It can sometimes feel like an impossible task driving sustainable progress in fashion when there are so many forces working against it. Those in power don’t want to disrupt the business models that have made them rich, and those who are motivated to subvert the status quo come up against myriad challenges — not least how to finance this transformation. With high inflation, rising interest rates and economic instability, investors have grown more cautious, favouring proven business models over those led by experimentation.
At Vogue Business’s latest Fashion Futures event, held at Somerset House in London, we gathered a range of people working in the space — from brands to startups, investors to suppliers — to discuss how we can keep going and continue to change the industry for the better, even when times are tough. Approximately 200 attendees gathered for a series of panel discussions and keynote sessions, and perused the innovation showcase, which featured a selection of startups and growth-stage companies working across circularity, next-gen materials and supply chain transparency.
Below, the key takeaways from the day’s speakers.
Sustainably made products must still be desirable
The day kicked off with a fireside chat with Vanessa Barboni Hallik, founder of New York-based womenswear brand Another Tomorrow, which has managed to sail through the turbulence faced by so many of its peers via prioritising desirability alongside sustainability and supply chain resilience. In addition to targeting investors with a long-term view, Barboni Hallik detailed the holistic “systems thinking” approach that has kept the brand going. “Before we even had a designer or a brand name, I looked at why things fail to scale in the consumer landscape,” she said. “A lot of it was a prioritisation of sustainability, but without a deep understanding of why the customer buys products. So product integrity and design were absolutely central to us and we really invested in that.”
Clever marketing can be a linchpin for circularity
Depop CMO Peter Semple shared how the resale marketplace sets out to make secondhand buying and selling “exciting”, with a view to encourage the mass adoption of circular fashion. “We need people to think differently from what they’ve been conditioned to do, like buying new for so many years,” he said.
This poses a challenge as Depop scales and the market matures. The platform, which was initially laser focused on Gen Z, now wants to attract a broader demographic — and “exciting” means different things to different generations. “We needed to regulate some of the cool edginess we had, to broaden the audience that we could appeal to,” Semple said. Something that has played out in its localised channels and influencer partnerships: in the US, for example, Depop might lean more into YouTube and focus its communications on the value you can get from buying secondhand; in other markets, it makes more of an effort to provoke a cultural conversation with younger generations. “Some of our marketing investments are intentionally non-scalable, but we do them because they’re interesting,” he said.
A long-term view is required
For the first panel discussion of the day, Will Sheane, CEO of Finisterre; Amy Tsang, head of Europe at The Mills Fabrica; Eshita Kabra-Davies, founder and CEO of By Rotation; and Andrew Wolfson, CEO of Pembroke VCT, compared notes on raising capital for purpose-driven brands and circular startups. “It was really tough,” said Kabra-Davies, recalling the seed funding round (which reached £2.3 million in 2022) for By Rotation, the peer-to-peer resale marketplace she founded five years ago. “What really got us there was being able to show growth and being revenue generating — I think that’s something that’s really expected in the UK. Consumer brands are not able to raise crazy amounts of funding just from an idea.”
The Mills Fabrica invests in and accelerates startups that are driving planet-positive change. Tsang shared the key criteria the company looks for: innovation to address a market need, scalability and, most importantly, impact. This requires a long-term view. “I think sometimes, as an investor, it’s easy to forget the kind of mammoth challenge that some of these startups, especially the ones developing the B2B solutions, are looking to tackle,” she said. “It takes time to try, test, fail, learn, improve and perfect. So while we do want to see the path to profitability, it doesn’t have to be immediate.”
Wolfson and Sheane echoed this. “We’ve become a society that’s been driven by immediacy and success. If you want to build a brand that is going to be worth something, you need to have a much longer term vision,” said Wolfson.
Suppliers should have a seat at the table
Fashion is designed by brands, but it is made by suppliers, and it’s the suppliers who are at risk from both the luxury slowdown and climate change. For the second panel of the day, we invited Hirdaramani Group partner Nikhil Hirdaramani, Lanificio Cangioli 1859 president and co-owner Vincenzo Cangioli, and Apparel Impact Institute’s manager of stakeholder engagement Andrés Bragagnini to shed light on how suppliers are being affected by each factor, while creating a shared blueprint for supply chain transformation based on equity, transparency and resilience. Panelists were keen to emphasise that the lack of standardisation in sustainability strategies and regulations is placing more pressure on already squeezed suppliers, causing audit fatigue and stalling progress. This is only exacerbated by the lack of supply chain knowledge among decision-makers in brands, said Cangioli. “We’ve got a problem where brands think they know their supply chain, but they only know it through the numbers. They don’t really understand how we process products, what we can do and how complex this is.”
Moving from short-term, transactional relationships to long-term, strategic partnerships requires a system of incentives and disincentives, Bragagnini explained. For aII, the gold standard is at least three-year deals, whereby all stakeholders have skin in the game, and multiple brands or suppliers can co-invest to share the financial risk and give the initiative “more oxygen”. Throughout all of this, it’s vital that the supply chain has a seat at the table, added Hirdaramani. Brands might set sustainability targets and strategies, but it will be suppliers that put them into practice. “At the end of the day, all of these initiatives need us to actually prevail,” Hirdaramani said.
For next-gen materials, price is a deal-breaker
Circulose’s story underlines the magnitude of challenges facing those fighting to reduce fashion’s impact on the environment at scale. Its former self, Renewcell, filed for bankruptcy in February, sending shock waves through the sustainable fashion community.
Now, the company has risen from the ashes with a new backer in the form of private equity firm Altor. It has been renamed after its hero product Circulose — a pulp made from 100 per cent textile waste that can be used to replace high-impact raw materials like cotton and viscose — and has hired a new top team that includes former H&M Group CEO Helena Helmersson, who joined as chair on 1 December.
At Fashion Futures, Helmersson shared the key learnings from Renewcell’s bankruptcy and acquisition. There was one big takeaway: the price of Circulose needs to come down. “When looking at feedback from brands — and, of course, I have my own experiences from my time with H&M Group — the biggest point has been that it was very expensive,” said Helmersson. One way it plans to tackle this is by coordinating more closely with companies at different stages of the supply chain, she said. Bringing large brands on board will also be important to achieve efficiencies of scale.
Helmersson’s commitment to bringing Circulose back to market was clear. “The [Renewcell] team did something remarkable with developing this technology and bringing it to scale,” she said. Production ground to a halt in February; she said the ambition is to get it back up and running by the start of 2026 — though that is entirely dependent on brand interest. “We will ramp up the production when we know the demand.”
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