Every year, VF Corp, the owner of brands including Vans, The North Face and Supreme, carries out a detailed analysis of the risks that threaten its business. Last year, it included climate change for the first time.

In many ways, VF has already taken more steps than its peers to address and mitigate climate issues in its supply chains. The company is supporting rubber farmers and cattle ranchers to adopt regenerative agriculture practices, which help sequester carbon and restore soil health and resilience; it’s launched worker and community development programmes to improve stability and quality of life for more than 650,000 of the 1 million people who make its clothes; it’s traced the full supply chains of 100 products and identified regions of high water risk.

But it’s still not enough. “Very soon, any company will realise how small [it] is in the bigger scheme of the potential trajectory of climate change,” said VF senior director of sustainability David Quass. “I think in all honesty, … the global community is struggling [to find] definite answers to tackling the potential adverse effects of climate change, which are enormous.”

It’s a mounting risk for the fashion industry and the resources and workers it relies on, particularly as hopes of limiting global warming to a level that would stave off some of the most catastrophic impacts of climate change become increasingly unlikely.

“Nature is being destroyed faster than it can regenerate and we’re nearing irreversible tipping points,” said Claire Bergkamp, chief operating officer and incoming chief executive of non-profit Textile Exchange. “We have to make changes and we have to make [them] now, and at scale.”

Make Nature Stronger

Crop failure is one of the most visible and immediate ways climate change is taking hold of fashion supply chains as weather extremes hit harvests of key raw materials.

Just this year, cotton production in many of the world’s biggest growers have been hit by a mix of drought and floods. Pakistan, the world’s sixth-largest cotton producer according to US Department of Agriculture data, lost an estimated 40 percent of its crop to deadly flooding in recent months.

The disaster was caused by rainfall well above predicted ranges, Syeda Faiza Jamil, programme director at non-profit Net Zero Pakistan, told attendees at a panel hosted by the UN Fashion Charter at the COP27 climate summit last month. “What is happening right now is something we were expecting would happen 30 to 40 years from now,” she said.

Brands can’t change the weather, but experts say that promoting regenerative agricultural practices designed to restore soil health can help make croplands more resistant to extremes, improving the amount of water that can be absorbed in floods and retained in times of drought.

“It’s not just a trendy thing, it actually physically builds resilience,” said Dr Helen Crowley, partner at climate investment and advisory firm Pollination and former Head of Sustainable Sourcing Innovation at Kering.

But today only a tiny fraction of the materials fashion uses are produced in this way. Changing that is complicated, despite splashy corporate commitments in support of regenerative agriculture. The concept can be hard to pin down and what works on one farm may not work on another. Switching is expensive and time consuming and carries considerable risk for farmers. Most projects are still in the pilot phase.

Long-term purchasing commitments from brands and policies that incentivise regenerative farming will be needed to change that, said Bergkamp. “I think this must be a part of the conversation around climate resilience,” she added.

Build Supply Chains with a Conscience

Fashion is a resource- and labour-intensive industry, with a production system that rests on tens of millions of workers across the globe. Climate change is likely to make life for many of these workers much more precarious.

That’s a problem for the industry as it comes under growing regulatory pressure to ensure its supply chains are free of labour abuses. Dangerous and productivity-dampening heat stress is likely to become a growing challenge as temperatures rise, while natural disasters and food insecurity in countries with little to no social safety nets create fertile ground for challenges like modern slavery, according to risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft.

To address this, fashion companies will need to establish stronger, long-term partnerships with suppliers, and go directly to communities on the ground to better understand the challenges they face, said Cliodhnagh Conlon, associate director at consultancy Business for Social Responsibility. Brands could establish a stronger social and financial safety net for workers in their supply chains by offering insurance for crop-growers, for example, or supporting ecosystem restoration like reforesting mangroves, a key coastal defence against flooding that could save homes and livelihoods.

In the face of growing climate catastrophe, supply chain experts say companies need to be both nimble and responsible, balancing risk management, agility and diversification with real, established commitments and partnerships in sourcing countries. “These shocks will be more and more [frequent]” said Shameek Ghosh, co-founder and chief executive at supply chain traceability platform TrusTrace. “You have to optimise your supply chain for these risks.”

Engage in Lobbying and Advocacy

Fashion brands — and indeed the wider industry — cannot manage all the far-reaching impacts of climate change on their own.

Huge infrastructure projects on a national scale will be needed in order to make manufacturing hubs climate-resilient. For instance, flood defences will be crucial in places like Bangladesh, Vietnam and Guangzhou in China, where thousands of factories stand to be underwater by 2030 as a result of rising sea levels, according to a working paper published last year by Cornell University’s New Conversations Project in the School of Industrial and Labour Relations.

It’s in the fashion industry’s interests to ensure that local policymakers are primed to address these outcomes, or risk ending up with a broken supply chain. It’s an issue that has cemented itself on the global agenda, though advocates say it remains underfunded. Funds to help poorer nations adapt to now-inevitable impacts of climate change accounted for just over one-third, or $28.3 billion, of all climate finance received in 2020, according to OECD analysis, but combatting the issue in earnest could cost hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

While fashion’s engagement with climate lobbying is relatively new, there are emerging examples: in 2020, consortia of major industry players opposed the Cambodian Government’s plans to expand coal-based energy production, and called on lawmakers in Vietnam to make renewable energy sources more accessible. As Rachel Kitchin, corporate climate campaigner at advocacy group Stand.Earth, notes, big brands showing they are serious about their commitments to such issues can be a strong market signal to countries where garment manufacturing is a major export.

“If brands … use the voice that they have in conversations with government and in public advocacy, they can make a real impact,” she said, “because countries will know that it is a requirement, if they’re going to keep getting that business.”

Technology has unleashed problems from a misinformation epidemic to the information overload that strains our mental and physical wellbeing. But it also holds incredible power to reshape the world for the better. In the third session of BoF VOICES, speakers examined the ways technology can allow us to overcome challenges that range from the personal to global.

Enabling Our Best Selves

In 1962, Dame Stephanie Shirley founded a pioneering technology company called Freelance Programmers. It was for women and by women — a response to the rampant sexism Shirley had encountered working as a young woman at London’s Post Office Research Station, where some of the earliest computers were developed. The company’s achievements included writing the software for the Concorde’s blackbox flight recorder, a feat she pointed out was accomplished by a team of 30 women mostly working from their kitchen tables. When she stepped back in 2000, the company had become a $3 billion empire that made Shirley and several of her colleagues rich.

“You can always tell ambitious women from the shape of our heads,” she told the audience at VOICES. “They’re flat on top, and that comes from being patted patronisingly.”

Harley Finkelstein, president of e-commerce platform Shopify, highlighted technology’s ability to enable entrepreneurs, noting that it’s easier than ever for people to launch businesses and turn what in the past might have remained no more than a hobby or passion project into a livelihood.

“We’ve never seen business scale like this ever before, and the technology makes it possible, but the entrepreneur is driving it,” he said.

Rethinking the User Interface

Technology wasn’t praised indiscriminately, however. Speakers warned of the dangers of misinformation and the control tech giants hold on our lives.

Imran Chaudhri, a former Apple designer credited with creating the original iPhone interface, said our devices are forcing us to contort our lives and our physical bodies around them, when it should be the other way around. The solution, in his view, won’t be the headsets or glasses in development by companies like Meta and Apple. They just bring the screen that much closer to the face and block our eyes, an important site of connection.

“We believe that the best user interaface is no user interface,” Chaudhri said.

For four years, Humane, the company Chaudhri co-founded with his wife, has been working on a new type of device that will rely on ambient computing and AI to offer a screenless future where people can focus on the world in front of them. Chaudhri offered examples like spotting sneakers or a dress on someone walking by and being able to immediately get details on what brand they are and where to buy them, or being at a wedding and being able to capture the moment — all without the interruption of taking out a phone.

Precise details remain scarce, but at VOICES Wednesday, Chaudhri revealed that Humane will announce its first products in the spring of 2023.

Working for the Collective Good

At the outset of the pandemic, when Asian-Americans were being scapegoated as Covid’s cause and assaulted in the US, designer Phillip Lim knew he needed to act but wasn’t sure how. After he began to speak out publicly, he received a call from Musa Tariq, a friend who had worked for brands such as Burberry, Nike, Apple and Ford before becoming chief marketing officer of the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe. They ultimately created Stop Asian Hate, which became a digital hub for people to donate, fundraise and share their experiences.

Kindness is contagious, Tariq said, and when people see others contributing they’re more likely to do so themselves. Technology has made it easy, though as Tariq noted, “actually it’s the people that use the technology that make it come to life.”

Several speakers at VOICES offered similar examples of technology providing help to people in need. New Story, an organisation focused on ending homelessness founded by Brett Hagler and Alexandria Lafci, has used 3D printing and a proprietary cement mix to create affordable, well-designed homes. Sneha Sheth’s Dost Education, meanwhile, sends a one-minute podcast daily to low-income parents in India who may have limited education themselves to provide instruction on how they can break the cycle of illiteracy with their children.

Reimagining the Supply Chain

The past few years have seen constant disruptions to the supply chains that power the global economy and revealed their ultimate fragility. That’s because they’re like spiders, said Lisa Morales-Hellebo, founder and co-managing general partner of Refashiond Ventures, in a nod to the book “The Starfish and the Spider.” They’re centralized, so cut the head off and the organism dies. A better system would mimic a starfish: cut off a leg and it will grow back into a full starfish.

Morales-Hellebo’s ideal is a distributed network of clone factories, where if one goes down production could be digitally queued up at the next closest supplier. This sort of arrangement, she added, could also transform the supply chain — where a brand produces, ships and then sells products — into a demand chain, where the brand sells the item first and then produces on demand. The result would be major benefits to profitability and a reduced environmental impact.

Sriram Krishnasamy, the chief executive of FedEx Dataworks, which provides data-centred logistics solutions, offered his own view of the future supply chain. If brands were to join forces, they could create a collaborative data ecosystem that would use AI to optimise their supply chains for the benefit of all.

Whether or not brands ultimately buy into these ideas, Morales-Hellebo had a warning for brands: “Disruption will happen with or without you,” she said.

BoF VOICES 2022 is made possible in part through our partners McKinsey & Company, Shopify, Flannels, Brandlive, Lenzing, ShopRunner, Snap, Canada Goose, Invisible Collection, Soho House, and Getty Images.

The first three sessions at BoF VOICES 2022 tackled issues inside the fashion industry and far beyond. Speakers explored the climate crisis and accusations of corporate greenwashing; the potential of artificial intelligence and the associated ethical implications; the war in Ukraine and growing economic uncertainty and inequality across the globe and Gen-Z’s rising anger over these issues and how to start to fix them.

“At this event, fashion is often quite marginal,” said BoF editor-at-large Tim Blanks during the live recording of “The Best of VOICES With Tim Blanks.” “It’s in our minds, but what we’re talking about are the world’s big, definitive issues,” he added.

Blanks was joined by VOICES speaker Ziad Ahmed, chief executive of JUV Consulting and Stephanie Simon, the former head of community at Clubhouse, to reflect on the highlights from the first two days of talks and panel discussions.

Here are the first three sessions of VOICES:

BoF VOICES 2022: Finding Optimism in an Unsteady World

BoF VOICES 2022: Fashion’s Fresh Challenges and New Directions

Register for the livestream to watch day three of BoF VOICES 2022, where we’ll hear from global pioneers shifting the industry’s status quo and a daring group of entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists using technology to power a better future.

BoF VOICES 2022 is made possible in part through our partners McKinsey & Company, Shopify, Flannels, Brandlive, Lenzing, ShopRunner, Snap, Canada Goose, Invisible Collection, Soho House, and Getty Images.

OXFORDSHIRE, United Kingdom — In the second session of BoF VOICES 2022, speakers addressed a broad range of themes that are increasingly urgent for the fashion system, from the need to regulate corporate greenwashing to what comes after the post-pandemic rebound.

Achim Berg, senior partner at McKinsey & Company, presented a first look at the latest edition of BoF’s flagship The State of Fashion report.

After a first half of 2022 that was “all about growth, about lots of opportunities to wear and buy fashion,” a deterioration of the global economy in recent months has left fashion executives bracing for a slowdown, according to Berg.

“Even if we have a bit of a V-shaped recovery in the US, even if China reopens faster than we expect, it’s going to be challenging in the first six to nine months next year,” Berg said. “Then we can hope for a better Christmas.”

McKinsey expects global fashion sales growth of 5 percent to 10 percent for luxury, and negative 2 percent to positive 3 percent for the rest of the industry in 2023. Bright spots include surging sales in the Middle East, as well as a rebound in more formal dressing.

Can Regulation Stop Greenwashing?

Splashy corporate pledges to improve environmental impact have become commonplace in fashion as well as finance, energy and other industries in recent years. But activists, public officials and even some fashion insiders are increasingly losing patience with self-regulation that has delivered few results and are now calling for government “referees” to speed change.

Tariq Fancy, a former banker and founder of the Rumie Initiative, spoke about leaving the industry of “green bonds” and low-carbon exchange-traded funds behind as he became increasingly disillusioned with a “system that was painting itself green.”

“This ESG stuff can actually be harmful if people don’t know its BS,” Fancy said. “[It’s] a convenient fantasy… where the world corrects itself and no sacrifice is required.”

When surveyed anonymously, most CEOs agree their companies are engaged in greenwashing, Fancy added. After years of allowing companies to appear to regulate themselves through a patchwork of corporate responsibility pledges, change needs to become “both systemic and mandatory” by changing the rules that constrain capitalism.

“It’s time to call in the refs,” he said.

Maxine Bédat, director of the New Standard Institute, spoke about the New York Fashion Act, proposed legislation in New York State that would put in place “basic guard rails” on the industry by setting minimum environmental standards for all companies with revenue over $100 million doing business in New York (no matter where they are headquartered or where their products are produced).

Bédat said the bill was modelled after efforts to fight air pollution in California, where the state’s rules on automobile emissions quickly became a global standard due to the scale of the market.

Fancy and Bédat were joined in a panel discussion by Baroness Margaret Omolola Young, a member of Britain’s House of Lords and Ken Pucker, former chief operating officer of Timberland.

“We’ve refined this system to work for a relatively small number of people who are ageing. It’s not borrowing from the future — it’s stealing,” Young said. “Regulation has to step in. Systemic change has to come to governments, too, as they’re in thrall to certain types of businesses that depend on [fossil fuels].”

“Governments need to take bold action, and we need to tell them to be bold at the ballot box and at every opportunity,” Young added.

Reaching Underserved Customers

2022 has seen a veritable renaissance in brick-and-mortar retail as brands tried to reach consumers by opening new stores in locations that were historically underserved, from massive emerging economies like India (where the pandemic sparked a shift to luxury customers shopping domestically) to smaller cities in developed markets like the US and the UK.

Michael Murray, CEO of UK-based luxury retailer Flannels, spoke about his company’s strategy of focusing on building luxurious physical boutiques outside of London’s historic shopping hubs.

“The regional consumers are severely underserved,” Murray said, referring to smaller UK cities like Liverpool and Leeds. “Luxury brands obsess over capital cities; we’re obsessing over those white spots where they’re not going to invest because there isn’t a Bond Street.”

Sometimes underserved customers can be found closer to home. Retail activations in big-city neighbourhoods away from shopping high streets can help brands find new customers and deepen engagement with their existing base, Appear Here’s founder Ross Bailey said. Bailey’s company has helped stage temporary retail experiences for major brands, like Gucci’s centennial pop-up in London’s Hackney in 2021, as well as developing ultra-local shopping villages dedicated to promoting products and services from the immediate area.

Cecilia Morelli, co-founder of Mumbai luxury boutique Le Mill, spoke about her efforts to reach Indian customers. Those shoppers, who previously focused their spend on gold jewellery and traditional Indian fashion are becoming more interested in mixing in items from Western luxury brands — and in being able to buy those products close to home.

“Finally India is really coming forward. Luxury brands are starting to look to India in ways they haven’t done before,” Morelli said.

The former Bergdorf Goodman executive’s advice for building a business in a new market? Listen.

“I thought I could impose my vision of good style, good taste,” she said. “What I learned was all I could do was really listen to my customer.”

She’s seen success by really considering the lifestyles of local customers — learning what sort of occasions they go shopping for, and what would be seen as suitable to wear. Fashion brands can still do a lot better on this front, adapting their approach for different climates, body types and languages.

After the DTC Era

The sleek, neutral brand messages favoured by DTC brands don’t resonate as much as they used to, writer and technologist Toby Shorin said.

“The DTC era has hit a cultural impasse,” he said. “[These] brands couldn’t create a relationship with the subcultures they wanted to become or to identify with.”

Consumers are now moving on from an “impoverished lifestyle economy” to “lifeworlds” imbued with cultural meaning, values and the promise of transformation.

“People opt into these communities with the self-awareness that they may be changed,” Tobin said, citing transformative concepts like effective altruism, or brands like Peoplehood, a group therapy-inspired service created by the founders of SoulCycle. “We see an increased willingness to be told ‘the right way to be,” Tobin said.

Brands should think about bringing more elements of the broader culture into their work, referencing memes or invoking subcultures. They can adapt to the focus on values by thinking about how to cater to adherents of various ideologies or to create their own “lifeworlds” with intrinsic culture and ideologies, Tobin said.

American Luxury

In conversation with BoF editor-at-large Tim Blanks, Fear of God founder Jerry Lorenzo spoke about his vision for American luxury.

“You don’t have to be in a stiff suit to be elegant,” he said. “American luxury is freedom. It’s about being able to wear what you want when you want to … so you can be the best version of yourself.”

The Los Angeles-based brand, which tripled sales in the last two years, is set to stage its first-ever fashion show and open its first flagship store as part of a wider expansion drive. It will also add new categories such as women’s shoes and bags, Lorenzo said.

“Our intention is that when you come into the store, there’s a shift that happens,” Lorenzo added. “We want to bring you into a space that’s beyond an environment; it’s an atmosphere.”

BoF VOICES 2022 is made possible in part through our partners McKinsey & Company, Shopify, Flannels, Brandlive, Lenzing, ShopRunner, Snap, Canada Goose, Invisible Collection, Soho House, and Getty Images.

Italian fashion group Prada is set to hire former Luxottica chief Andrea Guerra in a top management role to ease a transition at the helm to the next generation of the founding family, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

Founded in Milan in 1913 by designer Miuccia Prada’s grandfather and his brother as a leather goods shop, Hong Kong-listed Prada has grown into a group with 365 directly operated shops as of end-2021 and yearly revenues of 3.7 billion euros ($3.8 billion), with 40 percent coming from the Asia Pacific region.

After overseeing a successful turnaround since 2017 to reverse a slide in sales, Prada CEO Patrizio Bertelli, 76, said a year ago he planned to hand over the reins of the group he leads with wife Miuccia to their 34-year-old son Lorenzo.

Lorenzo, who is Prada’s marketing chief, had joined the company’s board in May 2021 ahead of his father telling investors in November he could take over as CEO within “three to four years”.

Facing a family succession, like many other Italian business dynasties, Prada has been planning ahead and seeking a senior figure to work alongside Lorenzo while he gains experience in the field, another person close to the matter said.

Widely credited with being a fast learner, Lorenzo joined the family business in 2017 as head of digital communication.

Prada is putting the final touches to an accord with Guerra to hire the 57-year-old manager, who earlier this year stepped down as head of the hotels division at luxury goods giant LVMH , the first source said.

Prada and Guerra declined to comment on the news.

As Luxottica CEO from 2004 to 2014, Guerra oversaw a more than doubling in sales at the spectacles manufacturer that since 2003 has been producing and distributing eyeglasses under the Prada group’s Prada and Miu Miu brands.

Veteran Luxottica executive Massimo Vian, hired by Guerra in 2005 and later head of operations at the eyewear firm, joined Prada in 2020 as chief operating officer.

“We believe Guerra would add invaluable experience and significant gravitas to the Prada senior management team,” Jefferies said, adding the market would welcome progress on succession arrangements.

On the creative side, Prada in 2020 brought in Belgian designer Raf Simons to share the director role with Miuccia. Simons last week said he would close down his eponymous brand, in a move seen as a prelude to taking over in full from Miuccia.

Eleven years after its Hong Kong market debut, Prada is also studying a possible Milan listing to widen the investor base, another two sources briefed on the matter said. The move would not yield any cash or dent the family’s 80 percent stake because Prada would not sell new or existing shares.

Italian daily la Repubblica first reported the news that Prada could announce Guerra’s arrival as early as January.

By Claudia Cristoferi, Valentina Za

Learn more:

Lorenzo Bertelli on Prada’s Sustainability Strategy

In an exclusive interview, Prada’s future CEO and joint marketing and sustainability chief spoke to BoF about making recycled nylon a reality, why the market isn’t ready for leather alternatives and Prada’s plans in resale.

Kering SA’s Balenciaga is seeking at least $25 million in damages from the production company behind an ad campaign that has made the luxury fashion house the target of fierce criticism at the start of the holiday shopping season.

Balenciaga filed a lawsuit Friday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan alleging that production company North Six Inc. and set designer Nicholas Des Jardins used documents related to a child pornography case in photos in the ad campaign without permission.

As a result, the public and the media “have falsely and horrifically associated Balenciaga with the repulsive and deeply disturbing subject,” the fashion house said in the court documents. Balenciaga withdrew the images following an uproar on social media.

A representative for North Six declined to comment. A representative for Des Jardins didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Balenciaga on Monday reiterated its apology and said in a statement that it takes “full accountability for our lack of oversight and control of the documents in the background,” saying, “We could have done things differently.”

The fashion brand also apologized again for a separate ad campaign that featured children holding teddy bears that were clad in what appeared to be bondage gear. The company has also removed those images.

The scandals led celebrity influencer and businesswoman Kim Kardashian to say she’s re-evaluating her relationship with Balenciaga.

Kardashian has been featured in numerous ad campaigns for the brand, led by Chief Executive Officer Cedric Charbit and whose creative director is Demna. Last year, she appeared at the Met gala in a full Balenciaga outfit that covered her face.

On Sunday, Kardashian told her 334 million Instagram followers that her future relationship with the brand will be based on its “willingness to accept accountability for something that should have never happened to begin with.”

“The safety of children must be held with the highest regard and any attempts to normalize child abuse by any kind should have no place in our society,” Kardashian said.

HSBC estimated in an April report that Balenciaga generated about €1.76 billion euros ($1.82 billion) in sales in 2021.

The brand made headlines earlier this month when it stopped working with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, after he posted antisemitic posts. Ye is Kardashian’s ex-husband.

By Angelina Rascouet, Jeannette Neumann

Learn more:

Kim Kardashian ‘Re-Evaluating’ Balenciaga Deal After Bondage Ad Crisis

The brand later said it was “closely revising its organisation” as it continues to face widespread backlash over a campaign featuring children modelling BDSM-inspired products.