2025, the seemingly far-off year of climate target deadlines, has suddenly arrived. Is the fashion industry where it should be? Have its climate targets been met? Has the industry undergone the radical change necessary?
It’s a ‘no’ on all three fronts. Over the past 12 months, the industry faced a sort of existential crisis, as supply chains were rocked by scandals, beloved brands shuttered and political turmoil cast a shadow over progress.
Elections! Bankruptcies! Scandals! It’s been an eventful year for sustainable fashion.
Here, sustainable fashion experts weigh in on what needs to happen in the year ahead.
1. Raise the bar beyond regulations
Until recently, fashion was largely left to its own devices. 2024 reiterated how dangerous that can be, with a slew of supply chain scandals that laid the groundwork for policymakers to further step up and shape the industry. There were allegations of poor working conditions and insufficient pay, even at the upper echelons of luxury, and reports of child labour from cotton to perfume ingredients. In Bangladesh and beyond, protests raged on in a bid to secure better pay for workers and the industry’s lack of respect for freedom of association was plain to see.
“2024 was the closest we’ve ever been to a collective recognition of the failure of fashion brands to self-regulate when it comes to protecting rights for the people who make their clothes,” says Thulsi Narayanasamy, director of international advocacy at the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). It’s not just workers’ rights where the industry is falling short: it’s also on track to fly right past its climate goals.
From the US to the EU and beyond, 2025 will see sustainable fashion regulators tighten their grip on the industry, streamlining and enforcing existing regulations, including ecodesign (ESPR), digital product passports (DPPs) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Brands are still woefully underprepared for this shift, says Lisa Lang, who works closely with EU policymakers. She estimates that 50 to 75 per cent of the fashion industry “will not survive” the next three to five years of policy enforcement unless they make significant changes to their supply chains, the digital infrastructure underpinning them and the business models motivating them.
It’s not just brands on the chopping block. Suppliers are also struggling with the cost of compliance, which is often shunted onto those with the tightest margins and the least bargaining power, as well as the time required to abide by new rules. Policymakers will need to streamline reporting requirements, and supply chain businesses and brands around the world will need to get on the same page, to ease compliance.
“The level of evidence businesses require before even considering action is often too high, leading to burnout among sustainability professionals,” says Textile Exchange CEO Claire Bergkamp. “We cannot drive impact at scale if we are all working off of a different playbook,” adds Reformation chief sustainability officer and VP of operations Kathleen Talbot.
2. Focus on what works
Last year was characterised by chaos, says Dr Hakan Karaosman, associate professor at Cardiff University and co-founder of Fashion’s Responsible Supply Chain Hub (FReSCH), an EU-backed action research project. “It was the hottest year on record, when political instability around the world led to financial and political turmoil with intergenerational consequences. Social inequality widened, and, in the context of fashion, these issues brought supply chain disruptions. Fashion failed its two most essential components for business survival: labour and nature.”
Against this backdrop, many brands rolled back their climate commitments and shrank their already stretched sustainability teams. Dounia Wone, chief impact officer at Vestiaire Collective, hopes to see this trend reversed in 2025, and predicts that brands scaling back impact investments will be scorched by their short-term thinking. “The urgency of the climate crisis demands bolder, more accountable action across all sectors,” she says. “Overproduction, global inequities and greenwashing remain significant barriers. While the industry has moved forward in awareness and innovation, true systemic change is still lacking.”
Rather than adding in evermore novel ideas and pilot programmes, it’s time for fashion to double down on projects with proven impact, says Bergkamp, especially if budgets are tight and teams reduced. The industry knows what works, she says: transitioning to renewable, sustainably sourced materials and scaling circular systems. “It’s about cutting through the noise, aligning efforts and directing our energy and resources towards proven solutions. This shift in mindset has the potential to drive real, measurable change and build momentum towards achieving shared goals.”
3. Engage different stakeholder groups
With the dawn of due diligence regulations, fashion has finally begun to rethink the dynamics at play within its supply chains. This poses new questions for the industry to tackle in 2025, says Kim Van der Weerd, host of the ‘Manufactured’ podcast and outgoing intelligence director at denim sustainability non-profit Transformers Foundation. “Which stakeholder groups are defining the problems we aim to solve? And how do solutions based on a particular — rather than a shared — understanding of the issues become so widespread?” she posits, arguing that it’s time for fashion to include manufacturers in conversations about what and how to prioritise in the push for sustainability. “Manufacturers tend to operate in some of the places — and employ some of the people — [that are] most vulnerable to climate change. If we were to ask what their climate action priorities are, they would probably say something about adaptation and resilience.”
It’s not just brands that need to engage a more diverse array of stakeholders, says Bergkamp. Non-profits and multi-stakeholder initiatives also need to work on this in 2025. “As an industry, it can be easy to overlook those furthest removed from the final product, but when it comes to natural materials, there is an incredible untapped opportunity. We need to make more space to listen to those being asked to drive the change: farmers, growers, recyclers and others on the ground,” she says. “These are the individuals who deeply understand the realities of material production, and we have so much to learn from their experiences and expertise. Only by aligning the needs and perspectives of all players in the system can we drive sustainable fashion forwards in a way that is both impactful and enduring.”
4. Put social impact on par with the environment
For a long time, fashion has been chasing easy wins and pushing back systems change. But 2025 is no longer a distant deadline, and the climate crisis is no longer a future concern. Climate risks are unfolding in real time, ranging from floods and droughts affecting raw material yields to hailstorms and hurricanes affecting garment production, all of which could jeopardise $65 billion worth of apparel exports up until 2030. It’s time for fashion to prioritise adapting and mitigating climate risks in its supply chains, says Nemanthie Kooragamage, group director of sustainable business at Sri Lankan manufacturer Mas Holdings.
That means putting social and environmental impact on a level playing field, and accepting that you can’t silo them into two separate strands of progress. “Social equity is often sidelined in favour of environmental goals, leaving workers’ rights as well as the non-profits supporting workers’ rights, underfunded and unprioritised,” says Katrina Caspelich, CMO at advocacy organisation Remake.
It also means moving away from the carbon tunnel vision that has dictated change to date. “Fashion is singularly focused on emissions reduction as opposed to preparing for a world that’s hotter,” says Van der Weerd. “A key reason fashion is struggling to meet its emissions reduction goals is because decarbonisation is a brand and retailer priority, or maybe even a Global North priority. It is not a manufacturer priority. Yet countless tools, continuous improvement programmes, innovations and beyond, are peddled to manufacturers as the solution to their decarbonisation woes. When ‘uptake’ and ‘adoption’ of these solutions are lacklustre, the industry scratches its head.”
5. Stop ignoring growth
Once fashion acknowledges that change needs to be holistic, it can start prioritising systems change over incremental change. First on the agenda? Growth.
There are already signs that fashion’s relationship to growth is changing, albeit more among consumers and activists than brands themselves. The Or Foundation has been pushing for the industry to address growth with its ‘Speak Volumes’ campaign, which invites brands to share how many units they produce each year. Meanwhile, 2024 saw the rise of ‘underconsumption core’, ‘no buy’ and ‘no new clothes’ challenges — a broader pushback against overproduction and overconsumption, which has continued into this year.
“This year, fashion began to confront some of the long-avoided elephants in the room. Chief among these is the growing recognition that unchecked growth is fundamentally incompatible with achieving our climate and nature goals,” says Bergkamp, pointing to Textile Exchange’s recent report on the need for reimagining growth. “Profit can no longer depend on the ever-increasing production of new goods. Our hope is that this realisation will drive the industry to reevaluate its current business models and begin reimagining growth in a way that aligns with planetary boundaries.”
Tackling unfettered growth could help fashion address many of the other issues in sustainability, from overconsumption and textile waste, to workers’ rights and supply chain due diligence, adds Karaosman. “The dominant logic of financial growth is operationalised through cost-reduction strategies that are routinely passed on to suppliers, conflicting with other demands such as on-time delivery, operational flexibility, increased sustainability requirements and better quality.”
It sounds complex, but it’s actually quite simple, says Francois Souchet, managing director of advisory firm Swanstant and former lead of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular initiative. “The current economic model is showing significant signs of strain and more of the same won’t solve it.”
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