Dr. Elizabeth Segran is a Senior Staff Writer at Fast Company. Today, Liz joins Ross and guest host Lorraine Smith to discuss how fashion works, explaining how the industry has evolved over the last 150 years to a system in which clothes are disposable. She explores the environmental cost of fast fashion, describing the dangers of using synthetic material and the tremendous waste associated with producing inventory well beyond what consumers are likely to buy.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hey everyone, welcome to season two of Reversing Climate Change. We are doing that podcast thing now and launching a Patreon. You can find it at patreon.com slash noripodcasts. There are various tiers with different types of goodies available. Do you want to receive a special newsletter digest of what norinauts are reading that week? Be a part of a nori book club? Get special access to nori events? Go take a look at patreon.com slash noripodcasts for what we’re offering. And in that spirit of being lean in that startup kind of way that, you know, we like to do, this list of goodies is subject to change and we’d very much like your feedback.
Is there something that you’d really like to see but it isn’t listed here? Honest feedback does a lot to help us shape what we offer to you. You can send an email to podcast. nori.com or fill out our podcast survey anonymously in our newsletter which you can find at nori.com slash subscribe. And thank you so much for listening to another season of Reversing Climate Change. Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon, lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. We have an alumna on the show co-hosting with me, guest hosting, Lorraine Smith.
Thank you so much for being here with me.
B. Lorraine Smith: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be back.
Ross Kenyon: I love that I can tap you on the shoulder whenever I have questions about the textile industry, about how fashion, how clothes are made, the supply chains of them. I find it very interesting, but I am knee high on a grasshopper. What’s this? Some stupid idiot. I don’t know how it works, basically. So thank you for teaching me and being here.
B. Lorraine Smith: Thank you for humoring my guidance. It’s a pleasure.
Ross Kenyon: It’s my pleasure. Well, we saw a couple articles coming out of Fast Company from Liz Siegren, who is a senior staff writer at Fast Company. We saw these articles you’ve been writing about how fashion should be regulated, what’s happening with color. I don’t understand how this works. We’re going to get into how fashion changes and evolves. Lorraine, do you want to just introduce yourself a little bit here?
B. Lorraine Smith: Sure. Yeah. So I’m wearing a couple hats for this conversation, along with the hat I always wear, which is a huge fan of Nori. I am an advisor to companies who are interested in being more sustainable and in particular these days really pushing towards a regenerative economy. So moving beyond just less bad and trying to be net positive or net awesome as a part of their business model. And I’m also a longtime maker of textiles. So I’m a spinner, knitter, weaver, been playing with strings since the mid 70s. So I get to bring both of those pieces of my life to bear for this conversation.
I’m glad to be here.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s great. And Lorraine, you’ve been helping me get into knitting, which I found to be a very peaceful and enjoyable habit to be doing in COVID-19 days. So thank you for...
Elizabeth Segran: Oh my gosh, I just picked up knitting myself. And it’s a form of meditation, I feel.
B. Lorraine Smith: If we need to, we can turn this into a tutorial. I am also a speed hitter and I’ve been on, I don’t usually bring this into my intro, but since you think of it as meditation, I’ll just say it can also be a speed sport. And I’ve been on speed knitting and spinning teams from Canada. So when you’re ready to do the next level, let me know and we’ll have some fun. Yeah, sounds good.
Ross Kenyon: That was one of the first things I started thinking about when I was knitting. I was like, I bet there’s on YouTube people who are doing this so absurdly fast that it’s beautiful. And not surprised. I checked and there absolutely is tonnes of that. Would recommend this, Liz. Okay, serious time. Let’s get into actually what we’re here to do, which is how does fashion work, Liz? I don’t know how the supply chains work. I don’t know how they get to me. I don’t understand what determines what is cool in a given fashion.
What colors are in? I’ll just be like, one day I’ll wake up and be like, why is everyone wearing mustard shirts? Why is that all that I see on the street today? And I feel like totally passive. I don’t understand how these decisions are made. Just give us an overview. What’s happening? How did these decisions get made?
Elizabeth Segran: Yeah, this is actually fascinating and it’s something that I’ve been very interested in myself because I didn’t actually start my career as a fashion journalist. I sort of came to this over the last couple of years and so this has been an education for me and I found it fascinating. I think that the best way to talk about this is to go back about a hundred years because for most of history, People didn’t really have a lot of choice when it came to clothing. It was much harder and more complex to make clothes.
And so, you know, 100 years ago, you know, 150 years ago, only very wealthy people were able to have Lots of clothes in their closet that they would bring out as a form of self-expression or as a status symbol. The average person had a few garments, usually handmade, and they would basically wear those garments out. And so fashion really wasn’t part of the equation for most of human history. I mean, there were general trends in terms of what clothes people wore, but fashion as we know it is actually a relatively And so basically, you know, over the last, you know, 100 to 200 years, things changed as it became a lot easier as we developed various technologies to making clothes.
And so it just became easier to mass produce them. It became a lot less expensive. And so as clothes became more affordable, it was possible for people to acquire more clothes in their closet. And then the entire function of clothes changed from being something that was very practical to something that was what we think of it today as a form of self-expression. Well, all of this changed a lot over the last 70 or 80 years. At about the beginning of The last century, a whole complex, I would call it like the fashion industrial complex began to develop.
And first of all, there were these department stores that sold clothes. And one thing that they thought would be really great to get people to come through the door was for them to have these little fashion shows where they would show, you know, wealthy New York women what the latest trends were. And that turned out to be a great idea. People decided that, you know, it was really great to have new clothes every season. And at the time, it was still relatively wealthy people who did that. But that basically kickstarted this entire trend that we now know as seasonal fashion trends.
And so basically over the last, you know, 70 years, fashion designers have started to design clothes seasonally. So there’ll be essentially two collections. There’s the fall winter collection, and then there’s a spring summer collection. So basically, if you think about it, the entire notion of clothing changed, right? It suddenly became something that was trend driven, which meant that clothes that were from several And so, clothes essentially became, on some level, disposable, right? Because suddenly there was a shelf life to the garment. Of course, for most of, you know, the last And so brands like H&M and Zara and all of these brands that you’re familiar with as fast fashion, Their whole goal was to democratize this whole concept of fashion.
And so what they were trying to do was say, look, there’s this beautiful notion of having these beautiful garments that are seasonal and that reflect particular trends. We want everybody to be able to access these clothes. We don’t want just wealthy people to do that. So they found ways to make clothes very, very cheap. And they did this by using much less expensive materials like synthetic materials instead of organic materials. So instead of using wool and cotton, they started using essentially plastic-based materials to replicate some of these designs. And they also found ways to manufacture very cheaply by using very inexpensive labor.
So they took their supply chains to China and Bangladesh and parts of the world where labor was a lot cheaper. And that has resulted in the world that you live in today, where they’re turning out even more frequently than twice a year. Most brands are turning out new sets of clothes every few months. Even though you probably find it hard to identify exactly how a trend comes into being, these companies are sitting down six to nine months before their collections hit the stands, right? We are going to essentially determine and forecast what is going to be trendy six to nine months from now.
They look at color palettes. They look at what colors and patterns were in vogue the previous season and last year. And they try and create looks that are very different from that so that those old looks cannot be recycled the next year without you feeling really awkward about it. And so there’s now this entire industrial complex that is basically there to make you feel like clothes that you bought two years ago are no longer wearable today.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, there’s so much there, Lorraine. I don’t know if you have a preference for where to dive in. I guess the first thing that comes to my head is I wonder how many fortunes have been lost where someone’s like, I think what’s going to happen this next season, I think it’s going to be all about pastel fedoras. And then they bet everything. So that’s the level of contribution that I’m bringing to the table here.
Elizabeth Segran: And so what they’re doing is they’re acting a little bit like VC companies that invest in a lot of different portfolios. They’re basically investing in a lot of different looks and they’re making the code so cheaply. So they’re assuming a certain amount of loss because they’re not going to make good bets on everything. Is that something that you’ve seen yourself, Lorraine?
B. Lorraine Smith: Yeah, yeah. I was thinking very similarly along those lines. And there’s actually a great article written by a woman who worked in fashion and branding, a woman named Katia Bartlemes, maybe we can put in the show notes, that touches on some amazing stats around inventory, where exactly as you say, you know, the business model is predicated on what they’re likely to sell. And exactly as you say, Liz, they know they’re not likely to sell everything. And so it’s still profitable to have inventories well beyond what consumers are likely to buy.
And knowing those things will most likely be landfilled or, you know, sort of remaindered, if you will. And I think we’re seeing dialogue on that, but not meaningful enough. Although the situation we’re in right now with the virus that is affecting how people consume or don’t, and obviously lots of stores shuttered and not seeing that walkthrough traffic buying at retail, though it’ll be interesting to see how it influences online shopping. But one of the things I’d like to see us hearing more about, and I’m really curious, Liz, if this came up, I loved your provocation around the regulation like the oil and gas industry.
We know oil and gas has been feeling pressure around climate and reducing use of fossil fuels and reducing emissions for some time. And that’s been part of the public parlance and the issues around regulation. Companies like H&M that really get targeted around fast fashion, they Haven’t had that same kind of pressure yet, but they are talking about becoming more circular. You know, we’re seeing these great claims around contributing to the circular economy and exactly what that means other than, you know, taking some stuff back. It’s a little bit more complicated than that.
It’s going to be interesting, but they’re not really signaling that to their investors. So there’s a lot of consumer dialogue around recycling or more eco-friendly clothing, but that still doesn’t seem to be landing in the investor or really the asset allocation conversation, which is where your point around regulation could start to get really, really interesting. And I’m curious if you’re seeing more about that or what the feedback was on that notion, because there’s a lot of power behind that. Bigger regulatory climate change conversation versus just let’s consume less or wear that mustard shirt three seasons in a row or whatever it may be.
Do you have thoughts on that?
Elizabeth Segran: Yeah. I mean, you know, interesting that you’re bringing that up. You know, Ross, before you were talking about how, you know, the average consumer is just not aware of basically all of this, right? This entire process. And neither was I until I started really digging into this and researching it, you know, as part of my job. But yeah, essentially, we’re talking about how these companies are essentially assuming that entire chunks of their inventory are just going to be thrown into a landfill. And so the cost, the environmental cost of that is enormous.
So what that means is that All of the labor, the resources, the carbon emissions that went into that entire set of clothes has just been completely wasted. There’s no utility that anybody’s getting out of that. It’s just shocking, right? And I think the average person doesn’t fully understand that. And the way that companies are talking about it, about the environment and about its sustainability, You know, they’re talking about this whole thing about circularity and recycling clothes, you know, putting them in, you know, essentially secondhand markets, things like that. I mean, that’s just kind of really scratching the surface of the problem here, right?
Because at this point, we don’t have A textile recycling system that is on par with, say, paper recycling or aluminum recycling. If that was the case, then it would be a slightly different scenario, right? You could basically take all of the clothes that they’re wasting, in addition to all of the clothes that we’re wearing eight times before we throw out, and then putting them in some sort of recycling bin that would then turn those clothes back into new clothes. But we don’t have that technology yet, right? So essentially what’s going on is that The vast majority of clothes are not getting much utility before we throw them out.
And so that’s because of all of these inventory issues that we’re talking about and also because the entire fast fashion system has made clothes so cheaply, as I mentioned before, that even when you do buy something, you might even buy it at full price. It’s so inexpensive that you don’t think of it as a durable long-term purchase. And so as a result, you’re wearing it eight or nine times. There’s some statistics that show that the average garment is worn a shocking So in some ways, you know, those things are not really that different, right?
Like buying an item, wearing it eight times, then throwing it out or having that item just kind of thrown out like before even getting worn. I mean, it’s not really that different, you know, the way that we’re treating both of these garments. Basically, we’re treating clothes as disposable. Okay, so that’s one thing to think about. And so then, there are all of these externalities, there are all of these social costs to these garments being disposable. And so if we put them in a landfill, we know that because... At least 60% of our garments are made of synthetic materials, which is plastic, essentially.
If we put them in a landfill, they’re not going to decompose. They’re not going to biodegrade. They’re just going to clog up those landfills. A proportion of that plastic-based material will end up in the ocean, where it will be either consumed by sea life, It’ll break down into smaller bits and then sea animals will eat it. And then it’ll end up as part of our food chain. So basically there are tiny bits of plastic that are ending up in fish that we are consuming. And the initial studies about that suggest that our bodies are perceiving those tiny bits of microplastics as toxins.
And so we’re only just beginning to learn about how essentially this entire system is essentially harming our health in that way. And so that’s what happens if it goes into the landfill. But in some cases, you know, these clothes are essentially incinerated, right? And so if we’re incinerating garments, then we’re essentially taking garments, using a lot of carbon to make them, and then immediately turning them into And so basically, that is what the fashion industry is doing to the environment. And that is the impact it’s having on climate. And currently, it’s really hard.
For us to identify exactly, to quantify exactly what impact that has. Although initial studies suggest that the carbon impacts of the fashion industry are enormous, right? I mean, I think that there are several statistics out there that suggest that it might be even larger than international air travel and maritime shipping combined. That is the impact that this industry has. And yet, while oil and gas is being regulated, and while things like the car industry, the automotive industry, that is being regulated, there is nobody that is regulating the fashion industry. And this is a really, really, really big problem and something that I think people need to start addressing.
Mm-hmm.
B. Lorraine Smith: Yeah, you’re touching on such a key thing because everybody wears clothes. Like it’s a little bit ridiculous to point out, but it’s sort of illegal to leave home without them. And yet it’s really not being addressed in terms of the impacts it has. I want to circle back, if you’ll pardon the pun, to something that you mentioned a bit earlier around the circular economy and this potential for companies to be more circular. And I want to just level set a little bit what I’m hearing people say around circular economy and then what I understand is actually meant by it because I think there’s a bit of a disconnect there and it’s maybe a beautiful space to surf around in a little because if we close that gap, things could get kind of interesting.
So when I hear people talking about the circular economy, I often then hear things like recycling or in the context of clothing take-back programs where companies will take garments back or help sort of upcycle. And I think those are important things and we don’t want to see less of that. But if we look at what is the definition of the circular economy, like what it actually entails, it’s really at much more of a fundamental business model level in terms of how a company creates value. And I always look to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation as the sort of go-to resource around circular economy definitions and conversations because they really have become a global reference and put a lot of really useful resources out there.
And there’s three elements that they point to as fundamental to circular economy principles. And almost none of them really comes up when you hear people saying, yeah, this is more circular. So I’ll quickly bullet them. The first is designing out waste and pollution. And the key there is design. From the beginning, the process isn’t, as you say, Liz, using materials that are going to lead to waste and pollution because they’re petrochemical based and will end up in the ocean. So designing out waste and pollution. Keeping products and materials in use, and that’s where fast fashion needs to pull up its socks and make sure that those are really durable materials that will stay in a productive loop.
And the last one, which I think is the beautiful space I want to hover for a moment, is to regenerate natural systems. And this is something that I see a lot of inspiration happening today or these days, which is around the possibilities that a business, by doing business, can be part of regenerating natural systems. So not just reducing how harmful processes are or looking at those externalities and trying to minimize them or minimize the risks to the business, but actually looking at the business and saying, what would it mean to regenerate ecosystems as a result of our business being in business.
So I look at H&M, for example, and they’ve got some amazing ambitions. They have publicly stated that they aim to be 100% circular, their whole business 100% circular by 2030. That is a decade away. That’s kind of now-ish in terms of industrial planning, capital allocation for manufacturing. It’s not quite what color will the neckties be next season, but it’s pretty much around the corner. And I am seeing companies, I think of a company like Eileen Fisher, that has been for decades really exploring their supply chain, the dyes that are used, the materials they’re using, and really aiming for this level of regeneration.
I think they’re pointing towards that. Other companies, you know, Patagonia, I’d say, is maybe leaning a little closer to fast fashion. Eileen Fisher’s got those sort of lifetime pieces, definitely not fast fashion. But I think until we get to that as a common notion, We’re going to struggle. We’re going to be chasing our tails a little and trying to sort of pin down the bad guys. And I’m not sure what the regulation opportunity is there, but I’m curious if you have a point of view on that because I see, you know, your comment around we don’t have regulation clothing.
I just think that’s so important and it’s not even on the table. What could it look like if the regulation actually wasn’t just reducing harm, but really getting real benefits?
Elizabeth Segran: Well, I think the problem now is that the fashion industry and fashion supply chains are just so spread out. And as a result, it’s much harder to identify the different players and to essentially regulate different parts of the process. And I think it’s interesting because... Part of what has made fashion the way it is, that is, you know, so inexpensive, creating so many pieces in each one of us is apparently, so apparently every year more than 200 billion articles of clothing are made for, you know, A population of 8 billion humans.
Just being able to produce that many garments requires this global supply chain that’s very complex. And so if you think about all of the different pieces that go into that, there’s everything from The production of the raw materials, so growing cotton, getting wool from sheep to producing the synthetic fibers. There’s the milling process. So usually those materials go to an entirely different place where they’re milled and turned into fabrics. And then those fabrics are then shipped to a completely other place where they’re turned into clothes. Then they’re shipped to the brand who then ships it out.
And so that’s many, many, many pieces of the puzzle. And very frequently, brands are using multiple supply chains to make their clothes. So they’re not even just using one. So the question is, who do we ask to be responsible? Who do we have pay the taxes and make responsible for this? And in some ways, that’s a very complex question. In some ways, you know, if you think about it slightly differently, it could be kind of an easy one, right? So in France, so the question of regulation came up to me because I read about how in France, there is a government minister who works in the division of essentially sustainability.
Her official title is not minister of fashion, but she has used her Role in government in the sustainability department to focus on the fashion industry. And obviously, France is still a center of fashion. And so some of the things that she’s recommended are that she’s forbidding brands from burning inventory. So coming back to this very first thing that we’re talking about, where entire trunks of inventory are getting burned. So she basically has forbid that. But I think that one thing we could potentially do is we could hold... The brands accountable for what they’re doing.
We could tax the brands because if the brands that are ordering these clothes have to pay penalties for various ways that they’re creating waste and pollution, then they will in turn get other parts of their supply chain in line so that they will be wasting less. So that’s one way for us to deal with this. Regulation, I mean, it’s a complex question, but that’s one approach. But the other thing that’s interesting is, so you think about specifically this issue of carbon, and it’s interesting seeing how companies are dealing with this.
There’s been this movement over the last couple of years for brands to try and move towards carbon neutrality. And this is coming from the brands themselves, obviously, because there’s no... External regulation here. But in watching some of these brands try to regulate themselves, we get a sense of what could happen if the government were trying to regulate this industry. So for instance, I think Gucci is a really good example because the CEO of Gucci has basically put out a challenge to other CEOs to be carbon neutral. And he’s kind of using his own company as kind of a guinea pig for how He would do that.
And basically becoming carbon neutral means that he needs to analyze every single part of his own supply chain, which goes all the way, actually the largest proportion of carbon that is produced in the fashion supply chain happens very, very low down in the lower parts of the supply chain. So like in the production of the raw materials. So for Gucci, what this means is that it needs to have audits They have to analyze all of that. They are the ones who are responsible for that. And they basically have to analyze every part of that supply chain and essentially offset it, right?
So the onus is entirely then on the company to do that. And so what this means is that the company is on the one hand, Understanding its own supply chain very well. And then because it’s paying for every unit of carbon that it uses, the incentive is for it to then try and reduce the amount of carbon that it’s using in its own supply chain. So basically if governments did this, if it was not Gucci itself that was imposing these regulations on itself, but if it was the government that was asking That every company do this and pay for the carbon that it was using, it could radically transform the entire supply chain.
And finally, to your point, Lorraine, about regeneration. So what Gucci is doing in this context is that it’s basically offsetting its carbon by tree planting initiatives in regenerative agriculture in various parts of the world. Talking a little bit about the circularity thing, that’s basically what it’s trying to do. It’s basically paying for its carbon by essentially regenerative agriculture. In other contexts, we hear about brands that are doing similar things in terms of its sustainability initiatives, where it’s not just not doing bad, but it’s trying to do good. Here’s my issue with that.
My issue with that is that if you’re a successful fashion brand, it’s actually not that expensive for you to devote a proportion of your revenue to regenerative agriculture or various regenerative systems, right? Nature-based systems, right? And I think that’s a good step. It’s certainly more than what lots of other companies are doing. But I ultimately think that the real problem that we’re dealing with right now is that we’re overconsuming. The entire system that we’ve talked about, you know, from the very beginning of this podcast, this idea that, you know, we went from like 100 years ago, having a few clothes in our closets that were functional pieces, and that we held on to for a long time, Being in a world where it is now possible for even middle class and lower middle class people to own lots of garments that they throw out, that is ultimately the real issue here.
And I think that in order for us to deal with this issue and basically to tackle the issue of fashion’s impact on the environment, we first need to change consumption habits. And we first need to get back to a place where clothes are durable goods that can last a long time. And once that has happened, then I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be talking about things like I think that all of those things are really good, but I think that the overarching problem here is just that we have so much stuff and we’ve created a system where it is totally reasonable to have For the average person to have over 300 articles of clothing in their closet and wearing a tiny proportion of that, like I think 20% of that.
That’s something that needs to be addressed, I think, before any of the other stuff will actually kick in and have an effect.
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Check out attitude.com and use promo code Nori. And now back to the show. Well, it’s good that you bring that up because that’s what I wanted to ask because I’m one of those people that if I had my way, I would own, I don’t even own that many pieces of clothing now, not out of some ethical duty that I feel imposed upon me by conscience or otherwise, but I don’t really enjoy shopping very much. The aesthetic that I like is sort of timeless. I like natural fibers. I like stuff like Lorraine likes to make fun of me, but I like things like wool pants.
I like things that ostensibly never go out of style. And if I have Why isn’t that a thing? I guess one potential answer there is that this is a planned obsolescence thing where companies have to keep selling. They can’t keep selling to you if you own one really durable, beautiful pair of pants that you wear three times a week. I feel like there’s more going on than just planned obsolescence, but I know that’s a common thing that people say here.
Elizabeth Segran: Yeah, that’s certainly part of it. I also think that, yeah, I mean, you know, it’s a whole system, right? So if the average brand is not using very durable materials, you may well, you know, love your wool pants and, you know, a beautiful linen shirt. But, you know, if the average person is buying clothes that are made from materials that are just very low quality, then it’s not just about fashion, it’s about the durability of those garments. But that said, I think that the style that you’re talking about is increasingly becoming fashionable, actually.
I think that there are brands now that are coming into Vogue that are sort of focused on these kind of timeless pieces. As we talked about before, her brand has been making a comeback among younger consumers because I think a lot of people are looking for better quality pieces that will last a long time. A lot of that seems to be coming from consumers themselves. There’s this kind of movement towards having less clothes, a capsule wardrobe, things like that. But it’s not going to become a mainstream part of how we dress until the brands themselves, more brands, shift towards this kind of approach.
B. Lorraine Smith: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I hadn’t really thought of it as clearly until now when you put a fine point on if the brands were responsible for paying attention. For the climate impacts through their value chain. You know, we’ve known since I think it was 2005 when at the time Walmart CEO Lee Scott sort of drank the sustainability Kool-Aid and they sort of doubled down on sustainability. And we’re very clear that so much of their impacts are in the supply chain, as you say. So this has been a known challenge with retailers and apparel companies for a while.
But even knowing that, they still haven’t really had to pay for it. So they’ve been voluntarily doing some pretty great things and made lots of improvements. But we have more fast fashion now than we did in 2005. So we haven’t, we definitely haven’t cracked the nut. And when I think about, you know, H&M is kind of an easy target. So I’ll just keep borrowing them because they put such stuff out into the public. They make lots available. They’re saying they’re going to be fully circular by 2030 and carbon neutral by 2040.
Those are voluntary commitments. But imagine... If they weren’t, to your point, if there were regulation or if there was some kind of demand, their business model would have to be different. So when we talk about circularity and regeneration, it isn’t just investing in some regenerative agriculture. That’s probably going to be a part of it to get cotton, wool, and other natural fibers, if you will. It means actually only functioning in a way that Works in alignment with life’s principles. Like there’s no other sort of dynamic living system beyond earth that we get to live in right now.
So that is what true circularity is. And I’m sort of daydreaming about what it looks like when those business models, when the people designing the businesses, not just the shirt for next season, are designing with that in mind. And when you push on that brand mindset, Ownership button, I think, wow, that starts to get really interesting. Imagine that shift in responsibility. I don’t know. You may call me a dreamer, but you’ve really sparked a direction of thought there. Yeah.
Elizabeth Segran: No, and I think that actually I take some inspiration from luxury brands because... I think that it’s been a little bit easier for some luxury brands to transition into this model of a more sustainable approach, partly because they’ve always, or at least certain luxury brands, have always focused on creating products that will last generations. You think about Hermes and a bag that you could Buy from Hermes that you would carry for years. And then if the patina got stuffed or something like that, you could bring it back and they would repair it.
And there are some products from the brand that have lasted multiple generations. And that is part of their business model. They’re not trying to sell you multiple. They obviously are trying to sell you multiple bags, right? They’re trying to cultivate a desire in you. But they’re also saying that the bags that you do buy can last you a very, very long time. And so, you know, obviously with a lot of luxury brands, there’s, you know, very, very inflated prices, partly because they’re trying, part of their selling point is creating the status But I do think that they do teach us a little bit about what it means to create durable products and to have a business model that is not premised on selling you tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of products.
If brands began to see that there were costs at every stage of their supply chain, whether the average brand, a brand that made cotton shirts or trousers or whatever, the clothes that we wear every day, if they could sort of You know, borrow from some of these luxury brands in terms of, essentially, from the very beginning, finding the very best, most durable materials, paying for any sort of externalities or, you know, costs that come along with that, you know, in terms of carbon, in terms of, you know, the chemicals that they’re putting out into the world, and then making these clothes that, you know, That will last you a long time and can be repaired.
I think that there are some brands that are sort of moving towards that. You think about, you know, like obviously Patagonia, you know, has a whole program devoted to repairing garments. And, you know, you mentioned that They’re sort of going a little bit towards fast fashion. I agree with that on some level, but there are many articles of clothing that they produce that they’ve essentially produced the same model for decades, right? And so you can go and have those repaired. You can sell them back to Patagonia. Patagonia is a brand that’s sort of moving in that direction.
But there are lots of startups now that are kind of creating in a similar way. So startups that I’m thinking about are like American Giant, which is this brand that makes all of its products in the United States using cotton from North Carolina. And they’re really all about creating these very durable garments. And Kuyana, a startup that makes, you know, leather goods and their products are, you know, are supposed to be very durable as well. I think that we’re sort of moving in the direction, very slowly, in the direction that, you know, that is basically Ross’s aesthetic.
And so actually, Ross, you may actually be a trendsetter, you know, in ways that you’re not even aware of.
Ross Kenyon: If you move slow enough, there’s nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes once mused. So it eventually just catches up to me. It’s fine.
Elizabeth Segran: Totally, totally, totally. Yeah, so basically, we’re sort of moving there, but what I would love to see is for there to be a cost, as we’ve been talking about throughout all of this, if there was some sort of tax on these companies, then I think that they would be forced to move in this direction, right? And they would abandon this idea of trying to sell you inexpensive things, you know, every season.
B. Lorraine Smith: Yeah, yeah, and you know, I might even... Although I agree with everything you just said, I’m going to provoke anyway and say, in some ways I don’t think it has that much to do with how long the garments last. Because I think, for example, of the food industry, Is, let’s face it, it’s designed like their products are single use. You know, we eat them and then they’re gone. And yet it’s possible and desirable and happening in some instances that food production and the business model around food is regenerative. Basically, every industry is going to have to be regenerative in order for us to live in a regenerative economy.
And without that, we’re in a degenerative economy. And it’s just a matter of how quickly do we degenerate. And I wonder if we can, although I like the idea of products being durable, so I’m certainly not opposed to that, but it feels like there’s other sectors and examples we can look to where we’re seeing really interesting business model innovation. So I think of a company like Interface, which is a flooring company. They essentially make commercial carpet tiles. And a bit like Eileen Fisher, they went through quite a decades-long sort of inner intervention to look at how they Create and bring products to market.
And in the last few years, they’ve been really exploring the principles of biomimicry or using nature’s principles or life’s principles, which we’re all kind of beholden to whether we understand them or not. And understanding how those living system principles can inform manufacturing. And so they have a program or an initiative, I guess you call it Factory as a Forest, where they’re building two different factory sites to manufacture carpeting. One in the US, I believe the other is in Australia. I’d have to fact check that. But the idea is that the manufacturing facility will sort of have the same impact as a forest would.
In other words, it doesn’t have all the dirtying industrial processes that then need to be cleaned. It’s conceived of the way a natural ecosystem would work. And a lot of really serious scholarship and metrics and ideas go into making that possible. And they’ve been very transparent about it. There’s lots of, we can include some links and show notes on this too. There’s lots of great material that they’re making public as they go through the learning curve. And that’s for industrial and commercial carpet tile. And there’s really no rule about how long you have to use those carpets.
And in some commercial carpet spots, those things wear out really quickly. There’s lots of wear and tear and they get replaced. So the point isn’t necessarily how long does it last, but how much Generation can happen by producing and selling it in the first place to provoke a little. I like the idea of clothes lasting a long time.
Elizabeth Segran: Don’t give her a lie. Yeah, I know. I definitely think that’s an interesting point. And I think that the reason that durability is so important now is because right now, because there are no regulations and because the industry itself is not operating like this, it falls on the consumer. To change the consumer’s behavior, right? And so right now, if you want anything to change, this means buying clothes sparingly and then wearing them for a long time and hoping that sends a signal to the market that’s what more people want. And I think it might be working on some small level, but really for change to happen, it needs to be happening at a bigger scale.
And I think that the reason that we’re not getting to that point is because, and this is not just about the fashion industry, but it certainly applies to the fashion industry. It’s that the entire business model of these companies is premised on constant growth, right? All of these companies are measured by how Quickly, they’re growing every year. For startups, it’s month to month, right? Growth is the most important metric. And so in these companies, how do you grow? It’s by selling either the same customer more product or by getting more and more customers and selling them more products.
And I think that because that’s kind of the premise of These fashion brands, it’s going to be really, really hard to move to this different system. And so, yeah, to me, that’s the big conundrum. I mean, I think it’s absolutely, it would be absolutely great if the companies themselves were coming up with entirely new systems of making clothes. Basically, they were taking responsibility for the cost that society was bearing for their production processes. And if they could get to a point where regeneration was kind of the norm in their manufacturing.
But there’s no pressure on them to do that yet. And I just don’t know what it would take for them to move to the point where they would be willing to invest in that, in all of the infrastructure that would go into making that possible. Yeah. So to me, that’s kind of the conundrum.
Ross Kenyon: Well, Liz, if someone wanted to learn more, they wanted to follow your work, they want to read more about this topic. Clearly, we did not exhaust the topic. There’s so much here. There’s a lot to figure out. The details of which all seem to matter quite a lot, how any policy might be designed, how companies are doing this. Where should someone look?
Elizabeth Segran: Yeah, so you can just look me up. You’ll see my work all over fastcompany.com. And if you pick up an issue of Fast Company Magazine, we have a magazine that you’ll probably find on a newsstand somewhere near you. And also you can look me up at Liz Siegren on all of the platforms, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.
Ross Kenyon: Great. Well, thank you so much for being here. I learned a lot. I mostly kept my trap shut. And Lorraine, thanks for covering for me. So we look like we know what we’re talking about.
Elizabeth Segran: Glad to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it was great. Thanks for being here. And if you like the show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher. Tell your friends. Tell someone who likes to buy lots and lots of fashion that Liz Seagrin is coming for you. No, that’s good. Thanks for listening. And I hope you have a great day. Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience.
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