For the past few months, there have been whispers that New York Climate Week 2025 would be a subdued affair, with fewer attendees and many companies scaling back their participation in light of President Donald Trump’s ongoing anti-ESG backlash. The reality couldn’t have been further from this — a sure sign that the sustainability movement has no plans to go quietly.
“The city was buzzing with events, engagement and momentum,” says Eva von Alvensleben, executive director and secretary general of The Fashion Pact, which hosted its Operations Committee with chief sustainability officers in New York last week, as well as a more public-facing event on its Future Supplier Initiative on the Thursday.
“Even in an increasingly challenging and complex world, all the discussions I attended were rooted in solutions and solidarity,” adds Kate Wylie, global chief sustainability officer at Chanel, who hosted a closed-door roundtable focused on “uncommon collaborations” in supply chains at Goals House, the United Nations-led convention space that bridges Climate Week and the UN General Assembly (UNGA). “We’ve seen firsthand how bringing together unexpected partners can spark innovation and accelerate change,” she adds, pointing to Chanel’s partnership with the University of Cambridge to upskill over 500 of its leaders, and the luxury brand’s recent launch of Nevold, a business-to-business (B2B) platform designed to scale recycled materials.
The event, held at the Bowery Hotel in New York City, brought together industry leaders to discuss the intersection of technology and sustainability, and how it’s reshaping business.
Throughout the week, it became clear that the reports of companies scaling back climate commitments were really more about reframing the rhetoric so the work can continue in polarising times. On a panel about tech-enabled reuse, Kate Sanner, co-founder and CEO of smart shopping startup Beni, said environmental impact can always be the goal, but it should not always be the selling point. “I’m selling you style and affordability. Sustainability is the gift with purchase,” she quipped. At Vogue Business Fashion Futures, Phia co-founder Sophia Kianni echoed this message, highlighting how the browser extension for scouring secondhand fashion sites has generated 500,000 downloads in its first five months, by appealing to price sensitivity rather than relying on sustainability to motivate behavioural change.
“Other major themes have been perspective shifts and finding unlikely allies,” says Ellen Jackowski, chief sustainability officer at Mastercard. “When you start seeing everyone as a potential partner, perhaps just with different expertise, that’s where the breakthroughs happen. The most exciting conversations I’ve had this week weren’t with the usual sustainability crowd, but with the innovators, financiers and industry leaders who are approaching the transition to a regenerative economy from completely different angles. Common ground isn’t just nice to have, it’s where you unlock the scale and resources needed to move the needle.”
While the turnout was better than expected, it would be wrong to suggest that the political climate isn’t affecting corporate progress, says Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert. “Some companies have pulled back their commitments, but many remain dedicated to making progress. They are, however, evolving the language used to talk about climate and ESG [environmental social and governance], which is welcome, because corporate jargon isn’t getting us anywhere.” Despite this, the fear spreading across corporate America is undeniable, he adds. “The UN Global Compact found that 88 per cent of CEOs believe the business case for sustainability is stronger now than five years ago, but only 50 per cent are comfortable talking about what they are doing around the issue. Businesses are pulling back their communications due to fear of scrutiny, or even uncertainty around how to talk about it, but corporate voices are needed more than ever. The US is losing — or has already lost — its competitive edge due to how unpredictable and anti-science policy has become.”
Corporate plus charisma
What sets New York Climate Week apart from other sustainability forums is the unique combination of “New York’s corporate density” and UNGA’s “diplomatic convening power”, says Jackowski. “You get CEOs, policymakers and innovators all stuck in the same traffic, literally and figuratively working through the same challenges. I’ve had more breakthrough conversations in hallways and elevators this week than in weeks of scheduled calls. When the stakes are this high and the right people are all in one place, serendipity becomes strategy.”
“No other event allows you to skip from perspectives on Indigenous culture to tech solutions, to women-led action, to corporate innovation and standards development, in such a short space of time,” says Lucy Shea, CEO of change agency Futerra.
The involvement of financiers was a highlight for others, too, especially since sustainability teams often struggle to get chief finance officers to buy in. “Again and again, we heard discussions about how to channel corporate capital into decarbonisation, how to bring financial teams on board, and how to balance long-term ambition with short to medium-term realities,” explains von Alvensleben. “Equally important was the emphasis on anchoring solutions in business realities. In today’s volatile global context, abstract commitments are no longer enough. Climate action needs to be positioned not just as an environmental necessity, but also as a compelling business case.”
This collective spirit was on full display at the Climate and Nature Studio, a two-day conference brought together by Textile Exchange, Apparel Impact Institute (Aii), Global Fashion Agenda, Cascale, ZDHC, Worldly, Fashion For Good and The Fashion Pact. “It was a powerful reminder that challenges of this scale can’t be solved in silos, and that collective spaces for exchange are essential to driving action,” von Alvensleben says.
Catherine David, CEO of the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), says her highlight was getting a selfie with the actor Matt Damon, and then watching him be “upstaged” by Pemmy Majodina, South Africa’s Minister for Water and Sanitation, who “raised the roof” with her rallying cry that “Water is life, sanitation is dignity”.
Culture emerged as a key driver of change throughout the week, says Kerry Bannigan, co-founder of the UN Fashion and Lifestyle Network and president of the board at PVBLIC Foundation. “At the SDG [Sustainable Development Goals] media zone, we explored how heritage functions as soft power, how community and resale are reshaping circularity, and how cultural narratives can mobilise people where policy alone cannot,” she explains. “By bridging fashion, media and diplomacy, we can harness culture and creativity as catalysts for systemic change, and ensure that sustainability is not a side discussion but central to shaping our shared future.”
Pushing beyond panel discussions
Many events trialled new formats, hoping to foster more constructive dialogues rather than relying on a seemingly endless stream of panel discussions. Copenhagen Fashion Week, for one, hosted a closed-door roundtable about the potential role of fashion weeks and fashion councils in catalysing positive change in the industry, moderated by yours truly. Likewise, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and the Swarovski Foundation staged an exhibition and showcase about the future of sustainable materials.
Climate Week kicked off with the inaugural Nat Gala, a fundraising event designed to galvanise investment in nature finance, which attracted Hollywood big hitters Jane Fonda and Harrison Ford, music stars like Billie Eilish, as well as an impressive array of financiers and business leaders.
Following on from Sunday’s gala, advocacy organisation The Nat hosted a series of industry-specific roundtables during Climate Week. At the fashion event, hosted on the 41st floor of the Salesforce Tower, guests discussed four of fashion’s biggest hurdles: sourcing, circularity, designing for longevity and educating consumers.
Nicole Rycroft, founder and executive director of non-profit Canopy, says co-hosting a roundtable with the Laudes Foundation at H&M’s New York HQ was a highlight of her week. The event explored how blended finance can help scale next-gen materials in India, the US and Europe. “The conversation was pragmatic and focused on how we leapfrog pilots to the true, market-scale production of low-carbon, circular fibres,” she notes. “More to come.”
To raise awareness of the global need to protect the Amazon Rainforest, designer Gabriela Hearst hosted an intimate lunch with actress and activist Fonda, as well as Indigenous activist Nemonte Nenquimo and her husband Mitch Anderson, who co-founded the campaigning non-profit Amazon Frontlines to mobilise Indigenous land defenders against environmental destruction. All three were in town for the Nat Gala, where Fonda honoured Stella McCartney for her services to environmentalism, while Nenquimo was honoured for her ongoing activism.
A week of launches and announcements
Throughout the week, textile-to-textile recycling solution Reju ran an immersive augmented reality experience, which passersby could access via QR codes in high-traffic areas near key Climate Week venues. Upon scanning the code, users could point their cameras at the Empire State and Flatiron buildings, where they would see mountains of textile waste overlaying the two iconic New York City landmarks. “It’s a wake-up call, but also a glimpse of hope. This is the very waste Reju is designed to transform, turning discarded textiles into high-quality materials and closing the loop in fashion and beyond,” said Reju CEO Patrik Frisk in a statement about the stunt.
At Solutions House, change agency Futerra staged an impressive roster of events, including one of my personal highlights: a panel about how mainstream television shows from Bollywood to Love Island can integrate climate storytelling. Futerra and Oxford Net Zero also launched their white paper, ‘Spheres of Influence’, introducing a framework for companies to get credit for climate action that goes beyond emissions reductions. The framework is now open for consultation, and Futerra is particularly keen to get feedback from fashion companies. Running simultaneously is Futerra’s new ‘Fuck Doom’ campaign, which tackles youth fatalism and encourages people to “please recycle your despair responsibly”.
With such a strong focus on scaling solutions through collective action, it was only fitting that intelligence platform Plasticfree made its entire database of plastic alternatives open source. “If we want AI to shape a better future, it must be fed trusted, science-backed, human-verified data,” said Sian Sutherland, co-founder of Plasticfree and campaigning organisation A Plastic Planet, in a statement. “In a world where misinformation races ahead of truth, Plasticfree is building a foundation of knowledge that people and machines can trust, a compass for real change in how we source and produce nature-safe and human-safe materials, and create systems for how we make and consume the stuff we need.”
Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) launched the Fashion CEO Agenda 2025, urging business leaders to accelerate action at the midpoint to 2030. It also announced that LVMH has joined its ranks as a strategic partner, signalling closer collaboration to come between the luxury group and its competitors, Kering and Chanel. “Climate change is the defining certainty in an uncertain global world, impacting all lives and communities,” GFA CEO Federica Marchionni said in a statement. “The investments needed to future-proof businesses will keep increasing and the cost of inaction will inevitably become greater than the investments needed to address it.”
Circularity is king
Circularity was top of the agenda, notes Rycroft. “The brand-heavy agendas positioned circular production as near-term operations, not distant moonshots,” she says. “That was an important mindset shift.”
Among the circularity-adjacent announcements was the extension of Mastercard’s Start Path programme, which supports startups as they scale and has welcomed over 500 from more than 60 countries since its founding in 2014. It now counts circular fashion company Save Your Wardrobe among its beneficiaries. “We’re witnessing the moment circularity moves from aspiration to infrastructure,” says Jackowski. “That’s the real highlight — seeing entrepreneurs build the rails for a circular future that consumers are already demanding.” Indeed, David says it “wasn’t as hard as [she] thought it would be” to build traction around WRAP’s Circular Living campaign.
This shift was felt across Climate Week, adds Reniera O’Donnell, executive lead for retail at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. “Companies are now recognising the opportunity in front of them to stay competitive and asking how to scale circularity across their business,” she explains. “I leave New York encouraged by the fact that companies are realising that the move to a circular economy is no longer a nice to have, but a business-critical strategy to build resilience and mitigate against resource scarcity and supply chain shocks.”
Blind spots remain, but progress is undeniable
As with many sustainability-focused events, the main criticism centres around the people that were not included. “We have to ensure these forums are diverse and representative of solution holders. If we don’t unite theory with the lived reality of what communities face, we won’t achieve the progress we need,” says Wylie. “During previous climate weeks, we have called for greater inclusion of women, who are leading nature and climate resilience work but are often not sufficiently heard, seen or invested in.”
Another glaring gap was the representation of primary producers, says von Alvensleben. “The manufacturers, farmers and suppliers on the front lines of production. Their perspectives are essential if we want policies and initiatives that work in practice, not just in theory.”
When Thulsi Narayanasamy, director of international advocacy at Worker Rights Consortium, spoke on a panel about garment workers struggling with extreme heat — in an aptly hot room in NoHo — she was pleasantly surprised by how receptive the audience was. “I hadn’t expected to have such an enthusiastic audience when discussing why the fundamental shifts required in the structure of clothes manufacturing to ensure living wages and decent work, are the same shifts needed to reduce the negative impact of fashion on the climate. That has given me great hope,” Narayanasamy says.
Still, she says many Climate Week events missed this fundamental point. “You can’t have environmental sustainability while abusing workers’ rights, and you can’t protect garment workers’ rights while ignoring fashion’s climate footprint — the causes of both are inextricably linked and the solutions must be, too,” Narayanasamy explains.
There is a potential oversight in the way ordinary people are positioned at Climate Week, too, says WRAP’s David. “The consumer was well represented, but the rights holder and voting member of the public, not so much. Perhaps that’s a difficult perspective to create right now given the intense political polarisation we’re seeing, much of which was playing out at the UN General Assembly meetings, just round the block from Climate Week.”
Future Climate Week programming is likely to focus more on water as shortages rise around the world and water scarcity becomes a bigger issue for businesses, predicts Rycroft. Likewise, the growing conversation around climate resilience will mean future events integrate more Indigenous and local leaders, as environmental and social proponents form closer ties.
Overall, Climate Week felt surprisingly hopeful. “Climate Week has evolved, and it’s starting to move markets,” says Rycroft. “What was once a space for protest and pledges now feels like a strategy floor where capital, policy and industry are being rewired in real time. Activists are still here — and vital — but now they’re joined by billion-dollar brands, institutional investors and finance architects working to scale solutions rather than just discuss them.”
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