Black Friday is bad for sustainability, but businesses can’t escape it. Here are some alternative ways to engage.
Vogue Arabia, February 2022. Photo: Eddie Wrey
Every year, Black Friday seems to get more intense: sales start earlier, last longer and drive prices down further. This year, analysts and experts predict that the shopping event will trigger a spike in sales despite a global slowdown in demand for luxury goods, as well as ongoing shipping and logistics challenges.
Black Friday is a behemoth of overconsumption. On the fringes of sustainable fashion, there is a faction that stands against it. Certain brands have always opted to shut up shop on Black Friday or refused to put items on sale, but there is a growing middle ground, where companies try to leverage the increased footfall and consumer attention to promote more sustainable or circular practices. Here, Vogue Business highlights five alternative ways to engage.
Vestiaire Collective x The Or Foundation
Luxury resale platform Vestiaire Collection and US-Ghanaian non-profit The Or Foundation have a history of sustainable fashion activism. The Or Foundation has hosted Vestiaire Collective employees at Kantamanto Market (said to be the largest secondhand clothing market in West Africa); Vestiaire Collective has hosted Kantamanto resellers in Paris; and the two organisations have joined forces to lobby the European Union to make the extended producer responsibility regulation more inclusive. Now, they are turning their attention to the “consumer frenzy” surrounding Black Friday, using the shopping event to launch a collection created by Ghanaian designers from upcycled materials from Kantamanto Market on Vestiaire Collective.
The collection will feature 29 one-off items, including tapestry jackets, denim adorned with embroidery and appliqués, and patchwork bags. Items will be available from Black Friday onwards across the US and Europe. Proceeds will be shared among the featured designers and the Kantamanto community via The Or Foundation’s Secondhand Solidarity Fund, according to Vestiaire Collective.
“Launching this collection on Black Friday — a day that has waste and overconsumption so explicitly woven into its DNA — highlights the innovation, mastery and creativity that comes out of Accra’s Kantamanto, the largest secondhand market in the world, in stark contrast to what brands are offering and what people are typically shopping for on this day,” says Liz Ricketts, co-founder and executive director of The Or Foundation. “Black Friday is just one day a year, but the overconsumption habits that drive it are pervasive year-round fueled by brands. … We hope this [collection] encourages people to take stock of and re-evaluate their relationship with clothes.”
The upcycled collection features designs by 1304 Thrift Street (left) and Alpha Tribe Costume (right) among others. Photos: Courtesy of Vestiaire Collective and The Or Foundation
Veja opens up its repair shop
Veja has been resisting Black Friday since 2017, but this year, the French trainer brand is making a point of it. The company has launched 10 cobbler spaces since 2020, repairing over 35,000 pairs of shoes in the process, and will now use Black Friday to champion the cause. Hosted at its Paris headquarters, Veja’s two-day Repair Friday event will offer free repairs on worn-out shoes, clothes, furniture or electronics, regardless of where they came from.
It has also invited other companies to take part. This will include Swiss homeware brand Vitra (repairing Eames chairs), bicycle repair shop Cyclocare (fixing bikes), French studio Aurélie Chadaine (offering leather repairs and hand-sewing workshops), secondhand book shop Recyclivre (rehousing old books), specialist cobbler À la Ville à la Montagne (repairing technical shoes) and Anti_Fashion Project (upcycling old textiles into accessories). The event will run from 29 to 30 November.
“Black Friday is 24 hours of crazy promotions on anything and everything. The ultimate rush and then nothing. The money is gone, the joy is gone, and the purchased items become useless,” says Veja co-founder Sébastien Kopp. “Customers are generally really surprised by what we can do. They often think the product cannot be repaired. Sometimes, just cleaning the shoes can make people fall in love again, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to achieve.”
The upcycled collection features designs by 1304 Thrift Street (left) and Alpha Tribe Costume (right) among others. Photos: Courtesy of Vestiaire Collective and The Or Foundation
Archive invites brands to put secondhand on sale
White-label resale platform Archive is using Black Friday as a call to action for its partner brands to bring circularity out of the shadows. This looks different for each brand, explains co-founder and CEO Emily Gittins. Some, such as Dr Martens, are putting their resale offerings on the market alongside their mainline collections. California brand Toad&Co is running 20 per cent off selected resale items and promoting the sale with its main discounts.
H&M Group’s Arket is one of the Archive partner brands that will use Black Friday only to promote its pre-loved collections this year. Brand and communication director Karl-Johan Bogefors says this chimes with the company’s focus on “well-made” and “durable” products, also noting that it has never offered Black Friday sales in the past.
“Black Friday is a pivotal moment for retail. With consumer interest in sustainability at an all-time high, it’s a natural opportunity to highlight the value of resale,” says Gittins, though she notes that many brands are still reluctant to engage.
Royal Mail x Movopack
In the UK alone, PWC estimates that consumers will spend £7.1 billion, 68 per cent of which will be online. That’s why the UK’s Royal Mail postal service is partnering with Milanese reusable packaging startup Movopack, allowing e-commerce customers to choose packaging that can be reused up to 20 times. The move coincides with the announcement that Movopack has secured £2 million in seed funding to finance its entry into the UK market. The company is already used by over 100 brands globally, including Italy’s OTB Group, which owns Diesel, Marni, Maison Margiela and Jil Sander among others.
Packaging isn’t everything, but it does generate a lot of waste, says Movopack CEO and co-founder Tomaso Torriani. “We want to make it easy for consumers to reduce their environmental impact when shopping online and to reimagine the life cycle of their purchases.”
Ecoalf: Fast fashion’s hidden disaster in the Atacama Desert
With Black Friday fast approaching, Spanish brand Ecoalf has added a conspicuous bright blue banner to the top of its website that says: “0% discount” and “break your habit, not the planet”. The brand has boycotted Black Friday discounts since its founding in 2009. “Black Friday represents a moment of extreme overconsumption, so we always try to use it as an opportunity to educate rather than sell,” says CMO Carolina Álvarez-Ossorio. This year, the brand commissioned filmmaker Stella Banderas to create a documentary short about Chile’s Atacama Desert, whose heaps of textile waste are said to be visible from space.
The film, which debuted on Ecoalf’s Instagram account on Monday and is now available across its digital platforms, is intended to “make people reflect on the true cost of their purchases”, says Álvarez-Ossorio. “What does a ‘good deal’ really mean when it comes at the expense of the planet and vulnerable communities?”
Spanish brand Ecoalf has chosen to spotlight textile waste this Black Friday, releasing a short film about Chile’s Atacama Desert, shown here. Photo: Stella Banderas and Renee Nabinger
Originally published in Voguebusiness.com
