Activist, sustainability advocate, writer… Livia Firth can be referred to by a wide spectrum of titles, and her contributions to the world of fashion have been nothing short of remarkable. Here at Vogue Arabia, of course, the trailblazer has been known as the sustainability editor, and over the years, her monthly write-ups have helped educate not just the region, but the whole world about the impact of consumption on the planet.
Livia Firth
Through her career so far, Livia Firth has found novel ways to shake up the industry. While her 2015 documentary The True Cost came as a much-needed jolt with its insights on consumerism, globalization and capitalism, her Green Carpet Challenge encouraged celebrities to join in her making a case for sustainably sourced and produced fashion. And then there was, of course, Eco Age. Established in 2009, Livia Firth’s consultancy firm aided brands — including Gucci, Chopard and Stella McCartney, to name a few — in incorporating eco-friendly practices into their processes. Now, as it closes its doors after 17 wonderful years, Vogue Arabia pays homage to Firth’s incredible journey with a look back at 10 of her most insightful written pieces for the magazine, all handpicked by the multi-hyphenate herself.
“It was not easy to choose 10 articles among the 60 I wrote in the last five years of working with Manuel and the team at Vogue Arabia… So many different topics around a more socially and environmentally just fashion world!” Firth muses as she goes over her complete collection. “But one thing is sure: we have been talking about some of these issues for so long, and it is up to us to decide whether we want to be consumers or citizens. This selection is just a reflection of the complex stories woven into the clothes we wear everyday, and I hope that by looking at them not in isolation, the simplicity of the message will emerge even louder: by getting dressed every day, you are either standing in solidarity or not.”
Below, a walk through Livia Firth’s most memorable and educational pieces from the past.
May 2020: What is Happening to The Garment Workers at Factories Closing Down Due to Covid-19?
With many fashion brands closing down factories and ceasing production of clothes, what happens to the garment workers?
Livia Firth at Dhaka factory in Bangladesh
There is no doubt that we are living in unprecedented times, and that each one of us has been affected by this global pandemic. Some, like myself, are incredibly fortunate to live in a country with a good healthcare system, and to have the privilege to be able to close the office and allow the team to work remotely until this is over. But the reality for the majority of the population across the globe is very different. There are many on the frontline risking their lives every day: doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, delivery men, and so on.
Livia Firth with Lucy Siegle. Photo: Getty Images
While we may not worry anymore about what we wear every day as we stay home, we should worry about the global workforce of millions of garment workers, who have not only been exploited for years in supply chains worldwide, but are now being forgotten by so many brands. For more than 10 years, I’ve been campaigning against fast fashion and have been involved with The Circle, a NGO founded by musician Annie Lennox. It is led by an extraordinary group of female lawyers who help workers with their rights and obtaining a living wage. Throughout my journey into the issue of labor exploitation, my friend and mentor Lucy Siegle (a journalist, BBC presenter, and author) has always been at my side. We went to Bangladesh together for the first time in 2008, we launched The Green Carpet Challenge in 2009, and four years later we were executive producers on the documentary The True Cost. Lucy has always been there for me and guided me through some of fashion’s biggest questions, and so it was her I called when I heard about brands not only canceling orders, but also refusing to pay for the orders already in production.
Fashion Critical with Lucy Siegle and Livia Firth
Factories are closing in fast fashion production hotspots like Bangladesh and Cambodia, and workers’ wages go unpaid without a safety net for the majority of them. Meanwhile, at factories that are still operating – to create personal protective equipment (PPE) – the workers are at risk of Covid-19. What will happen to them? For our podcast, Fashion Critical, Lucy interviewed Kalpona Atkar, a garment worker, former child laborer, and union leader in Bangladesh. Kalpona is on the frontline campaigning for a better fashion system. Her story is the story of all of the workers, so next time you buy something, make sure you know where and how that garment was made. It is our duty to protect the workers – their lives are not less precious than ours. When we come out of this pandemic, may we all unite in working towards a more sustainable world, where every day we get dressed with pride.
Lucy Siegle: What is the current situation in the garment industry?
Kalpona Atkar: People are losing their jobs because of a number of brands and retailers cancelling their orders due to Covid-19. Almost two million workers have been affected. Here, when workers are laid off, the rules mean they only receive their basic wage for a certain time. Workers are fighting to live with their minimum wage, and if they don’t even have that, they will be living without food for them and their families.
Has the government given some clarification?
At the moment, they’re not listening to anyone. For the last three weeks I’ve gone back and forth fighting with the manufacturers to make a decision on factory closures and to ensure the workers are getting their wages. It seems that the manufacturers’ association wasn’t ready with any strategy or backup plan except asking the brands not to cancel and asking the government for a bailout.
What do brands and retailers need to do right now?
First of all, they shouldn’t cancel their orders. These workers are the people who have made them a profit for years; they can’t just be left to starve. I know brands and retailers are facing consequences too, but they and manufacturers are just losing a fraction of their profits. For workers, they are losing their food. Brands have to understand that. If you really have to cancel, fine, pause for this moment, but step up with financial support. That is what’s needed now. I’m not only asking for Bangladeshi workers but for all production employees. This pandemic will go away eventually and when it does, how will these brands show their faces to the world and to the people who helped them make a profit, knowing they left them to hunger?
Are the garment workers able to do social distancing?
The workers are at their homes as few of the factories are open. Where they live, social distancing isn’t possible. They live in crowded and congested places and they share toilets, showers, and kitchens with other families. If someone gets infected in one community, the virus will spread rapidly.
Many of the factories still in operation are making PPE for export, but what about the safety of those making the items?
The irony is, many of the workers want to stay at the factories to help make this equipment to make people safe. While they are thinking about helping others, they are risking getting infected.
How many factories have switched to making PPE?
No more than 10 factories. I think brands should transform their factories. Rather than make fashion clothes or cheap clothes, they can make PPE for health workers, so those heroes can fight. I know if factories can ensure the safety measures, workers will be willing to work and make PPE.
What changes from this point?
Workers need the recognition they deserve. They are the heroes making PPE for other heroes who are helping people to survive. I’m not sure if the world will recognize that.
February 2021: What Do the Technological Advances in Fashion Mean for Garment Workers?
As technological advances in fashion threaten to leave behind vulnerable garment workers, could the answer lie in our imagination?
Fashion styling and shopping app Drest. Photo: Courtesy
In April last year, a couple of months into total lockdown and as we were all getting accustomed to our Zoom meetings, online classes, and remote dance parties, I had the privilege of interviewing one of my heroes, Naomi Klein. Among other things, we spent quite a long time sharing our feelings about technology. Naomi said she heard Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, talking about this as a grand experiment: “So I think we should say: You’re right. It is. We’ve been living in Eric Schmidt’s grand experiment. And guess what? We hate it! You know, we’re not happy… Do you know anybody who’s enjoying spending this much time on screens, having this little contact with other humans? I think we should be grateful that we got this fast-forward vision of this Silicon Valley utopia. And we now know in our bones that we don’t want to go there.”
So here I am – one year on, still in lockdown, still working on Zoom, doing online classes, and at the beginning of another month of fashion weeks, where we will consume fashion digitally, virtually, and in ways we have never thought before (look at what The Fabricant has done in the realms of 3D fashion design and animation in the past few months…) – asking myself: do I like this future?
Drest. Photo: Courtesy
Before trying to give an answer, let’s unpack our technological fashionscape so far. Three or four years ago, everyone started to talk about how technology was the best friend of sustainability and how this epoch promised plenty of disruption. But I remember at the time thinking that whether or not this was welcome, it depended on how we steered a course through change.
Take increased automation, for example. Fashion is a human industry that relies on and needs people. Are we saying that we don’t want human involvement anymore? Or that we are happy to throw on the scrap heap approximately 70 million people currently in the supply chain, because we think we can produce more efficiently, even cheaper and even faster using technology? I hear too great an emphasis on disruptive technology targeted at the usual suspects. For example, how can the consumer consume products even faster, or how can we sell more; what technology will get this from runway into their hands before they have time to change their minds? How might brands deliver results and boost productivity?
What I am not hearing, though, is how all of this will impact the less visible people in the supply chain – the garment workers.
Rob Hopkins’ From What If to What Is. Photo: Courtesy
But then imagine the technology (and we don’t have to imagine too much because it’s starting to become a reality) if some of the spoils of the digital age were transferred to garment workers. Women with smartphones, able to monitor and report on their own safety conditions, to be in charge of their time and their piece rates. Imagine the enhanced transparency! Imagine if we use technology not just to monitor the sale of apparel, but also the story of its recapture, its disassembly, and reuse. This is where technology starts to become a force for progress. Imagine all the stories we could tell! As Rob Hopkins says in his beautiful book From What If to What Is, “In these times of deep division and deeper despair, if there is a consensus about anything in the world, it is that the future is going to be awful. There is an epidemic of loneliness, an epidemic of anxiety, a mental health crisis of vast proportions, a rise in extremist movements and governments, catastrophic climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity.” But there is plenty of evidence that things can change, and cultures can change, rapidly, dramatically, and unexpectedly – for the better. We do have the capability to effect dramatic change, Hopkins argues, but we’re failing because we’ve largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also demonstrably in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most.
Livia Firth with the founder of Drest, Lucy Yeomans. Photo: Getty
This is where the use of technology gets me excited – when it is used as a means to enhance imagination. With this in mind, for example, last year at Eco-Age we used technology to create a new narrative inside The Green Carpet Fashion Awards. We created the first event in the world to ever be produced and broadcast using four different kind of technologies – augmented reality, digital, holograms, and film. We used it to send out a strong message about using this period as a portal into a new era, where environmental and social justice underpins everything we do. And it was a huge success: we could involve talent all over the world without having them leave their locations, created films, and turned the iconic La Scala in Milan into the perfect magical world. Technology can also create much needed new business models for the fashion industry when it helps brands, for example, to move from selling clothes (unsustainable) to gaming – something that Lucy Yeomans, founder of fashion gaming platform Drest, understood a year ago. Let’s see what this year unfolds but technology as a tool to progress is something that makes me excited – otherwise it will be the emperor’s new clothes all over again.
Zendaya at the virtual 2020 Green Carpet Awards in a vintage Versace dress. Photo: Courtesy
February 2022: Is Digital Fashion an Eco-Friendly Replacement to Fast Fashion or a Virtual Illusion?
Virtual fashion available from DressX. Photo: courtesy of DressX
In pure Carrie Bradshaw style of “I couldn’t help but wonder,” I have found myself recently thinking about this new “digital fashion” phenomenon and whether this means that physical clothes will eventually become irrelevant as our lives will be moving online and into metaverse platforms in virtual worlds. You only had to read the fashion press of the last few months to notice an increasing number of digital fashion releases, NFT collections, and articles studying this new phenomenon – and branding it as “sustainable.”
Our avatar versions can’t go around naked, and brands are here to solve the problem. And if you don’t have an avatar yet (like me), you will probably soon be able to stay in your pajamas for Zoom meetings (forgoing the casual leggings and dress-up top we’ve all been wearing the past two years), wearing a Gucci “shield” in the same way you can fake your environment with beautiful screens while working from bed.
I remember Marco Bizzarri, CEO of Gucci giving a lecture at the London College of Fashion in 2017 during which one student asked him how he would reconcile Gucci’s own sustainability agenda with the company’s need to keep producing new clothes season after season. He shrugged and
said that while he didn’t have an answer yet, surely the only way would be for Gucci to become more of a content producer and diversify its business model. Fast-forward a few years and Gucci has become one of the first brands to have a virtual world, with digital products and gaming too. It is called the Gucci Good Game. Marco was right–and looking at it through this lens, it is a genius move. If you can keep your company profitable while not producing more physical clothes (with all the consequences this implies), surely, it’s a win.
But, as you probably know by now, for the last 10 years I have been particularly invested in the harsh reality experienced by the 70 million real people currently entrapped in the fashion supply chain to meet our insatiable consumption appetite, which is fed by a multibillion profit-making fast fashion model that now is presumed as being the norm. My first question is, what does this new virtual revolution hold for these 70 million people – the garment workers who are predominantly young women? We’ve already seen the consequences a global pandemic had on them, with brands refusing to pay for placed orders and cutting subsequent bookings without any responsibility towards the workers at all. Adding this new “virtual revolution” to an already existing problem of exploitation could spell a social crisis on a scale we haven’t yet witnessed – the dystopian nightmare, which we are all pretending not to be a part of. Predicting the future is a perilous business. And I don’t have an answer for you yet. But we need to stay vigilant and not let history repeat itself. Sustainability is not only about environmental justice, but, much more importantly, social justice. We need to make sure inclusivity and equality are fundamental pillars of this revolution.
My second question is, is it also truly sustainable from an environmental point of view? What are the metrics we will use to measure this? CNN recently reported on the limited data available about the reduced impact of digital fashion, quoting a sustainability report from digital fashion startup DressX saying digital garments emit 97% less carbon than physical ones. But how did they measure this? As we know by now, data can be manipulated, and reporting can be stirred according to what a business wants you to see. DressX states on its website, “We share the beauty and excitement that physical fashion creates, but we believe that there are ways to produce less, to produce more sustainably, and not to produce at all. At the current stage of DressX development, we aim to show that some clothes can exist only in their digital versions. Don’t shop less, shop digital fashion.” The devil is in the details and the sentences “Don’t shop less” (so continue to feed consumerism) and “At a current stage of DressX development we only sell digital fashion” (implying it may start selling real clothes in the future) set alarm bells ringing in my head.
This epoch promises plenty of disruption, but whether this is welcome depends on how we steer a course through change. The one superpower we have – and which we have the duty to use – is our action to push for the right governance and accountability. We don’t need our avatars to be better versions of ourselves.
June 2022: Livia Firth on Why Going Green Should Be More Like Common Sense to Save the Planet
We’ve lost our instinctive connection with what’s important for ourselves and the planet – and it’s time for common sense to lead the way again.
Photo: Elizaveta Porodina
Almost every interview I have done in the last 14 years or so starts with the same question: “When did you become sustainable?” Sometimes the phrasing is different, but the concept is always the same: how and when did it happen?
I usually shrug my shoulders and come up with an answer, but the truth is, I am not sure there was a precise moment – it was more a collection of circumstances that brought me to where I am today. I associate my personal journey with the transformation not only of the fashion industry, but with how we went from being “citizens” to being “consumers.”
I was born in 1969, the year of that fabulous Woodstock festival and the hippy movement, and the first man on the moon. I spent the first 20 years of my life (if not more) in an era pre-internet, pre-mobile phones, pre-consumerism. I was also born in Italy, so everything that happened in the 80s – including the beginning of consumerism and fast food – arrived in my country much later than in the US (where it was born) or the UK (where I moved to in 1996). I am sure the same is true for any of you who are from my generation and are not based in one of those two countries.
Two-year-old Livia at her aunt’s wedding with her mother, wearing a custom-made silk dress which she later gave to Livia
Apart from Madonna’s music, huge earrings, and shoulder pads, the 80s for me are about my twin brothers being born, my family suddenly becoming four siblings, my dad having to maintain everyone with one salary, and my mom buying lowenergy light bulbs not because we were “eco,” but because we needed to save money. The same went for clothes that were mended, altered, passed down, and exchanged – simply because we couldn’t afford it and cheap fashion didn’t exist anyway. We had to save money to buy clothes and we bought quality clothes to save money, as they had to last through the years.
Things start to get blurry later on, and maybe the question is not, when did I become sustainable, but rather, when did everything become super fast, super cheap, super accessible, and super charged at the speed of light? When did we start living in an era when we had to certify things, or call them “sustainable” or “eco,” while it had been normal practice up until then?
Livia wearing a Laura Strambi recycled plastic bottles dress. Photo: Getty
At some point this is what happened, and it suddenly became cheaper to buy new socks, rather than mending the holes in them, and we started buying readymade mash potatoes at the supermarket rather than boiling and mashing two potatoes. Isn’t it interesting that, in the span of my lifetime, I saw this huge transformation from one kind of world to a completely different one? And now I’m witnessing a new revolution: the technological craze of Web 3.0 and all things “metaverse.” Maybe this is why I always say that for me, sustainability – call it green or any color you like – is more like common sense than anything else. And if you start looking at it in this way, then there are a million questions whose answers will always be no. Does it make sense to you that we buy things that we throw away after a few times? (Think about this for a moment – the fact that we throw away clothes like food that has gone past its expiry date in our fridge.) Does it make sense to you that we wear toxic materials on our bodies? Does it make sense to you that we spend our time looking at the lives of people we don’t know on social media, because our lives are so empty that the only way of feeling alive is to feel envious over what someone else is wearing, or which place they have gone on holiday? Does it make sense to you that, although we technically abolished slavery last century, we still enslave millions of people in supply chains around the world, since we need to buy lots of very cheap things, very often? I could go on, but shouldn’t the real question be, when will we start to care again, to reconnect with what matters again?
Livia in a factory in Dhaka. Photo: Reza Shahriah Rahman
For the last two-and-a-half years I have been writing these pages, every month on different topics, every month trying to involve you in something new. This month I would like to throw the ball back in you court and would like to ask you what you care about. What would you like to know more of, explore more, understand more? What is your story and what are your solutions for the future of humanity?
January 2023: As More Women Lead Equitable and Fair Fashion Production, Could Compassion Be This Year’s Biggest Trend?
Stella McCartney Resort 2023
A new year opens with so much at stake and I feel like we are going round in circles. From a fashion perspective, 2022 closed on a bitter note, with ultra-fast fashion brand Shein named the most popular brand in the world, and more greenwashing initiatives than we could wish for. The sustainable fashion conversation is getting more divided, entrapped in incorrectly used environmental data, avoidance of the reliance on oil and gas, and constant dismissal of the fact that this is a human industry.
We need to come up with a better plan. What is the thing that could flip the switch and change everything? Perhaps 2023 could be the year we subvert everything through what Annie Lennox calls global feminism, and we finally embrace feminist fashion. Women are the biggest consumers of clothes and accessories, and women are most of the workforce who produce them (80% of garment workers are female). In the Global North we keep marching for women’s rights and equality, while we are happy to wear clothes sewn by enslaved and abused women in the Global South. It doesn’t make sense, does it? Rather than talking about “sustainable fashion” (a term I can’t even hear anymore), what about refocusing and making our clothes a real force of feminists’ action?
Vivienne Westwood RTW Fall 2022
The beginning of the “eco-friendly” fashion movement has seen plenty of amazing female designers in the driving seat – from Katharine Hamnett to Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney. Yet we never included the garment workers, the cotton pickers, the millions of women working across the supply chain along with it. Why? How did that happen? And what if we operated in a different way – considering them, respecting them, and fighting for them, both at brand and consumer level? What if brands ensured their workers are paid a living wage and have their human rights respected while we, in turn, see the face of the woman who made our new dress? Would that change everything? I hope so.
Native American fashion designer Bethany Yellowtail says it beautifully, “Everything is connected. What we create and how we do business ripples into the world. The industry needs to urgently lean into uplifting vulnerable populations, cultivate community, and create a vision forward with future generations in mind. There needs to be a real shift into equitable collaboration. With my B.Yellowtail brand, we have helped create a culture shift for Native American artists and entrepreneurs. For generations we’ve only seen the fashion industry exploit and profit without any repercussions or benefit to our people. It’s a beautiful thing to see more Native people and communities benefit from our creativity and ancestral rights.”
Fashion Revolution’s Who Made my Clothes campaign ensures greater transparency for the talented people behind the clothes
Her message is loud and clear, and we have seen the success of campaigns like Fashion Revolution’s Who Made my Clothes. Yet we still don’t notice or care enough to make it a priority, as women, to support other women in fashion’s global supply chains. So how can we start a new chapter? According to Aurora James, founder of Brother Vellies and the Fifteen Percent Pledge, “Fashion designers, along with leaders in all other production-based industries, must be intentional about what they are putting into the world.” She continues, “What are these products made of, and by who? The industry must evolve into a more inclusive space and give opportunity to those who have been historically repressed. I am constantly inspired by the artisans we work with at Brother Vellies. We partner with carefully selected, talented artisans who are leaders in their respective fields. Sustainability means building products that are meant to last, treating one another with respect, and thinking about the impact we are leaving on the world.”
Ahead of Christmas, nonprofit organization Fashion Revolution brought focus on the amount of unwanted clothing and textiles being sent to landfills
The same is true for American designer Angel Chang. “We partner with a local non-profit, the Tang’an Dong Ethnic Eco-Museum, in the village in China where our collection is crafted. They built a workshop, dye facility, and library for the community’s use and we worked together with the artisans to create a framework for production costs and timing. During the pandemic, when I was unable to travel there, the artisans began training each other. So now our workshop is completely artisan-run! They take care of each other and manage the production timing based on their farming schedule and weather. Our relationship has turned into a true collaboration. It was important to me to live with the local communities to see how they work and what they care about. To have a more just fashion industry, we need a bottom-up approach, where factory workers are asked what they need and value first – and then build the factory and production from that foundation.” The same, I can add, is true for us – what do we want to value first? What will make us rise and protest, shout and defend, and be proud not of the clothes we wear but the stories of the women who made them? Hopefully it won’t take us another year to figure this out.
July 2023: Planning Your Holiday Wardrobe? Ask Yourself If You Really Need Another Fast-Fashion Polyester Dress
Photo: Domen/Van De Velde
With summer comes plastic–polyester dresses, synthetic bikinis, water bottles, and so on. I wonder how many of you are thinking about the repercussions of all of that. I know that today’s fashion motto is “circularity will save us all.” I embarked on a quest a couple of years ago in the form of a short documentary Fashionscapes: A Circular Economy, but I am sorry to break it to you: a recent conversation with former Timberland COO Ken Pucker (and his brilliant analysis in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, A Circle That Isn’t Easily Squared) posited fashion and circularity as an oxymoron.
He says: “The magnitude of fashion’s environmental impact is easier to grasp than its path to sustainable development. To satisfy the dual imperatives of growth and profit, the industry has optimized a linear system that relies on innovation, fast product cycles, planned obsolescence, outsourced cheap labor, inflated marketing, and relative apparel deflation.” He furthers that thus far, it’s worked; since 2000, fashion unit sales have more than doubled. “New styles are now introduced more frequently and some brands, like ultra-fast-fashion company Shein, launch thousands of new styles weekly. Most new purchases are worn only briefly and discarded, ending up incinerated, in landfills, or shipped to developing countries like Ghana and Chile.”
Still from the documentary Fashionscapes: A Circular Economy
What makes this scenario even worse is that today, most of the fashion industry relies on oil. According to the Changing Markets Foundation, fossil fuel fibers have facilitated the exponential growth of the fast fashion business model. Currently, they represent an estimated 69% of the clothing we wear, and this is expected to rise to 73% by 2030. Do you know what this means? By increasing capacity, production, and the use of petroleum-based fibers, the fashion industry can be said to be moving in the opposite direction to the globally agreed pathways demanded by the Paris Agreement. Once aware of this trade-off in their name, but without their knowledge, how will consumers feel? Citizens may have swerved unnecessary plastic wrapping on their fruit and vegetables, and they may have even swapped their car for an electric one and switched to renewable energy, but the clothes in their closets (and those of their kids) mean they remain inextricably linked to oil.
“As the industry’s use of synthetics like polyester and nylon grows faster than the rate of natural materials, fashion now consumes 70 million barrels of oil per year, or nearly 1% of global oil output,” says Pucker. “Between the fashion industry’s hopeful circularity narrative and the delivery of targeted results, lie several technical, physical, scientific, and financial barriers. The most consequential hurdles that must be overcome for circularity to deliver on its promise are discretionary or absent metrics, since no standard measures for circularity exist. One company might set targets for the percentage of recycled material, for example, while another may measure waste reduction. Also, an infinite loop, where products are upcycled into new garments, is a fantasy. Each loop around the circle consumes energy, and as energy is transferred or transformed, its quality diminishes. While more energy may one day come from renewable sources, today, only about 10% of global energy is derived from them. Additionally, for textiles, most recycling debases quality by shortening fibers, making garment-to-garment upcycling a challenge. Consequently, less than 1% of all fashion products are circular, or made from one garment into another.”
Still from the documentary Fashionscapes: A Circular Economy
The lack of proper technology or recycling infrastructure is also a problem, Pucker says. “Even if the technology was ready and cost competitive, it would take a herculean effort to finance and build the recycling infrastructure necessary to meet the demand to recycle more than 100 billion units of fashion each year. A recent study estimated the capital costs to build out infrastructure to support one-third of the recycling capacity for Europe alone at US $6-7 billion. These capital costs need to be weighed considering the low costs of virgin fibers, as it’s so cheap to produce polyester that there’s little profit margin unless the recycling processes are very inexpensive.”
So, what is the solution? To me, the big elephant in the room seems to always be the same: overproduction and the consequent overconsumption. Will fashion have the courage to ever address this? As Kate Raworth, who created and wrote the brilliant book about the economic model called doughnut economics, says in a recent interview in The Guardian, “I love that I have a shop around the corner that sells sneakers made from old plastic bottles, but my first question should be: do I need new sneakers? Doughnut economics is all about action. We’re not sitting having academic debates back and forth about the meaning of words. On a burning planet, we do not have enough time for such endless discussions. There comes a time for the smoke to clear, and for a beacon to guide us all through the haze.” Happy summer, everyone.
December 2023: Iranian-American Climate Activist Sophia Kianni’s Fossil Fuel Fashion Campaign Is Starting a Social Media Revolution
What happens when young leaders and creatives partner for change? Meet the team starting the Fossil Fuel Fashion campaign and social media revolution
Photo: Bright Colors
It all started with Sophia Kianni, the powerhouse Iranian-American climate activist, who is also the founder of Climate Cardinals, a youth-led non-profit focused on making the climate movement more accessible to those who do not speak English, as well as digital fashion platform Phia, which recently launched a collaboration with Stella McCartney. She is also the youngest member of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s Youth Advisory Council on Climate Change.
If you ask her what her goal is, she will always tell you it’s to empower her peers. “We can make young people understand that they are part of the solution by giving them the tools they need to understand what difference they specifically can make,” Kianni says. “This is why we must use fashion and social media to affect change. One of the biggest problems today is that we consume so much and so fast – and fast fashion is killing our planet. The fast fashion industry has become part of the fossil fuel industry. We are all literally wearing oil. Fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas – are by far the largest contributor to the climate crisis. There is a direct correlation between the growth of synthetic fibers and the fast fashion industry. How do we discuss transitioning away from fossil fuels when this industry is producing clothes made with oil and gas at an absolutely horrific rate?”
Fast fashion has become one of the biggest challenges for a generation like Kianni’s, which in many parts of the Global North is accustomed to consuming voraciously and digitally. “But here’s the turning point,” she says. “Every time we choose to rewear an outfit, every moment we decide to buy mindfully, we’re casting a vote for the world we want to live in. Choosing quality over quantity, natural over synthetic, second-hand over new – these aren’t just fashion choices, they’re declarations of our commitment to the planet.”
Photo: Bright Colors
Being part of the social media generation is what makes her so effective at mobilizing change – but Kianni alone wouldn’t have achieved the #WeWearOil campaign – she needed an epic creative team to help put her vision into action. Enter Harry Bernstein and Lucy Sumner, co-founders of Bright Colors. “In our agency we believe in breaking down – but not diluting – complicated topics, making them easier to understand so that more people are empowered to participate in solving today’s biggest challenges. This project is a pure example of that, and our team is honored to do work like this,” the team says. Jack Coyne, who also came on board with his media company and studio Public Opinion, says, “The climate crisis is the defining issue of our times, and the best way we know to contribute is true storytelling. We’re thrilled to be a part of this project – and mostly happy we didn’t mess up the shot, because we only had one take!”
Kianni wore a dress from her wardrobe and the entire team worked pro bono. If this is not the future of organizing, tell me what is…
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February 2024: Livia Firth on the Creativity, Potential, and Innovative Solutions Powered By Youth Beyond the Global North
Beyond the big fashion capitals of the Global North lie creativity, potential, and innovative solutions, powered by the youth – if we care to look.
This month, the fashion week circuit is starting again, with designers in New York, London, Milan, and Paris showcasing their latest collections. But how do we look beyond these same old cities, same designers, same Global Northcentric visions? What happens in the rest of the world? What is going on in Africa, for example? According to Dr Christine Checinska, who curated the landmark Africa Fashion exhibit at the V&A in London last year, the continent’s contemporary fashion scene is “incredibly inspirational and innovative. African creatives today are changing the shape of fashion. We would almost describe it as a fashion revolution. Now is the time to engage.”
In October last year, during Lagos Fashion Week in Nigeria, Unesco launched The African Fashion Sector: Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities for Growth report. It noted that “the fashion sector in Africa is brimming with opportunities, driven by the rise of the middle class, a young and growing population, rapid urbanization, and the emergence of digital technologies.” However, “several challenges remain, including a lack of investment and infrastructure, limited educational systems, insufficient intellectual property protection, as well as difficulties in accessing new markets and sourcing quality materials at an affordable price.”
South African sustainable textile designer Sindiso Khumalo
I remember talking to Sindiso Khumalo, a South African sustainable textile designer and a recipient of the 2020 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers, when she won best independent designer at the Green Carpet Fashion Awards in 2021. “The biggest struggle is access to materials or trade shows,” she told me at the time. “But, I’m positive. For me, the future is about more brands that are intimate with people and the planet, rather than loads of big brands.”
Nkwo Onwuka, founder of the sustainable brand Nkwo
Thanks to Fashion Trust Arabia, I now know designers and brands such as 2023 finalist Nkwo Onwuka from Nigeria, whose philosophy of less should be at the center of everyone’s fashion approach: “The philosophy of less asks: What’s the use in creating more than we can use if it causes us to live less of a life?”
But it’s difficult to learn about all that is happening on a continent with 54 countries and thousands of cultures, languages, and traditions. This is where two formidable and dynamic women come into play: Zara Odu, founder of platform Roundabout, and Jackie May, founder of platform Twyg. I had the fortune of meeting them both recently over Zoom and you won’t be surprised to know that I wish our conversation could have gone on forever!
“I am passionate about building an ecosystem focused on circular economy principles, conscious design, sustainable materials, local sourcing and production, and waste management,” Odu says. “African makers and entrepreneurs are actively innovating, and together we can build a powerful knowledge base that will benefit everyone.” Her mission is clear: “Inspiring new solutions by highlighting exciting developments across the continent and creating opportunities for collaboration and partnership. We also need to facilitate access to expertise and tools and build bridges with global communities, so that we can codesign innovative new ideas that are relevant to African issues, materials, and opportunities. We need to help brands access the materials they need, build supply chains, create jobs, and encourage a system where sourcing and producing locally in Africa is viable and rewarding,” she continues. “I wonder if there is anything similar in Europe or the US, and if this fashion spirit can be replicated and serve as inspiration?
May says she’s noticed a change in consumer behavior. “More and more young Africans want to buy local designers. There is a new appetite and interest. This is why Twyg’s manifesto is rooted in decentralization. We maintain an interest in big brand stories, but we are excited by the innovation and experimentation of outliers and independents who break from the herd and who make a difference. We also share work that gives voice and life to forgotten techniques and fabrications.”
May, who is a dynamo of ideas, launched South Africa’s annual Twyg Sustainable Fashion Awards in 2019, as well as the African Textile Talks in Cape Town, “because every conference here is always with Global North speakers,” she says. “It’s the battle we have, where we keep looking to Europe for technology solutions, for example, and we’re not looking on the continent for African appropriate alternatives.”
Odu confirms this, saying there is such a wealth of knowledge, talent, and craftsmanship on the continent, “but the challenges are how to nurture that creativity and develop the raw materials so brands can become household names, relevant globally, and so that the industry can stand on its own feet.” Perhaps the answer lies with the younger generation, I ask. “There are still people who want to walk around wearing international designers, but there’s been a shift – it’s really promising and encouraging. We need to get people to buy African designers, as right now we compete with fast fashion brands who are colonizing our consumers. On a more philosophical level, to build healthy societies and communities, it is important to see yourself reflected in the things you buy and know that they are made by the local community and are creating jobs for the people you live among.”
May 2024: Livia Firth’s 10 Values for the New Season at a Time When Hope for Sustainable Fashion is Slipping Away
At a time when hope for sustainable fashion seems to be slipping away, here are 10 values for the new season.
Photo: Francesco Scottiluc
A cursory glance through the headlines of our trade media in the last few weeks suggests that – despite Earth Month’s commitments, launches, and pledges – this sector is far from fixing fashion for good. As my friend and mentor Lucy Siegle says, “There is much pearl-clutching: cotton standards have turned out to be untrustworthy (see: the Better Cotton Initiative and Inditex), brands and retailers are falling short on climate goals, and the collapse of a great new material savior in Renewcell has caused panic and despair.”
The Better Cotton Initiative works in developing countries to make cotton farming more sustainable and beneficial for local communties
Lucy and I have known each other for 16 years – she was there when I started the Green Carpet Challenge in 2010 (in fact, she is the one who challenged me to do it) and I always turn to her when I have existential questions. Knowing that in times of crisis tradition dictates we need something to blame, I pick up the phone to clear my brain: Should we blame the crazy business model predicated on overproduction for over-consumption, should we blame the rampant greenwashing, or should we blame sustainable action? Lucy is used to my crises, and she is good at toning them down. “You’re right, things are not looking that great, and we know the tendency of the fashion sector is to cling on to defunct models. So it is not surprising that in some quarters the response is to proclaim loudly that sustainability should be ditched or watered down.” We both decide that there is no escape from the fact that we have to be morally and pragmatically committed to sorting out the dual crisis of soaring climate emissions and nature loss – so the only possible solution is to “stay with the trouble” of deep sustainability. Because, as we know, there is no fashion on a dead planet.
Livia Firth and Lucy Siegle
The problem is that, as I’ve written on these pages before and confirmed by recent research published by McKinsey, two-thirds of fashion brands will not meet their sustainability targets unless they miraculously accelerate emissions reduction. And therein lies the problem: 40% have seen their emissions increase since making the commitments. To put it succinctly: It is high time to stop listening to fairy tales and engage with deep work with great people.
Apologies if I sound enormously frustrated, but this is important to me. For millions of people on the frontline of climate disaster, this is real life. With my Eco-Age hat on, I spent 16 years guided by this framing. We can’t tinker at the margins, or pretend to act, or do performative (but meaningless) action, we must cut through the noise and drive forward – while bringing a coalition of the willing (and the courageous) with us.
Photo: Courtesy of The Better Cotton Initiative
This new season needs to be all about relationships because that’s what it comes down to. The company you keep has never mattered more. We are indebted to Indigenous leaders and young climate activists, to lawyers and architects of sustainable communities, and those with ideas on developing democracy. Rather than roaming around trade fairs for dyes with slightly less plastic in them, the real ideas exchange is in a community somewhere, with those who are rarely acknowledged in these value webs. What we need to create are real partnerships built on respect, economic viability, and future-proofed values that embed resilience.
I’m sharing this because when I scroll through the discontent and bickering and manoeuvring in our industry, I recognize so many of these recycled struggles and I know that they can be sorted by asserting real values and real sustainability. So I have asked the Eco-Age team to distill the top 10 governing values on how we can set a course of change in a world where you cannot do everything, but must be effective:
1. Complicated standards will never replace trust and knowing your farmer and factory manager. This has to be about human relationships.
2. Certifications, while useful if they are independent from industry interference and bias, are always prone to lobbying.
3. The greatest standards can buckle in response to industry pressure and the oil and gas industry.
4. Virgin fossil-based synthetic textiles must be stopped.
5. There are no quick fixes, just deep work and high ambition.
6. The business model must change radically. The idea that you can keep all research and development and clever stuff in rich countries and devolve all the messy, polluting, exploiting part of the supply chain to developing countries is over.
7. It’s a value web, not a chain, with equitable relationships between each part.
8. To those who are obliquely moving “towards circularity” with ever-growing plastic inventory, we ask, when are you planning on getting there?
9. Carbon dioxide “savings” are not actual cuts that will help end the climate catastrophe. You have to work doubly hard for those.
10. The glut of fashion waste, which is visible from space, cannot be reduced by a miracle plastic material.
And a final thought: Do not let size dictate change. The giant retailers and brands can be part of the conversation, but we need a biodiverse ecosystem of change, not a monoculture.
June 2024: Livia Firth on How Powerful Fashion Symbols Can Start a Revolution
The need of the hour? Simple, powerful fashion symbols that can be wielded by the right social media heroes to start a revolution, says Vogue Arabia’s sustainability editor-at-large.
Katniss’s hand gesture symbolized the revolution in The Hunger Games
As you are reading this, the Cannes Film Festival will have received global media attention for the fashion looks of the actors walking one of the most famous red carpets in the world. But while I am not able to comment on any of it (my print deadline for this June issue is before the festival opens), I can’t help but wonder if anyone could use this powerful communication platform to launch a new campaign for democracy and social and environmental justice. After all, social media has catapulted some of these celebrities to an insane level of fame; they could literally get everyone to do anything with just wearing one look or one accessory.
Back in 2010, when I launched The Green Carpet Challenge at the Golden Globes, I got some of the actors to join me to amplify the message. At the time, no one was talking about sustainable fashion, and social media wasn’t even a thing. Their endorsement and joining meant that the movement got bigger and stronger carpet after carpet, year after year. But were I to start this today, with sustainability being one of the most overused words from the dictionary and with social media on steroids… What would I do?
Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd wear black at the Golden Globes in 2018 in support of #TimesUp. Photo: Alamy
Would I choose a fashion symbol and ask everyone to wear it? Think about the Black Panthers’ famous black beret in the 60s, the Guy Fawkes masks during Occupy Wall Street, the pink hat, which was chosen in 2017 at the Women’s March in Washington, or the actors wearing black at the Golden Globes in 2018 in support of the #TimesUp movement. These were all simple, but powerful fashion symbols to show which side of history you were on. Can we do it again? Can we do it bigger?
Protesters at the Women’s March in Washington in 2017 chose to don pink headwear
This year, half of the world will go to vote. Lately, I have been busy meeting with young activists and colleagues trying to come up with the right campaign for young people to go and vote. There has been a fair amount of brainstorming, and back and forth with ideas on how to convince them that their vote matters and will make a difference – but every time all I can think is, “We need a Katniss and a hand gesture to symbolize and re-ignite the revolution.”
Here is a bit of context for those of you who are too young or too old (or maybe you were just not bothered at the time) to have missed The Hunger Games movies: the story is set in a dystopian world called Panem consisting of the lavishly rich and technologically advanced capital, which rules 12 districts in varying states of poverty. Every year, children from the 12 districts are selected via lottery to participate in a compulsory televised battle death match called The Hunger Games, with the purpose of providing entertainment for the capital while reminding the districts of its power and its lack of remorse or forgiveness for rebellion.
Fifteen years after the books and the movies became a cultural phenomenon, it is easy to see how this resonates with what is happening today. Dystopian nightmare is no more – the world of The Hunger Games is frighteningly like our world. In the business of fashion even more so: one only must look at the fast and ultra-fast fashion “extravaganza” of the last few years to understand the clear division between the Global North (where everyone consumes frantically what these businesses encouraged us to buy compulsively) and the Global South (where everyone is exploited to produce fast and cheap and where everything then gets dumped after a few wears). In 2015, when The True Cost documentary came out, the famous scene of the juxtaposition between Black Friday in America and the garment workers in Bangladesh hit hard. That was the Hunger Games already.
But in that story, everything changes when our hero Katniss Everdeen, played in the movie trilogy by Jennifer Lawrence, takes part in the games, distracts everyone with her fashion looks, becomes what today we would call an “influencer” and starts mobilizing everyone in the 12 districts with a “silent salute,” which soon becomes the symbol of the resistance and eventually destroys the capital.
Who will the Katniss Everdeen be in this day and age? What would the “silent salute” be and how would she use her being an influencer on social media to start a revolution? With Meta’s new political content “guidelines,” people fatigue in general, and everyone being sedated by relentless marketing campaigns disguised as “content” pushed on us by a distorted algorithm – it is not an easy answer.
The digitine movement has seen people blocking celebrities on social media for not speaking out on social issues
But this is precisely why it is the right time to think about it. I wonder who will start it and how it will happen. In the meantime, the new digitine movement (with people blocking celebrities on social media for not speaking out on social issues) may just be what we need to get the revolution started.
