This article is part of the Vogue Business Index: H1 2025, an bi-annual objective scorecard of the 60 top luxury fashion brands, based on revenue. Advanced Members can read the full Vogue Business Index here.
As deadlines approach, this year marks a tipping point in the industry’s progress towards environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, though it’s shaping up to be a bumpy ride. Between a brewing trade war, political turmoil and subsequent threats towards diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), 2025 casts a difficult backdrop for ESG efforts to thrive — albeit one where they’re needed more than ever.
Is the fashion industry making real progress? Is it nurturing the goals that will guide it to achieve necessary change? In the last Vogue Business Index, we highlighted that several brands quietly removed tougher targets set for 2030 or 2040, meaning when it comes to climate change, most businesses are aiming to meet only the minimum requirements set to 2050. During our H1 2025 data capture period, many brands were gearing up to achieve their interim goals in 2025, while making it clear that to transform the industry they must begin by partnering with relevant organisations and setting harder targets throughout their operations.
ESG climbers
In this chapter, we evaluate the performance of 60 Index brands — selected based on revenue and industry relevance — across environmental and social impact factors, assessing both the adoption of policies and the deadlines brands have set for specific targets. For environmental factors, we have incorporated metrics like the reduction of plastic packaging or carbon emissions and the implementation of policies around waste water treatment. Among social impact factors, the gender pay gap, executive-level diversity, living wages throughout the supply chain and unionisation have each been examined.
Meanwhile, an accountability assessment evaluates how frequently brands communicate on the progress they are making, targets they’ve set against criteria like the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and participation in recognised certification schemes like ZDHC. Finally, we asked consumers how sustainable they consider brands, allowing for a comprehensive audit spanning consumer perception and metric-based assessment.
Amid a line-up dominated by Kering and LVMH brands, Burberry, Stella McCartney and Coach are outliers in the top 10 for ESG. Gucci retains its leadership, followed closely by Bottega Veneta and Stella McCartney, while Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and Dior also populate the top of the leaderboard. Fendi and Hermès sit just outside at 11th and 12th place, respectively. Conglomerate-owned brands benefit from extensive reporting on the behalf of their parent companies — but it should be noted that policies alone don’t translate to real-world impact.
While the top 10 brands follow a similar pattern when it comes to environmental policies and workers’ rights, Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger and Chloé outperform in accountability and reporting. A broader mix of brands emerge towards the top of the social impact ranking, establishing less regulated factors, like diversity in leadership, closing gender pay gaps and committing to improving conditions and compensation for workers throughout the supply chain, as the biggest opportunities.
2025 is set to be a milestone year across the fashion spectrum. Premium labels like Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren have also set targets for 2025, but some are more measurable than others. Tommy Hilfiger has committed to sustainably sourcing 100 per cent of its cotton (mix of organic, regenerative and other recycled cotton sources), viscose (made from regenerated cellulose, usually from dissolved wood or bamboo pulp) and wool (mix of recycled, organic and certified wool sources) by 2025, alongside making 100 per cent of its packaging (throughout the supply chain) recyclable, reusable or compostable, with products passed to consumers free of oil-based single-use plastic. At Ralph Lauren, the company states that, by this year, five of its iconic products will be Cradle to Cradle certified, an initiative helping companies to innovate and optimise materials and products according to global science-based standards. The proportion of goods affected by the American brand’s ‘Timeless by Design’ plan is less clear, but the company says it has made progress in other areas such as decreasing its total water use across operations by 25 per cent since 2020 and eliminating hazardous chemicals in its supply chain.
Since the Vogue Business Index began in 2020, consumers have become increasingly critical of brands’ sustainability standings. In the first edition, there was a strong correlation between the most beloved brands and the highest sustainability scorers, despite some players having not yet rolled out their sustainability frameworks. Now, the desirability — or awareness — of a brand does not directly translate to its ESG ranking. This is forcing companies to become more sophisticated in how they tackle ESG challenges — especially via key partnerships or commitments that push the needle at an industry level. More mature approaches include the widespread adoption of SBTi, a UN-backed initiative helping companies set climate targets in line with the Paris Agreement; or rising participation in schemes like non-profit Leather Working Group (LWG), a coalition driving best practice in the leather industry.
Changing the language of luxury
The language historically used in product marketing strategies to communicate heritage and prestige is now being appropriated to boost sustainability credentials, with terms such as ‘timelessness’, ‘quality’ and ‘durability’ taking centre stage to sell products as more sustainable than the industry standard. Considering this emotional language still seeks to encourage purchases, though, and there is little evidence of brands promoting ‘buy once, own forever’ mantras, it’s a move that only fuels fashion’s overconsumption problem.
The availability of repair services — despite slowly growing — is still limited. While over 60 per cent of Index brands offer repairs, these are generally restricted to two or three-year warranty policies, placing a time limit on luxury’s lifespan. The cost of repairs outside of warranties, even when offered directly by brands, is often high, and even accessing these services can be a struggle, disincentivising consumers from repairing products altogether. Brands should lean into the lasting appeal of products, while boosting accessibility to maintenance services that prolong their use.
Brands lag in materials and manufacturing
In the ESG pillar, the phasing out of synthetic fibres holds the most room for improvement. Many brands are already prioritising natural fibres such as cotton and silk, but just 17 per cent of Index brands (including all Kering-owned houses, Hermès, Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger and Prada Group brands) have policies limiting the use of synthetic textiles altogether — or eliminating the subsequent issue of microplastic shedding — which places it far down the priority list. Many are, however, adopting textiles made from recycled materials, with most brands implementing these fabrics in sizable product ranges, not just capsule collections. While this represents welcome progress, it also exposes wider dependencies on synthetic materials, as well as the challenges to replace them with next-generation alternatives due to low-scale production.
Diving deeper into the supply chain, the incentivising of farmers to switch to regenerative agriculture practices is also lagging. Regenerative farming, generally a pushback against conventional industrial farming practices, including the use of pesticides and fertilisers, is a key sustainability move that maximises the carbon capture potential of soil while increasing its resilience to weather. Only half of brands in the Vogue Business Index offer some sort of funding or incentive to encourage responsible or regenerative farming — a proportion heavily weighted by conglomerate-owned brands. While a desired practice, regenerative agriculture faces a lack of investment at the producer end of the supply chain, meaning the burden of responsibility for meeting higher standards is being placed disproportionately on suppliers.
For suppliers, only 16 per cent of brands have a policy on ensuring workers across the supply chain are paid a living wage, with many focusing on legal minimum wages at best (55 per cent) or direct employees at worst (28 per cent). While around 80 per cent of Index brands have policies asserting the right for workers to join unions, the proportion of those with active, impactful unions protecting workers throughout the supply chain is less clear. Instead, many policies emphasise ensuring safe working conditions. Yet the onus is still often placed on suppliers to monitor these conditions, removing brands from the responsibility of ensuring them directly.
There are still several manufacturing markets, like Bangladesh and Cambodia, where the problem of poor compensation remains endemic. A recent investigation by NGO Transparentem in Mauritius, a garment manufacturing hotspot, exposed not only a lack of brand awareness around subpar working conditions, but also the reluctance to reimburse those in the supply chain who have had wages withheld or have faced unnecessarily high recruitment fees. Among Index brands, Tommy Hilfiger owner PVH was one of the few luxury groups to reimburse impacted workers.
Transformation in leather goods
When it comes to leather production, the picture is slightly more optimistic. Seventy-five per cent of Index brands have policies around the responsible use, management or reduction of harmful chemicals used in leather tanneries. Seventy-five per cent are either LWG members or predominantly use leather approved by the LWG, while 50 per cent follow the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) programme, a global initiative aimed at eliminating hazardous chemicals from the textile, apparel and footwear industries via sustainable chemical management throughout the supply chain.
Overhauling sourcing principles in the production stage has proven difficult to achieve. Many brands remain in pilot mode when it comes to testing new solutions, and total transformation in even a single category is still far away. Amid the rocky retail landscape, handbags and small leather goods offer a way for brands to lock in the aspirational customer, so it’s no surprise materials innovation has been met with hesitancy. Efforts to replace leather, either through vegan or plant-based variants, have been largely experimental, with only a few activist brands like Stella McCartney eradicating the material entirely. Beyond leather, Hugo Boss is aiming to remove polyester and polyamide, including in fibre blends, by 2030.
Increased investment in innovation could make it easier to transform categories at scale. Evolved by Nature, for example, aims to replace fossil fuel-derived petrochemical supply chains with non-toxic natural peptides to create technically advanced formulas that can be used as skincare ingredients, PFAS-free leather finishes and moisture-management coatings for textiles. By taking industry waste — in this instance, the cocoons of mulberry silkworms harvested for fish food — and creating a solution from its by-product, it is possible for brands to improve the sustainability of various categories while reducing waste and reliance on fossil fuels throughout their production cycle.
Case study: Ami Paris’s quiet approach to sustainability
During its 25 years in business, Ami Paris has taken various steps towards sustainable operations, most recently including the “responsibility” section on its product pages. As part of a long-term partnership with traceability platform Footbridge, shoppers can trace the lifecycle of a product back to its fibres, including composition, manufacturing countries and a calculation of climate metrics, including how much carbon and freshwater was used during production. While the scheme covers most of Ami’s current assortment, the label has yet to extend to leather goods.
The Ami Forever platform, meanwhile, is a proprietary resale platform that allows customers to sell pre-loved Ami garments back to the brand. Products are authenticated, reconditioned and then resold through the site; sellers are sent a voucher for use on new or secondhand collections.
While both schemes make it easier for consumers to shop more sustainably, removing the labour of research and encouraging engagement in circular initiatives, they are part of Ami’s quieter approach to sustainability. Despite making important changes, like the move to 100 per cent paper-based packaging in 2019, the brand misses out on communicating its sustainability wins. Such marketing might avoid greenwashing but, in an era of speaking out, it’s key for brands to have a voice of their own, especially when it comes to social issues like workers’ rights and the gender pay gap.
Key takeaways:
- Hard deadlines for environmental goals, soft measures for social. Progress is visible and easier to measure for environmental factors like carbon emissions and water usage, but brands have been reluctant to set hard targets for factors like ensuring a living wage for workers. These are important change factors that shouldn’t be neglected.
- Making the move to next-gen materials. In line with interim targets, a growing number of brands are swapping synthetic fabrics for recycled options, while leather innovation offers an opportunity for players to up their ESG credentials, despite a lack of investment.
- Leveraging partnerships to pursue progress. For brands to make true sustainable progress, they should select partners that can help them accelerate circularity, hold them accountable and innovate processes, all while protecting margins.
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