Sustainable fashion is going through a tough transition, and that played out onstage last week at the annual Textile Exchange conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Over 1,600 stakeholders from across the fashion supply chain showed up, hoping to make sense of the chaos we find ourselves working through.
An audience poll taken on the first day reveals that 52 per cent of attendees feel somewhat optimistic about the state of sustainability in fashion. Seventy-five per cent say their organisation was already set up to facilitate change, and had a clear pathway towards meeting its sustainability goals. When asked how confident they feel in the broader industry’s ability to meet its goals, only 4 per cent are very confident, while the largest segment — 37 per cent — are somewhat pessimistic.
Textile Exchange’s annual Materials Market report reveals ballooning global fibre production and no end in sight for the growth of fossil fuel-based synthetics.
There’s a concerted effort on the part of Textile Exchange to channel the current moment — with all its confusion and disillusionment — into something constructive. It’s a difficult tone to strike. As Textile Exchange CEO Claire Bergkamp says in her opening speech: “This work is not easy, but it is important. It requires vision, commitment and a deep sense of purpose. The survey tells us that optimism is there, but it’s measured. It’s not blind optimism anymore.”
The movement is currently facing setbacks in the face of global instability, as it slips further down the business agenda in favour of financial survival. Bergkamp, who previously led sustainability at Stella McCartney, didn’t seem fazed by this. “Our movement has gone through many phases,” she explained. “We had a moment where we were a group of passionate people driving change inside companies, on the ground. Then, we had a moment where we were a little more mainstream, a little bit cool. Then, we shifted to being a bit more compliance-driven, in response to regulation. Now, we’re in a more demanding phase. I won’t pretend it’s going to be easy, but there is opportunity in challenge.”
So, what exactly does that opportunity look like, and how can sustainability professionals leverage it best? Here, Vogue Business distils the views from speakers and attendees into six key takeaways.
Sustainability teams need to flex new muscles
“We’re not living in a moment of uncertainty; we’re living in an era of disruption — and climate change is the biggest disruptor of all,” says Jonathan Hall, managing partner of the Sustainable Transformation Practice at marketing data and analytics company Kantar, in the opening plenary. This sentiment was repeated throughout the conference. At every turn, stakeholders from brands to Tier 4 producers describe dealing with increasing uncertainty. Rather than an exception, this is the new norm. “This uncertainty is not incidental,” explains Hall. “It’s an upturn of the global economic order by design. If we think this is just going to be a few years of turbulence, which will go away eventually, we need to think again.”
As the political backlash to sustainability and the polycrises playing out in global politics pull decision-makers in different directions, sustainability professionals need to regroup and get clear on the business case. Speakers note time and again that the era of pushing for progress on the basis that “it’s the right thing to do”, or because of incoming regulation is over. Christine Goulay, founder of Sustainabelle Advisory Services, took part in a session about appealing to decision makers with competing priorities, noting that sustainability teams need to flex new muscles and speak the “love language” of whichever team they are trying to win over. Alongside other speakers, she emphasises the importance of moving from morality to materiality: operationalising sustainability and selling it as a business imperative. Resilience, efficiency and financial savings are the new motivators.
We’re in a trough of disillusionment
Several attendees point to Tariq Fancy’s talk as a particular highlight. The Canadian entrepreneur, who previously served as Blackrock’s first-ever global chief investment officer of sustainable investing, walked through the dot-com boom and eventual bust, arguing that sustainability is going through a similar cycle. Often, in new movements, the initial “innovation trigger” leads to a peak of “inflated expectations”, he explains, during which early-movers might IPO and everyone wants in on the action. When this bubble inevitably bursts, participants hit a “trough of disillusionment”, which sees the less genuine players and less meaningful innovations drop away. Keen to regroup and press on, committed parties slowly rise up the “slope of enlightenment” before landing on the “plateau of productivity”.
Right now, Fancy argues, sustainable fashion is in the trough of disillusionment, reckoning with its next steps, just like the internet had to. “In that moment, belief wasn’t enough. Something had to become a real business or it would disappear,” he says. “In some ways, it was a quality filter. When the marketing and hype goes away, you get a clearer view of what needs to be done and how to do it.”
It’s time to be boring but brilliant
Consultant Kaye Carmichael says Fancy’s other argument — that sustainability teams need to focus on initiatives that are “boring but brilliant” — also resonated deeply. Prior to the conference, there was a lot of worried chatter that brands were pulling back on sustainability and progress was stalling. That isn’t necessarily the case, says Rachel Kolbe Semhoun, head of sustainable sourcing and nature initiatives at Kering. Actually, “everyone is still motivated and committed”, but this energy is being redirected into less flashy — and more meaningful — programmes. This includes creating new systems for measuring impact, as most current methodologies are “not fit for purpose”, she adds, pointing to lifecycle assessments for regenerative agriculture or natural fibres produced in nomadic communities as an example.
“The work at hand now is to prove how sustainability can be the greatest ally when it comes to business performance,” continues Semhoun. “It’s about finding ways to show value creation linked to regeneration, resilience gained via landscape approaches and risk mitigation integrated into supply chain management, which makes sense for future-fit and future-focused companies to pursue.”
Stemming the flow of fossil fuel-based synthetics is a priority
In December 2024, Textile Exchange published a report on the need for fashion to “reimagine” its relationship with growth, decoupling economic gains from material resource use. But it’s a tough sell in an industry defined by its overproduction and overconsumption. In September, the non-profit’s latest Materials Market report showed that the slow shift towards circularity can’t make up for the constant flow of new materials. It was a sobering reality check, as Bergkamp notes in her opening speech. Annual global fibre production has increased by 34 million tonnes since the Paris Climate Agreement was adopted in 2015, equating to four tonnes of new fibre every second.
In light of this, Textile Exchange doubled down on solutions with proven impact, encouraging attendees to do the same. “If we are serious about transformation, we must shift decisively to textile-to-textile recycling, and invest in systems that enable true circularity. At the same time, we have to confront the continued growth in virgin fossil fuel-based synthetics, which is driving greenhouse gas emissions across our sector. We will not meet our climate and nature goals if this trend continues,” says Bergkamp. “And of course, natural fibres remain a critical and necessary part of the solution. Here, we have an opportunity not just to reduce impact, but to support producers working on the ground to create true positive outcomes through regenerative agriculture.”
Tier 4 producers need a seat at the table
Rather than focus on scaling preferred materials, as it has previously, Textile Exchange has shifted the emphasis to scaling preferred production systems, an acknowledgement that materials do not appear out of nowhere — they are produced by ecosystems of people, nature and businesses, which all need support to dethrone the virgin synthetics that continue to dominate fashion. As a result, Tier 4 producers (suppliers of raw materials) have a much stronger presence this year, a level of visibility they are rarely afforded at industry conferences. It didn’t go unnoticed.
South African angora goat farmer Trenly Spence has been investing in regenerative agriculture for decades, and says it is “satisfying” to see the industry finally recognise its benefits. It’s a rare example of Tier 4 producers leading, rather than “being forced to adapt”, he notes. Redressing this power imbalance was high on Textile Exchange’s agenda, after clarifying its mission and methods earlier this year. Several sessions focused on Tier 4, exploring the economic barriers producers face, the interfaces between Tier 4 and Tier 0, how impact should be measured at the farm level, and why closer relationships with Tier 4 are the secret to successful nature-based solutions, among other topics. This effort made an impression: Ryan Han, marketing director at Chinese Tier 4 producer Jiaren Chemical Recycling, says his team “deeply felt the organisers’ dedication”, labelling the conference’s focus on equitable economic models at Tier 4 as “eye-opening”.
Sustainability work needs to be personally sustainable, too
For the past four years, the Vogue Business Sustainability Leaders Survey has unpacked the infrastructure propping up sustainability teams, working on the hypothesis that how a sustainability team is supported, incentivised and integrated into a business has just as much impact on their progress as their strategy. This work revealed that sustainability teams within fashion brands are chronically under-resourced, expected to deliver ambitious change with minimal capacity, budget or buy-in — a surefire recipe for burnout, which Bergkamp calls out in her closing speech.
“I think the vibes were extra good this year because we all needed this. We needed a chance to reconnect with each other, to learn that our problems are not unique to us, and that we can solve them together,” she tells attendees. “If we try to solve them alone, we will burn ourselves out. This work is boundaryless. We have to create boundaries for it, or we will all run out of energy. We have to take care of ourselves so that we can do this work.”
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