A group of fashion CEOs, retailers and designers, including luminaries lie as Dries Van Noten, Tory Burch and Craig Green, have called for greater efforts to encourage sustainability in an open letter to the industry. The group noted the current environment presents an opportunity for a fundamental and welcome change that will simplify their businesses, making them more environmentally and socially sustainable and ultimately align them more closely with customers’ needs.
The group emerged from a series of Zoom conferences this month, uniting a surprisingly broad array of figures including fashion forward designers, dynamic executives, influential big boutique owners and even online retailers. The first of their two key demands included adjusting the seasonality and flow of both women’s wear and menswear goods, starting with the Autumn/Winter 2020 season besides maintaining a more balanced flow of deliveries through the season to provide newness but also time for products to create desire.
Another of their goal is to greatly reduce the bane of all designer houses, discounts, in order to allow more full-price selling. This fledgling fashion forum also calls for greater sustainability throughout the supply chain and a new sales calendar, which they claim would lead to less unnecessary product; less wasted fabrics and inventory, and less showrooms.
The letter is also signed by the likes of Joseph Altuzarra, Linda Fargo of Bergdorf Goodman, Erdem Moralioglu, Gabriella Hearst, Shelly Corkery of Brown Thomas, Marine Serre, Mary Katrantzou, Michael Kliger of Mytheresa, Pierre-Yves Roussel and Rodrigo Bazan of Thom Browne.
