overcomplicating the conversation. As Follow The Money’s Yara van Heugten reflected, “The bigger picture was oftentimes missing. Where is this solution or project bringing us in terms of progress?”
On the other hand, there was often a lack of detail to serve the production of soundbites. Inspiration is important, particularly when we’ve been running only on vegan salads and coffee all day, but we desperately need technical expertise and practical takeaways. I think more input from engineers working in textiles, land and energy systems could be helpful to address this.
Of course, we are all tempted to take individual credit where positive progress has been made (big brands most of all but NGOs are also guilty of this). Inspired by Donella Meadows’ Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, I would encourage conference-goers and onlookers alike to consider: What is the gap I can fill with my very complicated expertise and experience in order to solve the very simple problems at hand? Perhaps we might realise that billionaire-owned brands and Silicon Valley startups might not always be best placed to intervene, and that there could be a pluriverse of small, local and transformational and most of all simple solutions to leverage, too.
To wrap up, here are some of my key takeaways from what was said onstage at the conference sessions themselves:
It was great to see representation from manufacturers and farmers (although of course there were limitations - this is an English-speaking event in one of the world’s most expensive cities) whose main messaging to brands was: a) Visit your factories and farms to understand issues more tangibly, and b) Help us invest in the solutions we are already experts in. There was also a lot of talk about operationalising sustainability (one of five points on the CEO Agenda this year) in terms of getting out of sustainability team siloes and embedding practices and policies across the entire business. In my conversations with brands, getting finance teams on board with putting money behind climate promises is the biggest barrier to progress. They desperately need a business case for decarbonisation (and I’d argue, reverse incentives through punitive policy), unfortunate as that may be for us ‘naive’ climate activists, systems change advocates and critics of limitless growth and shareholder capitalism.
Paul Polman’s (ex-Unilever) speeches focused on ideas such as ‘less bad is not good enough’ and ‘set targets to win, not just not to lose’. I agree, and I think this speaks to the problem with the panel discussion/trade show/conference circus - we spend a lot of time celebrating incremental progress, and calling targets and initiatives that are both entirely necessary and entirely feasible ‘ambitious’. It reminded me of this tweet:
Very few panellists disagreed with each other (lots of talk of ‘preaching to the choir’), with one important exception in the form of my brilliant friend Emma Håkansson, activist, author and founder of Collective Fashion Justice. Her clear, concise and challenging indictment of the leather industry began with the basic premise that slaughtering animals for a product inherently breeds exploitation and extraction throughout the entire value chain of the product. I uploaded some clips here if you fancy watching. Huge props also to both Emily Stochl from Remake and the inimitable fashion critic Vanessa Friedman for being some of the only people I witnessed who named the elephant in the room - we make too much stuff. There is simply no way to polish that turd with circularity initiatives, or with an equivalent volume of more sustainable materials.
Lots of tech startups, innovation, collaboration, DATA. But as Ganni’s co-founder Nicolaj Reffstrup said on a panel, “We didn't need to wait for some multi-stakeholder initiative to do this.” In other words, transformational business decisions can be made without ‘permission’ from peers, and without perfect data or perfect third-party providers - brands can invest today in the relatively low-tech existing solutions that we know work (solar panels, solar panels, solar panels!). Similarly, GFA’s Peder Michael Anker-Jorgensen warned: “So-called collaboration has been a fig leaf for inaction…incremental change, not transformation” when discussing fashion’s failure to put their money where their mouth is on climate, and watering down ambition by hunting for consensus and win-win solutions.
Eva Kruse, the original founder of the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, left brands with an inconvenient reminder: “We need to make choices that hurt.”
Five quick things
A new little segment to draw your attention to important, inspiring, interesting stuff that caught my attention this month in the realm of fashion, labour and climate.
+ A bonus thing! Rachel Arthur’s new Substack, Owning It:
If you’re interested, you can read last year’s post about Global Fashion Summit to compare…
Love this summary! And resonates a lot with my experience at other climate / environmental conferences, the feeling that the answers are far simpler than we are willing to accept. Making changes seem impossibly complicated is a dangerous tool for climate delay.
Beautiful and truly threadbare summary of the Summit - thank you for sharing Ruth, and thank you for also posting about Owning It. I loved Paul Polman's reminder that really it all just comes down to us: "Do you care?"