Fashion and ESG: Time to put the S back centre-stage?

This week is Fashion Revolution Week and it’s a particularly poignant one: it’s been ten years since the Rana Plaza building collapsed on 24th April 2013 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing over 1,138 and injuring a further 2,500 people who were working there in sweatshops for fast fashion brands. It remains one of the biggest industrial disasters in history. But how much has really changed, despite pledges and action from most of the major fashion brands?

Sweatshops are still operating all over the world to feed our insatiable appetite for cheap, trendy fashion – just in secret. And this is fundamentally because the model of production and top-down pricing hasn’t changed. Transparency is the key to change. According to Fashion Revolution’s 2022 Fashion Transparency Index, 73% of brands still do not disclose their approach to achieving living wages for supply chain workers.

This was the background to the second panel at SEC Newgate UK’s panel event last Thursday, (Re)engineering the future of fashion: Turning the Wheels of Change: Putting the ‘S’ (social) back into fashion. The discussion was kicked off by Delphine Williot, Fashion Revolution’s policy and campaigns manager, introducing their Good Clothes, Fair Pay campaign. “We absolutely need binding legislation within the fashion industry,” said Williot. “Having seen that voluntary measures on living wages have been there for decades – they’re not working.”

The organisation that was set up in the wake of Rana Plaza is currently lobbying the European parliament to introduce living wage legislation across the garment, textile and footwear sector - and are seeking a million signatures from EU citizens.

Education is also vital, argued Donald Browne, a veteran of fashion production having run production at Ted Baker for 30 years. Browne left Baker to set up The Coded, a start-up that is hoping to disrupt the status quo by operating a “bottom-up” production model that gives garment makers in their supply chain a fairer share. It’s also heavily involved in educating “the next generation of influencers”, working with Central St Martins and the Fashion Retail College. Nonetheless, Browne uncovered a disconnect between the “outrage” expressed by some students when informed about abuses of workers… and their reluctance to give up cheap clothing. He’s come to the conclusion, like Williot, that legislation (taking the choice away) is the only way forward.

Other remedies the panel discussed included a tax on unregulated and unaccountable imports and a “polluter pays tax”. Gavin Miller, national officer light industries from Community Trade Union welcomed “the idea of a product passport,” in other words, mandatory labelling that discloses key ESG data – including sustainability credentials and if a living wage was paid  – that would at least help consumers to make more informed choices, as well as helping sustainable British brands in competing against the fast fashion machine.

Browne is involved in another start-up called Circulariti that uses smart technology to make various ESG data “from first thread through to second life” – covering origin, wages and even recycling advice – available at point of sale and online.

Also on the panel was entrepreneur Susanna Wen, the CEO/founder of Birdsong, a community interest fashion label that operates in Poplar, East London. Pursuing a policy of radical, warts-and-all transparency, Birdsong has found that rather than putting off consumers “they respect us more for it.” In order to continue paying a living London wage, however, Wen has had to pivot their model towards digital printing (which is faster), producing designs on sustainable garments for the B2B as well as for the consumer market.

Miller pointed to the multiple challenges facing ‘Made in Britain’ brands: “If you’re manufacturing in this country, pretty much everything is against you – business rates, energy prices, labour cost, you know,” he said. He put it down to the absence of a “joined-up manufacturing strategy” from central government and called for radical shift in policy. Without which a scalable future for ethical fashion production in Britain will not be possible.

The trade union man also pointed out that even with new legislation and reform, there will be no transformation without proper monitoring. It’s worth remembering the Rana Plaza building had been audited several times before it fell down and had been deemed safe.

Listen to the full podcast of the panel here.