FFFU0020

Written evidence submitted by Professor Dilys Williams on behalf of the

Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London

Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF)[1], is a University of the Arts London research, knowledge exchange and education centre, based at London College of Fashion. Founded in 2008, the centre shapes and contributes to Fashion Design for Sustainability, as a field of study, industry, and education practices. CSF takes a systemic approach to fashion, honouring equity and diversity that draws on fashion’s intersecting cultural, social, ecological and economic contexts.

Centre for Sustainable Fashion wholeheartedly welcomes the follow up Inquiry of the Environmental Audit Select Committee and its questions for action towards a UK fashion system with underlying operating principles of social equality, fulfilling livelihoods and environmental care and benefit.

Summary

The UK government needs to amplify sustainability in action, recognising and supporting the work of pioneers, to achieve its Net Zero emissions target, fulfil the Paris Agreement and other climate and social justice commitments. There is not enough time for incremental improvement in environmental and social impacts; evidence shows that such improvements to date have led to increased negative impacts.[2] There is a moral imperative for the UK government to act boldly on clear evidence of the capacity of the UK to thrive, by committing to restorative models and practices that contribute to long-term social, economic, cultural and ecological prosperity.

This submission of evidence highlights ways to address causes as well as symptoms of the three-fold crisis of human, planetary and societal health. It proposes ways to support the vital contribution to systemic change of

- UK-based micro, small and medium fashion design entrepreneurs, (MSE-FDEs)

- UK universities undertaking fashion and sustainability research and education

- UK fashion media, NGOs and communities, alongside that of larger businesses.

The aim is to address problems at source (values, goals and criteria of success) rather than just symptoms of a carbon-based, labour exploiting fashion industry, alongside mitigating immediate impacts and consequences. It makes direct reference to the Inquiry concerns of environmental impact of the fashion industry and working conditions in the UK garment factories and other recommendations within the EAC report Fixing Fashion (2019), including the priority area of fashion and textile waste.

This evidence draws on findings from a range of research and education projects undertaken by CSF members with colleagues from UK and European universities. It suggests that eliminating environmental degradation, unethical and dangerous working conditions, and impacts of fashion and textile waste are contingent on design practices and business models that recognise prosperity through fashion’s cultural, social, economic and environmental value. Such practices reduce costs across all four dimensions. Evidence shows that this can be achieved through a diverse and rich, multi-model approach, relevant to place, skills, resource availability, product types, citizen and community need and critically, the positive role that fashion plays in our lives.

CSF would like to highlight vital work relating to the All-Party Parliamentary Group: Ethics and Sustainability in fashion[3] and APPG on Limits to Growth,[4] NGOs, communities, businesses across all scales, individuals and organisations in and beyond the UK, making and activating change towards sustainability in and through fashion.

Evidence in response to inquiry questions:

What progress has been made in reducing the environmental and social impact of the fashion industry since the Fixing Fashion report came out?

Rethinking Fashion Design Entrepreneurship: Fostering Sustainable Practices

At the time of the Fixing Fashion report, research had just started to investigate environmental, economic, social and cultural value contribution from micro, small and medium sized UK based fashion design entrepreneurs (MSE- FDEs) and their role as drivers for sustainable prosperity. This research, undertaken at UAL, Middlesex University and Open University, funded by AHRC,[5] was referenced in the initial enquiry.

Since then, data has been gathered from research involving over 400 MSE-FDEs, followed by an in-depth study with 50 of these fashion design entrepreneurs.

Our work shows that government is doing very little, but that MSE-FDEs are innovating, and a support ecosystem for sustainability is emerging against the odds. The research findings have been analysed through a four-way lens of social, environmental, economic and cultural prosperity, to evidence where, how and under what conditions UK MSE-FDEs are successfully interweaving these elements.

Social sustainability: contribution to and interaction in places, communities and organisations; agency of diverse participants, their autonomy and cohesion

Environmental sustainability: engaging in activities taking place within biosphere limits; recognising people as part of nature; contributing to long-term quality of the natural world.

Economic sustainability: ensuring working conditions within agreed boundaries (wage levels relative to costs of living); a healthy relationship between productivity, employment and economic status.

Cultural sustainability: recognising and cultivating diversity to reflect a range of communities, locations and belief systems, practices and histories.

Work in progress findings suggest that MSE- FDEs are the ones making progress in addressing the sustainability challenges by bringing together different elements of sustainable prosperity.

MSE- FDEs take a social approach to design and business and are creating new models for living and working that foreground well-being for those in their business and supply chains. This leads to increased levels of trust, job satisfaction and fair wages through mutual understanding. This approach draws on traditional fashion skills and employment of UK graduates, shift to local production, and inclusion of communities not usually associated with fashion production. Examples include Bethany Williams[6], Birdsong[7] and Away to Mars[8].

MSE- FDEs take an environmental, climate emergency motivated approach to design and business and are creating models of resourcefulness and sufficiency that foreground place: resources that are location specific in terms of materials, skills, infrastructure, geographic conditions and community needs. Products and services are designed to maximise the value of these resources. This leads to reduced draw on virgin resources, reduced overall resource consumption, extended resource valuation and low emissions. Examples include Petit Pli[9], Unmade[10] and Sabinna[11].

MSE-FDEs take a culturally engaged approach to design and business and are developing models that extend who and what fashion represents in terms of diversity of people, histories, craft and other artistic practices, beliefs and aesthetic appreciation. An expanding and re-defining of luxury at what constitutes socially acceptable modes of consumption is also taking place. This leads to a broadening of fashion, diversifying sources and types of materials employed, leading to environmental and social sustainability progress. Examples include Phoebe English[12], Nu Wardrobe[13] and Elvis & Kresse[14].

MSE-FDEs take an economically progressive approach to design and business and are developing models of value beyond the creation and selling of products. This is taking place through networks of peer to peer exchange of knowledge, services or products; through social enterprise, co-operative, sharing, gifting and other exchange of labour with income models. This is leading to more resilience in human, environmental and economic terms. These findings align with research undertaken by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, relating to creative sector practitioners.[15]  Examples include Raeburn[16], Finisterre[17] and Patternity[18].

These MSE- FDEs display a newly recognized set of sustainability skills and capabilities that create social, environmental, cultural and economic prosperity. There is a need to support such sustainability skills training at school education, apprenticeship, HEI, and lifelong learning levels relating to the creative industries. Such training and education can be adapted and applied across locations and scales to inform UK creative and cultural industries.

Creative Industries Clusters (UKRI/AHRC)

The Creative Industries Clusters’ projects[19]Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology (BFTT) [20] and Future Fashion Factory (FFF) are providing a driving force in innovation to ensure UK industry remains at the forefront of creativity and technology, despite huge challenges presented by Brexit, the circular economy and COVID-19. As part of BFTT, the Re-Modelling Fashion project, led by a team of researchers from CSF and Cambridge University, in collaboration with UK fashion business, ASOS and with UK sustainability pioneer MSEs, is designing products and business models that extend value across a range of scales. This builds on academia-industry knowledge exchange partnerships, to understand and practice design for sustainability, with applications into product design, notably through extended knowledge exchange with ASOS’s creative teams.[21] Commercial application can be seen in current products on sale.[22] Re-modelling fashion is creating sustainable design methodologies to provoke, test and future-proof fashion products and services, amplifying positive environmental and social impacts and substantially reducing negative impacts.

The Sustainable Fashion Glossary[23]

Fashion media plays a crucial role in determining what, how and from whom fashion is bought and sold, shaping understanding and cultures of sustainable lifestyles. A high profile, substantial part of the fashion sector in its own right, pivotal UK fashion media publications are speaking out about fashion’s value and impact in environmental and social terms. They sit in tension between what they see as relevant in the sustainability context and what advertisers expect to sell through their pages.

Condé Nast, through its Vogue publications, is questioning practices of consumption and exploitation, articulating fashion’s value and values through text and visual narratives.[24] Condé Nast is partnering with Centre for Sustainable Fashion through collaboration between Vogue’s world’s leading fashion editors and academic researchers, establishing The Sustainable Fashion Glossary. Providing a rigorously researched lexicon of fashion and sustainability terms, it expands sustainability literacy in order to reduce fashion’s environmental and social impacts and extend its value. It builds and socialises a shared vocabulary for the benefits of editors, brands, fashion audiences and wider networks.[25] An impact assessment of the Sustainable Fashion Glossary is being undertaken.

Making for Change: Waltham Forest

Fashion’s social and cultural value in action is evidenced in the ‘Making for Change: Waltham Forest’ project[26], led by academia (London College of Fashion), funded by local government (London Borough of Waltham Forest), and involving local communities, schools and fashion MSEs.[27] It engages in fashion-related activities to catalyse socio-economic change. The project enables skills development (e.g. repair, embroidery, natural dyeing, zero-waste pattern cutting, sewing), opens up career pathways especially for young people and fosters community engagement[28]. Outcomes include, in partnership with heritage fashion manufacturing businesses, a Wash Lab[29] in east London (with laser-based textile and garment finishing processes to reduce water and chemical consumption), policy recommendations for the increased use of recycled polyester, and exhibition of craft tools and skills to engage participation.

Digital Life-Long Learning in Fashion and Sustainability

Education plays a foundational role in reducing the environmental and social impact of the fashion industry. Fashion and sustainability is a relatively new disciplinary area in research and curriculum terms. Whilst some UK universities offer courses that critically engage in fashion’s environmental and social considerations,[30] there are notable gaps in fashion education, across levels, which means that unsustainable practices are still taught and learnt. This is a problem at source and CSF has responded to this need for lifelong learning in fashion and sustainability by creating an open-source online course[31], in conjunction with an industry-academic collaboration with luxury fashion group, Kering. The course has enrolled over 70,000 learners; spanning students to senior industry leaders, from over 190 countries. CSF education provision is aligned to Sustainable Development Goals 4 and 12: Quality Education and Sustainable Production and Consumption. The centre is extending its open source, digital life-long learning provision with four new courses in 2021.

Responding to gaps in educator knowledge in sustainability, CSF is partnering with three EU universities in creating an open-source, online Framework for Fashion and Sustainability Teaching and Learning, FashionSEEDS[32], funded by the Erasmus Strategic Partnership programme. It will launch in 2021, offering all fashion educators methods and resources to apply and adapt to a range of courses and learning opportunities.

How can any stimulus after the Coronavirus crisis be used to promote a more sustainable fashion industry?

Current government policy makes it easier to engage in destructive practices than restorative ones. It offers licence to do harm by rewarding rampant overproduction and consumerism, the crux of the problem. The evidence outlined above, offers models and practices for sustainable prosperity that work with ideas of resourcefulness, sufficiency, co-creation, resilience, ethic of care, rootedness in place and culture and expanded view of fashion as a force of societal change. These models have been created under exceptionally difficult circumstances. Evidence suggests that whilst we live in times of uncertainty, there is a great appetite for pioneering sustainability in action.

Whilst the fashion industry has been severely affected by Covid19, there is early evidence of fashion design entrepreneurs showing exceptional ingenuity. Fashion businesses have played a pivotal role in coordinating and delivering much-needed scrubs to protect NHS workers, notable through the efforts of the Emergency Designer Network. Several of the businesses referenced here have been commended by the House of Commons for their efforts during Covid-19[33].

What actions could Government take to improve the collection of fashion waste?

What actions could Government take to incentivise the use of recycled or reused fibres and materials in the UK fashion industry?

Unsold stock has long been a fashion problem, particularly exacerbated by Covid 19. The government’s response to Fixing Fashion’s recommendation regarding unsold stock focuses on exploring policy measures in the future, rather than action now. To incentivise innovation, the government should ban landfilling or incinerating unsold stock. The French circular economy bill provides a proof of concept for the UK government.[34]

Companies taking steps to reduce waste should be rewarded. Fixing Fashion’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme recommendation of a 1p/garment levy to address fast fashion[35] should be re-considered to create lasting culture and practices change. Re-investment of receipts into UK fashion infrastructure and supporting MSE-FDEs who exemplify sustainability in action would open a vital door to change; finance being a key barrier holding them back. The policy recommendations that form the part of the 2019 European Commission report Support report mapping sustainable fashion opportunities for SMEs[36], co-created by CSF, Middlesex University, Institut Français de la Mode and Politecnico di Milano, are recommended as a point of reference.

The government’s response to Fixing Fashion’s recommendation regarding VAT reduction on repair services, was that VAT is a complex issue; retailers should realise social and environmental responsibility to be important. This is an inadequate response to an opportunity to incentivise not only the use of re-cycled materials, but to look higher up the value chain to extend use and re-use of existing garments.

Achieving Net Zero Emissions (de-carbonising fashion)

The government response to Fixing Fashion cites A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment,[37] the report Our Waste, Our Resources: A Strategy for England[38], and the role of SCAP. Yet, the waste strategy in these reports has an overarching focus on plastic, which, whilst important to materials such as synthetics, is not an adequate response to the suggested blueprint for achieving net zero carbon emissions in the UK fashion sector. Race to Zero[39] requires a 45% reduction in fashion emissions by 2030 through learning from proven solutions and a change in business model; targets will not be achieved if current patterns of consumption are unchanged. [40]Changing brands’ and citizens’ consumerist practices is key to success.

Diaries note 2025, 2030 and 2050 deadlines, but there are major gaps in 2021-5 calendars, years when demonstrable action on climate change must take place.

Sustainability-in-Action: Now

A re-modelling of priorities, goals and measures of success in the fashion sector is necessary. This is a political challenge rather than a material or technological one[41]. A blueprint for fashion achieving net zero emissions and restorative practices in human and environmental terms requires collaboration across the UK fashion sector and with key organisations across the global fashion system[42]  Through the UK’s world-leading fashion and sustainability research, education and design entrepreneurs, across scales, we need to create a UK wide sustainability ecosystem. This involves connecting citizens, communities, schools and universities, NGOs, businesses, supply chains, local councils and mayors in sustainability-in-action; establishing a fashion and sustainability infrastructure, models and cultures of environmental, social, cultural and economic prosperity.

By creating a de-centralised  fashion system, responsive to regional needs, resources and capitals offers the means for production of distinctive products and services that offer jobs, community cohesion and creative expression.

This value paradigm for fashion creates new business opportunities (re-use, re-design, re-value resources from a range of sectors) reduced emissions and lower transport costs and increases the UK’s resilience in social, financial and resource terms.

A UK distinction

The government’s response to Fixing Fashion sought to address social and environmental costs of the industry within the wider environmental crisis, rather than recognising the unique context of the fashion industry. Actionable steps were absent or pointed to wider policy developments across multiple industries focusing on bigger corporations. Evidence and recommendations outlined above point to the distinction of UK fashion, its world-leading designers, the 59,000 SMEs in the UK[43] and universities contributing significantly to the UK’s world-leading talent, research and innovation. The evidence outlines a designing in of value that is critical to the economic and social prosperity of the UK. Surely this is preferable to designing out to fix the consequences of not recognising the worth of the UK’s human and environmental resources?

Policy recommendations relating to evidence provided in this submission

R&D: Sustainability in Action: Now

-          Long-term commitment to support an R&D experimental centre of design for sustainability, resilience and wellbeing via academia, industry and community partnerships.

Support for Fashion design entrepreneurs (MSE-FDEs)

        Access to finance and showcasing opportunities that recognize the specific needs of fashion MSE-FDEs including patient capital and impact investment

        Incentives for regional fashion systems

        Specialist support relating to new fashion design entrepreneur archetypes

Infrastructure development

-          Ban fashion from landfill[44] by extending legislation already in place in France.

-          Extend producer responsibility to incentivise a resource valuing  system[45]

-          Support take-back, re-sale, re-furbish and re-make infrastructure and businesses relating to these activities

-          VAT exemption for repair, rental, second-hand items and peer to peer fashion services[46].

-          Fashion companies that reduce their environmental impact should be rewarded in tax cuts and those that do not should be fined. [47]

-          Extension of the Modern Slavery Act (2015) to include all UK factories and support mechanisms for workers.

-          Commit to Green Public Procurement and Circular Procurement to lead by example

Education and Job Creation

-          Support fashion eco-design, fibre and materials knowledge and practical skills training and life-long learning.

        Higher Education courses to include sustainability in all courses and to extend life-long learning opportunities for a diverse range of learners.

        Mandating making and mending skills in school curriculum Key Stage 1, 2, 3

        Increase opportunities for apprenticeships and training in skills for sustainability including technical and craft skills.

November 2020