While this would be a boost for the London Stock Exchange (LSE), which has lost several organisations to other international exchanges over the last five years, it raises the question of why Shein has not been successful with its application to the NYSE.

Shein has gained a significant global market share in online fast fashion since launching in China in 2008. It found success accelerating the already lucrative fast-fashion business model to become an ultra-fast fashion retailer.

That Shein is the second most popular fashion retailer for American generation Z is unsurprising, given the vast choice of up to 10,000 new garments uploaded daily at significantly lower prices than fast-fashion competitors like Zara and H&M.

Yet those strategies that have enabled Shein’s international expansion are now likely hindering its application to the NYSE. The low cost of fast fashion in general has long been linked to potential labour exploitation, and the precariousness of outsourcing fashion production to the cheapest supplier within a global supply chain was evident during the pandemic. And as awareness of unethical and unsustainable practices in the wider industry grows, activists may yet have the power to disrupt Shein’s growth.

Swiss NGO Public Eye has reported on alleged exploitation at factories said to be used by Shein, which itself recently issued a comprehensive response saying it has made “extensive progress” in improving conditions. In the US, Rubio introduced a law in 2021 blocking imports made by Chinese Uyghur slave labour and has since ordered an investigation into Shein and fellow Chinese low-price retailer Temu to see if their goods fall foul of the law.

Climate emergency

The US is going further in regulating the fashion industry. In New York, the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act will, if passed, legislate that fashion and footwear brands with more than US$100 million (£79 million) in revenue must map 50% of their supply chain to ensure transparency. They will also have to develop plans to reduce their social and environmental impact.

Similarly, in 2019 the European Parliament declared a climate emergency, and the European Commission responded by developing the European Green Deal. This includes planned legislation forcing the fashion industry to address sustainability issues, meaning that by 2030 fashion and textiles will have to become more durable, repairable and recyclable. Businesses will also need to have strategies in place from the design process through to the end of life to maximise resources and avoid contributing to landfill.

French politicians are also “legislating to limit the excesses of ultra-fast fashion”, with a surcharge from 2025 of €5 (£4.29) per item, rising to €10 by 2030. This is recognition that ultra-fast and fast fashion does not only exploit labour, but also the environment. In being seen as disposable, fast fashion has been shown to encourage constant consumption.

While listing Shein on the LSE could improve the company’s respectability and profits, it could backfire for the brand in the long term. Shein could become more visible to a wider audience and with more understanding of sustainability and business practices that contribute to the climate emergency, activists could begin targeting shareholders and other organisations and people with connections to the company.

There is precedent for this – activists who targeted museums and galleries over their sponsorship from energy companies, as well as campus protests in the US and Europe calling for universities to divest from Israeli companies over its war in Gaza.

This trend of publicly criticising brands for exploitative or unethical practice has been levied at fast fashion retailers on social media for years. In particular, influencers who promote “fashion hauls” have been criticised for encouraging unsustainable fashion consumption.

The fashion industry may appear to be unfairly scrutinised for failing to address sustainability. After all, it’s hardly the only industry that damages the environment. But the scrutiny appears to be valid; the United Nations now believes that the fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world.

What’s more, as an industry it makes an overt display of its cheap prices and rapid turnover, with marketing tactics claiming “last chance to buy” or “low in stock”, along with discounts that encourage frequent impulsive purchases. Our research has found that fast fashion marketing on social media is “in your face” and encourages mindless consumption of clothing that often languishes in wardrobes with the tags still on.

Fast-fashion retailers frequently make sustainability claims to alleviate consumer “eco-guilt”, which are often ambiguous and can’t be readily substantiated. But fast and ultra-fast fashion can never be sustainable due to the speed of turnover and items that are often binned after one wear.

So, although the marketing entices customers through social media, the messages consumers see as they scroll are increasingly competing with stories of activism and protests about fast fashion’s harmful effects.

As moves to regulate the fast-fashion industry spread to more regions, the effects will almost certainly affect the profits of those in the sector. While a London listing for Shein might be a shot in the arm for the LSE, it could spell trouble for the retailer as it finds itself – and its practices – under increasing scrutiny.

Shein was approached about the claims made in this article but declined to comment.

Elaine Ritch is a reader in fashion, marketing and sustainability at the Glasgow Caledonian University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Each is a mind bomb (a term coined by late, great Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter), marking, for many of us, a definitive before the collapse and after. But has our shock and awe at this deadly tragedy translated into any real or lasting change in an industry rife with problems? Are we addressing the fragmented supply chains, culture of subcontracting, unliveable wages, systemic racism, sexism and infrastructural overhaul needed to protect garment workers? Yes and no.  

In the early months post-collapse, an unprecedented community-organization effort rose from the rubble. Founded by British fashion designers Carry Somers and Orsola de Castro, Fashion Revolution served to mobilize global citizens and turn up the heat on fast fashion brands through use of the Socratic method. Fash Rev’s #WhoMadeMyClothes campaign has generated 979,000 impressions on Instagram alone, placing steady pressure on the apparel industry and centring garment-worker rights at the heart of the sustainable fashion conversation.  

Since 2017, the non-profit’s annual Fashion Transparency Index has ranked 250 of the biggest fashion brands and retailers based on their public disclosure of human rights and environmental policies, practices and impacts. While nearly half of these now disclose their first-tier manufacturing lists, only 4% of brands reveal whether their garment workers earn a living wage.  

In the last 10 years, the chorus of voices addressing fashion’s social impacts has grown. Organizations including the Clean Clothes Campaign, Remake, the Fair Wear Foundation, Labour Behind the Label, GoodWeave and others continue to call for proper compensation for Rana Plaza’s survivors, many of whom suffer deteriorating health, and commitments to ensure worker safety, which was the aim of the short-lived but not inconsequential Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and Accord on Fire and Building Safety  (which became the RMG – short for “ready-made garment” – Sustainability Council in 2020).  

In 2021, an International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry was formed, now 190 brand and labour union signatories strong. Efforts to date include 56,000 independently overseen building safety inspections at more than 2,400 garment factories, the resolution of more than 140,000 occupational health and safety issues, and the implementation of factory-wide rights and safety trainings and much-needed complaint-reporting mechanisms. Undoubtedly, the accord has made factories safer for Bangladesh’s 4.1 million garment sector workers

But while accord signatories hail from countries around the world, its protections extend to workers in exactly two: Bangladesh and Pakistan. The majority of global brands remain unsigned and continue to abide by their own internal policies, obligated only to enact voluntary remediation efforts in the event of violations. In a post–Rana Plaza world, anything less than the accord’s legally binding commitment to worker safety is performative virtue signalling.  

Mounting pressure on the fashion industry since Rana Plaza has led to a push for regulatory changes in the West. The Fashioning Accountability and Building Real Institutional Change (FABRIC) bill was introduced in the U.S. last spring and proposes both workplace protections and major incentives to accelerate domestic apparel manufacturing, while simultaneously putting an end to piecework – payment per unit produced, the conventional driver of productivity – in favour of hourly wages.  

Calls for apparel brands to be better corporate citizens have enveloped both the industry’s haunting labour practices and environmental exploits. At the state level, New York’s Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act aims to address both the social and environmental outcomes of companies exceeding $100 million in revenue. The act will mandate supply-chain mapping, impact disclosures and the implementation of science-based climate targets. The attorney general’s office will handle enforcement and fine companies up to 2% of revenue for infringements.   

Across the pond, the EU has set an ambitious intention to become the first climate-neutral continent, which will mean big changes in the garment sector. As part of its Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan includes strategies to end greenwashing and the use of misleading environmental claims, to stop overproduction and overconsumption, to discourage the destruction of unsold or returned textiles, and to establish circular design requirements for textiles to increase durability, longevity and recyclability.  

We need to see more of these top-down approaches. As it stands, the current system obfuscates where responsibility should lie – with industry – rather than on increasingly cash-strapped consumers, who, bombarded with options from a 52-season fashion calendar, are somehow expected to either abstain or pay a premium to shop responsibly. While there are sustainable options that won’t break the bank, it’s time to redirect our energy to push for policy change.  

For the fashion community and beyond, April 24 will always be a solemn day worth observing. But an overemphasis on extremes like Rana Plaza can dull our senses and exacerbate our indifference to the more mundane and quotidian instances of suffering experienced by garment workers around the globe.  

As author and activist Mariame Kaba reminds us, “Spectacle as the route to empathy means the atrocities itemized need to happen more often or get worse … in hopes of being registered.”  

There is a silent acceptance of “ordinary” terror in our preoccupation with worst-case scenarios. In Rana’s case: 1138 dead, 2,500 injured, 322 unidentified.  

Indeed, there is much more work to be done to bring safety and transparency to an industry that remains largely self-regulated. As horrific an example as it is, Rana Plaza is the iceberg’s visible tip – a factory built on a swamp, two storeys too tall, overloaded beyond structural capacity with heavy vibrating machinery. Rana was not the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern history but a wholly preventable one, which deserves to be remembered as much for the systemic changes it incited as for the grievous loss of life and livelihood.  

Sarah Jay is a sustainability consultant, researcher and filmmaker who visited the site of Rana Plaza in the fall of 2014.  

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Environmentalist activists weren’t quite as thrilled. A few weeks prior, environmental organization Stand.earth issued a scorecard assessing 47 fashion companies on the steps being taken to eliminate fossil fuels from manufacturing, materials and shipping processes. Team Canada’s new outfitter had a poor showing, with a D-.

“Lululemon’s continued dependence on fossil fuels poses a significant investor and brand risk, and is inconsistent with its values,” said Muhannad Malas, senior climate campaigner at Stand.earth, in a statement. The Vancouver-headquartered yoga-pant maker has “a critical opportunity to rise to the top and become a climate leader by committing to ditch coal and invest in a rapid transition to renewable energy,” he added.

Lululemon has made commitments to cut the intensity of its carbon emissions, but only three companies assessed – REI, Asics and Mammut – committed to curbing absolute emissions across their supply chains by 55% or more by 2030.

The scorecard measures performance in five areas: climate commitments and transparency, renewable and energy-efficient manufacturing, renewable energy advocacy, low-carbon clothing materials, and greener shipping.

No company earned a perfect score, but sportswear brands were clearly in the lead, with Mammut earning a B- (the highest overall), followed by Nike (C+), then Asics, Puma, Levi’s and VF Corporation (maker of The North Face and Timberland) tying with Cs.

Patagonia, Adidas and Canadian outdoor outfitter Arc’teryx were also in the top 10.

Twenty companies, including American Eagle Outfitters, Esprit, Everlane, MEC and Prada, received Fs.

Textile production is considered one of the world’s most polluting industries, churning out more tonnes of carbon dioxide per year than international flights and shipping combined. A large chunk of the clothing manufacturing occurs in China, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam, countries heavily reliant on coal power plants, which increases the carbon footprint of every garment.

On the climate advocacy side, H&M, Levi’s and VF Corp. earned points for using their influence to caution Cambodia against plans to increase coal-fired power and to encourage support for renewable energy in Vietnam.

“Fashion companies in Vietnam contribute to the majority of national exports,” said Nguy Thi Khanh, executive director of the Green Innovation and Development Centre. “As an important energy user, the fashion sector plays a crucial role in accelerating energy transformation.”

The fabrics themselves are another big hurdle. More than 60% of textile fibres are now synthetic, and fossil-fuel-derived polyester has overtaken cotton as the most popular clothing fabric. Several sportswear and fast fashion companies assessed – including Lululemon, Under Armour, Zara and Uniqlo – were flagged in the report as facing “major challenges in transitioning to low-carbon materials since fossil fuel-derived fabrics like polyester make up a large proportion of their materials mix.”

“If we want to continue to have the Winter Olympics, we have to transition off fossil fuels to renewable energy as rapidly as possible,” said Malas. “The runway is getting shorter for companies to move from commitments to actions.”

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When COVID struck and the malls shut down, more than 2,000 retail and fashion companies abruptly cancelled thousands of orders, many failing to pay even for those that had been completed. The small suppliers who produce some of the world’s best-known brands – The Gap, Nike, Primark, H&M and hundreds more – were forced to cut staff or even close their doors, leaving millions of workers struggling to feed their families.

At the best of times, garment workers, most of them based in Asia and primarily female, live precarious lives. They work up to 60 hours a week earning as little as $2 to $3 an hour while working at breakneck pace in often unsafe conditions.

In Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Kenya and other centres of textile production, workers have protested to regain their lost wages. But social media, which often exposes power imbalances, may prove the most effective tool for recouping the money the workers are owed.

Enter Remake, a California-based group of millennial and Gen Z designers and activists dedicated to “making fashion a force for good.” Galvanized by research published by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and Penn State’s Center for Global Workers’ Rights, Remake, along with a a global network of  labour unions and labour rights advocates emerged to demand that brands pay factories the billions they owe. Under the hashtag #PayUp, Remake used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to shame the big companies that have greatly profited from their poorly paid global supply chains.

Never underestimate the power of fashionistas: by the fall, 273,000 people had signed Remake’s petition, and Adidas, H&M, The Gap, Lululemon, Ralph Lauren and Primark were among the 21 brands removed from Remake’s hit list, by promising to pay for cancelled and in-production orders in full, and in a timely manner. Remake estimates this effort will recoup US$22-billion worth of payments for overseas suppliers – about half the total bill it believes the retailers incurred.

In October, Penn State and WRC released an updated research brief, Unpaid Billions, documenting US$16.2 billion in cancelled orders and retroactive price reductions by garment brands and retailers, noting, “The result has been a dramatic loss of income and jobs for millions of garment workers.”

Among the companies still holding out as of November: Arcadia (which owns Topshop), The Children’s Place, JCPenney, Oscar de la Renta, Urban Outfitters and TJX, which owns Marshalls, Winners and HomeSense in Canada. (See sidebar below.)

How do such inequities happen? Apparel buyers used to fund new inventory using letters of credit, which guaranteed payment – without delays or further haggling – once the products were shipped. But The Wall Street Journal reports that big brands abandoned that practice over the last decade, “opting instead for an open-account system – essentially an honor system –where factories trust retailers to pay after shipment.” Factory owners had little choice but to go along.

“In the Covid-19 crisis, this skewed payment system allowed western brands to shore up their financial position by essentially robbing their developing country suppliers,” director of the WRC and co-author of the study, Scott Nova, told The Guardian.

Remake founder and CEO Ayesha Barenblat recently issued a campaign update:

“Missing from all of these fashion conversations of building back better post COVID-19 are workers whose wages and safety continues to be in a free fall. But if we have something to do with it, CEOs of fashion brands and the billionaires behind them, cannot just slip back into polite society after the devastation they have caused.”

Barenblat announced that Remake is launching the next phase of PayUp Fashion, demanding that brands go beyond just paying up and also commit to keeping workers safe, boosting wages and supporting much-needed laws and regulations that put workers at the center of a stronger, more equitably fashion industry.

As Barenblat told Vogue in the summer, #PayUp’s success “illustrates the power of activists and citizens coming together to hold the fashion industry accountable.” However, she adds, “we will not rest until the industry commits to liveable wages and social protections for garment makers so that never again will women who make our clothes be pushed to the brink of starvation.”

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Meanwhile, COVID has thrown a spotlight on the industry’s more unseemly practices. In Bangladesh, for example, suppliers lost millions when big fashion players didn’t pay for the orders they cancelled when the pandemic began. Factories were forced to close, leaving millions of workers on the curb without wages for completed orders, or jobs. 

At the end of March, one non-profit stepped in to help. Remake, whose mission is “to make fashion a force for good,” started an online campaign under the hashtag #PayUp to pressure fashion brands to pay for their fulfilled orders. Adidas, H&M, The Gap and Lululemon were among those that were pressured into honouring their contracts, but The Children’s Place, Urban Outfitters and TJX, which owns Marshalls, Winners and HomeSense in Canada, have not yet publicly committed to paying. 

The fashion industry is at a crossroads: either slash costs by doubling down on unsustainable practices that hurt workers and the environment or ramp up sustainability pledges made before the pandemic. 

“The question is now, how do we build back better?” says Michael Stanley-Jones, co-secretary of the United Nations Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, in a story for the UN Environment Programme’s website.  “We need to map the value chain and identify opportunities to limit the negative environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry while building in accountability and transparency.”

If one of the world’s dirtiest industries is going to clean up its act, then fashion schools must get in on the ground floor. Is the next generation of designers, merchandisers, buyers and managers being trained for the transition? 

***

If the $2.4 trillion fashion industry were a country, it would be the world’s seventh largest economy. It’s also considered one of the world’s dirtiest industries, responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions. The industry guzzles about 79 billion cubic metres of fresh water annually, making it the second-largest water polluter and consumer. Though apparel’s environmental and social impacts have long been criticized, COVID-19 unequivocally confirmed the need for the fashion industry to take action. Business as usual is no longer an option – and fashion’s supply chains, labour practices, water use and textile waste are all in need of makeovers. 

Are fashion schools keeping up? 

Currently, only a handful of sustainable fashion study programs exist, with just two offered in Canada. Marilyn McNeil-Morin, program director at George Brown College’s Fashion Exchange Program in Toronto, was at the centre of designing the program when it launched in 2016. She foresaw the “forces of change and recognized that the school needs to meet them ahead of time.”

McNeil-Morin explains that sustainability isn’t just about greener fabric choices. “The way the program is constructed is that it looks at the whole supply chain. Sustainability is not just fixing the environmental impacts of fashion, but also labour and social impacts,” she says. For example, classes focus on principles of accountability in the ethical sourcing of raw materials and sustainability challenges in apparel production by looking at labour logistics and production standards. 

There’s a push-and-pull tension in this space. Though McNeil-Morin suggests the desire to clean up the fashion market is growing on both the production and consumption sides, Pulse of the Fashion Industry 2019 tells a different story. The report – by the Global Fashion Agenda, Boston Consulting Group and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition – found that progress on sustainability slowed by a third in 2018. 

“Unless the current trend…improves,” the authors write, “fashion will continue to be a net contributor to climate change.” 

Sabine Weber, a professor in Seneca College’s School of Fashion in Toronto, offers a course on fashion sustainability but says there’s a shortage of trained people to lead sustainable initiatives. It’s a problem she hopes that classes like hers can help solve. She says sustainability is still “an abstract concept” for most fashion students and industry professionals, and it has to be made relatable by breaking down the supply chain. How does textile waste affect the planet? How can we reduce, reuse, recycle and join the circular economy? How can we push for quality clothing that people will want to keep longer? These are all questions she addresses with her students. 

“Designers determine the life cycle of a garment,” Weber says, “and they can see what the life of a garment will be at the end of its design and after the consumer is done with it.” Training students to design a garment so it can be easily recycled or upcycled helps ensure that tomorrow’s apparel companies are contributing to a circular economy. 

Suad Ali is a third-year Fashion Business Management student at Seneca College’s Newnham Campus. She says she learned about the detrimental effects of fashion in school. “[It] changed the way I think … Now I want to work in recycling and upcycling materials,” she says. 

Only a few students from her program are seriously incorporating elements of sustainability into their post-graduation business plans, Ali says, adding that most are resigned to the status quo. “That’s why we need more courses to keep reminding people of the importance of sustainability.”

Other schools putting sustainability at the core of their fashion design, production and business programs include Lethbridge College in Alberta and the London College of Fashion. But there are still far too few of them to flip the industry on its head, advocates say. 

A lot of the work going into educating the public, students and brands about the importance of sustainability in fashion is coming from outside of school systems. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has been working with a number of brands and universities to encourage a transition to a circular economy, recognizing the need to move away from a “take-make-waste” model of production and consumption. Through online resources and collaboration with universities around the world, such as the University of Montreal and the University of Chile, the foundation equips students with the knowledge and skills to build a society and economy with the concepts of sustainability and a circular economy at the core of their values. 

Still, more schools and universities need to recognize the future of business and forces of change and train students accordingly. 

“I attended the Copenhagen Fashion Summit [last May], and I was so surprised to see that education leaders were still only talking about introducing sustainability courses. At this point, we need interest at the program stage, not just the course stage,” McNeil-Morin says. 

Regenerative fabrics, upcycling, recycling, as well as slow-fashion business models all must become central to fashion programs so that students can bring these practices to the industry when they graduate. With scientists suggesting that we have 10 years left to bend the climate crisis curve, we need all hands on deck – including the next generation of fashion industry leaders. 

Shreya Kalra is a journalist based in Toronto writing on the environment, women, children and social issues.

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The truth is, most people didn’t even notice. Of the ten or so shoppers who showed interest in the “Product may contain slave labour” shirt at the front of the H&M, only two actually read the sign. Sitting on the sidelines, I listened to a shocked mother and daughter examine the shirt marked as potentially being created by slaves and yet they still entered the store, continuing their shopping as usual. Meanwhile, the “Product has been certified to be slave labour free” sign received even less attention.

When I repeated the process at the Gap and put the stickers on men’s jeans and women’s t-shirts, only 20% of people acknowledged the signs. Considering that labels act as powerful tools to warn consumers about allergens like peanuts, my stickers seemed hopeless in aiding consumers’ purchasing decisions as so many people overlooked them.

This lack of attentiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that consumers don’t want to buy more ethically. In 2016, Morgan Stanley surveyed 1,000 customers in the U.K. regarding their views on leading clothing retailers. 51% of respondents said that ethical credentials were somewhat or very important when deciding among apparel retailers. The same study also found that 62% of respondents valued good ethics as a key spending criterion. Good ethics landed in the middle of a list of 12 factors; good value for money was first at 84% and good advertising last at 36%.

To shop ethically, it’s critical for consumers to understand that slavery is not an idea of the past. An estimated 25 million people, the majority of which are in Asia Pacific, are victims of forced labour and subject to slavery, debt bondage and human trafficking. They’re found in the supply chains of global industries from canned tuna to British spring onions. Forced labour is also woven into the production of cotton, leather, textiles and garments at the world’s largest clothing retailers. According to the Global Slavery Index, the clothing industry is the second largest supporter of modern slavery after electronics.

Ethical sticker experiment seemed hopeless in aiding consumer purchasing decisions as so many people overlooked them. But lack of attentiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that consumers don’t want to lobal sla more ethically.

Last month, an Australian ABC television investigation uncovered that Target and H&M were among the brands sourcing cotton from China’s troubled Xinjiang province, where detained Muslim Uyghurs are reportedly forced to work in textile factories. The brands said they are investigating their relationship with suppliers.

Patricia Carrier, a program manager at Modern Slavery Registry, told Ethical Corporation that “given the prevalence of modern slavery in global supply chains, we know that most global companies will have it somewhere in their supply chains, very far down where they don’t have much visibility or leverage.”

The International Labour Organization values profits from slavery at $150 billion a year, making it more fruitful than Apple. Essentially, these victims are part of the reason why we can walk into our favourite fashion retailers, snag a great deal on a pair of jeans and feel economically satisfied because we found our size before it sold out.

The 2015 documentary The True Cost highlighted several of the gruesome aspects of fast fashion. It delved into the lives of low wage workers in developing countries and featured a 23-year-old Bangladeshi garment factory worker named Shima Akhter. It’s Akhter’s plea to consumers at the end of the film that is most chilling. “I don’t want anyone wearing anything,” she says, “that is produced with our blood.”

After hearing Akhter’s teary-eyed message, I assured myself that I would never again buy from a fast fashion retailer until later that week when I found the perfect summer dress at Zara. Could I consider myself an ethical consumer or was I some sort of monster?

A possible explanation for the lack of practice in ethical consumerism is that people often have different goals in different contexts. For instance, in the long run someone may want to lose weight but in the short term they’ll eat an entire chocolate cake.

A study called “The Socially Conscious Consumer? Field Experimental Tests of Consumer Support for Fair Labor Standards” tested this idea in 111 Banana Republic Factory stores across the U.S. by arranging two different signs around the stores. One highlighted the fashion attributes of products while the other explained the company’s commitment to promoting fair and safe working conditions. The labels with information about labour standards on low priced men’s and women’s items had no statistical impact on sales in outlet malls. Notably, the labour signs did have a positive effect on female shoppers looking at higher priced items.

Notably, the labour signs did have a positive effect on female shoppers looking at higher priced items.

 

The blinkered mindset, which many consumers maintain while shopping, makes it difficult to consider the ethical implications of a purchase. I liken this to going to a rib fest with my vegetarian best friend and having her try to convince me to eat salad instead. Of course, I love animals but I’ve come with the intent to buy ribs and that is what I will eat.

People may also engage in unethical behaviour and defend their desired perception through motivated reasoning. One study title sums it up concisely: “Sweatshop Labour is Wrong Unless the Shoes are Cute: Cognition Can Both Help and Hurt Motivated Moral Reasoning.” Georgetown University researchers found that a great sale or exclusive offer can justify labour practices, as can assumptions that sweatshops are the only realistic source of income for workers in poorer countries. The study also found that consumers that were stressed, distracted or preoccupied were less likely to justify sweatshop labor “due to a lack of mental capacity to convince themselves of something that isn’t true.”

A recent report by the San Francisco-based supply chain benchmarkers at KnowTheChain ranked global companies on the steps they took to eliminate forced labour throughout their supply chains. Gap (which scored 75/100), and H&M (65/100) were among the leaders, which is why I chose to target them for my experiment. The stickers, evidently, received little attention, but is it right to put the onus on consumers whose goals lead them to shy away from considering the use of slave labour in products?

In Canada, many of the most vigilant shoppers have trouble arriving at informed decisions. World Vision found that 80% of Canadians have no insight into whether their purchases assist in the exploitation of children. The study also noted that 90% of Canadians agree that the government should obligate companies to publicly report on their suppliers as well as their efforts to curtail slave labour in their supply chains.

90% of Canadians agree that the government should obligate companies to publicly report on their suppliers

 

Engaged citizens and advocates are encouraging Canada to follow in the steps of the U.K., California, the Netherlands and France in passing legislation to address modern slavery. The U.K.’s Modern Slavery Act guarantees that companies who operate at least part of their business in the U.K. and have approximately $73 million in annual gross global turnover are held liable for actions in their supply chains.

Kevin Thomas, the CEO of the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE) explains that “Canada needs the type of regulation that would empower private sector companies to report on their due diligence efforts to restrain and eliminate the use of modern slavery in their supply chains.”

Last December, a private member’s bill calling for a modern slavery act in Canada was tabled by Liberal MP John McKay. The proposed act would ask companies doing business in Canada (with at least $40 million in annual revenue) to submit public annual reports on the steps taken to prevent and reduce the risk of forced and child labour in their supply chain. In June, Employment and Social Development Canada held consultations on how the federal government should address labour exploitation in supply chains. Any further work on this has been suspended until after the federal election in October.

Would a modern slavery act survive the next federal election if there’s a change in government? SHARE’s manager of engagement and policy, Delaney Greig, is hopeful, “We believe this is a cross-party issue and does not depend on the same government being re-elected. Modern Slavery Acts in the U.K. and Australia have come in under conservative governments.”

Either way, the more pressure put on government and companies to root out modern slavery, the more likely they are to provide better working conditions for those whose anguish is on the clothing we wear daily.

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It hasn’t quite been advertised in lights, but Kering – the Paris-based group behind Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen and other luxury brands – has been quietly pioneering environmental and social initiatives behind the scenes for several years now. So quietly, in fact, that in 2015, the Washington Post slagged the company for not being public enough and failing to leverage its global influence to help make going green sexy, the way Tesla has for electric cars.

Fast forward to the present and Kering and its biggest profit-driver, Gucci (now beloved by Millennials and rappers alike), have been coming out of the closet as sustainability champs. “We have been working on sustainability for so long and we realized at one point that our actions needed to be better understood within and outside the company,” Gucci president and CEO Marco Bizzarri told Women’s Wear Daily during the launch of Gucci’s new online platform, Gucci Equilibrium – designed to “connect people, planet and purpose.”

There’s no denying luxury fashion hasn’t exactly been synonymous with ecological sensitivity. Exotic animal skin handbags, fur-trimmed ensembles and questionably-mined bling have dominated haute couture runways and boutiques since the dawn of luxury fashion houses. Not that luxury and sustainability are inherently at odds. The Italian authors of the book Sustainable Luxury Brands: Evidence from Research and Implications for Managers argue that “craftsmanship, preservation of artisan skills, product quality and durability” give brands like Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci greener bones than fast fashion’s disposable knock-offs.

By the time fashion lovers started adding up the true cost of their clothing after Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza garment factory collapse killed 1,138 garment workers back in 2013, Kering was already doing its own number crunching. That same year it released its first Environmental Profit & Loss Report, attaching a monetary cost to its air emissions, land use, water consumption/pollution, waste and greenhouse gases (notably, Kering’s GHGs largely came from the cattle farming involved in its leather). In 2013, the environmental price tag for making Kering’s multi-brand luxury goods rang in at US$817 million.

The latest EP&L numbers from its 2017 report are pegged at €482 million (roughly US$620 million). Kering’s aiming to slash its environmental footprint by 40 per cent across its entire supply chain by 2025, as well as halve its GHGs by then (a critical move, considering a 2018 Quantis report found that the apparel and footwear industry jointly account for 8.1 per cent of global climate impacts).

To get there, Kering’s chief sustainability officer Marie-Claire Daveu has admitted the company’s going to have to find “some really disruptive innovations.” So far that’s involved hemming executive bonuses to sustainability gains (their board, by the way, has the highest percentage of women of Corporate Knights’ Global 100 list), as well as funding innovation labs and change-making startups – and open sourcing the innovations they develop. It all rolls into Kering’s status as 2019’s most sustainable publicly-traded fashion corporation and the world’s second most sustainable corporation overall on the Global 100 (up from 47th place last year).

But while fashion commentators applaud Kering’s progressive governance, top-drawer policy targets and moves like their recent ban on fur, UK-based nonprofit Fashion Revolution’s 2018 Transparency Index still critiques Gucci (the only Kering company evaluated) for its opaqueness. To fully fuel the fashion revolution, founder, Carry Somers, tells Corporate Knights that Kering needs to root out potential shadows in its supply chain by going public with its supplier list the way, say, H&M and formerly Kering-owned Puma have.

Nonetheless, Fashion Revolution says that, more than most luxury brands, Gucci is moving in the right direction. Kering’s moves to date certainly signal that luxury goods don’t need to be cloaked in secrecy to thrive.

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